Rabe,
The Taboo Vathara created doesn't make sense, its a plot hole. Saying its bad for spirits to visit any harm on humans is too simple. These aren't all wild dogs. They are the gods of the setting and more then capable of high level thought.They can and have been wronged in the past. They should be at least free to defend themselves. If they are not free to defend themselves and determine their own course. Then what are they to be, the human's pets? Also that would mean the AVATAR by the very act of defending itself would be breaking the taboo because it too is also a spirit. Essentially there needs to be a loop holes or this is the legal equivalent of trying to make it illegal for it rain on days that end in y.
Well, no, they're not really 'gods', certainly not in a Western sense that implies overwhelming power and unimpeachable authority. We also don't know how much sentience these spirits all have, or how they think. If memory serves, the vast majority of encounters in the Spirit World that have been intelligent have been involving other human beings, most commonly deceased Avatars of the past. The Face Stealer and the gigantic turtle of the last episodes are notable exceptions, but I can't think of many others.
I think the points in the story where this aspect shows up involve spirits
directly harming human beings, or even going far, far beyond their natural habitats to deliberately hunt down human beings and drain then kill them.
2) This is a AU that means those AU elements should be seen everywhere even off stage or in the distant past but they are not.
Well, no, this simply isn't a fair criticism. There is no one definition for the term 'AU', Rabe. In Embers there are dramatic and extensive differences in the characters themselves, the setting itself, and the past history of the world. These together are more than enough to qualify it as Alternate Universe.
3)Making up thinly veiled excuses to cut out Mai and Zuko's relationship, then throwing 2 OCs namely Min Wen and Jia Wen at Mai and Zuko's feet and expecting romantic relationships to form spontaneously is just the kind of hamfisted writing that I'd expect form a 14yr Zutara fan writing for a fic challenge. I mean in 1 paragraph alone Vathara basically killed all of canon Mai that elevated her above named goon status.
The cutting out wasn't a 'thinly veiled excuse'-there were substantive reasons it happened in story. It wasn't capricious or ill-conceived. You may not
like it, but that's not the same thing. I do agree, though, that too many people fall in love with Zuko and his nobility in the story too quickly-male and female, romantic and otherwise. Mai hasn't been killed, though...and in canon, she basically
was a named goon for the overwhelming majority of her appearances.
4) In chapter 22 we find out that Vathara went back in time and change the? Canon time line to reflect that Avatar Kyoshi Killed Chin the Conqueror and then set up the Dai Li to play Ghost buster because in the Embersverse Antiques turn evil and try to kill you if they are older then a century. Which in turn made the 46th Earth King very unpopular so the whole war was apparently a power grab on Chin's part, due to the Earth King keeping antiques. Anyway even after Chin's death at the hands of Avatar Kyoshi his army went right on razing the Earth kingdom for a time rendering his death a pointless homicide. After which they for reasons strange and unknowable returned to the site of Chin's death and still founded a town based on hating the Avatar for killing Chin which didn't really seem to inconvenience their war effort much according to Vathara.
Wait, before you were complaining that the story isn't AU. Now you're complaining that a fundamental change to the story's history doesn't make sense. Which is it? Criticisms 2 & 4 contradict each other. Also, your description of how spirits interact with certain items is pretty simplistic. Also, it's far from implausible that killing an army's general wouldn't necessarily immediately stop that army. And as for hating the Avatar...presumably his army at least liked their general, or at least didn't dislike him enough not to be upset when an Avatar kills him.
5) Vathara in chapter 22 wont stop making Katara call everyone she bumps into liars. She has shown sense enough in the past understand she would need to stop talking and start looking for an advantage. Instead we are forced to see a Partially lobotomized person who might have been Katara if minus about 30 IQ points go on and on claiming all the people in the conversation with her are liars to their faces.
Katara's reactions are entirely unreasonable from everyone in the story's perspective but her own, Rabe. Zuko is - fairly, from her experience - one of the primary personal embodiments of evil and suffering and generally
trouble in her world. When confronted with this shocking and unexpected development - Zuko in the city - what do you expect she'll do? Take the word of a bunch of near-total or complete strangers that, no, you're wrong, Katara,
all of your past encounters with Zuko in which he used aggression, deception, cunning, and ruthlessness to kidnap your buddy and inflict harm on your home (and that's after, no less, decades of war crimes her tribe suffered at the hands of the Fire Nation) don't mean squat in the face of our experiences. Us total strangers, that is.
In fact, what's more implausible than Katara's ongoing antagonism and barely-restrained violence and mistrust is the
lack of those characteristics on the part of Aang and Sokka, or at least it would be from anyone else. Katara is the one person with previous antagonistic experience with Zuko who is behaving
normally, Rabe, in ways that might be expected from anyone.
