Yeah, it does drag, and I am glad we're FINALLY past the dialogue barrier. That could have come a little earlier without losing its impact. I don't think I noticed the dragging bits quite that much when I was reading the last 10 or so chapters as they came out, with time in between to forget stuff and then be reminded.
About the payoff--that statement is primarily related to Zuko's conflict of Stockholm Syndrome, how he feels attached to the tribe but resented for so long their imprisonment of him. I kept thinking the author would forget and make him too comfortable (as so many imprisonment fanfics do), but I liked when we had a few chapters of him emotionally shutting down and deliberately halting his own progress...I felt like we were pulled along with him in that ethical dilemma. Then when he was finally given his freedom, I liked that it didn't immediately change much in his life, except that now it was his choice. And she managed to frame that within what is to him an alien culture, almost to say that his basic understanding of his imprisonment was itself flawed--not that he wasn't a prisoner, but that his perception was from a radically different cultural outline so he was seeing it through his eyes, not theirs, which was interesting and for the most part successful.
The stuff with Jet was a nice and necessary plot push and I feel like things are going to head toward a conclusion soon afterward.
Re: icon love!
About the payoff--that statement is primarily related to Zuko's conflict of Stockholm Syndrome, how he feels attached to the tribe but resented for so long their imprisonment of him. I kept thinking the author would forget and make him too comfortable (as so many imprisonment fanfics do), but I liked when we had a few chapters of him emotionally shutting down and deliberately halting his own progress...I felt like we were pulled along with him in that ethical dilemma. Then when he was finally given his freedom, I liked that it didn't immediately change much in his life, except that now it was his choice. And she managed to frame that within what is to him an alien culture, almost to say that his basic understanding of his imprisonment was itself flawed--not that he wasn't a prisoner, but that his perception was from a radically different cultural outline so he was seeing it through his eyes, not theirs, which was interesting and for the most part successful.
The stuff with Jet was a nice and necessary plot push and I feel like things are going to head toward a conclusion soon afterward.