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.
Agreed. Unnatural ease with language or worlds that all have the same language are NEVER something I complain about, simply because I dislike stories about learning languages so much (or learning basic human manners).
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.
Agreed. That was handled very well.
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.
Oh, I totally agree! From the very beginning I got the sense that his definition of 'slavery' was inadequate at encompassing the full context of being a slave in the Water Tribes (and that humorous line of Toph's 'They're treating you like her husband' only confirmed it for me).
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.
Agreed. Now that he's out of the Water Tribes, he's going to have to make a choice between finding his uncle and going back with Katara.
Enslaved
Agreed. Unnatural ease with language or worlds that all have the same language are NEVER something I complain about, simply because I dislike stories about learning languages so much (or learning basic human manners).
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.
Agreed. That was handled very well.
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.
Oh, I totally agree! From the very beginning I got the sense that his definition of 'slavery' was inadequate at encompassing the full context of being a slave in the Water Tribes (and that humorous line of Toph's 'They're treating you like her husband' only confirmed it for me).
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.
Agreed. Now that he's out of the Water Tribes, he's going to have to make a choice between finding his uncle and going back with Katara.