Warning: Once again, I'll be ranting a fair bit.
Katara sleeps quite well that night, and is slow to wake up. She refuses to do the "women's work" on principle, which draws Hasa's ire, but thankfully, her father steps in and gets on his case for not respecting her decisions. Katara talks to Bato, who says he "had thought" that Hakoda was coming around to him dating Ming (which implies that in actuality, Hakoda has not), and as Katara asks him questions about his relationship with someone from another nation, he vaguely implies that he's already looking ahead to marriage. Realizing how much he's admitted, Bato swears Katara to secrecy.
Katara's glad that most of the men are leaving, since she'd tried to make another speech, but Hasa and Kuba tried in vain to poke holes in her arguments. Sokka and Bato speak up, but they're dismissed because of who their girlfriends are. Perhaps the most effective rebuttal is when Sorrak empties a gravy boat onto Hasa's head and then hits him with it, after Hasa declares that "a woman should know her place." Ironically enough, Hasa's wife, Karin, apparently forgot her place, becoming "a badass with the spear" while raising the kids for three years, and Katara hopes that Karin and the other women will have more luck getting the men to see sense than she herself did.
Katara, once again, "accidentally on purpose" overhears a conversation, this time between Zuko and Iroh about Zuko forgetting Mai in prison. Zuko brings up some arguments in favor of it- resuming their relationship is honorable, beneficial to both of them, and he does owe her for saving his life- but unfortunately, though, he can't say that "because Mai and I like each other" is one of those reasons.
Iroh comes up with some rebuttals. He says that Zuko doesn't have to shag everyone who saved his life, and it should be noted that Katara is one of those people. He also criticizes Zuko by saying that it's not exactly honorable to resume his relatonship with Mai while he's secretly going out with Katara (Katara's convinced Iroh's off-base because of what Toph said, but he's actually right). Zuko tells Iroh that Katara is his best friend, and he doesn't want to risk losing that, as he believes that all couples inevitably fall apart (and doesn't quite accept that Fat and Piandao are the exception). Iroh asks why Zuko even bothers with dating Mai if he doesn't think much about romance, particularly since he hasn't talked about her until two days ago, but Zuko, after expressing regret over even asking his uncle, decides to go back to Mai.
Katara is furious, going into the standard, "what does she have that I don't?" inner monologue. She wonders whether it's the knives, whether it's becasue Mai is taller (I've noticed that women, at least in Japanese media, seem to be concerned about being too tall, although many people are sensitive about being a Toph-size midget), or because Mai is a noble.
After stewing in anger as the menfolk depart, Katara confronts Zuko in his office, asking him to confirm that he got together with Mai and demanding to know why she wasn't consulted. He gets defensive, saying that Katara's not his boss (I have to agree, since if Aang said something like this to Katara, the author wouldn't be nearly as sympathetic), but Katara retorts that she's his friend, and she doesn't think Mai is good for him. Zuko, after insisting that it's about what's good for Mai (something Katara knows all too well about him), says that he'd been under the impression that Katara was leaving, forcing Katara to reveal her apprenticeship with Dr. Yang in the middle of an argument, long after it might have done some good. When Zuko asks why, Katara says she never got the chance, before she's interrupted by Za Jei, and runs off to cry in her room.
Katara laments that Zuko picked another girl for less than ideal reasons, that she can't bring herself to tell him how she feels now, and that, while they weren't ever "together, she'd hoped that they'd at least had "an undertanding." In the end, though, she decides that rather than harangue him about his bad decisions, she can be there for him as a friend.
Let me return to the issue of pacing in this fic, this time with an analogy related to video games. One of the things about video games that most people who don't play them know is that you must defeat bosses by depleting their health. Since boss battles are generally longer than battles with regular enemies, the game tends to make them longer by
- Giving the boss significantly more health than the average enemy (which is almost always the case, and usually only varies by how much
- Making the boss able to resist or avoid damage somehow, whether players' attacks do less damage, only work if they hit a weakess, or so on or so forth.
- Less commonly, they allow the boss to regenerate health.
If the boss has all three qualities in too high quantities, the battle becomes tediously long, if not impossible to win.
How does this relate to the fic? Zuko and Katara have a great deal against them- they have to wait until they win the war before they can seriously consider going out, their countries have been enemies for a century, they each have canon love interests they may or may not like in this fic, and all sorts of unfortunate events happen to ruin their time together, all of which comprise #2. This isn't helped by how the author paces the fic, spending long amounts of time on side adventures, and slowly developing the main couple, and since this is reminiscent of whittling down a boss's health, this counts as #1. So while progress will be slow and many obstacles will be overcome, any progress they make will not only be all the more meaningful, but also permanent, right? WROOOONG! Katara and Zuko's intimate moments keep getting interrupted, he forgets her Anguished Declaration of Love when she finally summons the will to say it, and before she can try again, he hooks back up with his (canon) girlfriend.
For an example of this done better, I'd cite Bakuman。, in which the main character, a manga artist, and his girlfriend, a voice actress will marry each other once he gets an anime for his series and she plays the heroine. Naturally, he runs into a fair number of snags along the way- his first series gets canceled as a (indirect) result of him working himself so hard he gets hospitalized, his second series is too hard to write, his third series can't get an anime- and it takes over 10 years in universe. Through it all, there's a sense of progress. He gets better as a mangaka, becomes more patient and realistic about his goal, and develops more of a sense of trust between him and his girlfriend.
On a side note, the author's note accuses Bryke (or at least one half), having "Nice Guy syndrome," favoring pairings on the basis of the guy being nice, without regard for the girl's feelings. While I've seen a copy-pasted list on Fanfiction dot net listing "Nice guy" complaints about being rejected by girls, and saw that as bitter, I also found the author's comment even more so, as well as discounting the importance of kindness to one another as helping a relationship be more pleasant and stable. There's an interesting point on the Reality Ensues page that suggests that the failure of Makorra might suggest that Belligerent Sexual Tension does not make for healthy relationships, and notes that this might also apply to Zutara.
Of course, Katara and Zuko don't have a relationship at this point, and most likely won't for a while (although Katara does note that she's hoping that Zuko's "interlude" with Mai won't last forever), which means that the fic's dragging along as usual. The one thing I'd been certain about this fic is that the author was a fan of Zutara, as evidenced by her willingness to rewrite canon to imagine that it was actually happened, but given that it's unlikely that Zuko and Katara will get together any time soon forces me to question even that assumption.
What I liked
- I'm drawing a blank this time, and not for lack of trying.
What I didn't like
- Zuko getting back together with Mai and erasing most of his and Katara's hard-earned progress on their relationship
- The author's contempt for the Nice Guy getting the girl.
- Katara angsting about Zuko while expressing No Sympathy when Aang's upset about his unrequited love for her.
