History YMMV / EmbersVathara

** Shiden is often derided for being a cliche ''shonen'' hero dropped into a series where he doesn't fit, getting large amounts of CharacterShilling, marking the point where dragons and everything related to them become a malignant PlotTumor, and [[spoiler:kill-stealing Hama and thereby stealing one of Katara's most impressive feats in canon]].

** Shidan is often derided for being a cliche ''shonen'' hero dropped into a series where he doesn't fit, getting large amounts of CharacterShilling, marking the point where dragons and everything related to them become a malignant PlotTumor, and [[spoiler:kill-stealing Hama and thereby stealing one of Katara's most impressive feats in canon]].

* TheScrappy: For a number of readers who don't buy into the alternative character interpretation, Katara becomes this at some point in the chapters before or after the end of the Ba Sing Se arc.

* RonTheDeathEater: Katara's season three rage over Zuko getting Aang mostly-killed after she'd started to trust him is transposed into a season one homicidal fury that Zuko is of the Fire Nation and has the nerve to be a better healer than she is. Since then, Katara has been publicly humiliated by Zuko in three or four different ways and has been reclaimed as an acceptable being, but is being used as a prop in the new goal of showing that Aang is a horrible, selfish boy who is deeply intolerant of everything that doesn't fit into his childhood culture (which, by the way, is secretly evil). Even ''sky bison'' are painted as living ecological disasters (not unlike the Death Gore from ''Manga/{{Toriko}}''.

* RonTheDeathEater: Katara's season three rage over Zuko getting Aang mostly-killed after she'd started to trust him is transposed into a season one homicidal fury that Zuko is of the Fire Nation and has the nerve to be a better healer than she is. Since then, Katara has been publicly humiliated by Zuko in three or four different ways and has been reclaimed as an acceptable being, but is being used as a prop in the new goal of showing that Aang is a horrible, selfish boy who is deeply intolerant of everything that doesn't fit into his childhood culture (which, by the way, is secretly evil).

%%* BetterThanCanon: What most still reading it think.

* IronWoobie: Aang: He's the Bridge between his world and the spirit world; in other words, he's steadfast, symbolic, and everyone walks all over him.

* MisaimedFandom: Can occur when the audience misses the intended subtext, or if the storyteller failed to make their point in a convincing manner. Devoted fans of the story tend to see critics as the first case, failing to understand the motivations Vathara has created for various characters, despite the extensive author notes provided. Critics see this as the second case, claiming that the story and notes fail to reconcile the characters’ behavior with character development seen in dozens of canon episodes that are unchanged in this alternative timeline. Several paragraphs of debate on this and related subjects have been moved to the discussion page.

%%* IronWoobie: Zuko as well as his great-grandfather, Kuzon.
** Expressing this sentiment in front of Zuko puts him [[DontYouDarePityMe two steps away from chewing out the sympathizer.]] It's what lets Xiu paint her initial vision of 'Lee', as yet another war-orphan too young to be fighting and too weathered to be coddled.
** Aang: He's the Bridge between his world and the spirit world; in other words, he's steadfast, symbolic, and everyone walks all over him.

* CrazyIsCool: Played straight with references to Bumi: 'we all need to think like mad geniuses.' Deconstructed with Zuko. Many of the things he does, like [[spoiler:suggesting that people of fire and earth live together, escaping by amphibious train, using firebending and oil as a drill to free the Suzuran,]] following turtle seals under the ice and so on are regarded as absolutely insane. And yet he pulls them off. However, from Zuko's POV, these things are shown not to be acts of mad genius, but acts of desperation, very thoroughly planned out, and/or very possible given Avatarverse laws of physics. [[spoiler:Not to mention several decades of experience experimenting with lost or novel forms of bending: Zuko didn't come up with most of that stuff, Kuzon did.]]
* IronWoobie: Zuko as well as his great-grandfather, Kuzon.

* BrokenBase: As noted in the summary. Most of this comes down to disagreements over AlternateCharacterInterpretation.
** Arguments over the history and backstory of the Fire Nation and Vathara's world in general can also be volatile and comes down to four points of contention:

* {{Adorkable}}: Zuko, oh so very much.
-->"So, clueless," Shirong concluded.\\
"I very much fear he is, yes."\\
"''He'' is standing right here, Uncle," Zuko said warily. "And ''he'' would like an explanation."\\
"Of course, nephew." Iroh folded his hands in his sleeves with suspicious serenity. "Now let me see, I am sure I have a proverb for this..."\\
"Never mind," Zuko winced. "I don't want to know."
** Ditto Kuei. Bookworm tendencies and a lifetime shut up in the palace tends to do that to a guy;[[spoiler: it's made quite clear after he meets the female Touzaikaze/desert witches in Chapter 45. But hey, at least he's trying. Sort of.]]

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: A lot of the controversy revolves around a reinterpretation of Katara and of the contrast between her Sugar Queen persona and the dark side she sometimes shows in canon. Some readers think it’s brilliant. Some see it as character bashing as well as a case of RonTheDeathEater. Some think they see where the author was trying go with this, but also think it was taken too far or otherwise poorly executed.