Long Time Lurker

because here’s the thing. i’ve harped before on how fucking dumb it is to take the character whose central line in the og show was “no matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are” and have them immediately afterwards 1. actually somehow just not leave the country they were banished from, and 2. deliberately and knowingly choose to have their own memories wiped. like ???????!!?

and yeah, that then leaves the question, when it’s revealed in late s3 that she was banished and is possibly still alive: why didn’t she ever come back for her kids? why didn’t she at least seek out zuko, who was also banished and therefore at least theoretically accessible to her? why didn’t she try to intervene when she presumably learned about the agni kai and her son’s disfigurement? and if she never learned of it, how could that be without her either deliberately forgetting she had kids or choosing to actively ignore any opportunity to get information about them?

and my friends, this is where the silliest part of the whole kerfuffle is. because there was ALREADY a built-in, solid, well-explored piece of worldbuilding that could very easily have answered all of those questions in a way that wouldn’t fundamentally violate the basic foundations of her character’s nature. that piece of worldbuilding? the city of ba sing se.

As a writer, this solves so many of your problems. If Ursa ends up in ba sing se (which there’s decent reason for her to do, given that it’s entirely reasonable that she’d be worried about ozai changing his mind and deciding he needs to tie up loose ends, and that the city just repelled iroh, making it about the most secure location she could get) then once she makes it inside the walls she discovers there is no war in ba sing se. suddenly, trying to get information about anything to do with the fire nation, let alone the royal family, becomes extremely difficult and dangerous. she has a plausible reason not to know, or have very little and extremely delayed awareness of what’s happening to her children.

also, the city is fucking massive and packed to the brim with refugees. even with zuko and iroh getting all about the lower and upper ring, it’s completely plausible for her to have even still been there without amnesia and just. never happened to cross paths. big cities are like that. you could see a million people in a day that you’ll never see again and they’ll only be a tiny fraction of all the people there that you’ll never catch a glimpse of. plus, once you’re lucky enough to get in as a refugee, it’s probably not so easy to leave again, especially if you want to have a chance of being able to come back.

if you really want the amnesia plot, the dai li/joo dee worldbuilding is already set up there too! all you have to do is have ursa keep trying to find out about her kids, maybe even discover zuko’s banishment and try to either reach out or leave the city in response, and have the dai li catch her in a sting to crack down on citizens promoting awareness of the war.

badabing, badaboom, ursa gets joo dee’d and now you have an amnesia plotline without ursa deliberately abandoning even the memory of her kids.

I also thought it was far more tragic to work off what Zuko said, that they were a happy family once, but Ozai had a bigger love for power than family.

I know as a kid he could've not realized how things actually were, but it just hits me harder to think that they were a happy once, and from Ozai's lust of power, his family fell apart, it broke, it grew weak and divided. Conflicting.

And it just added to the lesson of pursuing absolute power is a loss of love, a collapse of your house, a weakness in your foundation.

How the higher you climb, the farther you are from the roots that held you up and together, and it makes the fall far more devastating.

His want of power over family, he sent away the wife he once loved.

Turned an older brother against him to plot in secret.

Banished the son that would help lead to his defeat.

Broke his most loyal and effective daughter and soldier as he left her behind.

And all it left him was being alone and overconfident. No one to come to his aide as he faced the wrath and mercy of the Avatar.

So Tim gets kidnapped. 

Makes sense. He is the CEO of Wayne industries. Of of the most notable Wayne children. His kidnapping is really no surprise. He gets kidnapped every other month.

But usually the kidnappers tie him up.

And take his phone.

And his laptop.

And lock the door.

And make it so he can’t just…y’know…leave.

And they especially don’t give him a very nice desk set up where he can continue his work unimpeded.

Bruce is confused.

Tim is confused and intrigued.

The kidnappers are by no means special. They aren’t any sort of costumed crook. They have no magic or powers. They are absolutely normal people.

Normal but smart people.

“Mr. Wayne, we have your son.”

“Which one?“

“The one who runs your business.“

“I see.”

“We want $10 million for his release.”

“I think you’ll find that Tim has already been subjected to multitude of kidnapping in the past. We are well used to these tactics.”

“Oh, this one’s different.” The head kidnapper responded.

“It is different so far. I’m not tied to a chair and there’s no lock on the door. What’s to stop me from leaving?” Tim asks, bemused and gesturing to the aforementioned unlocked door with his again unbound hands.

“Because we have coffee.“ The kidnapper replies, gesturing to a rather fancy coffee setup with a freshly brewing French roast.

Tim immediately perks up.

“And for every hour that our demands are not met, we will give him a fresh pot of coffee with an increasing grade of caffeine.”

Ten seconds pass.

There is a “ding” from the kidnapper’s cellphone as the notification of the payment goes through.

The kidnappers blink.

“I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect that to work.”

Tim, who had taken advantage of this time to make himself a cup of coffee and already finished it, sets the empty cup down.

“I’ll double it to keep me.”

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

Bear, aged 8, was the leader of this particularly chaotic takeaway. I overheard them pretending to phone another customer - customer order 125 - and explaining that their delivery would be delayed by approximately fifteen minutes due to a “rockslide.”

“Hey, wait a minute, what was that?” I asked.

“Are you order number 125?”

“No, I’m order number 165.”

Bear said severely, “we don’t give information about other people’s orders.”

“That’s very professional,” I said, “but what was that about a rockslide?”

Bear said, “that’s not your order.”

“Sorry,” i said, justly chastened. “Was it a big rockslide? Is it on the news?”

“If you need information about your order, you will get it.”

My pretend phone then pretend rang, so I had to answer it. It was the takeaway.

“Number 165? Your order will be delayed by five minutes.”

“Oh,” I said, “why?”

That’s an interesting question!

Thinking about this from the perspective of them swapping places in their respective stories with nothing else swapping, I think that Ryland Grace would make for a good Stanley, but Stanley as Ryland Grace feels more complicated.

If Ryland Grace found himself in the parable, he would probably fall into the role of Stanley fairly well as he’s very curious and would be able to keep up as The Narrator’s foil and with his snark. Grace would probably be very curious about how the parable works and eager to explore endings that won’t get him killed (which he would stumble into anyway because The Narrator doesn’t want to spoil anything now would he?). The dynamic between Ryland Grace and The Narrator probably wouldn’t be too dissimilar to Grace and Rocky’s dynamic. I imagine that The Narrator would probably relish in the opportunity to talk about the intricacies of his stories and the parable, but would be frustrated with Grace’s curiosity about the parable and reluctance to explore potentially dangerous areas and endings because it stalls the story.

Stanley is harder to figure out because of how little we actually reliably know about Stanley since he very rarely acts independently of the player and we can’t be sure any of The Narrator’s statements about Stanley are reliable. I don’t think Stanley would be able to fulfill the science requirements of the astrophage problem, but he probably would be able to pull off the death defying acts that Grace could. If you take in common fan interpretations (defiant, driven by simple or straightforward goals, snarky, curious, mute), Stanley could probably match Rocky’s energy, though they would have to figure out communication again, but Stanley would still have significant trouble with any science problems that crop up. Stanley would probably do fine at any point during and following the trip to Erid, but would not make a good Ryland Grace at any point before. The answer might also depend on how smart you interpret Stanley to be and whether the Narrative around him shifts to accommodate for him.

Things would probably run more smoothly for Stanley if The Narrator joined Stanley in the PHM universe if he retained his status and abilities as a Narrator, though Rocky joining the parable would probably kill him unless the Parable accommodates for Rocky and either gives him his own space or the ability to survive in the Parables atmosphere. I also don’t believe Grace or Rocky would do well mentally long term in the parable if they can’t find a way to leave on their own.

i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.

so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”

And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”

I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”