Embers/YMMV

"Sokka: Someone needs to learn the difference between stupid and desperate, and it's not me."
 * Alternate Character Interpretation – 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. Some think they see where the author was trying go with this but also think it was taken too far or otherwise poorly executed.
 * Author Appeal: Vathara really likes The Empire. She has a Ruroken-Star Wars fusion which puts the best possible light on the evil empire and the worst on the Jedi that you ever did see without actually changing any major facts... Except that she sees the Tarkin Doctrine - the use of WMDs to promote peace through power - as morally justified; ie Kenshin shouldn't publicly aid the rebels because it would be his fault if they used the Death Star on more planets. Militaristic empires with huge fleets appear to just put her in her happy place. Thus, the Fire Nation is way cool. (Which it kinda is. Vathara downplays the ridiculous propaganda machine, though, because being duped by the government does not befit Proud Warrior Race Badass Dragon People, apparently.)
 * Debateable. Generally speaking, Vathara appears to aim at deconstructing The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified tropes. Recall that this is fanfic, meaning that it's automatically in conversation with the original series. Her usual approach is to show that good people and bad people can turn up on both sides of the battle lines. In Embers, no one is purely good or purely evil. Or at least, no group. (Ozai's probably an exception.) As far as the Author Appeal aspect of Rooting for the Empire goes, Word of God appears to be, "No, no, hell no, and did you actually pay attention to the story?" (My wording, not Vathara's.) So, probably not Author Appeal.
 * That Ruroken-Star Wars fusion never says the Tarkin Doctrine is justified. It says that it's effective. These are two wildly different concepts. Will police hesitate to break down a door and come after bank robbers directly if those robbers are threatening to shoot hostages? Yes. Is it morally right for the police to look for other options, which will not result in dead hostages? Yes. Are the bank robbers therefore justified in killing innocent people? Hell no. Kenshin's reluctance to get millions of people killed is in no way an argument that threatening those people isn't a very bad thing. And the same thing is true in Embers. That something works does not make it good. That the Evil Empire does something horrible but effective does not mean the Author thinks it is the right thing to do.
 * Bellisario's Maxim - Since Vathara averts it for the original series, she can't complain if readers fail to apply it to the fic.
 * Better Than Canon - What most still reading it think.
 * And the canon-reinforced Ship Sinking in Chapter 31 shows how this might not be a good thing.
 * Chapter 42 has been posted, and things are much clearer than before.
 * The fic had come very hard on the "Fire Nation best" and this is not about the war. They posses so far: reasons for the war that bemoan on and on, kind and just rules all around except legendary exceptions, connection to the origin of the world unbroken, dragon kin and superpowers, the greatest army in the world (stated literally that the Fire Nation could have ripped apart both North Tribe and Ba sing se when they want it) and know, fire ghost smacking the Stupidity of the core cast, not to mention the Zuko wankfest... yeah, its so thick it nearly chock one to swallow and this Troper likes this Fic
 * It's drifted in odd directions recently - Vathara keeps trying to adapt the idealistic High Fantasy setting to her knowledge of logistics and sociology and keeps giving the Fire Nation entirely new capabilities in order to keep from writing herself into corners; civilizations capable of prosecuting century-long wars are inherently sociopathic, and really only stop when someone else cuts their heads off - see Medieval France prior to the Battle of Crecy and similar battles that followed it, where most of their nobility was slaughtered by peasant bowmen. But she's Rooting for the Empire and wants the Fire Nation to be sympathetic, so she came up with, so most of the Fire Nation is Just Following Orders really, really reluctantly. Then she realized that getting Fire Nation serfs to support a war for a hundred years is just as tricky, so she came up with , meaning the Fire peasantry is Just Following Orders really, really reluctantly. The result is an empire that literally has No Delays for the Wicked, and I'm wondering how she's going to tone her superempire down enough that they didn't actually conquer the world decades before the events of the series and are just pulling some insane scheme to manipulate Aang into making Ozai the Avatar or something.
 * Broken Base - As noted in the summary. Most of this comes down to disagreements over Alternate Character Interpretation.
 * Arguments over the history and back story of the Fire Nation and Vathara's world in general can also be volatile and comes down to four points of contention:
 * When it comes to the causes of the war some people see "but"s that make the Fire Nation "Innocent" and others see "why"s that don't.
 * With some see it as  while others see it as, at worst,  Either way, given a choice between murdering children and dying, anyone who chooses murdering children has no right to complain when someone kills them for it. Kuzon, who was far down in the line of succession, became lord of Byakko because most of his family died rather than obey Sozin's orders.
 * Vathara's culture for the Air Nomads:
 * The Gambit Pileup, some see it as part of a complex web of reasons, others see it as someone set up the Fire Nation to go to war and kill the Air Nomads which makes it ultimately not their fault?
 * "There are no excuses. There are reasons, but no excuses," is a reoccuring theme of the story. Deliberate Values Dissonance does not invoke Death of the Author; and in fanfic it is thrice as hard considering how often Fandom invokes Word of God.
 * Of course, the idea that reasons do not equal excuses may qualify as expecting the readers to know the difference; it possibly doesn't help that, given how much Chekhov's Armory turns up, it seems reasonable to believe that we're only scratching the surface of the reasons. For example, is the result of them getting the same treatment from Fate that the Fire Nation got.
 * And on top of all that is Vathara's word that the fic has gone way more AU then she had initially intended; the Canon Fire Nation began conquering the world because Fire Lord Sozin believed that "The Fire Nation (is) the greatest civilization in history and the war (is their) way of sharing (their) greatness with the rest of the world", and later generations extended that to "Fire is "the superior element", and has the right to take what it wishes". Solution: Aang must become the Avatar and beat Fire Lord Ozai into the ground. However, the Fire Nation of Embers is Solution: ...Aang's... working on it.
 * Canon Sue - Zuko. While he does get a power up, the multitude of mistakes he admits to making and Vathara's fondness for torturing him are pretty good counterarguments.
 * Forget Zuko. Iroh. And it is awesome. In canon, Iroh is depicted as Crazy Awesome but the viewer is never allowed to see that much (his escape, for example). In Embers, Iroh
 * Complete Monster - When There Are No Therapists, and no Bedlam House either (tribal cultures can't afford them), the Water Tribes have to dispose of theirs by ice floe. (See Wendigo) The question of what a culture does about people who refuse to act like decent people is a driving question, with Aang's claim that the Air Nomads didn't produce any being highly suspicious. The Fire Nation had Agni Kais to handle them, among other reasons.  While not Exclusively Evil or Bad Powers, Bad People, the Fire Nation does seem to have a higher than normal chance of producing these,
 * Chapter 51 seems to reveal that, logically enough, the Air Nomads did produce "bad people", but what happened to them? The Air Nomads are pacifists, yes. Which is why the "bad people" were
 * It's not just at fault: the Fire Nation has practically been breeding for Complete Monster traits for the past century, in some cases literally.  Sozin's order to kill the Air Nomads  The firebenders with the will to stand up to evil instead of going along with it to save their own skins died. Ozai's canon order to strafe the Earth Kingdom would likely have done the same thing. And that's on top of encouraging people like Zhao and Azula,  Iroh and Zuko are pretty convinced that
 * Crazy Awesome - Played straight with references to Bumi: 'we all need to think like mad geniuses.' Deconstructed with Zuko. Many of the things he does, like following turtle seals under the ice and so on are regarded as absolutely freaking insane. And yet he pulls them off. Which is awesome. However, from Zuko's POV, these things are shown not to be acts of mad genius, but acts of desperation, very throughly planned out, and/or very possible given Avatarverse laws of physics.  Since the reader knows that no, what Zuko did wasn't actually that cool, the way other characters react to them, given what they know, sometimes feel like a Creator's Pet. Although not everyone is that impressed.
 * Crazy Awesome - Played straight with references to Bumi: 'we all need to think like mad geniuses.' Deconstructed with Zuko. Many of the things he does, like following turtle seals under the ice and so on are regarded as absolutely freaking insane. And yet he pulls them off. Which is awesome. However, from Zuko's POV, these things are shown not to be acts of mad genius, but acts of desperation, very throughly planned out, and/or very possible given Avatarverse laws of physics.  Since the reader knows that no, what Zuko did wasn't actually that cool, the way other characters react to them, given what they know, sometimes feel like a Creator's Pet. Although not everyone is that impressed.

"Agent Bon: We give up everything for our city. Can't it give us something back?"
 * Creator's Pet - YMMV since there are some who enjoy the author's interpretation of Zuko, and others who would identify him more as a Canon Sue. However, just in case you forget for a scene how awesome Zuko is and how he  the characters will make sure it won't be for long. When Zuko is not directly in the scene, you bet that the canon characters and OC's will be talking up his many good deeds, psychoanalyzing his previous actions, and speculating ad nauseum about his powers/ability/upbringing. This is mostly written to win the goodwill of the reader in support of Zuko, rather than to advance the plot.
 * What Zuko is doing is, in the context of the world they're in, the equivalent of you asking somebody to board a boat made of skins stretched over a wooden frame with their family, and trusting it'll float through whatever the open ocean might throw at them to eventually reach land whose location is 'over the horizon that-a-way.' Getting people to agree to it means you must prove that you're Crazy Awesome--crazy, with that sort of idea, is a given.
 * Fridge Brilliance: Vathara may have perfectly explained a key plot twist in two ways without realizing it; she says the Dai Li joined Azula because, but she also showed another explanation;

""That is the strength of your line! The strength we wished to steal for our own, through Ursa's children.""
 * Iron Woobie - Zuko as well as his great-grandfather, Kuzon.
 * Expressing this sentiment in front of Zuko puts him 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, but alongside the fortitude and authority is being a giant doormat for each side.
 * Magnificent Bastard - As appropriate for a Gambit Pileup, there are tons running around.
 * Koh Also, what happened during the attack on the Northern Water Tribe: [[spoiler: killing the last healers and causing the public to lose confidence in him.
 * Wan Shin Tong
 * Sozin
 * Yue
 * Kuruk Koh might have gone after his wife because Kuruk was too good at his job, not because he wasn't doing it.
 * Kuzon Alternatively,
 * It Got Worse. Even hating Sozin and Mokoto, Byakko admired their power.

""Several of our younger sisters, especially among the bearing, were most distressed to witness the Avatar's will. I counseled the elders to bring all back into harmonious accord, as while mercy and compassion are tender illusions, they yet cause the spirit to remain attached to things of this world, and must all be pruned away. Else as you know yourself, one will desire more of what can only pass away and be forgotten. And how, then, would we know the transcendent joy of teaching our pupils freedom, if those who bear them will not give them up...""
 * Azula on top of canon.
 * Ty Lee
 * Averted partially in Chapter 35:
 * Pakku for what he did to Katara's waterbending.
 * Misaimed Fandom - A Misaimed Fandom 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.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During The Beach arc, Zuko gives a pretty hefty chewing out to Avatar Roku over how he could have prevented Sozin coming to power and the resultant war if he'd just paid attention to his people and how Kyoshi's decree was driving them all nuts instead of giving things the once over, saying "everything's fine as-is", then running away to other nations to train in other forms of bending. In his subsequent explanation of just what Kyoshi did to the Fire Nation that ultimately caused the war, Zuko may not explicitly state that the Fire Nation got drunk for a week after Roku died, but his opinions make it clear they probably didn't care too much to see this second Avatar die.
 * Congratulations,Katara! You've just handed verbal proof that Shidan--and by extension, Byakko--is working against the Fire Lord to the Fire Lord's own army. Their deaths, if any, will be on your head.
 * Nightmare Fuel - The author's description of what
 * Not to mention Vathara's presentation of Spirits. The Plague Spirit was bad enough, then she had to go and make the Haima-jiao... * Shudder* This troper had to tell herself that turning off the computer and going to bed was perfectly safe for over an hour before she actually got the courage to move.
 * And then there's the fact that loyalty bending, as shown in Embers, works in real life. No bending required. In fact, the main difference between loyalty bending and the Milgrams' experiment, etc, is that loyalty bending is a lot easier to resist (by knowing another firebender, for example).  Between that and the reasons she gives for Katara's view that Zuko is driving the others around him insane (all of which are perfectly valid) and her hatred for him in general overwhelming even her determination to be a good person, Vathara seems to delight in exposing the reasons why rationality is a happy illusion. It's not even Humans Are Bastards. Someone has to be in control of their own actions to be judged a bastard.
 * Chapter 31 has the letter from Monk Yuan-ti, and while everyone else is horrified to hear it, Aang shrugs it off like it's nothing:


 * Ron the Death Eater - Fans of the fic mistake Embers' version of Katara for an evil person when most of it stems from Vathara trying to explain Katara's lying, stealing, and torturing people for not telling her what she wants to hear in canon without making her evil. The author spent so long hammering in the paradox between everyone's descriptions of Katara and her own inner monologue showing her as a good person who only wanted to help others, and the way she treated Zuko, because she was trying to get the readers to see that it was unnatural and therefore there had to be a reason for it. The reason is revealed in Chapter 30, and alleviating even a part of it immediately allows her to be far more rational regarding Zuko, even though the authors notes reveal it's going to be a long road to recovery. Katara has been described as The Woobie by both Toph and
 * Rooting for the Empire: In canon, the Fire Nation's reasons for the war are detailed in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord" - sharing the Fire Nation's "prosperity" with the rest of the world, QED colonialism with all the abuses thereof. Canon Zuko's World of Cardboard Speech Calling the Old Man Out is when he finally realizes it. Vathara's Fire Nation is instead:
 * Going crazy from pent up aggression from a forced intra clan peace. The comparison is made to a normal fire based ecosystem, it must go up in flames in order to be healthy. However, because everyone is united under the Fire Lord they can't fight each other, leading to them attacking everyone else.
 * Seeking justice for a horrific sneak attack by
 * Stuck in the war, even if they wanted to stop, which they mostly don't want to. Fire bending is aggressive, it's not so good at defense. The Fire Nation has already committed so many atrocities that if they tried to stop/allow the other nations to get their feet under them, they believes everyone else will gang up on them and kill them all.
 * The Fire Nation generally rules captured territories fairly and justly, in a way similar to how the Romans and other ancient empires managed things, and the abuses are solely the fault of extremists, many of whom make policy. In chapter 20, her Zuko actually says that the Fire Nation has to keep fighting the war just so it can keep its victims from exacting revenge!
 * This is all why The Avatar is needed, someone to be a neutral third party with enough respect and firepower to enforce such things. But not just any Avatar--Aang and his crazy airbending Idiot Ball culture is needed. Because that is the only one that believes in stopping the Cycle of Revenge.
 * OTOH, Vathara is calling for the complete destruction of the central government since the canon Fire Nation is utterly beyond redemption, while canon just put Zuko in charge. Discussion moved to the Embers Just Bugs Me page.
 * Shipping - Vathara seems fairly determined to keep the fic gen, and centered on worldbuilding and character development instead of romance. She sinks two of the three main canon ships (Suki has yet to make an appearance), although The two 'maybe' ships in the fic  both seem to be there as plot devices and probably won't amount to anything:  However, it would surprise many to note that most of the Avatar fics on the author's favorites list are Zuko/Katara. This may just be because it's the pairing of most Zuko-centric fics, or it might explain why Zuko, who is used to being hated and looked down on, cares so much about Katara's dislike of him, he tends to speak in rather complimentary terms about her when he's not talking about her dislike for him and certain things that are revealed to not be her fault, and he cares about hurting her feelings far more than anyone else's, including Iroh's.  If there is a ship, it's likely to be this, but since  the fic is more likely to continue to be gen.
 * Most likely Zuko/Katara? When it's he and Toph who like, respect, miss, and most importantly to both of them, trust each other? Zuko relaxes around her, showing off and playing around. They help each other, teach each other. They work at understanding each other. He shares secrets with Toph that impact his entire nation as well as just himself. He doesn't do any of that lightly, and would never consider doing so with Katara. Toph, on the other hand, clearly appreciates being appreciated and listened to. And she isn't phased at all by Zuko . Yes, at the moment she's too young to be in a relationship, but for her culture, not to young to be thinking about one. And Vathara has taken pains to establish that . Additionally, given that Zuko is a prince and needs a wife his people can follow and trust to help protect them, Toph is about ideal. Everyone who's opinion matters to him who has met her thinks she's awesome; admiring her honesty, fairness, fearlessness, and fighting ability. Which is what she wants to be valued for. And given that
 * Currently, Zuko seems to regard Toph as the little sister he would have had if Azula weren't a Complete Monster, just like Iroh, who is delighted that she calls him uncle. Of course, uncle could also be uncle-in-law.
 * As of Chapter 38,.
 * In chapter 27, we have the following bit of dialogue that may prove to be the best Chekhov's Gun (Chekhov's Relationship?) ever;

":...to not take up weapons, to not prepare night and day to slaughter any enemies that would come against them - it is unthinkable. It is - one who does such a thing, who believes the world will not be dangerous, will not strive to kill him... That is what we call insane. ...And it is our dangerousness, our peril to each other, that keeps each clan from another's throats. If one member of the clan will not fight, and other clans know that to be true... Langxue: They stomp on him, everybody else comes roaring in to fight, and the whole countryside goes up in flames."
 * Of course, this could just be the author teasing the readers.
 * Additionally, marrying a member of the high nobility like Zuko would go a long way toward reconciling Toph with her parents: by Earth Kingdom standards she would be succeeding and bringing honor to her family despite previous embarrassing behavior.
 * The Scrappy - For a number of readers who don't buy into the alternative character interpretation, becomes this at some point in the chapters before or after the end of the Ba Sing Se arc. Starting around chapter 30-31, there are efforts to reverse this by presenting the character as . However, many of those who weren't persuaded by the reasons presented for the character's abrasive behavior when it happened also don't find the attempted cleanup afterwards to be convincing or soothing to the irritation that has been raised regarding this character.
 * Tear Jerker -The scene in chapter 47 with Aang talking to Hakoda about the life he would have had: Peaceful, happy, raising a student and figuring out all kinds of new tricks with airbending...something wonderful and precious that he never really had a chance at, but he didn't know it, and he lost it forever.
 * Values Dissonance: Turned into Conversation On the Main Page(See "Fan Fic Embers Discussion" - Values Dissonance), but here's a shot:
 * The Water Tribes, Air Nomads and Earth Kingdoms have familiar ethics-based legal systems(assumption of innocence, punishment of the guilty, reparation to the injured) enforced by the heads of their communities. They may disagree on minutiae, but they can comprehend each other easily enough. The Fire Nation has a sociopathically selfish approach to justice: the only reason not to commit a hostile act is if the person you're attacking will kill you for it, and if they don't have the ability to stop you, then they deserve to lose property, to suffer pain and to die unlamented - Might Makes Right. The other nations dub this, as we would IRL, "homicidal mania."

"Want to ride elephant koi? Ride elephant koi. Want to stop practicing your earth bending because you're bored? Stop (at least until something more irritating comes to annoy you, then go and hide behind your bending practice). Want the war to stop? Well he doesn't want to have to fight Ozai, but he has to if he wants the War to stop, so he'll do it. This makes sense, until of course you apply it to other things. Hakoda is killing people, therefore he must want to kill people. If he didn't want to, then he could just stay in the village, right? Zuko's want got in the way of Aang's intent reading."
 * This even applies to warfare. Zuko believes the War is wrong because the Fire Nation will be unable to hold its new territories, and as a result be unable to prevent retaliation by the other nations - retaliation that will kill pretty much everyone in the Fire Nation. He doesn't believe that the war is immoral, just unsuccessful. Vathara suggests this is inherent to their culture - a throwback to the constant state of clan warfare in which the only law was; "War is only immoral if you lose."
 * As team Avatar wanders the fire nation, we see that earth, air, and water also don't understand each other in all ways.
 * Aang has faith in freedom
 * Water's orientation towards comunity often means that "good"
 * Villain Decay - Whether Azula averts this or plays it straight in canon is YMMV, but while in canon she has her breakdown and goes from Magnificent Bastard to crazy person due to losing people she never regarded as friends in the first place, Embers first points out that Azula is less dangerous than Aang because all her moves are calculated, she thinks of the consequences of her actions, and limits the collateral damage,
 * In Chapter 34,
 * Or does it?
 * The Woobie - As of Chapter 31, Toph is outright horrified by how  treated, and Zuko feels as though doing this might have been Moral Event Horizon enough to mean he shouldn't be allowed to rule anyone, and feels compelled to  even though he's from a culture based on cultures where  are considered worse than useless, what matters is actually taking action. Which he does, by
 * Although this 'apology' manages to
 * Of course, all of this neglects that Aang--whom a lot of people forget is twelve--is being forced to deal with suddenly having to mature and take on adult responsibilities. Since what he's being told he has to untangle is a clusterf*ck (in trope terms, a game of catch played with reproducing Idiot Balls), and as of Chapter 36 he is only starting to realize just how huge a mess he's expected to fix...it doesn't help in the least that, from what has said about, his views of his own people are going to be severely challenged.
 * It Got Worse. The latest chapter tells us about Xiangchen and Subodei That's right, Xiangchen is no hero.
 * Unfortunate Implications - The number of these in the series was much of what inspired the fic. Some claim the fic has as many as it exposes,
 * What the Hell is
 * Not so much an Unfortunate Implication as a deliberate implication. Also
 * A better example in the fic would be Aang, full stop. He tells Zuko that he was lying from the beginning in episode 2 and seems to think that Zuko and everyone will think this was just a clever strategem to get the fighting to stop. That's not what it implies to people from the Fire Nation.
 * It Got Worse. Since Airbenders are Living Lie Detectors, Aang knew from the beginning that Zuko wasn't really going to hurt those people, which is why he doesn't understand why everyone's acting like he did something bad when Zuko lied first. Meaning the lesson about consequences is getting the reasonable reaction of wait, you're saying that you can lie and I can't?
 * Aang doesn't seem to realize there's a difference between not wanting to do something, and doing something you don't want to do. Just because Zuko didn't want to hurt anyone doesn't mean he won't use lethal force if he thinks he has to, such as.
 * For all we know at this point, to Aang there might not be much of a difference. He spends a good part of the canon trying to cope with it, which might be part of why since that is really normal for his age. Sophistication in thinking is not something preteens are known for!
 * Confirmed to hell and back in Chapter 48. In Aang's understanding of the universe people do things Because They Want To.
 * Aang doesn't seem to realize there's a difference between not wanting to do something, and doing something you don't want to do. Just because Zuko didn't want to hurt anyone doesn't mean he won't use lethal force if he thinks he has to, such as.
 * For all we know at this point, to Aang there might not be much of a difference. He spends a good part of the canon trying to cope with it, which might be part of why since that is really normal for his age. Sophistication in thinking is not something preteens are known for!
 * Confirmed to hell and back in Chapter 48. In Aang's understanding of the universe people do things Because They Want To.


 * Often occurs in debate over the fic. In real life, genocides do not happen without certain prerequisites. Some people say that Vathara making the Avatar world more realistic by including those prerequisites is Rooting for the Empire since disobedience meaning death for the common soldier and a belief that they were attacked first would make what the Fire Nation did OK. By that logic, Nazi Germany's genocide, which had those prerequisites, was OK, which hopefully is not what the fic's detractors are trying to argue.
 * It's not. What the detractors are pointing out is that Vathara has forgotten one interesting word: Valkyrie. Loads of Germans hated Hitler and the Nazis, even during the war itself, despite the propaganda. Abraham Erskine's declaration that "the first country the Nazis invaded was their own" has a lot of Truth in Television in it. Canon, Piandao and Jeong Jeong didn't make noises about cultural differences and whatnot, they went out and won the Earth Kingdom back their capital the instant they had the opportunity. Giving the Fire Lord No Delays for the Wicked is equivalent to giving Hitler a working Spear of Destiny.
 * Valkyrie is NOT a good example of resistance to Nazi Germany or its ideals. The group that carried out the plot only did so because Nazi Germany was losing; they didn't care about genocide or war crimes, all they cared about was preserving some of Nazi Germany's conquests and convincing the Western Allies to sign a truce with them so that, with Hitler gone, they could crush the Soviets. As if that was going to happen, but most of the plotters honestly believed that they could get the Allies to let them keep most of eastern Europe. Not only were they delusional, they actually agreed with the Nazis in many ways. Von Stauffenberg regarded the Poles as sub-human and his major objections were to Hitler's handling of the military side of the war. He and his compatriots were just as rascist and militaristic as the Nazis. Finally, nearly all Germans were loyal to the Nazis and Hitler until the very end; the cult of personality set up was strong enough that even where dissent existed (In March-April 1945) it never went beyond grumblings. A memoir I read by Bidderman offer a good example of this; he and his men weren't happy about the war, and they vocally expressed their displeasure to one another, but they never considered openly defying orders.
 * TL;DR version: Stauffenberg drools. Boyzen rules.
 * Indeed. As Ian Kershaw and many other historians have concluded, there was little active resistance within Germany. Dissent yes, but those who wanted to bring down the government were in a distinct minority.
 * The Water Tribes, examples are Hakoda and Katara. It's perfectly ok to sneak aboard a Fire Nation ship and expect them to not fight back, because after all, they deserve it, right? And it's only right to try to heal two little kids in whose house you're in because those two firebenders in the corner are totally dangerous, all without getting permission from the ones who live there? If you're not Water Tribe, you have absolutely no right to cross them...except when they cross you.
 * What an Idiot!: During his spirit-encounter with Roku, Zuko all but calls Roku an idiot for failing to see he could have prevented the war by undoing the unnatural situation Kyoshi had put them in, as well as for failing to accept his guilt in the matter. In Roku's defense, it's heavily implied that as a Fire Nation Avatar is born devoid of Loyalty, the suffering the Fire Nation was undergoing after having been forced to adopt a more Earth Kingdom-like social structure just passed over Roku's head. Roku himself doesn't even seem to know (or at least understand) that Loyalty, in a Fire National, is literally the difference between life and death.