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ljwritesThis feature is one whose subject thought I would never write. I beta-read for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amyraine, and she does the same for me much to my delight and gratitude. She thought I wouldn't write a profile on her because of this relationship, but she didn't count on my blatant cronyism. I waited to do this profile because I wanted her to develop a body of work that I could say real things about. With Mirror the Sun, one of her recent stories and certainly her longest, I believe that has happened.
The thing that strikes me about Amy Raine's stories is the quiet. And by "quiet" I don't mean at all the boredom of nothing happening, but the contemplative spaces that open up in life. It's evident in passages like this from The Wind in the Sail, one of the earliest (and in my opinion, one of the best) Tenzin fics out there:
Notice how much is happening here in this one short passage. In addition to presenting a beautiful image of sky and water (beautiful imagery is another recurring motif in Amy's writing), it encapsulate's Tenzin's relationship with the elements and becomes a linchpin to resolving the central conflict of the story. All this is done in a beautiful economy of words, something Amy is always chiding me about in my own writing and admittedly my greatest writing bugaboo. So I tip my hat to her for making it look easy to say a lot in few words, because I know all too well it's not easy.
Another way Amy Raine makes her readers think is by writing dialogue that captures the inner lives of the characters in a single pointed stroke. In China there is a saying, "murder with an inch of steel (寸鐵殺人)" about that perfect cutting remark that bites to the bone. The lines Amy writes for her characters are those inches of steel, which are not only in character for the characters but also lay them bare and capture their ineffable essence. See, for instance:
There you have it, the deep commonalities between Toph and Mai, two characters who hardly said two words to each other in canon; Mai's ambiguity about her role as royal consort and her willingness to choose another prison to be with Zuko; the growing rapport between these two highborn ladies from former enemy nations. And all this is captured in six brief lines of dialogue. This kind of insight into characters and their inner lives, expressed so elegantly, is one of the many reasons I love Amy Raine's stories.
The contemplative nature of Amy Raine's writing, together with her knack for on-spot dialogue, manifests in a particular skill for engaging with the inner lives of characters. Her Azula story Mirror the Sun is particularly interesting in this regard. For instance there is the following passage from Chapter 9, which takes place after Azula has (somewhat) regained her sanity and finds herself back in the Fire Palace with her family.
It's important to remember that at this point Azula is sort of living the war criminal's best of all possible worlds. Despite her role in the war Azula appears to have been pardoned or at least forgotten in the six years since, and certainly her youth and insanity are reason enough. (Amy told me that she intended it to be because Ursa pleaded for her daughter, which makes sense.) Also, Azula's worst acts during the war, killing the Avatar and the intended destruction of the Earth Kingdom, were either undone or never came to fruition. The reasonable thing for her to do at this point would be to count her blessings and enjoy the good life.
But of course reasonable people make lousy protagonists, and if Azula had no ambitions beyond being a pampered princess ATLA would have been a different show and she herself would have been a different person. Despite the second chance at sanity and life that she has been given, the dilemma from her first lfe remains: What does she do with talents and ambition so at odds with her position in life?
It is especially instructive to compare Mirror to the "work" that provided the original idea (I hate to say inspired, because the word implies something good about the source of inspiration): the infamous fan comic How I Became Yours. One of the comic's many (scroll down for traced art), many, MANY problems is that it wipes out (disturbing picture at right of Katara having a miscarriage) Azula's personality along with everything else that made her interesting as a character and as a villain, leaving her content to be Sokka's sweetly pure, ultra-feminine love interest.
Blissful domestication is so out of character for Azula that the idea is actively disturbing, yet HIBY, true to its staggering obliviousness, never spares a glance at the actually interesting implications of the setup. Mirror the Sun, even in its current incomplete form, tears into those same implications, ripping out the guts of the matter for all to see. That willingness to explore the uncomfortable and the ambiguous took what was the B-plot of a repulsively ignorant comic and turned it into a story about identity, social expectation, self-image, and the search for a direction in life.
In my mind there is only one real difference between crap and actual story, and that's honesty, the courage to ask the hard questions about life. Amy Raine has consistently been genuine in her storytelling by dealing with issues raised by the material, from Tenzin's place between two cultures in The Wind in the Sail, to Mai's ambivalence about commitment and freedom in Prisons of Choice and Azula's need for meaning in Mirror the Sun. Her willingness to look behind the conventional narrative gives her stories depth, and it is why I respect her as a writer.
To wit: Tenzin is the proud heir to an ancient culture. Oh really? How would a boy raised by the Water Tribe (at least in the setup of The Wind in the Sail) feel about being so different? Mai and Zuko are so perfect for each other ohmigosh! Oh really? How would she feel about the restrictions of being a royal consort after a childhood spent in opulent repression? If only Azula got good psychiatric help, saw the error of her ways and fell in love with a nice boy, her life would be perfect! Oh really? What about her outsized ambition and her need to please her father, who is very much alive and unrepentant?
These questions are the stuff real stories are made of. The trappings can be anything--mice and men, war and peace, magic kung-fu kids, robots, aliens, armchair detectives, furries, spaceships. What pulls these elements into a story is this: What questions to they pose about the human condition? How important and relevant are these questions, and how deeply, how honestly, how courageously are they explored?
Amy's skill in dealing with these Big Questions doesn't mean her writing doesn't have its lighter side. A writer with real range and depth recognizes the brighter side of life as well as the darker, and that range can be seen in the fun and humor of her stories. The oxytocin-jerker Adventures in Babysitting comes to mind, about Korra babysitting Tenzin's kids, and the sexy Sandman X-over The Androgyne just drips with zest and spark. The Mirror Universe of The Soldier in the Iceberg and The Merchandise looks like a fun place for an amoral romp (in every sense of the word), provided you're one of the winners, of course. Those Fire softies never stood a chance.
They say no writer is a hero to her editor. Or was that something else? Anyway, as Amy's beta-reader it has been my duty to look for flaws in her writing, and I am happy to report that for the most part she has no serious tics or blind spots that a beta-reader cannot catch. There is the occasional lapse into cliche or unclear descriptions, all easily fixable. She also tends to overuse commas while I if anything underuse them, which gets comical when we edit each other's stories. She keeps adding them to mine, and I keep deleting them from hers. And that, children, is how the cosmic comma balance was maintained.
One area where she could use work is in the structuring and pacing of longer works, because her inward focus sometimes results in a slow pace for stories over a certain length. While the novelette-length The Ground on Which I Stand was both spare and effective, Mirror the Sun suffers from occasional stretches of description where not much seems to happen. While the slowness could also show off her strengths, for commercial viability (and she is at a level where she needs to consider this) it is a better bet for a novel to flow quickly and to have a sense of direction, even if it's not necessarily a fast-fast read. Pacing is a learnable skill like everything else about writing, and the work (and suffering) she did for Mirror probably helped a great deal already.
The stories mentioned so far, enjoyable as they are, are only a small sample of the stories Amy has put up. Each has its own strengths that I urge you to discover on your own. In the meantime the below are some of my favorites, excluding the stories already discussed.
Her Lead: This just filled me with both sadness and joy. I found it bittersweet and uplifting, and it's one of my favorite Yue stories ever. Mirror the Sun is another.
The Ground on Which I Stand: I know, I said I'd exclude already-mentioned stories, but I didn't give this one nearly the introduction it deserves so nyah. It's an incredible character piece for Aang, the supporting characters are very much themselves, and a great villain and a delicious moral dilemma are at the core of it all. This story also ties into the Legend of Korra continuity, and I don't care if it's canon or not because this has already become part of my headcanon.
The Psychopomp: Let's just say it's another Sandman crossover. Also the most beautiful sendoff to Jet imaginable.
You Don't Stop Running Until You're Dead: One of the best Azula stories I've read, even above Mirror because this one is a complete story. Everything I said earlier about Amy's writing applies here, the thoughtfulness, the revealing glances into the inner lives of characters. This one, however, has the added qualities of excellent action scenes and a relentless, hard-core atmosphere. It is also very explicit, viewer discretion advised and so on.
Mementos: An unsentimental, tough, and witty account of a sensitive subject. The story is a lot like its protagonist, in other words.
Journey of a Thousand Miles: For best effect I think this story should be read together withamanda_violet's Perfectly Matched. These two stories pretty much make up my Kanna headcanon.
And there are many more. Amy Raine is someone I consider a friend and fellow writer, whose warmth and keen sense of life are a delight to me. Those qualities come through in her writing, in her insight into human motivations and emotions, the piercing economy of her images, and the matchless humor and compassion in her treatment of the characters and the world we love.
It's hard to tell how long friendships, particularly online friendships, might last, but no matter how long our paths run together I eagerly look forward to the development of her craft, and will be first in line to buy her books when they are published. (I just hope there will be e-books, because overseas shipping is a bitch.) I wish her all the best in her endeavors, and I thank her for the joy her stories have given me while teaching me about the craft, myself, and life.
Now if I go on any longer I'll get weepy, and no one wants to see that. So go read Amy's stories or my interview with her something, go on! Shoo! Skedaddle!
Links:
amyraine's LiveJournal
Interview with Amy Raine
Amy Raine's AO3 Archive
Amy Raine's FanFiction.Net Archive
amyraine, and she does the same for me much to my delight and gratitude. She thought I wouldn't write a profile on her because of this relationship, but she didn't count on my blatant cronyism. I waited to do this profile because I wanted her to develop a body of work that I could say real things about. With Mirror the Sun, one of her recent stories and certainly her longest, I believe that has happened.The thing that strikes me about Amy Raine's stories is the quiet. And by "quiet" I don't mean at all the boredom of nothing happening, but the contemplative spaces that open up in life. It's evident in passages like this from The Wind in the Sail, one of the earliest (and in my opinion, one of the best) Tenzin fics out there:
Later, Tenzin walked down to where the ice met the ocean. The moon was a crescent in the sky, like a sail. The smell of saltwater filled his nose, a scent he didn't think he could ever live without. But when he closed his eyes, it wasn't the water that sang to him, but the wind.
Notice how much is happening here in this one short passage. In addition to presenting a beautiful image of sky and water (beautiful imagery is another recurring motif in Amy's writing), it encapsulate's Tenzin's relationship with the elements and becomes a linchpin to resolving the central conflict of the story. All this is done in a beautiful economy of words, something Amy is always chiding me about in my own writing and admittedly my greatest writing bugaboo. So I tip my hat to her for making it look easy to say a lot in few words, because I know all too well it's not easy.
Another way Amy Raine makes her readers think is by writing dialogue that captures the inner lives of the characters in a single pointed stroke. In China there is a saying, "murder with an inch of steel (寸鐵殺人)" about that perfect cutting remark that bites to the bone. The lines Amy writes for her characters are those inches of steel, which are not only in character for the characters but also lay them bare and capture their ineffable essence. See, for instance:
"It's pretty sad when a psycho is a step up from your mom."
"Isn't it?"
Toph sighed. "I'd give up everything to keep that freedom."
Mai ran a finger along a blade. "Some of us just traded one prison for another."
Silence. Then the younger girl said softly, "Is it worth it?"
She didn't hesitate. "Yes."
(From Prisons of Choice)
There you have it, the deep commonalities between Toph and Mai, two characters who hardly said two words to each other in canon; Mai's ambiguity about her role as royal consort and her willingness to choose another prison to be with Zuko; the growing rapport between these two highborn ladies from former enemy nations. And all this is captured in six brief lines of dialogue. This kind of insight into characters and their inner lives, expressed so elegantly, is one of the many reasons I love Amy Raine's stories.
The contemplative nature of Amy Raine's writing, together with her knack for on-spot dialogue, manifests in a particular skill for engaging with the inner lives of characters. Her Azula story Mirror the Sun is particularly interesting in this regard. For instance there is the following passage from Chapter 9, which takes place after Azula has (somewhat) regained her sanity and finds herself back in the Fire Palace with her family.
Ursa also bid her good night, claiming a stomach ache, but promised that they would go to the tailor in the morning and see how her new outfits were coming along. Once again Azula found herself alone and aimless. Is this what my life is going to be like? she asked herself. Idly waiting for the next banquet, spending money on clothes and looking pretty for my brother's guests?
It's important to remember that at this point Azula is sort of living the war criminal's best of all possible worlds. Despite her role in the war Azula appears to have been pardoned or at least forgotten in the six years since, and certainly her youth and insanity are reason enough. (Amy told me that she intended it to be because Ursa pleaded for her daughter, which makes sense.) Also, Azula's worst acts during the war, killing the Avatar and the intended destruction of the Earth Kingdom, were either undone or never came to fruition. The reasonable thing for her to do at this point would be to count her blessings and enjoy the good life.
But of course reasonable people make lousy protagonists, and if Azula had no ambitions beyond being a pampered princess ATLA would have been a different show and she herself would have been a different person. Despite the second chance at sanity and life that she has been given, the dilemma from her first lfe remains: What does she do with talents and ambition so at odds with her position in life?
It is especially instructive to compare Mirror to the "work" that provided the original idea (I hate to say inspired, because the word implies something good about the source of inspiration): the infamous fan comic How I Became Yours. One of the comic's many (scroll down for traced art), many, MANY problems is that it wipes out (disturbing picture at right of Katara having a miscarriage) Azula's personality along with everything else that made her interesting as a character and as a villain, leaving her content to be Sokka's sweetly pure, ultra-feminine love interest.
Blissful domestication is so out of character for Azula that the idea is actively disturbing, yet HIBY, true to its staggering obliviousness, never spares a glance at the actually interesting implications of the setup. Mirror the Sun, even in its current incomplete form, tears into those same implications, ripping out the guts of the matter for all to see. That willingness to explore the uncomfortable and the ambiguous took what was the B-plot of a repulsively ignorant comic and turned it into a story about identity, social expectation, self-image, and the search for a direction in life.
In my mind there is only one real difference between crap and actual story, and that's honesty, the courage to ask the hard questions about life. Amy Raine has consistently been genuine in her storytelling by dealing with issues raised by the material, from Tenzin's place between two cultures in The Wind in the Sail, to Mai's ambivalence about commitment and freedom in Prisons of Choice and Azula's need for meaning in Mirror the Sun. Her willingness to look behind the conventional narrative gives her stories depth, and it is why I respect her as a writer.
To wit: Tenzin is the proud heir to an ancient culture. Oh really? How would a boy raised by the Water Tribe (at least in the setup of The Wind in the Sail) feel about being so different? Mai and Zuko are so perfect for each other ohmigosh! Oh really? How would she feel about the restrictions of being a royal consort after a childhood spent in opulent repression? If only Azula got good psychiatric help, saw the error of her ways and fell in love with a nice boy, her life would be perfect! Oh really? What about her outsized ambition and her need to please her father, who is very much alive and unrepentant?
These questions are the stuff real stories are made of. The trappings can be anything--mice and men, war and peace, magic kung-fu kids, robots, aliens, armchair detectives, furries, spaceships. What pulls these elements into a story is this: What questions to they pose about the human condition? How important and relevant are these questions, and how deeply, how honestly, how courageously are they explored?
Amy's skill in dealing with these Big Questions doesn't mean her writing doesn't have its lighter side. A writer with real range and depth recognizes the brighter side of life as well as the darker, and that range can be seen in the fun and humor of her stories. The oxytocin-jerker Adventures in Babysitting comes to mind, about Korra babysitting Tenzin's kids, and the sexy Sandman X-over The Androgyne just drips with zest and spark. The Mirror Universe of The Soldier in the Iceberg and The Merchandise looks like a fun place for an amoral romp (in every sense of the word), provided you're one of the winners, of course. Those Fire softies never stood a chance.
They say no writer is a hero to her editor. Or was that something else? Anyway, as Amy's beta-reader it has been my duty to look for flaws in her writing, and I am happy to report that for the most part she has no serious tics or blind spots that a beta-reader cannot catch. There is the occasional lapse into cliche or unclear descriptions, all easily fixable. She also tends to overuse commas while I if anything underuse them, which gets comical when we edit each other's stories. She keeps adding them to mine, and I keep deleting them from hers. And that, children, is how the cosmic comma balance was maintained.
One area where she could use work is in the structuring and pacing of longer works, because her inward focus sometimes results in a slow pace for stories over a certain length. While the novelette-length The Ground on Which I Stand was both spare and effective, Mirror the Sun suffers from occasional stretches of description where not much seems to happen. While the slowness could also show off her strengths, for commercial viability (and she is at a level where she needs to consider this) it is a better bet for a novel to flow quickly and to have a sense of direction, even if it's not necessarily a fast-fast read. Pacing is a learnable skill like everything else about writing, and the work (and suffering) she did for Mirror probably helped a great deal already.
The stories mentioned so far, enjoyable as they are, are only a small sample of the stories Amy has put up. Each has its own strengths that I urge you to discover on your own. In the meantime the below are some of my favorites, excluding the stories already discussed.
Her Lead: This just filled me with both sadness and joy. I found it bittersweet and uplifting, and it's one of my favorite Yue stories ever. Mirror the Sun is another.
The Ground on Which I Stand: I know, I said I'd exclude already-mentioned stories, but I didn't give this one nearly the introduction it deserves so nyah. It's an incredible character piece for Aang, the supporting characters are very much themselves, and a great villain and a delicious moral dilemma are at the core of it all. This story also ties into the Legend of Korra continuity, and I don't care if it's canon or not because this has already become part of my headcanon.
The Psychopomp: Let's just say it's another Sandman crossover. Also the most beautiful sendoff to Jet imaginable.
You Don't Stop Running Until You're Dead: One of the best Azula stories I've read, even above Mirror because this one is a complete story. Everything I said earlier about Amy's writing applies here, the thoughtfulness, the revealing glances into the inner lives of characters. This one, however, has the added qualities of excellent action scenes and a relentless, hard-core atmosphere. It is also very explicit, viewer discretion advised and so on.
Mementos: An unsentimental, tough, and witty account of a sensitive subject. The story is a lot like its protagonist, in other words.
Journey of a Thousand Miles: For best effect I think this story should be read together with
amanda_violet's Perfectly Matched. These two stories pretty much make up my Kanna headcanon.And there are many more. Amy Raine is someone I consider a friend and fellow writer, whose warmth and keen sense of life are a delight to me. Those qualities come through in her writing, in her insight into human motivations and emotions, the piercing economy of her images, and the matchless humor and compassion in her treatment of the characters and the world we love.
It's hard to tell how long friendships, particularly online friendships, might last, but no matter how long our paths run together I eagerly look forward to the development of her craft, and will be first in line to buy her books when they are published. (I just hope there will be e-books, because overseas shipping is a bitch.) I wish her all the best in her endeavors, and I thank her for the joy her stories have given me while teaching me about the craft, myself, and life.
Now if I go on any longer I'll get weepy, and no one wants to see that. So go read Amy's stories or my interview with her something, go on! Shoo! Skedaddle!
Links:
amyraine's LiveJournalInterview with Amy Raine
Amy Raine's AO3 Archive
Amy Raine's FanFiction.Net Archive
