Shadow of the Dragon King, Part 2: Extended Fanfic Notes

My Ridiculously Long pastfic, Shadow of the Dragon King, is about 75% posted with the recent upload of Chapter 17: Games. That concludes Part 2 of 3, so it's time for another extended fanfic note. Since I talked about the overall conception and planning in the extended notes for Part 1, I'll stick to chapter-by-chapter commentary here, centering around the stuff that won't be obvious to readers. Spoilers for Part 2 abound, naturally.

( Chapters 11-12 )

( Chapters 13-14 )

( Chapter 15-16 )

( Chapter 17 )

So those are some of the things that were going on in my head when I wrote these chapters. Just four chapters more and the whole story will be done, yay!

Avatar Era Names in the Calendar of Wan Shi Tong?

In Chapter 17 of Shadow of the Dragon King, as well as the side story A Night's Work, I used the era name Ji Lian for the Era of Avatar Aang. I got the idea from the Avatar Wiki page on the History of the World of Avatar, which claims that the mechanical calendar in Wan Shi Tong's library shows the Avatar Cycle. According to the wiki (and the ATLA Annotations Tumblr), the current era of Avatar Aang is Yang Wu/Ri Wu (氜武) and the previous era of Roku was Zhuo Guang (焯光), while the next era of Avatar Korra will be Chun Tai (淳泰). The first letter of each era name uses the radical corresponding to the "home" element of each Avatar.

( I totally disagree with that theory, and here's why. )

Conclusion: While the letters on the third ring of Wan Shi Tong's calendar probably stand for years rather than eras, I still liked the idea of era names for the different Avatars and came up with Ji Lian (刏連, severed continuity) for Avatar Aang. "Ji" has the air radical qi (气) so it fits the Air Nomad Avatar, while "severed continuity" symbolizes the disturbed continuities that characterize the reign of this Avatar: The genocide of the Air Nomads, the long absence of the Avatar, and the century of war that wrought irreversible changes on the world.