The Alternative: Extended Fanfic Notes
Apr. 12th, 2011 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesThis is an extended fanfic note, a section where I discuss fanfiction I've written, in a longer form than is practical to put in the body of a story. I love writing about writing, and there's always more I want to say than most readers would be interested in knowing.
The Alternative was my first Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic, my first foray into a fandom that had become something of an obsession but I had not written for thus far.
The basic idea was one that I had had ever since I saw Azula in action in Book 2 of the show. I kept thinking: So that's who's going to be Firelord if Zuko doesn't? Absolutely ruthless, lacking in any personal empathy or moral compass, emotionally abusive, a pathological liar, cruel to animals - a classic, textbook sociopath ruling over the most militarily advanced nation in the world?
No. Nonononono. Do not want.
If I, a casual viewer, was thinking along those lines, I could bet the farm that broody Zuko had spent way too much time obsessing about it. I put myself into his shoes: If I were the only person who could keep a cruel, manipulative tyrant-in-waiting from ruling the Fire Nation, how would I feel? Pretty damn motivated, that's for sure, and that's on top of a myriad other motivations like personal ambition and a needy desire to prove myself to Daddy, and you know, survival.
So I decided that would be my first story, about Zuko being motivated partly by a need to stop Azula. The only question was, what event would be the catalyst to show his motivation? It could be just her general wrongness coalescing into motivation for Zuko, but that seemed a little weak as a story. I wanted a strong central image that would leave the reader as well as the character feeling revulsion and fear.
Small, fuzzy animals seemed to be the obvious answer. Cruelty to animals, a classic symptom of antisocial personality disorder and a charming trait of serial killers, held an immediate emotional appeal. To be horrifying, the animal or animals had to die, not just be injured. A grave full of charred animal bones seemed perfect, a haunting image that foreshadowed future mass graves.
At first I thought of making it a series of single graves or bodies, like with Peter in Ender's Game. The process of discovering them all seemed a little difficult, though, and not as focused as I would have liked. Besides, Azula didn't seem like the type to leave loose ends lying around. Zuko would have to become quite the sleuth to track all those little bodies down, and while it was an interesting idea in itself, it wasn't the story I wanted to write.
Then I thought of putting all the bodies together in a mass grave, but again the difficulty of discovery remained. It seemed a bit contrived for Zuko or someone else to stumble across it entirely by chance, and there was Azula's character to think of, too. Leaving a big grave lying around and returning to it time and again seemed a bit careless of her.
The discovery issue led me to the idea of the animal having an owner. Now that would pack some emotional punch. It's hard enough to lose a pet to natural causes or an accident; how would it feel to have one killed for fun? This way Azula could be cruel to an animal and a human in one stroke. I decided right away that the pet owner would have to be someone lowly whose word couldn't carry much weight against a princess and who would be easily cowed into silence. Yet he or she (probably she, that felt more appropriate to me, and also young and vulnerable) had to be in physical proximity to Zuko so he could stumble upon the sight of her grief. A palace servant it was.
Already at this point the animal was morphing into a single animal rather than a lot of animals. I decided the death didn't need the weight of numbers to give it significance. It didn't seem in character for Azula to be a serial animal killer anyway. To me she wasn't the Ted Bundy type who delighted in the immediate gratification of small-scale murder and torture. Her particular brand of evil was subtler and longer-term, and while she could kill small fuzzy things for fun, her real passion was in bigger things. I thought that the felinicide (I was settling on some type of cat by this point) was a learning experience for Azula in some sense, to test not only her agility and firebending, but also to see how much she could get away with.
Once those decisions were made, it was time to decide what exactly the animal was. A cat seemed appropriate for a young servant girl, since a dog was probably too much work. I wanted the readers to empathize with the pet owner, so I didn't want to go further afield than the most common and intimate housepets. Now, what kind of cat? The world of Avatar had all sorts of crazy chimeras among its fauna, so I had a lot of room for creativity. In the end I decided not to make the creature too strange, but to give her a slight fantasy touch. I thought of winged cats without really thinking of Ursula Le Guin's Catwings at the time, though I don't doubt I was subconsciously influenced, since I knew of the books. I'm a fan of UKL's works, though I haven't read her YA or children's books.
So the wingcat was burnt to a crisp and waiting in her grave, her spirit probably prowling around meowing and wondering why it was so cold and alone. Her owner was crying her heart out in an inner courtyard, cold and alone because her little friend was gone. I quickly added other serving girls because the girl who had lost the cat was too messed up to speak at first. I had Zuko notice the group as he came in from practice, asking what was wrong. After a little back-and-forth they said they couldn't say anything, because they were forbidden to speak. Zuko realized they had been threatened, and came up with the idea that they could show him without saying a thing.
And I was stuck. The characters creaked and said the plot-necessary things when I pulled the strings, but that was it. The scene refused to work because that was not how Zuko worked. Maybe at sixteen, after he had gone through the testing fire of his adolescence. But not at eleven, when he was still a shy, hurt boy just two years out of losing the most important person in his life, unsure how to deal with his sister's cruel manipulations and his father's cold distance without his mother's protection. I couldn't imagine him being so assertive and warm, or so quick-minded.
Wait. Assertive, warm, and quick. Who did I know that fit the description? Someone who was very plausibly at the Fire Palace at that time?
Of course! I needed Iroh. He had just the reason to be with Zuko at the time, too, if he was helping Zuko with his training. I started again with Iroh at Zuko's side, and Zuko going along with his aged Uncle's eccentricity in stopping to notice serving girls, knowing their names (Lan sounded about right for the cat's owner), and coming up with the idea of getting to the bottom of things without the girls saying anything. The story flowed from there. Iroh's presence brought out some more of Zuko's character, too. Zuko's first instinct was to pretend he didn't care, because he thought he wasn't supposed to care what servants did. Iroh's initiative, however, brought out Zuko's true nature. Because for all he wanted to be the image of the arrogant and aloof Fire Nation noble, Zuko is really a shockingly earnest and kind-hearted boy. His is a different kind of fire, warm and nurturing, not searing and destructive. That conflict is at the base of a lot of Zuko's troubles in the show, as I see it.
I came to need the name for the cat at some point, and I thought Miao Miao sounded about right. "Miao" could be the sound of a cat meowing [喵], it could mean a second of time [秒], signifying her short life, it could mean beautiful [妙], or small and insignificant [藐]. She was all of those things.
"Miao" could also mean a grave [庙], or a sprout [苗]. She was those things, too. Hell, it could even mean blind in one eye [眇]. Chinese is a highly punnable language with so many different words sharing the same sound, especially without the intonations. I could keep those ambiguities when I wrote in English, and in some ways this kind of thing was what attracted me to the fandom in the first place: Spaces for interpretation and imagination opened up when an Asian-inspired cultures and languages were presented to a Western audience, all those different avenues for exploration.
When Zuko told his uncle he couldn't lose to Azula, the story I'd planned was done but it didn't feel complete. I decided to skip ahead and take it right to the door of that fateful meeting room, creating a frame structure as one reviewer, FairLady, pointed out. One of the most remarkable aspects of Zuko's character is the huge reserve of energy and diligence he exhibits when he believes in (or is driven to) a cause. It's a character of his element, which the Fire Nation at large exhibits for better or for worse. So I decided to show not only the spark of his motivation but also the way it drove him. This would also connect my little scene to the larger story and give it meaning in context, and hopefully further emotional impact.
The Alternative was the beginning of my participation in the wonderful Avatar fanfic community, and also became one of the threads of thought that started the much longer (and as of this writing, ongoing) Shadow of the Dragon King. The Alternative and Shadow are in the same timeline, so in a sense the latter is a sequel. The Alternative is also my best accepted Avatar story so far, though I only have two completed stories in the fandom so that's not saying much. It also rekindled my interest in fanfic writing after a long hiatus, and reminded me of how much I love writing fiction in general. It'll always have special meaning to me for those reasons. Plus, as the redoubtable Kimberly T. put it, kittiwings!
The Alternative was my first Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic, my first foray into a fandom that had become something of an obsession but I had not written for thus far.
The basic idea was one that I had had ever since I saw Azula in action in Book 2 of the show. I kept thinking: So that's who's going to be Firelord if Zuko doesn't? Absolutely ruthless, lacking in any personal empathy or moral compass, emotionally abusive, a pathological liar, cruel to animals - a classic, textbook sociopath ruling over the most militarily advanced nation in the world?
No. Nonononono. Do not want.
If I, a casual viewer, was thinking along those lines, I could bet the farm that broody Zuko had spent way too much time obsessing about it. I put myself into his shoes: If I were the only person who could keep a cruel, manipulative tyrant-in-waiting from ruling the Fire Nation, how would I feel? Pretty damn motivated, that's for sure, and that's on top of a myriad other motivations like personal ambition and a needy desire to prove myself to Daddy, and you know, survival.So I decided that would be my first story, about Zuko being motivated partly by a need to stop Azula. The only question was, what event would be the catalyst to show his motivation? It could be just her general wrongness coalescing into motivation for Zuko, but that seemed a little weak as a story. I wanted a strong central image that would leave the reader as well as the character feeling revulsion and fear.
Small, fuzzy animals seemed to be the obvious answer. Cruelty to animals, a classic symptom of antisocial personality disorder and a charming trait of serial killers, held an immediate emotional appeal. To be horrifying, the animal or animals had to die, not just be injured. A grave full of charred animal bones seemed perfect, a haunting image that foreshadowed future mass graves.
At first I thought of making it a series of single graves or bodies, like with Peter in Ender's Game. The process of discovering them all seemed a little difficult, though, and not as focused as I would have liked. Besides, Azula didn't seem like the type to leave loose ends lying around. Zuko would have to become quite the sleuth to track all those little bodies down, and while it was an interesting idea in itself, it wasn't the story I wanted to write.
Then I thought of putting all the bodies together in a mass grave, but again the difficulty of discovery remained. It seemed a bit contrived for Zuko or someone else to stumble across it entirely by chance, and there was Azula's character to think of, too. Leaving a big grave lying around and returning to it time and again seemed a bit careless of her.
The discovery issue led me to the idea of the animal having an owner. Now that would pack some emotional punch. It's hard enough to lose a pet to natural causes or an accident; how would it feel to have one killed for fun? This way Azula could be cruel to an animal and a human in one stroke. I decided right away that the pet owner would have to be someone lowly whose word couldn't carry much weight against a princess and who would be easily cowed into silence. Yet he or she (probably she, that felt more appropriate to me, and also young and vulnerable) had to be in physical proximity to Zuko so he could stumble upon the sight of her grief. A palace servant it was.
Already at this point the animal was morphing into a single animal rather than a lot of animals. I decided the death didn't need the weight of numbers to give it significance. It didn't seem in character for Azula to be a serial animal killer anyway. To me she wasn't the Ted Bundy type who delighted in the immediate gratification of small-scale murder and torture. Her particular brand of evil was subtler and longer-term, and while she could kill small fuzzy things for fun, her real passion was in bigger things. I thought that the felinicide (I was settling on some type of cat by this point) was a learning experience for Azula in some sense, to test not only her agility and firebending, but also to see how much she could get away with.
Once those decisions were made, it was time to decide what exactly the animal was. A cat seemed appropriate for a young servant girl, since a dog was probably too much work. I wanted the readers to empathize with the pet owner, so I didn't want to go further afield than the most common and intimate housepets. Now, what kind of cat? The world of Avatar had all sorts of crazy chimeras among its fauna, so I had a lot of room for creativity. In the end I decided not to make the creature too strange, but to give her a slight fantasy touch. I thought of winged cats without really thinking of Ursula Le Guin's Catwings at the time, though I don't doubt I was subconsciously influenced, since I knew of the books. I'm a fan of UKL's works, though I haven't read her YA or children's books.
So the wingcat was burnt to a crisp and waiting in her grave, her spirit probably prowling around meowing and wondering why it was so cold and alone. Her owner was crying her heart out in an inner courtyard, cold and alone because her little friend was gone. I quickly added other serving girls because the girl who had lost the cat was too messed up to speak at first. I had Zuko notice the group as he came in from practice, asking what was wrong. After a little back-and-forth they said they couldn't say anything, because they were forbidden to speak. Zuko realized they had been threatened, and came up with the idea that they could show him without saying a thing.
And I was stuck. The characters creaked and said the plot-necessary things when I pulled the strings, but that was it. The scene refused to work because that was not how Zuko worked. Maybe at sixteen, after he had gone through the testing fire of his adolescence. But not at eleven, when he was still a shy, hurt boy just two years out of losing the most important person in his life, unsure how to deal with his sister's cruel manipulations and his father's cold distance without his mother's protection. I couldn't imagine him being so assertive and warm, or so quick-minded.
Wait. Assertive, warm, and quick. Who did I know that fit the description? Someone who was very plausibly at the Fire Palace at that time?
Of course! I needed Iroh. He had just the reason to be with Zuko at the time, too, if he was helping Zuko with his training. I started again with Iroh at Zuko's side, and Zuko going along with his aged Uncle's eccentricity in stopping to notice serving girls, knowing their names (Lan sounded about right for the cat's owner), and coming up with the idea of getting to the bottom of things without the girls saying anything. The story flowed from there. Iroh's presence brought out some more of Zuko's character, too. Zuko's first instinct was to pretend he didn't care, because he thought he wasn't supposed to care what servants did. Iroh's initiative, however, brought out Zuko's true nature. Because for all he wanted to be the image of the arrogant and aloof Fire Nation noble, Zuko is really a shockingly earnest and kind-hearted boy. His is a different kind of fire, warm and nurturing, not searing and destructive. That conflict is at the base of a lot of Zuko's troubles in the show, as I see it.
I came to need the name for the cat at some point, and I thought Miao Miao sounded about right. "Miao" could be the sound of a cat meowing [喵], it could mean a second of time [秒], signifying her short life, it could mean beautiful [妙], or small and insignificant [藐]. She was all of those things.
"Miao" could also mean a grave [庙], or a sprout [苗]. She was those things, too. Hell, it could even mean blind in one eye [眇]. Chinese is a highly punnable language with so many different words sharing the same sound, especially without the intonations. I could keep those ambiguities when I wrote in English, and in some ways this kind of thing was what attracted me to the fandom in the first place: Spaces for interpretation and imagination opened up when an Asian-inspired cultures and languages were presented to a Western audience, all those different avenues for exploration.
When Zuko told his uncle he couldn't lose to Azula, the story I'd planned was done but it didn't feel complete. I decided to skip ahead and take it right to the door of that fateful meeting room, creating a frame structure as one reviewer, FairLady, pointed out. One of the most remarkable aspects of Zuko's character is the huge reserve of energy and diligence he exhibits when he believes in (or is driven to) a cause. It's a character of his element, which the Fire Nation at large exhibits for better or for worse. So I decided to show not only the spark of his motivation but also the way it drove him. This would also connect my little scene to the larger story and give it meaning in context, and hopefully further emotional impact.
The Alternative was the beginning of my participation in the wonderful Avatar fanfic community, and also became one of the threads of thought that started the much longer (and as of this writing, ongoing) Shadow of the Dragon King. The Alternative and Shadow are in the same timeline, so in a sense the latter is a sequel. The Alternative is also my best accepted Avatar story so far, though I only have two completed stories in the fandom so that's not saying much. It also rekindled my interest in fanfic writing after a long hiatus, and reminded me of how much I love writing fiction in general. It'll always have special meaning to me for those reasons. Plus, as the redoubtable Kimberly T. put it, kittiwings!
