Open Review: A Box of Pearls by amanda91
Sep. 14th, 2012 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A Box of Pearls: FFN link | AO3 link
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Jun from Avatar: The Last Airbender is hands down one of the coolest characters in the show. Not only is she a more than capable fighter in her own right, she also has a unique sidekick and asset in the form of a shirshu (an Avatar-style chimera that stole the snout from some poor star-nosed mole) that can find anyone in the world with its sense of smell.

She seems to enjoy Korra-levels of strength, emphasis on "enjoy."
Perhaps her defining characteristic, though, is that the lady don't give a damn. The backdrop and central problem in the show is a world war, a war that most of the cast is invested in one way or the other, but that's none of her business. She gets her money and lives her life, and that's enough for her. She helps out both sides of the conflict in "Bato of the Water Tribe" and "Sozin's Comet" arc respectively, and mostly for selfish reasons. She wants money in the first instance, and in the second, she presumably doesn't want to burn to death in Ozai's genocide (and was probably promised money). She's a Lovable Rogue much like Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, but unlike Han she doesn't get a character arc that puts her firmly on the side of the White Hats.
Enter
amanda_violet's one-shot fic A Box of Pearls and character arc with a vengeance. Pearls is an
atla_crackfic exchange story that Amanda wrote for
amyraine, and I don't know about you but for me these two names by themselves are enough to catapult any project into the awesomesphere. It is also a Jun/Piandao story, which I'm guessing was Amy's request because Amy herself has written a story with that pairing called Can't All Be Heroes.
The strengths of Pearls lie in Amanda's skill in developing the central character in a believable and sympathetic way, giving the character new dimensions while keeping the qualities that make her interesting. Before I go into more detail I should note that I have kept the review spoiler-free, sticking to the content of the summary, but it may make more sense if you read the story first.
The start of A Box of Pearls reminds me of a video game: After the end of the series, Zuko calls Jun in for a series of jobs. If she uses her shirshu to retrieve war criminals the Fire Nation is highly interested in, she will be given treasures corresponding to each and become a rich woman for the rest of her days. It's a setup that suits the character perfectly, with the thrill of the chase and, of course, mountains of money to be made.
The thing that makes Amanda's vision resonate deeper than the standard search-and-arrest fare, however, is the depth of Jun's character. Yes, she sees the whole thing as a pursuit for fun and profit in accordance with her established character, but her point of view also reveals unexpected yet highly believable undercurrents.
For one thing there is the anger she feels at the crimes of the men she is tasked with finding. For the first time she is shown to have an emotional stake in the war, for all she tries to tell herself she only cares about the money:
Another current in the character is the sense that Jun doesn't know were her life is going, that she's drifting alone and everything is impermanent:
A Box of Pearls takes these two beginnings and does the formidable job of changing Jun's life on a fundamental level. It give her more depth than the show ever did, with the events flowing believably from the character's strengths and flaws. It was inspiring to watch Jun's journey from a cynical drifter in life to someone with a focus and meaning. Not that she ever becomes saccharine, thank God: Her comical inner voice is one of the joys of the story throughout.
The crack pairing with Piandao was all the more enjoyable because it was part of the character's journey and not the sole focus of the story. Amanda handled the romance believably through the progression of the story and character, and with a lack of sentimentality that I found refreshing.
As I said in my Rocky review, you can often measure the quality of a story in the distance from the story it might have been. Much as Rocky could have been a piece of violent race-baiting, A Box of Pearls could have been a "break the bitch" story where a woman who doesn't conform to society's ideals is punished for it, broken down to a blubbering mess and then remade into the image of social acceptability with a side heaping of penitence. (For a particularly distasteful trope in this vein, see Rape as Redemption. Trigger warning, obviously.)
Jun certainly fits that bill with her mercenary attitude, freewheeling lifestyle, and in Amanda's plausible and entertaining vision, promiscuous sex life. She suffers a devastating loss due to her own mistakes and, as a result, undergoes huge changes including getting a stable older boyfriend. The character's start and end points, plus the plot that connects those two, seem ripe for another bad-girl-redeemed-by-catastrophe story.
Rest assured, though: Amanda's skill as a writer, including her firm sense of character and principle, saves the story from being a sexist piece of crap and elevates it into something that is both universal and interesting. I can identify at least two main factors that distinguish Pearls from a stereotypical bad girl redemption story, first in the end point that Jun reaches, and second in the progression toward that end.
First, there is the difference in the end point: Poorly done bad girl redemption stories are about making the female character conform to conventional standards of feminine behavior such as being warm, nurturing, emotionally attuned, and dependent on a man. This could not be farther from Jun's end point in A Box of Pearls: The change she undergoes is not about conforming to conventional social ideals but about coming to believe in certain moral principles. Put another way, her character development is not about becoming a good girl but becoming a good person, and so strikes a universal chord instead of being sexist and preachy.
Second, the progression to that end point also differs from the bad girl redemption tale because the beginnings of the change in character were internal, not external. Remember how I mentioned the two threads in Jun's character from early on, the beginning of moral outrage and her lack of direction? Adversity becomes her opportunity to think about her life, to bring those internal questions to a resolution and go in a new direction.
At no point is she ever penitent for the simple reason she hasn't done anything wrong, nor is there pressure to conform to social expectation; rather she begins to hear her own inner voice because she can no longer ignore it. Jun's changes in the story are about becoming more fully herself and not about following convention, which is why the developments ring true.
One complaint I have with the story is the use of too many adverbs. I am far from a fanatical anti-adverbist, but like everything else they can be used well or badly. Amanda did not use them to best effect in this story, I argue, because combinations like "thought silently" are more distracting than illuminating. I am happy to report that in her more recent stories such as The Rusty Engine the writing flows much better without over-reliance on that tricky grammatical element.
Another issue with the story is one of pace and buildup. Though there are six bounties offered to Jun, only the last two felt really necessary for the story. The others offered interesting glimpses into the war crimes of the Fire Nation and provided color and action, but they could have been much shorter and the story would not have suffered in my opinion. To make them really necessary to the story the other arrests should have been less episodic and more connected to the central developments of the story, which are the changes in the protagonist and the post-war world.
The arrests, for instance, could have drummed up interest from the start by giving an escalating sense of suspense. They could also have used counterbalance and symmetry to tell Jun's story more fully, for instance by drawing parallels to Jun's own mercenary attitude in her adversaries, or by touching on aspects of her background as someone born of Fire and Earth parents, or by showing how hunter and hunted alike are drifting and alienated from the world.
Instead we have a story that has a somewhat loose structure and feels slow until the midway point, despite the exciting premise. Pace and structure are not easy to master—many a published writer has no inkling of either— and I hope Amanda writes more plotted stories for practice.
Overall, I found A Box of Pearls to be a fascinating read about an interesting but unexplored canon character. The unusual pairing is also believable and made a part of the main character's development. Pacing and story structure need some work, but the story does a solid job of portraying character development and the struggle for healing in the post-war world. I highly recommend it.
amanda91's profile: FFN | AO3
Jun from Avatar: The Last Airbender is hands down one of the coolest characters in the show. Not only is she a more than capable fighter in her own right, she also has a unique sidekick and asset in the form of a shirshu (an Avatar-style chimera that stole the snout from some poor star-nosed mole) that can find anyone in the world with its sense of smell.

She seems to enjoy Korra-levels of strength, emphasis on "enjoy."
Perhaps her defining characteristic, though, is that the lady don't give a damn. The backdrop and central problem in the show is a world war, a war that most of the cast is invested in one way or the other, but that's none of her business. She gets her money and lives her life, and that's enough for her. She helps out both sides of the conflict in "Bato of the Water Tribe" and "Sozin's Comet" arc respectively, and mostly for selfish reasons. She wants money in the first instance, and in the second, she presumably doesn't want to burn to death in Ozai's genocide (and was probably promised money). She's a Lovable Rogue much like Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, but unlike Han she doesn't get a character arc that puts her firmly on the side of the White Hats.
Enter
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The strengths of Pearls lie in Amanda's skill in developing the central character in a believable and sympathetic way, giving the character new dimensions while keeping the qualities that make her interesting. Before I go into more detail I should note that I have kept the review spoiler-free, sticking to the content of the summary, but it may make more sense if you read the story first.
The start of A Box of Pearls reminds me of a video game: After the end of the series, Zuko calls Jun in for a series of jobs. If she uses her shirshu to retrieve war criminals the Fire Nation is highly interested in, she will be given treasures corresponding to each and become a rich woman for the rest of her days. It's a setup that suits the character perfectly, with the thrill of the chase and, of course, mountains of money to be made.
The thing that makes Amanda's vision resonate deeper than the standard search-and-arrest fare, however, is the depth of Jun's character. Yes, she sees the whole thing as a pursuit for fun and profit in accordance with her established character, but her point of view also reveals unexpected yet highly believable undercurrents.
For one thing there is the anger she feels at the crimes of the men she is tasked with finding. For the first time she is shown to have an emotional stake in the war, for all she tries to tell herself she only cares about the money:
Jun felt a slight chill in her stomach. She'd seen a lot over the years. She prided herself on not being moved by all the depressing things she saw—it was like a callus, toughened and made insensitive through overstimulation.
She saw awful stuff all the time. Every day, almost.
She gritted her teeth.
Silly boy. He thought this was affecting her. Only the gold and smelly spices mattered.
Another current in the character is the sense that Jun doesn't know were her life is going, that she's drifting alone and everything is impermanent:
She didn't know how to live in one place. The thought of it sounded extremely unappealing most of the time, but she never knew what it would be like. Maybe it would be a good thing to try.
A Box of Pearls takes these two beginnings and does the formidable job of changing Jun's life on a fundamental level. It give her more depth than the show ever did, with the events flowing believably from the character's strengths and flaws. It was inspiring to watch Jun's journey from a cynical drifter in life to someone with a focus and meaning. Not that she ever becomes saccharine, thank God: Her comical inner voice is one of the joys of the story throughout.
The crack pairing with Piandao was all the more enjoyable because it was part of the character's journey and not the sole focus of the story. Amanda handled the romance believably through the progression of the story and character, and with a lack of sentimentality that I found refreshing.
As I said in my Rocky review, you can often measure the quality of a story in the distance from the story it might have been. Much as Rocky could have been a piece of violent race-baiting, A Box of Pearls could have been a "break the bitch" story where a woman who doesn't conform to society's ideals is punished for it, broken down to a blubbering mess and then remade into the image of social acceptability with a side heaping of penitence. (For a particularly distasteful trope in this vein, see Rape as Redemption. Trigger warning, obviously.)
Jun certainly fits that bill with her mercenary attitude, freewheeling lifestyle, and in Amanda's plausible and entertaining vision, promiscuous sex life. She suffers a devastating loss due to her own mistakes and, as a result, undergoes huge changes including getting a stable older boyfriend. The character's start and end points, plus the plot that connects those two, seem ripe for another bad-girl-redeemed-by-catastrophe story.
Rest assured, though: Amanda's skill as a writer, including her firm sense of character and principle, saves the story from being a sexist piece of crap and elevates it into something that is both universal and interesting. I can identify at least two main factors that distinguish Pearls from a stereotypical bad girl redemption story, first in the end point that Jun reaches, and second in the progression toward that end.
First, there is the difference in the end point: Poorly done bad girl redemption stories are about making the female character conform to conventional standards of feminine behavior such as being warm, nurturing, emotionally attuned, and dependent on a man. This could not be farther from Jun's end point in A Box of Pearls: The change she undergoes is not about conforming to conventional social ideals but about coming to believe in certain moral principles. Put another way, her character development is not about becoming a good girl but becoming a good person, and so strikes a universal chord instead of being sexist and preachy.
Second, the progression to that end point also differs from the bad girl redemption tale because the beginnings of the change in character were internal, not external. Remember how I mentioned the two threads in Jun's character from early on, the beginning of moral outrage and her lack of direction? Adversity becomes her opportunity to think about her life, to bring those internal questions to a resolution and go in a new direction.
At no point is she ever penitent for the simple reason she hasn't done anything wrong, nor is there pressure to conform to social expectation; rather she begins to hear her own inner voice because she can no longer ignore it. Jun's changes in the story are about becoming more fully herself and not about following convention, which is why the developments ring true.
One complaint I have with the story is the use of too many adverbs. I am far from a fanatical anti-adverbist, but like everything else they can be used well or badly. Amanda did not use them to best effect in this story, I argue, because combinations like "thought silently" are more distracting than illuminating. I am happy to report that in her more recent stories such as The Rusty Engine the writing flows much better without over-reliance on that tricky grammatical element.
Another issue with the story is one of pace and buildup. Though there are six bounties offered to Jun, only the last two felt really necessary for the story. The others offered interesting glimpses into the war crimes of the Fire Nation and provided color and action, but they could have been much shorter and the story would not have suffered in my opinion. To make them really necessary to the story the other arrests should have been less episodic and more connected to the central developments of the story, which are the changes in the protagonist and the post-war world.
The arrests, for instance, could have drummed up interest from the start by giving an escalating sense of suspense. They could also have used counterbalance and symmetry to tell Jun's story more fully, for instance by drawing parallels to Jun's own mercenary attitude in her adversaries, or by touching on aspects of her background as someone born of Fire and Earth parents, or by showing how hunter and hunted alike are drifting and alienated from the world.
Instead we have a story that has a somewhat loose structure and feels slow until the midway point, despite the exciting premise. Pace and structure are not easy to master—many a published writer has no inkling of either— and I hope Amanda writes more plotted stories for practice.
Overall, I found A Box of Pearls to be a fascinating read about an interesting but unexplored canon character. The unusual pairing is also believable and made a part of the main character's development. Pacing and story structure need some work, but the story does a solid job of portraying character development and the struggle for healing in the post-war world. I highly recommend it.