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Featured Fic: "Three Years at Sea" by amanda91
The second Featured Fic is Three Years at Sea by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amanda_violet and her other works, most notably her Avatar 500 stories. Amanda's fics are archived at her fanfiction.net profile and amanda91_fic.
Three Years at Sea is a series of short stories about Prince Zuko's exile, starting from the immediate aftermath of the ill-fated Agni Kai and following him through his journey all over the world for the Avatar. Zuko is his surly and difficult self, yet you really find yourself sympathizing with the character. Partly there's the obvious pathos of his situation, but where the writing truly shines is in bringing out the nuances of the character: The enormous challenges he faces, both external and within himself, his obvious flaws and his astounding inner strength, all brought out through his life at sea and how it shapes the boy into a young man, for better and for worse.
When I finished watching Avatar I was still reeling a little from Zuko's story. For all that I had watched him grow from a hurt and angry young man to a Firelord secure in his destiny, there were parts of the character I still could not wrap my head around. How could he bear, I wondered, to be humiliated in front of the entire court, to be permanently scarred by his father, and driven from home and country for a sham of a task? What was his life like in those years before the show? And how did he emerge with his mind and integrity (mostly) intact?
In search of answers, I read plenty of stories about Zuko's exile but was never quite satisfied. There were stories about the misery of his situation, which was pretty obvious, but few that depicted the boy's resilience, even obstinacy, in facing his reality. And any story of Zuko's life as a banished prince would be incomplete without talking about his strength as well as his suffering. After all, the young man we first met in "The Boy in the Iceberg" was no whiny weakling. He may have been angry and sometimes stupid jerk, but he was also strong-willed, and determined beyond reason to regain his honor and his birthright.
And then I discovered Three Years at Sea through the Relatives over Romance, Camaraderie over Courtship community. And I had finally found a story that helped me make sense of Zuko during his years in exile.
One of the ways the story helped me do that was by its focus on Iroh's role. In a very real sense, Three Years is Iroh's story as much as it is Zuko's. First, there's the fact that our favorite uncle opens the story in its very first scene by confronting Ozai, giving him a much-needed verbal lashing, then essentially blackmailing him into giving Zuko money and a ship for his "quest." (If anyone hears cheering through their monitor at this point, that would be me.) But even more importantly, Iroh is the figure that loves and nurtures Zuko in the years when he is away from home and family, and the one who tries to guide the boy, gently and subtly, toward his destiny.
And then there's his difficult, irascible charge. The driving force of the drama comes from the tension between Zuko's immaturity and the immense challenges he faces. Some of the challenges are internal, like when he tries to deny the reality of his wound--and I suspect, the fact that his father is an abusive ass who never loved him--in the stories The First Stop and Convalescence. He also comes face to face with the fact that what he knew of the Air Nomads was a lie, and struggles between his conscience and patriotism (The Journal of Monk Gyatso). There are plenty of external challenges and adventures, like braving winter at the South Pole (Sea Ice and The Long Winter), managing the ship's budget (Rumors and Doubts), meeting with then-Captain Zhao (Coffee), fighting pirates (The Pirate Ship and Shuang the Traitor), and the Fire Nation's own bureaucracy (Not as Planned).
Throughout all these difficulties that a grownup would find hard to deal with, Zuko's character shines through with a depth and reality that must be seen to be believed. He is hurt, vulnerable, confused, angry, obsessed, and abrasive--but also determined, energetic, brave, and loyal. There is much to admire about the main character even while the reader feels like slapping him over the head. The lessons that Iroh tries to get through his nephew's thick head come through eventually, little by little, laying the groundwork for his Heel Face Turn down the road.
What makes this story of growth and change in the face of hardship work for me are the little details. It's one of the great strengths of Amanda's writing that she doesn't neglect the specifics of life in the world she depicts. It's all very fine to talk about grand things like personal growth and relationships and destiny, but the point of fiction isn't in discussing those themes--at least not directly. A story brings out those abstract themes through depictions of life, of people going about their days and nights talking, thinking, acting, and feeling.
Amanda shows an understanding of this as a writer, and I love how she puts real thought into the concrete problems and situations that her characters face, thus bringing their choices and thoughts, and therefore their characters, to life. For instance, Zuko's financial straits and his increasing maturity come through without making a big deal of it as he struggles to balance his ship's budget. His brashness was shown in actions from refusing to take care of his wound to breaking his arm during training out of carelessness (The Drunken Adventure). His adorkability is on full display in episodes like his learning stealth by hanging from rafters and stealing the cook's prized chili plant (The Chili Plant). And he solves problems like pirates and rogue captains with admirable hustle and ingenuity ("The Pirate Ship," "Shuang the Traitor"), and feels pangs of conscience when he learns what a peaceful people the Air Nomads were through the details of Monk Gyatso's daily life ("The Journals of Monk Gyatso"). This kind of storytelling is precisely the reason "show, don't tell" is such a common yet powerful aphorism when it comes to writing--because the story's in the details, details that bring fiction to life in the mind of the reader.
I could go on and on, about the gentle wit and genuine warmth in the interactions between the characters, the clever dialogue, the adorable yet bittersweet subplot of Zuko and Mai's engagement and mutual feelings. If you have not read it already, you really should find out these things on your own. And if you haven't read it yet, why not?
As stated before, of course, no story (that I have seen so far) is perfect, and Three Years is no exception. I would say the greatest confusion about Three Years at Sea is whether to call it "stories" or "a story." It takes a kind of middle ground between an omnibus and a novel. It's an omnibus in the sense that each story is complete in itself and there is no obvious structure linking the individual stories, but it's novel-like in the sense that the stories are in chronological order and form a single timeline.
I definitely understand the choice of format, and in fact laud it as a shrewd one that balances the author's desire to tell a longer story with her limited time and energy. The format allows the author to tell a single story while not having to go to the effort of plotting and structuring a novel, and she can write a series of complete stories without the open-endedness of an unfinished novel. A novel is, in many ways, a delay of gratification; you build up toward really big stuff that a short story just can't express, but throughout the buildup the author and reader alike have to invest and engage in the story for future payoffs. It can be an exhausting process for both. The chronologically ordered omnibus format is considerably simpler to write and the gratification comes at the end of every story, meaning the author and reader do not have to delay gratification as much. Yet the format also leaves room for buildup toward bigger satisfaction down the road.
So like I said, I don't blame Amanda for her choice of format. Nevertheless, I think the chronological omnibus has its drawbacks as well. The individual stories never quite hang together as a single story, because they aren't structured to be that way. And yet, because the story is set in order of time with the same backdrop and the same cast of characters, the reader (or at least I) keep expecting the stories to act like chapters of a novel, for there to be little clues and foreshadowings that build up to long-term developments, and for the narrative to have a clear direction. This does not quite happen, due to the fact that Three Years is not truly a novel, and so it can seem to lack direction and focus when read as a whole. It's a story, or a series of stories, that tickles the fiction reader's novel-senses without delivering a novel, and that can be confusing. This confusion isn't the fault of the author, but rather something that's in the nature of fiction.
Though Three Years at Sea is the focus of discussion, Amanda also has a number of other excellent stories that deserve mention. Of particular interest is amanda91's Avatar 500, which is a compilation of her stories submitted to the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
avatar_500 contest community. This one is much more clearly a short story collection than Three Years, with different sets of characters and tones for every story. Amanda makes very good use of the contest's word limit, creating lean and pointed stories that convey vivid images and tones in few words. My favorites are Perfectly Matched, which is about Pakku's attempts to win Kanna back; The Woman in Red, about Azula's madness; Unstoppable Force, about Jun and Combustion Man; Between the Storms, the most believable and moving crack pairing fic I've ever read and just an excellent story in of itself. (My review for Between the Storm still amuses me in its exuberance. It's considerably over 500 words, that's for sure. I still mean every word of it, though!) The Toph stories, Toph's Field Trip and Rich Poor Royal Peasant are both wonderfully funny and poignant.
Other short stories with different characters round up the collection: The heavily romantic Much Better Now, the tale of a sweet, fun and short-lived romance in Kissing on the First Date Tends to Scare People, friendship fics Twice Told and The Ember Island Portraits. They are all entertaining and heartwarming stories that I highly recommend. Dragon Girl, an old Dragonriders of Pern fanfic that Amanda wrote when she was sixteen, may have been posted for laughs but I found it interesting. Even though the story is rough, it shows the author's attention to detail and penchant for vivid imagery, and provides a glimpse of the potential that is blossoming today.
Amanda is, in short, a highly talented and hardworking writer who writes stories full of laughter, life, and warmth, and I look forward to reading more from her.
Links
amanda91's Fanfiction.net profile andamanda91_fic, her LJ archive
Three Years at Sea: A series of shorts about Zuko's years in exile
amanda91's Avatar 500: Widely varied short stories, each 500 words or less
Interview with amanda91
amanda_violet and her other works, most notably her Avatar 500 stories. Amanda's fics are archived at her fanfiction.net profile and amanda91_fic.Three Years at Sea is a series of short stories about Prince Zuko's exile, starting from the immediate aftermath of the ill-fated Agni Kai and following him through his journey all over the world for the Avatar. Zuko is his surly and difficult self, yet you really find yourself sympathizing with the character. Partly there's the obvious pathos of his situation, but where the writing truly shines is in bringing out the nuances of the character: The enormous challenges he faces, both external and within himself, his obvious flaws and his astounding inner strength, all brought out through his life at sea and how it shapes the boy into a young man, for better and for worse.
When I finished watching Avatar I was still reeling a little from Zuko's story. For all that I had watched him grow from a hurt and angry young man to a Firelord secure in his destiny, there were parts of the character I still could not wrap my head around. How could he bear, I wondered, to be humiliated in front of the entire court, to be permanently scarred by his father, and driven from home and country for a sham of a task? What was his life like in those years before the show? And how did he emerge with his mind and integrity (mostly) intact?
In search of answers, I read plenty of stories about Zuko's exile but was never quite satisfied. There were stories about the misery of his situation, which was pretty obvious, but few that depicted the boy's resilience, even obstinacy, in facing his reality. And any story of Zuko's life as a banished prince would be incomplete without talking about his strength as well as his suffering. After all, the young man we first met in "The Boy in the Iceberg" was no whiny weakling. He may have been angry and sometimes stupid jerk, but he was also strong-willed, and determined beyond reason to regain his honor and his birthright.
And then I discovered Three Years at Sea through the Relatives over Romance, Camaraderie over Courtship community. And I had finally found a story that helped me make sense of Zuko during his years in exile.
One of the ways the story helped me do that was by its focus on Iroh's role. In a very real sense, Three Years is Iroh's story as much as it is Zuko's. First, there's the fact that our favorite uncle opens the story in its very first scene by confronting Ozai, giving him a much-needed verbal lashing, then essentially blackmailing him into giving Zuko money and a ship for his "quest." (If anyone hears cheering through their monitor at this point, that would be me.) But even more importantly, Iroh is the figure that loves and nurtures Zuko in the years when he is away from home and family, and the one who tries to guide the boy, gently and subtly, toward his destiny.
And then there's his difficult, irascible charge. The driving force of the drama comes from the tension between Zuko's immaturity and the immense challenges he faces. Some of the challenges are internal, like when he tries to deny the reality of his wound--and I suspect, the fact that his father is an abusive ass who never loved him--in the stories The First Stop and Convalescence. He also comes face to face with the fact that what he knew of the Air Nomads was a lie, and struggles between his conscience and patriotism (The Journal of Monk Gyatso). There are plenty of external challenges and adventures, like braving winter at the South Pole (Sea Ice and The Long Winter), managing the ship's budget (Rumors and Doubts), meeting with then-Captain Zhao (Coffee), fighting pirates (The Pirate Ship and Shuang the Traitor), and the Fire Nation's own bureaucracy (Not as Planned).
Throughout all these difficulties that a grownup would find hard to deal with, Zuko's character shines through with a depth and reality that must be seen to be believed. He is hurt, vulnerable, confused, angry, obsessed, and abrasive--but also determined, energetic, brave, and loyal. There is much to admire about the main character even while the reader feels like slapping him over the head. The lessons that Iroh tries to get through his nephew's thick head come through eventually, little by little, laying the groundwork for his Heel Face Turn down the road.
What makes this story of growth and change in the face of hardship work for me are the little details. It's one of the great strengths of Amanda's writing that she doesn't neglect the specifics of life in the world she depicts. It's all very fine to talk about grand things like personal growth and relationships and destiny, but the point of fiction isn't in discussing those themes--at least not directly. A story brings out those abstract themes through depictions of life, of people going about their days and nights talking, thinking, acting, and feeling.
Amanda shows an understanding of this as a writer, and I love how she puts real thought into the concrete problems and situations that her characters face, thus bringing their choices and thoughts, and therefore their characters, to life. For instance, Zuko's financial straits and his increasing maturity come through without making a big deal of it as he struggles to balance his ship's budget. His brashness was shown in actions from refusing to take care of his wound to breaking his arm during training out of carelessness (The Drunken Adventure). His adorkability is on full display in episodes like his learning stealth by hanging from rafters and stealing the cook's prized chili plant (The Chili Plant). And he solves problems like pirates and rogue captains with admirable hustle and ingenuity ("The Pirate Ship," "Shuang the Traitor"), and feels pangs of conscience when he learns what a peaceful people the Air Nomads were through the details of Monk Gyatso's daily life ("The Journals of Monk Gyatso"). This kind of storytelling is precisely the reason "show, don't tell" is such a common yet powerful aphorism when it comes to writing--because the story's in the details, details that bring fiction to life in the mind of the reader.
I could go on and on, about the gentle wit and genuine warmth in the interactions between the characters, the clever dialogue, the adorable yet bittersweet subplot of Zuko and Mai's engagement and mutual feelings. If you have not read it already, you really should find out these things on your own. And if you haven't read it yet, why not?
As stated before, of course, no story (that I have seen so far) is perfect, and Three Years is no exception. I would say the greatest confusion about Three Years at Sea is whether to call it "stories" or "a story." It takes a kind of middle ground between an omnibus and a novel. It's an omnibus in the sense that each story is complete in itself and there is no obvious structure linking the individual stories, but it's novel-like in the sense that the stories are in chronological order and form a single timeline.
I definitely understand the choice of format, and in fact laud it as a shrewd one that balances the author's desire to tell a longer story with her limited time and energy. The format allows the author to tell a single story while not having to go to the effort of plotting and structuring a novel, and she can write a series of complete stories without the open-endedness of an unfinished novel. A novel is, in many ways, a delay of gratification; you build up toward really big stuff that a short story just can't express, but throughout the buildup the author and reader alike have to invest and engage in the story for future payoffs. It can be an exhausting process for both. The chronologically ordered omnibus format is considerably simpler to write and the gratification comes at the end of every story, meaning the author and reader do not have to delay gratification as much. Yet the format also leaves room for buildup toward bigger satisfaction down the road.
So like I said, I don't blame Amanda for her choice of format. Nevertheless, I think the chronological omnibus has its drawbacks as well. The individual stories never quite hang together as a single story, because they aren't structured to be that way. And yet, because the story is set in order of time with the same backdrop and the same cast of characters, the reader (or at least I) keep expecting the stories to act like chapters of a novel, for there to be little clues and foreshadowings that build up to long-term developments, and for the narrative to have a clear direction. This does not quite happen, due to the fact that Three Years is not truly a novel, and so it can seem to lack direction and focus when read as a whole. It's a story, or a series of stories, that tickles the fiction reader's novel-senses without delivering a novel, and that can be confusing. This confusion isn't the fault of the author, but rather something that's in the nature of fiction.
Though Three Years at Sea is the focus of discussion, Amanda also has a number of other excellent stories that deserve mention. Of particular interest is amanda91's Avatar 500, which is a compilation of her stories submitted to the
avatar_500 contest community. This one is much more clearly a short story collection than Three Years, with different sets of characters and tones for every story. Amanda makes very good use of the contest's word limit, creating lean and pointed stories that convey vivid images and tones in few words. My favorites are Perfectly Matched, which is about Pakku's attempts to win Kanna back; The Woman in Red, about Azula's madness; Unstoppable Force, about Jun and Combustion Man; Between the Storms, the most believable and moving crack pairing fic I've ever read and just an excellent story in of itself. (My review for Between the Storm still amuses me in its exuberance. It's considerably over 500 words, that's for sure. I still mean every word of it, though!) The Toph stories, Toph's Field Trip and Rich Poor Royal Peasant are both wonderfully funny and poignant.Other short stories with different characters round up the collection: The heavily romantic Much Better Now, the tale of a sweet, fun and short-lived romance in Kissing on the First Date Tends to Scare People, friendship fics Twice Told and The Ember Island Portraits. They are all entertaining and heartwarming stories that I highly recommend. Dragon Girl, an old Dragonriders of Pern fanfic that Amanda wrote when she was sixteen, may have been posted for laughs but I found it interesting. Even though the story is rough, it shows the author's attention to detail and penchant for vivid imagery, and provides a glimpse of the potential that is blossoming today.
Amanda is, in short, a highly talented and hardworking writer who writes stories full of laughter, life, and warmth, and I look forward to reading more from her.
Links
amanda91's Fanfiction.net profile and
amanda91_fic, her LJ archiveThree Years at Sea: A series of shorts about Zuko's years in exile
amanda91's Avatar 500: Widely varied short stories, each 500 words or less
Interview with amanda91