I maybe wrote this post a week ago
Jul. 27th, 2010 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosSo I've been trying to find Avatar fanfiction, and finding the process ... kind of hilarious, in an awful sort of way. Like, here are some things I've learned from reading the first several paragraphs of a whole bunch of Avatar fanfiction:
1A. Katara was very, very, very mean to Zuko when she didn't trust him after, you know, she started to trust him that once and he helped get Aang killed. If it's a Katara/Zuko story, she has to meekly apologize for being such a bitch or be shown the error of her ways (ideally in an embarrassing way); if it's a Zuko/Aang or Zuko/Sokka story, she has to continue to be a big meanie who will try to push Zuko off a cliff or something; if it's a gen story, pick one or both.
1B. Toph is "a brat." She is also too mean, but she's usually too mean to Aang. She's just so abrasive and self-interested and immature and sometimes she says things that make Aang feel bad!
2A. Sometimes Katara decides to, like, live her own life and rebuild the Southern Water Tribe after the war instead of marrying either Aang or Zuko. That is horribly selfish.
2B. Or, Zuko and/or Aang ends up running the resistance army, and Katara does laundry, because she is mothering.
3. Katara's healing abilities don't work well on [category of injury x], because otherwise the hurt/comfort tropes don't work. Instead, she has to be able to heal it only a little, or very slowly, or not take the pain away, or maybe not at all because water-healing doesn't work on bones or lungs or kidneys or whatever, in order to allow someone to be bandaged and bed-ridden and spoon-fed. And by "someone," I mean "Zuko."
4. Suki is not good enough for Sokka. He is really in love with Zuko or Toph. Suki just doesn't understand him the way Zuko/Toph does.
5. Katara's skin is chocolatey.
5A. If Katara's skin isn't chocolatey, it is just sun-tanned. Also, sometimes everyone on the show has blue eyes, and sometimes people say "Jesus." Basically, sometimes I get five hundred words in and hit a line that makes me suddenly realize that the author thinks that the characters are all white or that the world is the a generic Celtic-y fantasy world, and then I get grossed out and backspace.
6. The Fire Nation didn't mean it really. And anyway they didn't kill that many people. And anyway they were just following orders. And anyway they were driven to it by the Earth Nation which was mean to them. And anyway that's just how fire is, you know? And anyway they're dead sexy.
7. Iroh is the best person to kill off before the story starts/in the first scene/in a subordinate clause to make it clear that a story is ~SAD~ or ~DARK~. It is also the best way to make me backspace instantly. OH IROH YOU ARE NOT-SO-SECRETLY MY FAVORITE.
Fannish things I have done recently:
1. Read a bunch of Avatar fic, as indicated above. And tagged some! I shall have to make a recs post for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
white_lotus's post-series challenge.
2. Oh, also, started an Avatar com calledwhite_lotus (with such_heights) for discussion/flashwork challenges/noticeboard -- it bears a certain resemblance to myth_confirmed in its "we can do this all in one place!" ness. So if you are interested in ATLA, I'd love to see you there! Also if you have recently or not-so-recently posted meta or squee or episode reviews or fic or vids or whatever, you could also announce them there, because we're encouraging reposts of older stuff as well.
3. Made a whole bunch of banners for Festibility. This was a kind of hilarious project that involved going through the comments to the Festibility announcement post, trying to find folks that I could find pictures of (and be confident I knew who they were) for banners, because I don't actually know a lot of those fandoms. So it involved a lot of googling, and sometimes confusing moments of not being sure which character folks meant. Like, I found the picture of Frank Pembleton without captions on a blog, and I had to turn the computer to T'wings to confirm that it was actually Pembleton -- I, uh, have only seen two episodes of H:LotS? And one of them was the movie because someone told me it was a great way to start watching the show and it wasn't spoilery. SUCH A LIE. Also, I found pictures of Cassandra Cain, and read about her on wikipedia, and she sounds awesome, but I still have no idea what kind of disability she has. (ETA: spoilers for Cassandra Cain's arc in the comments, now.)
4. Also I left some prompts over in the Festibility prompts post; the challenge doesn't require people to write to prompts, but encourages prompts for people who like that kind of thing.
5. Also I have banners I need to make for a different community-promotion project.
6. Also I keep wistfully thinking about this Avatar fic that I wish existed, so maybe I will give in and write it. It could happen.
7. Oh yeah, and I've been answering questions over atkink_bingo and the kink_wiki, except for the questions that I've forgotten to answer.
What I'm saying overall is, maybe I need to borrow t'wing's "why am I modding things now?" tag.
1A. Katara was very, very, very mean to Zuko when she didn't trust him after, you know, she started to trust him that once and he helped get Aang killed. If it's a Katara/Zuko story, she has to meekly apologize for being such a bitch or be shown the error of her ways (ideally in an embarrassing way); if it's a Zuko/Aang or Zuko/Sokka story, she has to continue to be a big meanie who will try to push Zuko off a cliff or something; if it's a gen story, pick one or both.
1B. Toph is "a brat." She is also too mean, but she's usually too mean to Aang. She's just so abrasive and self-interested and immature and sometimes she says things that make Aang feel bad!
2A. Sometimes Katara decides to, like, live her own life and rebuild the Southern Water Tribe after the war instead of marrying either Aang or Zuko. That is horribly selfish.
2B. Or, Zuko and/or Aang ends up running the resistance army, and Katara does laundry, because she is mothering.
3. Katara's healing abilities don't work well on [category of injury x], because otherwise the hurt/comfort tropes don't work. Instead, she has to be able to heal it only a little, or very slowly, or not take the pain away, or maybe not at all because water-healing doesn't work on bones or lungs or kidneys or whatever, in order to allow someone to be bandaged and bed-ridden and spoon-fed. And by "someone," I mean "Zuko."
4. Suki is not good enough for Sokka. He is really in love with Zuko or Toph. Suki just doesn't understand him the way Zuko/Toph does.
5. Katara's skin is chocolatey.
5A. If Katara's skin isn't chocolatey, it is just sun-tanned. Also, sometimes everyone on the show has blue eyes, and sometimes people say "Jesus." Basically, sometimes I get five hundred words in and hit a line that makes me suddenly realize that the author thinks that the characters are all white or that the world is the a generic Celtic-y fantasy world, and then I get grossed out and backspace.
6. The Fire Nation didn't mean it really. And anyway they didn't kill that many people. And anyway they were just following orders. And anyway they were driven to it by the Earth Nation which was mean to them. And anyway that's just how fire is, you know? And anyway they're dead sexy.
7. Iroh is the best person to kill off before the story starts/in the first scene/in a subordinate clause to make it clear that a story is ~SAD~ or ~DARK~. It is also the best way to make me backspace instantly. OH IROH YOU ARE NOT-SO-SECRETLY MY FAVORITE.
Fannish things I have done recently:
1. Read a bunch of Avatar fic, as indicated above. And tagged some! I shall have to make a recs post for
white_lotus's post-series challenge.2. Oh, also, started an Avatar com called
white_lotus (with such_heights) for discussion/flashwork challenges/noticeboard -- it bears a certain resemblance to myth_confirmed in its "we can do this all in one place!" ness. So if you are interested in ATLA, I'd love to see you there! Also if you have recently or not-so-recently posted meta or squee or episode reviews or fic or vids or whatever, you could also announce them there, because we're encouraging reposts of older stuff as well. 3. Made a whole bunch of banners for Festibility. This was a kind of hilarious project that involved going through the comments to the Festibility announcement post, trying to find folks that I could find pictures of (and be confident I knew who they were) for banners, because I don't actually know a lot of those fandoms. So it involved a lot of googling, and sometimes confusing moments of not being sure which character folks meant. Like, I found the picture of Frank Pembleton without captions on a blog, and I had to turn the computer to T'wings to confirm that it was actually Pembleton -- I, uh, have only seen two episodes of H:LotS? And one of them was the movie because someone told me it was a great way to start watching the show and it wasn't spoilery. SUCH A LIE. Also, I found pictures of Cassandra Cain, and read about her on wikipedia, and she sounds awesome, but I still have no idea what kind of disability she has. (ETA: spoilers for Cassandra Cain's arc in the comments, now.)
4. Also I left some prompts over in the Festibility prompts post; the challenge doesn't require people to write to prompts, but encourages prompts for people who like that kind of thing.
5. Also I have banners I need to make for a different community-promotion project.
6. Also I keep wistfully thinking about this Avatar fic that I wish existed, so maybe I will give in and write it. It could happen.
7. Oh yeah, and I've been answering questions over at
kink_bingo and the kink_wiki, except for the questions that I've forgotten to answer.What I'm saying overall is, maybe I need to borrow t'wing's "why am I modding things now?" tag.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 07:36 pm (UTC)...the straight guy who is in love with the girl WHO THROWS KNIVES, or the pre-pubescent cranky girl? Seriously?
And nobody better be killing off Iroh on my watch! Grrr.
Oh, fandom.
I look forward to your recs because this fandom scares me.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 09:52 pm (UTC)Killing Iroh, on the other hand, I can't understand at ALL. Because he is AWESOME.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 09:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, when Cass first showed up, she couldn't read, either, because all the "communication" centers of her brain were focused on body language.
And then there was this near-literal deus ex machina where she ran into a guy with telepathy who needed her help, scrambled her brain around so she could at least understand *some* speech, and talk a little bit, and later, I think, laboriously learn to read. (I think the writers were having trouble figuring out how to write her as a Batman-like detective character, when she couldn't read or understand speech, or have words in her thought balloons, etc.)
Then there was that storyline where they turned her evil, and the fact that the writer had her doing these page-long, eloquent villain monologues was probably the worst aspect of the character assassination involved. Well, that and turning her into a murderer. And I guess she's good again now, but I have no idea how they're writing her dialogue, if they've just completely forgotten about that part of her characterization or what.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-28 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-01 09:40 am (UTC)Oh my god, this has been making my head explode SO MUCH. I actually started a rant about this at my journal and then ran out of steam and didn't post it, but JESUS. I will be quite up front that Zuko totally stole my heart with his emo whiny teenage self, and I really enjoyed watching him win over the group one by one, but that doesn't change the fact that he tried to, y'know, KILL THEM. A lot. And betrayed them the one time they did trust him, with devastating results. Even Aang refused to trust him at first, with good cause. But Katara gets written as a Zuko-hating bitch who starves and abuses him. In the one Katara-bashing fic that I actually toughed out to about chapter 10 or so (because there were other things going on that were hitting my personal sweet spots), I finally quit in disgust when she ended up on the receiving end of a good old public shaming. Issues much, fandom?
2B. Or, Zuko and/or Aang ends up running the resistance army, and Katara does laundry, because she is mothering.
... which is another thing I had been working up a head of steam about; I'm boggled at the number of fics that reduce Katara to the person who does all the cooking and cleaning for the rest of the group. Have these people *watched* the show?
3. Katara's healing abilities don't work well on [category of injury x], because otherwise the hurt/comfort tropes don't work. Instead, she has to be able to heal it only a little, or very slowly, or not take the pain away, or maybe not at all because water-healing doesn't work on bones or lungs or kidneys or whatever, in order to allow someone to be bandaged and bed-ridden and spoon-fed. And by "someone," I mean "Zuko."
*laughs*
You know, though -- while I can totally believe that fandom would take this and run with it (I haven't been reading Zuko/Katara, so I may be missing the worst of it), isn't this kind of vaguely like her powers actually do work in canon? One of the things I liked about Avatar-verse healing is that it isn't especially effective; it seems to be more on the order of stopgap first aid and maybe speeding up the body's natural healing abilities a little bit, rather than a magical fix. It took her weeks to get Aang to the point where he could get out of bed ...
Basically, sometimes I get five hundred words in and hit a line that makes me suddenly realize that the author thinks that the characters are all white or that the world is the a generic Celtic-y fantasy world, and then I get grossed out and backspace.
*froths* Yes, this. Or having the characters make bacon and eggs for breakfast (... this was actually in a fic I started to read), or have a bachelor party/baby shower/insert-modern-Western-custom-here. That's another thing that's been making me want to shake half the ATLA fandom until their teeth rattle. Even if the writer is too damn lazy to research Chinese wedding traditions or whatnot, it's not like there isn't a ton of canon to draw upon for food and clothing and beliefs and so forth. There's just no excuse.
hahaha ... apparently I have come into your journal to rant at you. *slinks off*
no subject
Date: 2010-08-02 01:43 pm (UTC)re: Katara's healing, I think fandom has definitely added some bonus non-healing-ability to the mix -- Aang's injury basically killed him, and it took her a couple weeks to get him up, but in the fic it's all "Zuko's leg is broken" or "Zuko wast burnt by a firebender" or whatever, and then he's out for weeks and needs spoon-feeding and etc.
I have missed the bacon and eggs story, but oh man the number of baby showers and Christian weddings that I've seen the characters have is horrifying.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-07 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-11 08:05 pm (UTC)And I will totally do a recs post for white_lotus. Soon. Really. :)