Written for avatar_500 prompt #53, Rules.

Summary: Their life together has become bounded by them, and Mai is still figuring out how to reach for Zuko through them.

The Unspoken Ones

There were rules to sleeping with the Firelord, customs, traditions, nods towards discretion, a thousand and one things they had never had to think about before when he was just a prince.  A prince who was never going to take the throne, they never talked about it, never, but Azula...  It didn't matter.  There were rules now.  There were secret passageways, and chaperones, and a tangle of betrothals broken both times Zuko had left that had to be remade and renegotiated.

There had always been rules to sleeping with Zuko, things to back away from, things that hurt too much to look at.  Things that needed to be lanced or skewered.  Things that were the remnants of Azula's friendship.  Sometimes, she couldn't see through all that to what was theirs, and what they were free to do and be.

There were rules to being a couple, any couple, and it was when the rules began to contradict each other and twist on the page that Mai wanted to throw them away and stare mutely at the wall until it was over.

Just so long, Mai decided, as there was room for Zuko and Mai in the spaces between the rules.

In which our intrepid author attempts to answer the first hundred avatar_500 prompts in as few words and with as little seriousness as possible.  Each part is under 500 words, and since each part contains twenty-five fics, each fic is an average of 19 words long.

( Part One: Prompts 1-25 )



( Part Two: Prompts 26-50 )



( Part Three: Prompts 51-75 )



( Part Four: Prompts 76-100 )

Written for avatar_500 prompt #52, Party.

Summary: He isn't sulking, and she isn't bored.

Social Caterpillar

When she had been a child, her parents used to take her to the kind of parties where everybody was in constant danger, where a wrong word could end someone.  They would tell her to keep her mouth shut and then parade her around, and wonder why she wasn't charming and adorable like Ty Lee. That had changed.  There wasn't a party her parents wanted to go to that she wasn't invited first, and her words were the ones that could trap somebody else.

Glaze eyed introspection, the kind that had made the people her parents had tried to show her off to ask if there was something wrong with her was even less forgivable now.  She glanced sideways at her husband.  "Your sister warned me you sulked through these things."

Zuko jerked at the mention of Azula, she-who-no-one-mentioned, she-who-had-brought-them-together.  "I'm not sulking!"

"Whatever."  She rolled her eyes.  In the back of her mind, she wondered how many of the people below watching them so earnestly would think from that little thing that their marriage was on he rocks already, here at their wedding feast.  "It's not like I care.  It's the only thing I ever managed to do at these things."

"It's supposed to be for you too," he said, poking a bean curd ball around his plate with a chopstick.  "I mean, it's your wedding feast."

"That's big of you."

He ignored that.  "We can sulk together, if you want."

"I guess."  She put her hand over his.

That's it, folks, I can't take it.  In the hopes that maybe writing some of what I want to write will get me unblocked on the fic I'm trying to write, I'm giving in and running a commentfic meme for my Avatar!Zuko verse.  Comment with up to five requests, and I’ll guarantee you at least one commentfic.  I’ll probably answer with more, knowing me.  weirdlet , fanficforensics, beboots, and floranna  get seven requests and a guarantee of two fics, because beboots  and floranna  are the best betas ever, and weirdlet and fanficforensics just because.


Also, the 'verse has a title now, Kindle the Wind!


Air, Water, Earth, Fire.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and the new Avatar crashed into the ice sheet that borders our village. Although he is the Fire Nation prince, and it's his family and his nation that have brought this war to the world, I have hope that inside Zuko lies the spark of greatness. In the end, he has to save the world.

Timeline:

The first time Zuko struck a Fire Nation soldier in anger
Banner
Meeting Sokka and Katara
The joys of new bending
Zuko surprising himself by being spiritual and philosophical
Gran-Gran criticizing Uncle's parenting skills
Uncle Iroh finds out
Iroh has a talk with his nephew
Agni Kai against Zhao
Laying Aang to rest at the Southern Air Temple
Momo joins the Party
Sokka finds out the women on the ship aren't there to cook (and learns something, maybe)
Act of Providence
The Spinning Gates
Korra as the waterbending sifu to Zuko's successor New Nomad Avatar

I woke up on Monday to moths.  They trickle in every year, in twos and threes, until there’s a swarm several thousand strong around every light fixture and window all over he state, and the first moths always bring a groan, and the sinking feeling that they’re going to be there for months.

Of course, they usually show up in June, so this year, the dread is a little worse.  June is when the bats wake up to eat the fluttery, fuzzy, home invading monstrosities which means the moths didn’t trickle in this time.  They’re swarming, and dropping dead all over our house.  I think my grandmother’s going to have another stroke.  Yesterday, she walked outside to find hundreds of them hanging upside down underneath her bench, and screamed the rest of us awake.

Yo Yo’s happy.  He’s been catching them out of the air and eating them.

It’s not like they’re a big deal, but they’re a little frazzling, and my grandmother is frazzling the rest of me.  Stupid little things, my friends, stupid little things.

And to cap it all off, I have this absurdly strong urge to just sit down and write.  This is the kind of urge that has lead to me polishing off six thousand word fics in two days, and pounding out two to three thousand word chunks of fic in an afternoon.  Great right?  I’m inspired.  It’s the opposite of writer’s block.  Only none of the things I’m chomping at the bit to write are the thirty thousand word White Collar slavefic I’m two thirds into.  Gah!  It’s not just that I’ve lost enthusiasm for this particular fic, but I sort of ran out of steam on the whole fandom, which I knew was coming, given that I was there for the people, not the canon, but oh well.  Must finish fic.  It doesn’t help that Legend of Korra came back and sucked me right back into Avatar.  I mean, not that I ever left Avatar, but it’s like the first bloom of infatuation all over again.  Damn it.

Things I want to write:

My Original Novel!
The rest of Ice Flows Through
Meme of Zenith and Nader (Yue and Zuko switch places)
Meme of Bannerverse (The Avatar!Zuko AU)

I don’t usually buy books based on their cover art, but the cover for The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff was so deliciously morbid with that skeletal branch, and those scissors and knives and things above the stroller. Besides, changeling fantasy tends to hit all of the right buttons for me. Plus, the store had it as an audiobook, so I could get my grandmother to pay for it.

Mackie Doyle is a replacement, left in place of a human child by his own kind. Sickly, and unsuited to the human world, he was never supposed to live long, but somehow he has. All he really wants to do is live his human life with his family and friends, and spend time with a girl he likes from his school, named Tate. But when her baby sister changes suddenly, just before she sickens and dies, the town of Gentry starts whispering about changelings and the people under the slag heap, and sometimes they do more than whisper.

( Read more... )

I don’t buy books based on their cover image all that often, but I’m glad this time I did.

Brenna Yovanoff can be found on livejournal atbrennayovanoff.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #51, Door.

Summary: She isn't there for herself.

Solid Walls

One of her guards rushed forward to bend the door door open, and Yue stepped though, her skirt sweeping the floor, refined, traditional, and perfect.  She was a princess, a living symbol, wearing a mask that every chief's daughter had worn since the day the palace rose from the ice.

And there was nowhere to get away from it.  Against the walls of her chambers were heavy tapestries, empty porcelain vases from the Earth Kingdom, multi colored woven baskets from the Fire Nation, sculptures from her homeland.  It was as grand as any princess's chambers in the Fire Nation, any royal wife's suite in Ba Sing Se.  The Northern Water Tribe could have a princess, and dress her in fine fur robes and give her rooms like these to dwell in.  How grand and sophisticated they must be.

Her hair is white, her people said to themselves when they saw her.  The moon spirit has blessed her.  How many other nations have their princess blessed by the spirits?  How lucky we are to have her.

And when her guards sealed the door to her chambers for the night, leaving a blank wall, Yue felt her own unused, untaught waterbending answer.

Now that Legend of Korra has officially premiered, at least in my location, I have more Highly Important thoughts to share on shipping.  It says something about just how special our fandom is when the shipping, and even the shipping wars began way back when all we had on most of these characters was a name and a picture (it’s like a dating site but more animated...  See what I did there?) And really, I can understand why, I mean, our particular fandom has a reputation to maintain as the shippiest fandom this side of a navy base, but really, the half-hearted, meta joking shipping going on right now?  It’s a mockery to the noble tradition of shipping!

It’s not entirely our fault, I know.  Bryke and crew have been encouraging this by giving us ridiculous, thinly veiled copies of the popular ships from Avatar: the Last Airbender.  It’s sad how obvious it is that Mako’s scarf/Amon’s mask is the new Zutara, and Korra/pro-bending is the new Iroh/tea.  I mean, the Korra/spinning gates people are already starting to act like the Iroh/lotus tile people, and the scarf/mask people are already calling the Mako/scarf people immature canon slaves.

I suppose I should be grateful for the lull.  After all, we are a passionate fandom, and already, as I described above, the rumblings of true fannish feuding are beginning to be felt.  At least the lighter, joking unheated shipping is all in good fun and unites us rather than divides us.  For once, we are all one fandom.

Perhaps my dissatisfaction with the way things are going is because I know what’s coming.  I will see friends and siblings in fandom torn asunder.  The cracks that our anticipation of Korra have only papered over will grow wider.  The wounds will open up and bleed anew.  The ship wars are coming my friends.  Scarf will be vilified by the Mako/Korra people, and Mako will be vilified by the scarf/mask people.  The Korra/pro-bending people will call the Korra/spinning gates relationship abusive, and there will be no more common ground.

But I swear to God, if Amon’s mask joins the good guys, I will quit this show.  It’s just too predictable.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #50, Return.

Summary: Conquest is a rush.

Snow Melt Floods

Hanook disembarked from his flagship inside the ice covered harbor.  In the gloom, waterbenders sculpted the walls, expanding the harbor, spilling water out of dry docks for new ships to be built.  Outside the harbor, waterbenders all over the city kept up the frenetic pace.  They had to rush.  This had to happen fast.

He passed through the new streets, around the new houses, pushing aside the memories of the skin tent he had grown up in. 

He knocked on the door to the largest house in the new city.  The woman who opened the door smiled and threw her arms around his middle before leading him inside.  Her one-legged husband sat on low bench, bouncing a blown up turtle-seal bladder ball off the floor and into the hands of a little boy who kept stopping to hold the ball and suck on his thumb.

It was that missing leg that sometimes kept Hanook awake.  He wanted the little Avatar with his thumb in his mouth to think of the conquests and the new empire they were building as great things, good things.  He would shower the little Avatar with all the glories of empire.  He just had to hurry.

We're just over a day away from the deadline at avatar_500 for prompt 49, Lake, and we have only one entry.  So, to prove that I am not above using bribery, for anybody who writes and posts a fill for this round to the community before the deadline (Saturday, April 7, 10:00 PM, MDT), I will drabble up an answer to any one Avatar: the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra prompt they give me here at this post.  This includes all of my existing AUs (excepting Ice Flows Through) as well as unrelated prompts.  Or, I will make a 400x600 pixel banner for any Avatar: the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra fanfic (excepting  NC-17) written by the requester that they ask me to.  (Please provide a link).  Furthermore, after the deadline, I will do the same thing for anybody who writes and posts to the community a fill for the next biweekly prompt, Return.  And yes, that means if you post a fic for each, you get two requests.

A few rules-

No Ty Zula
No NC-17
No incest
No ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s)
No rape

Information on posting can be found here.

I'm not asking for much, just 100 to 500 words.  Good luck.


LAKE:

Piandao - Fanfare for c3childs 
Blind Sukka Spawn forlavanyasix 

RETURN:

Kori/Ty Lee - The Kyoshi guard captures the naughty assassin for lavanyasix 
Act of Providence - Avatar!Zuko AU for c3childs, who asked for "Ozai finds a genie in a bottle."  I also wrote her two short gag takes.

Ganked from dungeonwriter  who ganked it from another:

To participate:

1. Leave a comment to this post, specifically saying that you would like a letter.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.

I got R.


1. Rebecca from the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier - This is one of the only books my mom and I actually both like.  It amazes me how many different ways there are to interpret the titular dead character.  Was she, as her husband says, a glossy, abusive tyrant, the victim of a clever liar who wanted a wife who was more easy to manipulate, the perfection obsessed plaything of Mrs. Danvers?  I believe the first, knowing how well abusers of all genders fly under the rainbow, but all the novel gives us is Maxim’s word (much like most abuse cases, fittingly).

2. Roku from Avatar: the Last Airbender (and possibly Legend of Korra) - Roku is like Dumbledore if Dumbledore were completely incompetent at his job (great job preventing your best friend from becoming an evil overlord!) and gave really bad advice.  Speaking of which, what’s Aang doing listening to the guy in The Promise?  Bad Aang!

3. R2-D2 from Star Wars - You know, I probably watched the original trilogy for the first tie while I was still in the womb, and for the longest time growing up, I thought our favorite snarky droid was a rolling trash can.

4. Richard III as written by Shakespeare - we watched it in my tiny class full of sick people in high school, and all of the boys were absolutely in awe of him for winning over Lady Anne, while us girls were like “Oh please.”

5. Robin Hood from Robin McKinley’s The Outlaws of Sherwood - It fascinated me when I was younger the way that McKinley portrays the Robin of legend as a composite character with the outstanding skills of two people, the clever, angsty Robin who can lead everybody and keep roofs over their heads (mostly), and Marian, the one who can actually shoot a bow and has charisma.

Summary: Ty Lee begins Avatar Zuko's airbending training.  Takes place in the same universe as "Banner".

Author's Note: Wow, I actually wrote a drabble just because.  I haven't written like that for a while...  Anyway, this arose out of a conversation with weirdlet in which we both agreed *SPOILER FOR LEGEND OF KORRA (highlight to read)* that the way Korra's first airbending lesson went was the exact same way Zuko's would have gone were he the Avatar.



( The Spinning Gates (Spoilers for Legend of Korra, chapter two) )

Being as we are less than a month away from the beginning of Legend of Korra, and the shipping began long long before now, I have been thinking about my own shipping tendencies.   For too long, I have denied I have them, even as I have made my home in two of the most avid shipping fandoms known to humanity.  It’s true that gen fic is where my primary interest lies, and that in Harry Potter fandom, despite a fondness for the utter impossibility that is Snape/Black, I formed no allegiance to any particular pairing, and that in Avatar: the Last Airbender fandom, while I always come home to Maiko, I have never had a problem seeing any character I like with any other character I like.  In short, I sit on the shipping sidelines.  Us Maiko shippers have for the most part been content to let the Kataangers fight the battle against the Zutarans and only poke our much maligned heads above ground when certain members of the Zutaran camp (every group has their unsavories) start calling our girl an evil social climber who never loved Zuko and has a man face (man face?  What does that even mean?).  I don’t  feel the need to defend the pairing, but I do feel the need to defend the parties to it.

So I have been looking for a pairing that I can support to the point of fighting for it, a pairing that I could not see the world existing without, a pairing that I will scour every inch of canon for support for.  And I have found it.  Iroh/tea.

Now most people accept this ship, but I just can’t understand why so few people are as passionate about them as I have become.  Maybe it’s because it lacks the drama of a new relationship?  That’s a real shame that fandom can’t appreciate real, long term true love.  Iroh understands tea like nobody else.

And it’s a ship that lends itself so well to threesomes.  When Iroh shares tea with Toph, when he brews tea for Zuko...  Even Iroh playing Pai Sho with tea by his side.  There’s no need for shipping rivalry.

But the people who don’t accept this ship can be so cruel.  Those Iroh/lotus tile shippers are vicious.  In the face of all of the canon evidence for Iroh/tea, they will pick the most insignificant scenes, like the the time Iroh threw the tea Zuko made him out the window as evidence that the creators are really on their side.  Worse, some of them write whole fics with Iroh talking about how he secretly hates tea.  Seriously, people, if your ship is so great, back it up  Don’t tear down another ship because you don’t think your ship has what it takes.

So my fellows, I find I am not so above it all.  Let the shipping wars come.  In the end, Iroh/tea will prevail!

Completely seriously, though, one of the sweetest moments in the series is when Zuko tries to make tea the way his uncle likes it, and Iroh manages to down one cup, then pitches a second out the window when his nephew isn’t looking.  Aww, they try so hard.

Oh, and about the first two episodes of Legend of Korra released online?  All I got to say is, Byrke have got to be careful that the universe doesn’t collapse under the sheer weight of awesome.

Written for avatar_500 prompt #49, Lake.

Summary: In the history of the world, there have been many conquerors, none of them great.


Which No One Can Break Down

The shorelines were rimmed with ice.  Icebergs floated south from the northern fortress, and the rivers that bisected the Earth Kingdom continent were lined with frost and Water Tribe warriors.  Nianchu knew his town could either be enslaved to them, building temples and palaces of earthbent stone the way the waterbenders did out of ice, or flee.

It wasn't really a choice.

As their wagon wheels creaked over the open ground, further an further from water, their ranks swelled, and the creaking turned into a thunder, and the thousands following looked at him like he would know what to do.  All he knew how to do was go on.

So they went on.  And the land dried up under their feet.  They pushed on, and he could hear people crying in the wagons, babies, children, crying out for water.  And they could turn back.  They could live without their freedom, but they couldn't live without water.

When the lake shimmered on the horizon, he didn't believe it until he could touch it.

"And what are we going to do when the Water Tribe comes here?" one man demanded.

Nianchu gazed out over Lake Laogai.  "We build a wall around it."

Written for avatar_500 prompt #48, Finish.

Summary: There was a time before the Avatar, and before people knew what the Avatar was.


One Circle Closed

The lakes sank lower with each year, disappearing into the empty dust.  Fewer benders were born each year, and the people who had once lived on the backs of lion-turtles instead of rafts, and bent other people's bending were barely even memories.

No one had seen a spirit in dreams in generations.  The spirits had deserted them.  Only the blood of their greatest bender could bring them back, they whispered.

She was old.  Her children were dead, and her grandchildren were grown.  She put her own head onto the block, but when they raised the sword, her eyes glowed white.

~*~

When raiders came from the islands, his mother grabbed him and his brothers and sister and ran with them into the hills.  Fire burst out of the raiders hands and feet, catching in the thatched house roofs, and he watched it from safety, but when the fire came out of his hands, and the earth trembled with his footsteps, he ran down the hill to fight with the men of his village, and when his eyes burned white, and the voice of an old woman came out of his throat along with his own, no one stood in his way.

~*~

The dragons came out to meet her on the day she was born.  They sniffed her, their whiskers tickling her cheeks.  When they left her again, her parents breathed a sigh of relief.

As her belly grew round and full with her first child, the girl the dragons had blessed drew water from the well.  She pulled her hand up...

And the water followed.  She screamed, the water clinging to her, and she ran through the village as the old Sun warriors spoke of the boy who had driven them away from the Earth shores with earth and fire together.

~*~

As word traveled throughout the world that High Priestess of Fire with her glowing eyes and three voices had died, a woman gave birth alone, far from her clan, in a sky bison saddle.  She took the baby home and he cried into the wind.

His aunt and grandfather said he was the greatest airbender they had ever seen, but it was the day he mimicked the earthbenders at a festival and he earth moved that they realized just how powerful he really was.

"You know," his mother said, "He was born the night the three voiced Fire priestess died."

I am the only Jew down in Jewville not hungover today, but I have to get in on the Purim fun somehow, so meme! Post the name of any character from any of my fandoms, including my OCs, and I will tell you how they got drunk, who they were with, and what they're doing about the inevitable fallout/pounding head of doom.

Meme closed.

Disclaimer: "Playing with the Big Boys Now" from Prince of Egypt belongs to Dreamworks animation. The footage in this vid comes from Avatar: the Last Airbender, which belongs to Nickelodeon, as well as Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

Warning: There are some rapid scene changes. They didn't aggravate my seizures, but I have a bigger problem with shaky cam (which this vid does not have).

Creator Commentary: This is my first and probably only vid (I made it for atlaland, and decided it really wasn't for me, but I'm proud of the results). While this is a villain song in the original movie, and there is some underlying commentary in here about how all of the Order of the White Lotus members are male (did they leave the recruiting up to Pakku?) this mostly it's just a celebration of how awesome the old guys of Avatar: the Last Airbender are in a genre where adults are usually useless.


( Who knocks at the guarded gate? )

Written foravatar_500 prompt #47, Charm.

Summary: She tries to summon up something other than revulsion for him.


Skittering, Skittering

He had a certain kind of charm, if she had been willing to overlook what he was and what he had done.  Yue clasped her hand over her fist and bowed to him, and he bent his strange segmented legs.

He was the oldest, old when the first of the lion turtles had hatched, old when the world itself had been made out of fire.  She was the youngest.

He had been wearing the face of a Water Tribe woman when she had bowed.  In an eyeblink, he wore a moon mask, pale and half full, with silver eyes and painted eyebrows.  She shivered inside.  Tui had been the first moon, she reminded herself, and Tui's face had never been stolen.

The moon mask's painted lips curved up. "Princess."

"Koh the Face Stealer," she said, sliding down to sit against the stones.

"You come to me with a new face, moon spirit."

She didn't correct him.

"What have you come here for?"  He whirled on her like a lion-snake, and his voice reverberated around and around her head.

She didn't move.  Her face didn't move.  "I've come to ask you a question."

He hunched down.  "Then ask it, moon spirit."

Our dog Muffin died this afternoon.   We think she was fifteen, but she might have been older.  She lay in my arms while my mother patted her, as the euthanasia carried her away, taking away the pain in her legs and back that the narcotics couldn’t touch anymore.

We found her at my elementary school, playing with all of the kids, when I was ten.  A more fortuitous timing I can’t imagine.  With the immune therapy, I was healthy for the first time in my life, and Muffin had such tremendous energy.  She played all the time.  She never stopped.  From the first time we brought her a tennis ball and bounced it around the garage the first night we had her, there was nothing she loved more than to chase that ball.  To tire her out and give us a break, we used to throw the ball up and down the stairs, but she always came back, ready for more.  We switched to racquetballs pretty quickly, because the tennis balls wore down her teeth, and Muffin and those racquetballs were never apart.  They were just the right size for her to put in her mouth and smile up at us with a great big blue grin.

When my Girl Scout troop came over to my house for meetings, Muffin just knew that they were there to play with her.  She made herself right at home with everybody she met.  Usually, when we rescue a dog, everybody tells us how lucky the dogs are to have found us.  No one ever said that about Muffin.  Everybody told us how lucky we were to have found her.  That said it all.

These last few days, as the swelling on her spine worsened, I just held her as much as possible and tried to make her comfortable.  There was something so wrong seeing Muffin, lying there, so still, our girl who never quit moving.  The other dogs stayed close, licking her and supporting her as the end grew close.

Before Muffin, all of the dogs in our family had been my Mom’s.  Muffin was the first who was as much mine.  She was the first living being for whom I was responsible.  Oh, my baby girl, I miss you.

In honor of February 14, the first fourteen people who leave a prompt here with a ship from any of my three fandoms (pairing, threesome, moresome) and a one word prompt, I will write a 140 word story for that pairing and prompt.

A few ground rules related to my personal squicks:

No incest
No ships where one party is much older or younger than the other(s)
No ships that include both Ty Lee and Azula

Meme Closed and Finished.

Fills:

1. lavanyasix, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Song/Sokka - Nostalgia
2. selonbrody, Harry Potter: Lily/James - Spirits
3. floranna, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Jet/Zuko/Mai - Tanning
4. lunafana, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Teo/Ty Lee - Feather
5. gamiel, Harry Potter: Lucius/Narcissa - Surprise
6. clockwerkchaos, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Azula/Aang - Spicy
7. fanficforensics, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Suki/Zuko - Unagi
8. luunyscarlet, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Sokka/Zuko - Dance
9. weirdlet, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Sokka/Jet - Tribe
10. sheenianni, White Collar: Mozzie/Sally - Unexpected
11. avocado_love, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Toph/Zuko - Understanding
12. sholio, White Collar: Peter/Elizabeth - Cake
13. beboots, Avatar: the Last Airbender: Zuko/Yue - propriety
14. rabidchild67, White Collar: Neal/Peter - Sleepy


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