Notes toward a proposed fic, The Quest

[deleonjh]

This post is about the Avatar fanfic I am writing, tentatively titled The Quest. It’s shaping up to be my magnum opus, to be honest. I’ve been kicking it around for months and the amount of research I’ve done for it is far beyond what I’ve done for any other fic. I’ve been reading up about Chinese kinship systems, obscure martial arts, and attitudes on the Mandate of Heaven. To be fair, though, I wasn’t reading those things specifically for the fic but I did note interesting stuff down.

Anyway, The Quest is set three years after the war in a world where Aang’s iceberg was found by Suki at Kyoshi Island (it drifted north). Yeah, it’s majorly alternate universe. I was kind of worried that all of my stories would be retreads of the canon series with one or two points of departure, but this one is way different.

In this world, Aang was accompanied by Suki, and the two were eventually joined by Jet. Because of his companions, Aang became more responsible than in the canon. Jet’s influence meant that the Fire Nation royal family was overthrown and executed by their own people. Bloody purges went through the government and Zuko and Iroh were only spared because they helped the Avatar. The Fire Nation is currently ruled by an interim assembly of mayors, governors, and generals, and it muddles along without collapsing. Expect a more permanent ruling council to eventually be formed.

The story begins with Katara at the South Pole, 18 years old and never having left home. Some Northern Water Tribe people came down to help their southern cousins rebuild, but these northerners as a group tend to look down on their rustic and backwards kin. They’re also arrogant over the part they played in helping to win the war (still haven’t decided exactly how, perhaps they simply trained Aang in Waterbending). Some of them came down specifically to lord it over the southerners, since they sure as hell can’t do that in the far more developed Earth Kingdom.

The Southern Water Tribe is larger because of these newcomers and because of the returned warriors. It’s still a backwater, they mostly sell blubber, fur, whale oil, and musk to foreign traders.

I’m toying with the idea of writing the story entirely from Katara’s perspective. It’ll be tricky because all of my other Avatar fics have Zuko as the main character, but I think I have a decent hold on her character. I might alternate the point of view between her and Zuko, though I’d prefer not to unless it makes the narrative flow better.

And while we’re on the subject, yes, Zuko and Katara will be a couple here, but I’ve read too many fics where they awkwardly come to terms with their feelings for the other person, so in this one I think I’ll just have them hook up in the first chapter and have their relationship be a fait accompli.

Overall, the story will be structured as a bildungsroman, specifically Katara’s. It will be about her literal and figurative journey towards self-actualization, here externalized as mastery in Waterbending. So of course she will need to leave the Southern Water Tribe to explore the world after the war. Perhaps Katara will unknowingly recreate the path she took in the original story. This would help ground the fic in the canon material and prevent the creation of too many original characters, which quite frankly are generally a negative in fanfiction.

But if Katara follows the path of the canon series, and if her goal is to become a master Waterbender, why wouldn’t the story end at the Northern Water Tribe? Obviously, she must fail. Perhaps she is unsuccessful at convincing Pakku to teach her, or perhaps she finds the Northern Water Tribe too rigid and misogynist for her to comfortably live among (and since there’s no war, there’s also no urgency to Katara’s training).

Perhaps Katara thus seeks out other Waterbenders, which eventually leads her to the Swamp and the Foggy Swamp Waterbenders. Along the way she meets Toph, Zuko’s nominal fiancée – yeah, there’s a back story there, but I’ll actually introduce it way back in the first chapter so no one is surprised. It sound muddled right now but it’ll flow a lot smoother when it’s in narrative form.

Come to think of it, now the fic sounds more like a travelogue. Which is fine, but it seems to me the travelogue has less narrative possibilities than other forms of fiction, it’s mostly just a listing of stuff that happened. I’ll have to guard against letting the story turn into that.

I’ve got a few more ideas for this fic but they’re not in the form of coherent sentences so much as vague musings. Still, I like what I’ve got so far. I just wish I knew how to end this story. Guess I’ve got to do some more thinking.