First scene of the Yue fic

[esmenet]

They arrive on a ship made of dull grey metal, suspiciously clean and unscarred. The waterbenders stop them, search them, don’t kill them: Earth Kingdom.

Min and Mushi, they call themselves. (Such strange names, not a ‘k’ nor ‘h’ nor ‘t’ nor ‘y’ between them.) A young Earth Kingdom scholar and his elderly uncle, come to take not lives but songs and stories and poetry, to write them down and give them away to the world. Thieves, Yue doesn’t think -- it’s not unheard of to write poems down now and then, in bits and pieces, when the language allows. It’s not a bad thing. And there’s no reason why outsiders shouldn’t learn them, even if it’s been a long time since any of them did. There’s nothing wrong with it, not really.

They’re dressed for cold, but not well enough. The scholar (who can’t be much older than her, and looks a little younger) stands stiff and straight, very determinedly not shivering in his green over-robes -- flax-cotton, they must be, or something else no one here wears. The ship’s crew has less pride and crowd close together, hugging themselves for warmth.

(Strangely, the uncle doesn’t seem to be cold at all.)

“Welcome to the North Pole,” she says, and holds out a warm coat.

-

Okay, I am kind of really undecided about this? I mean, I like it, but I'm not entirely sure of the direction I want to go in. And I'm really not sure about making Zuko's taken name Min instead of Li, because I have pretty much no reason for it except that it sounded right. Help?

Comments

[annotated_em]

*________*

[esmenet]

. . . Is that a good *________* or a bad *________* ? *squints*

[annotated_em]

That's a good *_______*, definitely. It's an enormous starry-eyed grin, see?

[fulselden]

\o/ This is most excellent (as also that quote from Pollack's book below, which I missed the first time: heh!).

I love Yue being acccommodating about the frankly rather perverse practice of writing down poetry, and noticing that Zuko looks younger than her (also, oh yes, their kid being totally fascinated by something entirely random, as per your last post, is delightful).

Also: flax-cotton, heh. Descriptions of inadequate cold weather clothing worn by visitors to chilly climes always please me, for some reason (see also Pullman's Northern Lights).

To be honest this seems like the introduction to a romantic interlude of sweetness and hilarity and cross-cultural misunderstandings ... which, yeah, sounds good but not exactly plotty? Hmm.

I don't see any problem myself with having Zuko be Min instead of Li. For one thing, it makes everything very firmly AU, especially given the heavy-handed use of Zuko's SUPER SEKRIT ALIAS in some A:tLA fics I've come across. And it might also fit with aca!Zuko being a bit more savvy about names and such, assuming that 'Min' is just a touch less common a name than 'Li'.

[esmenet]

There's just something about people wearing weather-inappropriate clothing, I guess. :D

To be honest this seems like the introduction to a romantic interlude of sweetness and hilarity and cross-cultural misunderstandings ... which, yeah, sounds good but not exactly plotty? Hmm.

*holds fic up to the light and squints* It really does look like that, doesn't it? Which is definitely not what I was/am intending -- well, mostly intending. I guess I could do romance-y for a little while, then "news of the Avatar, sir", then HOSHIT Zhao's attack on the North Pole.

Yeah, that's what I was going for: if you want to make strangers forget you, don't call yourself by the most common name -- use the third most common.

[quadruplify.livejournal.com]

It definitely looks good so far. I can see why you chose Min as Zuko's assumed name -- this is an AU, after all, so it differentiates him from the "Li" he takes in canon -- but I'm still partial to Li myself. ^_^; And I really like his characterization -- it's still Zuko, even though it's AU.

I'd really like to see this fleshed out more, though -- and maybe having undergone a revision or two -- before I make any further judgments, as a snippet like this is hard to work with.