It makes me go "omg, I would love to co-write this with you!" and "wait, I would be terrible at co-writing.")
Heh, thank you – I’m entirely flattered! And I kinda feel exactly the same – I suspect the Avatar shipping wars would have nothing on me defending my territory over a pet metaphor or something equally trivial. Though I feel vaguely guilty here – I’m getting all the fun of world building with none of the hard graft of getting stuff down on paper... Not that writing isn’t fun, of course, but the attendant frustration levels are exponentially higher in my (very limited!) experience.
Man, I love the idea of haunted artefacts (which of course Embers gets a fair bit of mileage out of) – I mean, when your ceremonial vestments have been handed down from Sozin, for instance, that’s a whole lot of negative vibes right there. Not to mention an entire lineage-worth of infighting Fire Lords clogging up the dreams of the present incumbent (assuming reincarnation is an Avatar special-feature, or that Fire Lords get some kind of dispensation from it, the better to stick around and bug their descendants). Also awesome: the idea of Mai and her blessed knives, cutting through the crap of long, elaborate Fire Sage-ly ceremonies. Because, yes, I’m sure that rituals would balloon out of all proportion to the actual necessary rites, given a dedicated class of Fire Sages who’d want to attract patronage and what have you.
Being favoured by Agni does seem a likely Thing for the royals – which would help explain why Zuko, being a fail!bender for most of canon, was such an embarrassment. And while I don’t think any of that was actually canon, it would be great to play with the idea of water and fire being akin in this way – perhaps earth is too pragmatic and air too detached for those elements to need Patron Spirits to gift them to humanity or however bending happened in the first place (spiritbending?). But yeah, there could very well be the tradition that the Royal Family is entrusted with carrying on Agni’s fire, specifically – that their inner fire is qualitatively different. And then, when the line ends (if you don’t count Mai) with no apparent ill effects - massive implications for the power of the Fire Sages.
I’m pretty sure the Earth Kingdom would have been more or less the bread basket of the Fire Nation. I mean, even assuming the Fire Nation had been largely self-sufficient once upon a time, a century of industrialisation and war – and breeding babies for war – seems likely to have left them hugely reliant on imports.
I forget, did the FN royal family have a secret library?
Well, if they didn’t, THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE. Seriously, the Fire Nation royal collection of ancient scrolls and plundered Air Nomad and Earth Kingdom artefacts is one of my most treasured pieces of head-canon! And I can absolutely see copies being pretty central to any peace treaty – and being something aca!Zuko would very much have a vested interest in. Though assuming the Earth Kingdom has invented printing, or is on the verge of it (which seems likely, given the potential uses of earthbending) I can see him lobbying rather urgently for all this stuff to get put in print asap.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-10-02 09:16 pm (UTC)It makes me go "omg, I would love to co-write this with you!" and "wait, I would be terrible at co-writing.")
Heh, thank you – I’m entirely flattered! And I kinda feel exactly the same – I suspect the Avatar shipping wars would have nothing on me defending my territory over a pet metaphor or something equally trivial. Though I feel vaguely guilty here – I’m getting all the fun of world building with none of the hard graft of getting stuff down on paper... Not that writing isn’t fun, of course, but the attendant frustration levels are exponentially higher in my (very limited!) experience.
Man, I love the idea of haunted artefacts (which of course Embers gets a fair bit of mileage out of) – I mean, when your ceremonial vestments have been handed down from Sozin, for instance, that’s a whole lot of negative vibes right there. Not to mention an entire lineage-worth of infighting Fire Lords clogging up the dreams of the present incumbent (assuming reincarnation is an Avatar special-feature, or that Fire Lords get some kind of dispensation from it, the better to stick around and bug their descendants). Also awesome: the idea of Mai and her blessed knives, cutting through the crap of long, elaborate Fire Sage-ly ceremonies. Because, yes, I’m sure that rituals would balloon out of all proportion to the actual necessary rites, given a dedicated class of Fire Sages who’d want to attract patronage and what have you.
Being favoured by Agni does seem a likely Thing for the royals – which would help explain why Zuko, being a fail!bender for most of canon, was such an embarrassment. And while I don’t think any of that was actually canon, it would be great to play with the idea of water and fire being akin in this way – perhaps earth is too pragmatic and air too detached for those elements to need Patron Spirits to gift them to humanity or however bending happened in the first place (spiritbending?). But yeah, there could very well be the tradition that the Royal Family is entrusted with carrying on Agni’s fire, specifically – that their inner fire is qualitatively different. And then, when the line ends (if you don’t count Mai) with no apparent ill effects - massive implications for the power of the Fire Sages.
I’m pretty sure the Earth Kingdom would have been more or less the bread basket of the Fire Nation. I mean, even assuming the Fire Nation had been largely self-sufficient once upon a time, a century of industrialisation and war – and breeding babies for war – seems likely to have left them hugely reliant on imports.
I forget, did the FN royal family have a secret library?
Well, if they didn’t, THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE. Seriously, the Fire Nation royal collection of ancient scrolls and plundered Air Nomad and Earth Kingdom artefacts is one of my most treasured pieces of head-canon! And I can absolutely see copies being pretty central to any peace treaty – and being something aca!Zuko would very much have a vested interest in. Though assuming the Earth Kingdom has invented printing, or is on the verge of it (which seems likely, given the potential uses of earthbending) I can see him lobbying rather urgently for all this stuff to get put in print asap.