!!!! AVATAR. WTF. also, writing meta!

[lassarina]

So spreadnparanoia invited me over tonight for food and more of Avatar: the Last Airbender. We are now at the end of Season 2. I AM DEAD. What. what!!!!!! ZUKO. and my ship. and Zuko. and my ship, damn it. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

and Season 3 is not out on DVD. I AM SO FULL OF ANGST.

okay. flailing aside, I was commenting on some stuff to mad_rex tonight and it

Comments

[owlmoose]

Okay, now to your actual question. :)

it's the conflict, not the resolution, that interests me

That's an interesting observation, and one that I see to a certain extent in myself and the pairings I write. But I think I'm interested in both the conflict and in the resolution. It's like a puzzle for me -- how do I take this conflict and take it somewhere that works? Might be a happy ending, might not, although I admit that I find it particularly satisfying to take a difficult situation and get a realistic happy (or at least not tragic) ending out of it.

I also don't think "happily ever after" necessarily needs to be stagnant. One of my favorite Tidus/Yuna stories is set after the happy ending and shows them dealing with the stress and pain and difficulty caused by his having been away for two years and her feelings about that. They were living their happily ever after, but there was also conflict, and character growth, and fascinating interactions. A good, thoughtful writer can find the conflict in almost any situation.

[lassarina]

My issues with the happily-ever-after setting stories might also, primarily, be related to the fact that many fanwriters just don't do them well. And this entire thing might be just a bunch of psychological tangles for me and the way I deal with people and relationships, so should be taken with a grain of salt. :D

[stephen_poon]

http://www.avatarchapters.org/

[lassarina]

:) Yeah, I know that Avatar is online, I was just enjoying the social aspect of watching it with them.

in the meantime I think we're going to start Fullmetal Alchemist. :D

[shanaqui]

I wrote long comments for this twice, and LJ ate them both, so I'm simply going to say I agree with you for the most part, but often write fluff or pointless smut just for the fun of it. And now I'm going to sit and glare at LJ.

[lassarina]

Rar! *glares at LJ for you*

Yes, fluff and pointless smut can be lots of fun. I enjoy them from time to time. But I tend to like them with the aforementioned sharp edges. Which is probably why "The Game" is my favourite piece of yours still.

[shanaqui]

That's why I'm very fond of the idea of un_love_you. A claims community with so many unhappy prompts like "I want to hurt you" and "I need to want you"? Eee. I really need to get round to writing for my Mal/Simon claim there.

In my heart of hearts, "the game" will probably always be my favourite, too, even though it's been a while since I seriouosly thought about Seifer/Squall (or indeed, any FFVIII pairing).

[lassarina]

*avoids claims community like the plague even though it sounds really shiny* XD

I so rarely write slash except for someone else's prompt, but Seifer/Squall and Seifer/Irvine are the two pairings I'd want to do it for. XD

[terra]

I am going to be different and say there are DVDs released of Book 3-- I know I've seen them at Blockbuster.

Thinking about your rant made me, well, consider-- you and I have a lot of the same pairings, I think we've discussed that. But it really made me realize why I tend to write genfic. Because there needs to be conflict and while I'm all for major issues in relationships (it's funny that you say you're only interested in Cecil/Rosa as it applies Kain's problem, I'm really interested in how that pairing reacts to Kain, sort of the inverse) and it's pretty much impossible to write some of them fluffy. And I don't really like fluff persay, but I also find it really hard to through huge wrenches into ships that I like :( So I just write characters interacting with some external conflict (and/or Locke's Issues) and leave it at that. Hmmmm.

[lassarina]

Yeah, but not the entire thing yet. And if I'm going to watch it, I kind of want to watch it all in a go (or at least as much as I have done with seasons 1 & 2.)

I'm generally really interested in internal conflict in relationships, because I feel like I can relate to it better (which, I think, says a lot about me and my history right there.) I'm not very accustomed to dealing with relationships where the stressors come from external sources.

[terra]

It's a pretty considerable amount of S3, more than half of the season I think. I'm just going mad waiting for the finale, aaaaaah.

It's hard for me to write pairings at all, not necessarily because of how I relate to people, but I just grew up on adventure novels and I'm also really really enamored of the actionish element in my video-game fandoms. Like, Rydia and Edge team up to fight random monsters! With magic! And ninja! That appeals to me as much as their verbal sparring.

Your very interesting meta has just become an excuse for me to ruminate on my own tastes.

[lassarina]

I, uh, am not surprised? XD That seems to happen a lot. (Not just with you.)

I fail at writing combat, so I prefer their verbal sparring. That, at least, I can handle!

[astrangerenters]

I'll join in with the Avatar yays! Your boy Zuko is still very important for season three :)

I really liked Locke/Celes when I first played the game (granted, that was on PS1) but as I've replayed, I thought it would be interesting for her to move on with Setzer (or, as my cracked out mind likes to imagine, with Edgar) because I don't know if Locke is grown up enough for her and seems too preoccupied with not repeating the same mistakes he made with Rachel.

We all know I ship Balthier/Ashe til the cows come home. I think I'm much more of an optimist for them. She grows to respect him, and vice versa, and I just love the thought of "something" (the undefinable something!) rising out of trust and respect rather than infatuation. Although a healthy dose of that with the two of them? FINE BY ME.

[lassarina]

I can ship Setzer/Locke/Celes as a threesome, but I just. I have a psychological block on Edgar from years ago when I really disliked him for ridiculous fanbrattish reasons, and while I have grown to accept his character in general, I have not been able to ship him with Celes. Also I'm pretty sure she'd just castrate him the first time he tried to grab her ass.

B/A basically...they can't be together. Long-term, realities of politics and rulership and the personalities of both of them - one of them would have to give up the thing that defines that person (either freedom, or rule) and I can't get behind the long-term consequences of a pairing for which that is true. ....Then again, I am the countess of angst or some such shenanigans, so that probably informs my opinion as well.