FMB: 1 of 5 has been converted.... Yaaay?

[lavanya_six]

Got the beta for Chapter 1 back, along with an asskicking by my trusty beta on the fine aspects of swordsmithing. After much revision, Chapter 1 was made more presentable. I also changed it to past tense because trying to write long-form fanfic in present tense MAKES LAVANYA GO CRAZY. Chapter 1.1 is now back to the beta for a final check.

I've had several false starts on Chapter 2, mostly due to an underlying problem that didn't crystallize for me until I re-read a comment by clockworkchaos in a previous post about wanting to see an 22!Toph/Iroh conversation. See, in the original draft, Iroh was dead by the start of the story. Long story short, I junked the highly AU aspects of the first draft and lined it up more with canon. So now things run essentially the same for everyone until Toph joins the Gaang. ("Three-fourths of the Fire Nation's royal family in one small, deserted town? No one told me it was my birthday!") Because someone calling Iroh on his past deeds was too good a story element to pass up. Plus leaving Iroh alive puts the focus on Toph's war trauma and not on her relationship with her parents, which, over the course of writing the first chapter, I found the former was more important. 

I extended the outline to 5 chapters total, because I couldn't make the Ba Sing Se arc work in one chapter.

(I also have this weird idea for an omake which mashes up TMB!Toph, FFO!Katara, genderbent!Sokka and firebender!Suki in one story. But that madness will wait for another day never happen.)

Comments

[clockwerkchaos.livejournal.com]

Yay, glad to see an AU where Iroh gets called out. (plus Iroh being dead effect Zuko's development which real requires more than five chapter... Heck if he dies then Ozai doesn't need to argue for the throne which means no disappeared Ursa which ...yea)

But I'm also really curious, how did Toph being at the battle of Ba Sing Se manage to take out Iroh in the original draft?

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

It was a badly conceived plot device. The basic idea was that Toph has some credibility with the higher-ups -- she's leading Terra Team at this point -- and has a mini cult of personality going for her since she's lasted for so long on the front lines and was the first metalbender. When it becomes clear that they're going to lose the Outer Wall in the Fire Nation's next offensive, Toph, being the only command-level person not from Ba Sing Se, doesn't adhere to a Ba Sing Se taboo about never knocking down walls.

So, with Ba Sing Se on the verge of defeat, Toph convinces the desperate army leadership to intentionally collapse a mile-long portion of the Outer Wall. With twenty thousand members of the Earth Army holding onto the wall as it collapses, directing the energy of earthbending the fall into a rolling avalanche attack on the Fire Army. The siege would end in a rout of the Fire Nation, with Iroh being captured and eventually executed.

...And by writing that out, I'm once again struck by how terrible an idea it was.

There were several smaller bad ideas that got hammered out during the beta process, most of which had to do with making Toph less a Jerkass Stu.

One idea that I really liked, but was impossible to do in five chapters, was that Lu Ten becomes Fire Lord and purposefully dismantles Ozai's family so that it isn't a threat to him. Azula ends up scarred and exiled, with Ursa playing Iroh to her (and becoming the Blue Spirit) and Ozai later joining them in exile. Zuko would be co-opted by Lu Ten, who uses his sense of honor against him, and becomes the Fire Lord's most trusted lieutenant.

But that Lu Ten stuff was more of a concept in search of a plot, and it didn't even fit with what Full Metal Bitch became. The parallel plots of Ursa/Ozai/Azula and Toph would only have been useful if Toph's character arc was centered on her family. By the time of FMB's start, she's pretty okay with hating her parents' guts. So plotwise there's no need to reinvent the backstory wheel. The REAL plot turned out to be in Toph's damage from fighting in the Siege of Ba Sing Se and how her sense of morality contrasted with Aang's.

[clockwerkchaos.livejournal.com]

I have to agree on all both points.

1. The first plot was probably better junked. (not that I have any room to criticize here, I've come up with some really bad plot idea's in my time)

Though the idea of Ba Sing Se being to culturally integrated to think of avalanching the wall is kinda cool.

2. Lu Ten dismantling the royal family methodically is awesome, there isn't nearly enough Bastard! Lu Ten around.