Yue

[lavanya_six]

Currently writing a fic starring (a living) Yue for someone. I'm having a devil of a time trying to write her. She's just so... boring. There's only so much milage you can get out of the dutiful, self-sacrificing martyr. 

Anyone have any advice for writing Yue? How do you view her personality?

Comments

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've had the same trouble in the past. I find it easier to picture her with two sides: the dutiful young monarch-to-be and the occasionally playful and glad-for-a-distraction 16-year-old.

Whenever she's with Sokka in the series, we see her laughing and joking, and showing emotion, but any other time she's the pristine image of the perfect princess. So I guess finding situations in which she can show both sides somehow would make it easier?

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

So, basically, she's Zuko without the angst, temper, or adorkableness?

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

Hmm... not a bad comparison, although she's far more girly and less prone to take her frustration out physically like he does. Plus, I'm pretty sure she has no one to lean on when it comes to parental figures; while her dad seemed very sad she died, I still gather that the relationship wasn't all that close.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Interesting point about her father. Hadn't thought of their relationship that way.

So...

+Disney princess
+Lonely at the top
+Dutiful
+Girly
+Normal enough underneath
+Moon Zombie

I dunno. It feels a little thin to pin a leading role on, which is what I need from her.

Maybe I could shift the fic to an outsider's perspective? But how to do that and maintain the required pairing...

*ponders*

[yukinoomoni.livejournal.com]

Yeeeah...I suppose that's the huge problem with Yue. She's likable enough, but she really doesn't have much dimension and is forever destined to be a secondary character.

Maybe you could tweak something a bit. I dunno, damn. There has to be more there...maybe something with her mother?

[clockwerkchaos.livejournal.com]

Do an AU and make her a dutiful, self-sacrificing axe-wielding maniac whose out to help conquer the world for the glory of the Water Tribe.

Or is that not an option?

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

Well, she's going to be conquering the Fire Nation for the glory of the Water Tribe. But that's only because she's the Avatar in this fic.

[clockwerkchaos.livejournal.com]

Hold, she's the avatar? Then I'd suggest you make that your angle for her personality,don't ask, what is Yue's personality? But instead ask, how would what we know of her circumstances and personality affect he avatarhood?

First their is the question of how the NWT deals with female avatar's given the number of them, their had to be a few at some point. I see a few options.

1. The taboo against women fighting is recent, they haven't' had to deal with the problem. This creates a interesting situation, as they have to deal with having a woman avatar, while Yue's has to deal with two mutually incompatible 'duties'. She has a duty to her tribe to not fight, but she has a duty to the world to stop the Fire Nation. How does she deal with that?

2. They are expected to only learn water-tribe healing, but the tribe discretely ignores them learning to fight with other elements. In this case, Yue still has the mutually incompatible duties, with waterbending only for healing, airbending out of the picture, and most Firebenders wanting to kill her, she's left with only earthbending. At the same time, it would take her longer to realize this as she can fight, and it might take a while to realize it's not enough.

3. They send em south, que her heading down south, only to realize how bad it really is out there.

4. Avatar's are considered 'not women' for cultural reasons, which gives large opportunity to mess with personality.

Another possible bit of fun is her interaction with the Moon spirit. Both her and Aang had more spiritual awareness than normal people, but what if you combined it. Maybe Avatar Yue's a little to spiritual? Not entirely all there? Uncanny valley, with a thought process that's... odd. Not evil, not elderich abomination, just... odd.

And what of the other spirits reactions to this? The show focused on the Avatar keeping balance between humans, and humans and spirits, but I've always imagined that it also had a duty to keep balance between spirits. Maybe the moon spirit sticking it's fins in Yue has some of the other spirits scared, and now there are wars potentially looming in both worlds.

Or maybe the other spirits want champions of their own in the world? So now the daughter of the the Son of the Fire Lord is brilliant beyond compare, but also burns with an uncontrollable rage. Or the daughter of the Bei Fong's, who is blind, but also a living archive of every bit of written knowledge. Or Sokka's sister, who is always so strange, seeing this that arn't there?

[clockwerkchaos.livejournal.com]

What't the required pairing? Do you have any other plot mandates? Giving suggestions is easier the more I know what's being aimed for.

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

I can't discuss the pairing in the open, as it's a secret exchange until the community's moderator post the finished fics. I'll email you the details.

[https://profiles.google.com/ranchoth (from livejournal.com)]

I usually pick the neurological or psychological problem that's closest (and most plausibly connected) to how a bland character acts, and extrapolate from there. Oliver Sacks collections help.

(Nope--I can't tell if I'm joking anymore, either)

[rava77.livejournal.com]

Sorry Lananya, unlike Mai (people saying she is be boring as well) I really have issues with Yue out of the reasons you described...

Never had any such issues with Mai.

Hope you got some helpful ideas in the other replies, though...

[lavanyasix.livejournal.com]

No prob.

It took me a while to warm up to Mai as a viewpoint character but I've come to find she's actually pretty fun to do.

I think my problem with Yue isn't so much that she's a flat character, it's that 1) nothing interesting happen to her before she dies and 2) she doesn't have much interaction with any of the secondaries or main characters except right at the end of her life.

Suki's a 2D character, but at least she encounters different situations throughout the series -- her first real fight, going to the Earth Kingdom, Full Moon Bay, being captured, the Boiling Rock, post-escape. Solid fish out of water material. There's character growth a fanficcer can work with, but nothing really notable happens to Yue until she dies.

Less stuff happens to Ty Lee compared to Suki, but she has the life-long scaffolding of Mai and the royals to give her personalities to bounce off of, along with known points in the timeline (Azulon's death, Zuko's scarring) to give her past some context. We can sort of imagine the missing years of Ty Lee's life in a way we can't with Yue or Suki, y'know?