A little bit of personal joy to share in a storm of a week (year).
It’s no secret that I love fanfiction and I cut my teeth reading Zuko/Katara (Zutara) stories from Avatar: The Last Airbender starting way back in 2005. As far as useless expertise goes, I am pretty much an expert in Zutrarian fanfic though the fandom has long been dormant and my attention pointed elsewhere in the more mature fanfic community that came with the migration of disjointed stories across fanfiction.net, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, etc . . . to a general consolidation on Archive Of Our Own (AO3) with much better tagging and filters. Yes, I may have over 700 bookmarks . . . and this includes zero Zutara fanfic from my youth.
All this to say, there is one Zutara story that has long been my favorite: More Than The Price of Honor. It’s a capture fic (a common trope of the ship where a season one Prince Zuko captures Katara to use her as leverage to get to the Avatar) and absolutely masterfully done. One, it’s well-written (by an adult, early Zutara does were filled with twelve-year-olds like me trying our best), and it also has the advantage of being published two years after the show ended giving the author a full scope of the characters and their potential arcs but letting them play out in the familiar season one scenario.
My favorite word, to this day, is effortlessly because of the context it’s given in this fic. Obviously I love it and over the years as it updated had private messages with the author where we learned about each other and I was able to give encouragement.
So here’s the big downside with this wonderful story — it’s not complete. And this is pretty much the reason I only filter completed works when browsing AO3 because author’s are under no real obligation to complete their stories (they’re not being paid, after all, and could lose interest), so many stories that I loved — especially in the Zutura fandom where you had to read as people were writing or there would be enough content — were left without updates, incomplete, forever.
From 2010 to 2015, More Than The Price of Honor would get slow updates (after the bulk of the story being done over the first two years). I would check-in, reach out, try to keep conversations and encouragement flowing. On the last day of 2015 we got a new chapter with an update on how close we were to the end . . . so close.
And then nothing. For over four years. I would check frequently for a while, but in the last few years resigned myself to checking every couple of months (the email I used for fanfiction.net notification long ago abandoned). I knew it was never going to happen and tried to be satisfied with that I did have which was a whole lot of story that I loved. And after all this was fanfiction, I could just make up the ending I wanted in my head or go to some other fic to get my fix. But nothing was quite like this one.
You see where this is going?
Yesterday I stumbled on to fanfiction.net looking for a different story I thought I’d saved there, and at the top of my bookmarks list was More Than The Price of Honor. Being at the top was an indication that it had updated recently. My heart stopped. But then I checked and y’all it was true. The story updated. There was a new chapter. 2020 was trying it’s fucking best to sprinkle in some good in the midst of the complete shitstorm that has been this year.
I immediately texted my friends who understand what a big deal it was right away. We all thought it was never going to happen and I really haven’t shut up about this stupid story in a decade. Look at this beautiful support.
So starting yesterday evening I got to read my favorite fanfiction again, starting at the beginning to 100K+ words later a brand new (beautiful, thank you, uff da) chapter.
I understand that this is a very niche post — it’s not even a recommendation to read it unless you’d like to wait in hell for me for the next chapter that may never come — but some stories are fucking formative and this one was for me.
With Love,
Natalie