Panakin: This chapter is fun! BTW: the song right below me somewhere right around HERE is 'School's Out' from the Shake it Up! soundtrack. Fyre picked it at the last second because she normally picks a song she's listened to all week, but she has been incredibly bi-polar all week and can't stay on just one song.
And I have to live with her.
Don't let her say I'm the crazy one.
Chapter 6: The Avatar Needs to be in the Story
AKA: Making it Avatar-ish
July 13th, 2012. 4:16 PM
"It's finally summertime; we'll do whatever we want. Just let the sunshine get you up."
"Yep, this is gonna be fun," Panakin said, looking over at her sister.
Fyre smirked, before walking over and shoving Passion to the ground. "ALRIGHT," she shouted, placing a foot on Passion. "Panakin is now handing out maps of our neighborhood. We have everything around here, and I mean..." she trailed off, turning on her heel – which was still on Passion – to look at her twin, who shrugged slightly. "Um, where are the maps?"
"I kinda forgot to print them," Panakin said, looking at her shoes.
Fyre bared her teeth and grunted, stepping off of Passion, who instantly jumped up and ran into her safe-zone. "What do you mean you 'forgot to print them'? You click a button on Microsoft word on your computer that says print!"
"Click?" Azula asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Button?" Toph questioned.
"Microsoft Word?" Suki asked, an incredibly confused look on her face.
"Computer?" Ty Lee said with a sideways smile on her face.
"Print?" Katara scratched her head.
"Ugh," Fyre muttered.
Jiao-Jie walked into the room with three pieces of paper in her hands. "What? These things that say 'I heart Edward Cullen' on the back? Because on the other side they have a map to a Waffle House and a Chick-Fil-A," she said, waving the papers in the air.
"Sweet!" Summer squealed, pushing herself up off of the ground. "So I think we should stick with Fyre and Panakin for a little bit until we kind of get the feel of the area, so we don't get lost or run over by a truck," she said with her signature sweet smile.
Passion pursed her lips. "We want to stick with Fyre and Panakin?"
Jiao-Jie scratched her head. "I kinda want to get run over by a truck."
Summer's eyes narrowed into slits and she stuck out her bottom lip in an attempt to glare at her friends. "Fine. Do what you want and get run over by a truck while trying to get to Waffle House for their chocolate-chip-syrup-messes!" Summer yelled.
"YUM!" Fyre, Jiao-Jie, Passion and Panakin shouted.
Fyre smirked as Summer began to fume slightly. "Okay, so there's, like, everything in our hometown, and it's all within biking or walking distance. We have three bikes, our incredibly old half-working car, and twenty feet to work with. There's a bike path down the block that leads to everything; I would recommend starting there."
Passion instantly screamed at the top of her lungs; "I'M TWENTY! I CAN DRIVE!"
Jiao-Jie coughed awkwardly. "So can I."
"Me, too," Summer said softly.
"Fyre and I can illegally," Panakin shrugged.
Passion glared at her friends. "Oh, would you shut up and let me enjoy the fact that I'm older than everyone else here?" Passion snarled. "And Azula, Katara, Ty Lee, Suki, and Toph can't drive, so technically I still win." The twenty-year-old crossed her arms over her chest.
"Well, I think we should start at the mall, and since I don't trust Passion's driving at the current moment, we should probably walk. And walks are good for you, anyways!" Summer said with an emoticon-style smile on her face.
Jiao-Jie wrinkled her nose. "Is she always this cheery? Because if so, I'm staying here and cleaning up drool," she said, pointing at the small puddles on Fyre's wood floor. "I'll meet you guys at the mall!" she said, grabbing a towel from Fyre's side of the room and throwing it at the puddle.
Fyre sighed. "I'd love to go, but I have to make sure the 'demon cats' don't get out and rein down terror on the world."
"Yeah, and I gotta go beat Fyre's high score on Just Dance," Panakin said, giving off a slight shrug. Katara raised an eyebrow at her, before also giving off a shrug, and grabbing Fyre's Hunger Games book, flipping through the pages and muttering something about how they needed to make one in Chinese.
Summer put her hands up in the air. "So who does want to go with us?" Suki and Ty lee raised their hands awkwardly. Summer nodded and walked over to Fyre's window, opened it, and swung one of her feet out of it, looking down at the ground. Panakin coughed.
"We have a door," she muttered.
Sumer glared at her. "Yes...but I like windows." With that, she slid her other leg out and jumped the five feet to the ground.
Passion coughed as well. "I'll just...take the door..."
OOOOO
As the three teens and a twenty-year-old walked – or in Summer's case, skipped - down the bike path, Suki groaned with every step. Finally, after Passion couldn't take it anymore, she yelled, "What is wrong with you? Is spending time with us that bad?"
Suki shook her head. "No...yesterday we did a modern AU-fic where my name was Suzy, and Zuko went crazy because his parents beat him every day, so he took his anger out on me, his girlfriend...and he kinda missed the protective shoes they put on us when we get burnt feet. Sometimes special effects backfire."
"Hey, didn't that happen to the guy from Passion of the Christ?" Summer asked. Ty Lee raised an eyebrow at her. "What? Fyre sent it to me for Easter last year...it was a bit scary..." she trailed off into a shudder. "Nightmares, dude."
Suki smirked. "You would've thought they would've learned from that. I told them from the start the entire fic was a bad idea...but do they ever listen to us? NO. I don't even think they'd even listen to other people." She grabbed her shoe from her foot forcefully, then threw it at the ground. The second her foot hit the hot pavement, however, she yelped and threw it back on.
"Maybe they would, though!" Passion said, grabbing her notebook and jotting down everything Suki had just said.
DON'T
Change Character Names
If you do this, even if you put a 'guide' at the beginning, it's not Avatar. This is a big Pet Peeve of mine when reading 'AU' fanfictions.
Have no-bending
And if you say 'But Passion...' stop for a minute. Now think about the plot of Avatar. Now re-read this 'don't' and thank me forever.
Do it in Modern Times
Sure, if you're doing Korra, you can have cars and technology like that. But please, School-modern AU's are very overdone, and they aren't very Avatar at all
Change every character's backstory
Okay, so Zuko was spoiled rotten as a child. Katara was constantly beat up by her parents and her evil older brother. Aang committed suicide after being told he was the Avatar. Does that sound fun for any of them? Nah.
Change every character's personality
Again, Aang committed suicide. Katara's a brat who hates everyone. Zuko is an overdramatic pretty boy who flirts with every girl he meets. Sokka's Jackson Rathbone. Doesn't that sound like a great story that won't get flamed?
"That's so peppy," Summer drawled. She grabbed the paper and smiled. "I'm gonna tell the authors what to do to make it better so your list doesn't depress them into falling into a ditch and dying from eating weird grass!" The other three stared at her. "What? It could happen if someone got depressed or creeped out enough..." she trailed off, memories of last Easter rushing back to her.
DO
Watch the Dang TV show.
What's better at being Canon than Canon? Nothing. Not Fyre, not me, and not anyone on this site. If you question something a a character does in your chapter, watch an episode where they do something like that and see how canon it is.
Make a guide of Character Backstories
It may seem like a waste of time at first, but this will keep you consistent. Avatar Wiki is a great place to go, and all the gaps that are there – well, it's called Fanfiction. You can fill in the blanks.
Be careful
That last step I told you? BE CAREFUL. It is very easy to make a Mary Sue or a 'Sorry Sue' (An opposite of a Mary Sue; a character that's had stuff so horrible happen to them everyone is supposed to feel bad for them) out of backstories. Make it realistic. Most likely none of the characters got constantly beat up as children. (Okay, we'll ignore Zuko's scar and Fyre's fic "Found' for the current moment)
Summer shrugged. "See? Happy! It's easy to not be Mai, Passion. You just have to smile and hum!" She shouted, jumping up and down in the air.
Passion coughed. "Uh, right. Hey, by any chance, did you have a lot of coffee this morning?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at the strawberry blonde girl in front of her. Summer was currently running around like a puppy, chasing a butterfly. She stopped when Passion ended the sentence.
"Yes, why?"
"No reason."
Fyre's Note: For Easter my church showed all the Middle-Schoolers and High-Schoolers 'The Passion of the Christ'. It was fun since we screamed like it was a horror movie...which it was...
Anyways, the one-shot will be called 'Forget-me-not'. It's appropriate, and it leaves the other dramatic titles open for future one-shots by me :D
I also plan on doing one called 'Feel Like a Monster', my first songfic! If anyone can guess which song/artist it will be, I'll try to force Panakin to mention you at the top up there. Although I have little to no control over what she does...
Next Chapter:
Summer School
