A brief Slice of Life fanfic
based on The Legend of Korra, written by Archive of Our Own user RhazadeWaterbender.
Roughly concurrent with the finale of Book 3, the story involves a twelve-year-old girl reading a newspaper article about the events of said finale while waiting for the school bus. Details about the viewpoint character emerge throughout the narrative.
Contains examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The story summary is the only thing that discloses the viewpoint character's place of residence, and her name is revealed in the tags. The author has also offhandedly revealed other details elsewhere.
- All There in the Script: The viewpoint character's name is given as "Hakini" in the work tags.
- Big Eater: Hakini is a growing girl who is already quite big for her age, and the "increasingly ravenous appetite" that she has to show for it gets a brief mention. It's implied that her height stems from her birth mother's genes, which means she could potentially get even taller than she already is.
- Dramatic Irony: It becomes increasingly clear to the reader that Hakini is the biological daughter of Zaheer and P'Li. She herself, however, is mercifully unaware of the fact.
- Elsewhere Fic: Although it's roughly concurrent with the Book 3 finale, the story is set "somewhere in the Fire Nation." As such, no canon characters actually appear.
- Flash Fiction: Clocks in at just over 200 words.
- Give Her a Normal Life: Implied to be the reason that Hakini was given up for adoption, although the choice wasn't made by her biological parents.
- Happily Adopted: Hakini draws a distinction between "her parents" and "the people who'd brought her into the world."
- Huge Schoolgirl: Hakini is a twelve-year-old student, described as gangly and awkward, who—at a confirmed height of 5'11" (slightly over 180cm) and still growing—is already promising to be taller than her adoptive father. Not too surprising, considering that her birth mother was 6'8" (2.03m).
- Kidfic: An inverted example, in which characters with no apparent connection to the plot have adopted the biological daughter of a canon antagonist couple.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Neither Hakini nor her adopted parents know who Hakini's biological parents are, and they seem to have no involvement in politics or the events of the plot.
- Nameless Narrative: Canon characters are mentioned, but not named. Noncanon characters are referred to only with epithets: Hakini is referred to as "the girl," and while she has a name, it isn't revealed in the story proper—it's simply listed in the character tags of the fic (the author has admitted that, when it was written, Hakini didn't even have a name). Similarly, the names Hakini's adoptive parents are never revealed in the story.
- No Infantile Amnesia: Downplayed. Hakini was born in the summer, but her earliest memory is of "bone-crushing cold." Considering her age, she would have been conceived shortly before the Red Lotus "op team" were incarcerated and born in P'Li's cell; ice crevasses tend to be cold throughout the year.
- Original Character: Hakini is one, as are her parents. "The people who'd brought her into the world," however, are canon antagonists.
- Patchwork Kids: Averted. Although something about Zaheer's mug shot looks vaguely familiar to Hakininote , she's implied to mainly just have a Strong Family Resemblance to her mother P'Li (or, at very least, to have inherited the bending element and the height).
- Playing with Fire: Hakini is stated to be a firebender. Yet another way in which she takes after her birth mother.
- Seasonal Baggage: A contrast is drawn between Hakini being a firebender born in summer and her distant memories of cold.
- Slice of Life: The story is ultimately just a short moment about a kid reading the newspaper while waiting for the bus.
- Tell Me About My Birth Parents!: Defied. Hakini only asked her parents about her biological family once...only to find out that the information had been deliberately withheld from them. While Hakini does wonder sometimes, she mostly decides that she's content not knowing her birth parents' identities.
- Title Drop: The second-to-last paragraph quotes the title verbatim:"She’d asked her parents, once, about the people who’d brought her into the world. They hadn’t been told names—only that they were better off not knowing."
