Better Off Not Knowing
A brief Slice of Life fanfic based on The Legend of Korra, written by AO3 user RhazadeWaterbender.
It's set just after the finale of Book 3, and 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.
Tropes used in Better Off Not Knowing include:
- All There in the Manual: The story summary discloses the viewpoint character's place of residence, and her name is given as "Hakini" in the tags. The author has also offhandedly revealed other details elsewhere.
- Big Eater: Hakini is a growing girl—possibly quite dramatically so, if her birth mother's genes leave their mark—who's already big for her age, and the "increasingly ravenous appetite" that she has to show for it gets a brief mention.
- 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.
- Flash Fiction: Clocks in at just over 200 words.
- Give Her a Normal Life: Implied, although the choice wasn't made by her biological parents.
- Happily Adopted: Hakini draws a distinction between "her parents" and the (unknown to her) "people who'd brought her into the world."
- Huge Schoolgirl: She's a twelve-year-old student, described as gangly and awkward, who—at a confirmed height of 5'11" and still growing—is already promising to be taller than her adoptive father. (Not too surprising, considering that her birth mother was 6'8"...)
- Kid Fic: An inverted example, in which characters with no apparent connection to the plot have adopted the biological daughter of a canon antagonist couple.
- Nameless Narrative: Canon characters are mentioned, but not named. Hakini's name (the author has admitted that, when it was written, she hadn't yet actually been given one) and those of her adoptive parents are not revealed in the story proper.
- No Infantile Amnesia: Downplayed. Hakini was born in the summer, but her earliest memory is of "bone-crushing cold." Considering her age, she'd have been conceived shortly before the Red Lotus were incarcerated and born in P'Li's cell; ice crevasses tend to be cold throughout the year.
- Patchwork Kids: Averted; although something about Zaheer's mug shot looks vaguely familiar to her (Word of God is that it's the cheekbones), she's implied to mainly just have a Strong Family Resemblance to P'Li (or, at least, to have inherited the height and the bending element.
- Playing with Fire: Hakini is stated to be a firebender. Yet another way in which she takes after Mama.
- Seasonal Baggage: A contrast is drawn between Hakini being a firebender born in summer and her distant memories of cold.
- Slice of Life: When it comes right down to it, this is a story about a kid reading the newspaper while waiting for the bus.
- Tell Me About My Birth Parents: Defied. Sure, Hakini asked once...only to find out that the information had been deliberately withheld. Hence...
- Title Drop: In the second-to-last paragraph. Applied not only to Hakini, but to her adoptive parents as well.