Title: You Only Live Twice
Author: Raeigh
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: Complete (16k words)
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairings: None
Summary: After defeating Fire Lord Ozai, Aang learns that his journey had only been a test of his worthiness. He awakens in his present- 100 years in the past- and must defeat Fire Lord Sozin in order to save his people. Two-shot.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8249685/1/You-Only-Live-Twice

Admittedly I rarely look for Avatar fanfiction, even though I love that show and still think it is the best cartoon with a well paced story line mixed with just the right amount of action, adventure and friendship, but the fandom is overfilled with poorly written "Zutara" stories or downright embarrassing "what-if" AUs. Anyway, I did come across this fic and I found it amazing. Yes, this kinda fits the (especially in Harry Potter fanfiction) overused time-travel archetype, but the story does add a lot of creative world-building elements, like how Aang also has to learn the culture and traditions of the other nations and not only master those elements, but trying to live like a citizen of said nation.
It realistically describes, how the war could have gone differently if Aang had been present, though with the maturity he developed through the spirit journey.

Honestly, I consider this fic one of, if not the best story I found in Avatar fanfiction. It's short, but ends the plot in a great way and definitely fits for a quick good read, so check it out! 5/5

 

3/5, no higher. And that's rounding up.

The AU is unoriginal but the concept of the Avatar needing to absorb the culture as well as the bending arts makes sense and was handled decently. But it was far too short to actually service that idea beyond just introducing it. The conclusion was good, but again, that's a compliment to the concept not the execution. Sure, not everything needs to be a full novel. There are plenty of good one and two shots out there, but they're one-shots that are crafted to be one-shots. They are concentrated and focused with a story that befits the length. This was not.

You Only Live Twice is a very nice and detailed outline for a story. I'd be more interested in the full tale than what we got, as the full tale could actually do the ideas the author had justice.

 

On second thought, going down to 2/5. Frankly this isn't a full story because it's just missing so much. It glosses over everything, and concepts poorly executed are to be held accountable for what they are. Also not really huge on the Avatar's Friend being a reincarnating thing as well. It's kinda dumb. You can address with the fallout of Sozin's betrayal with the weight it deserves without throwing that malarkey on top of everything.

(Doubleposting because apparently the edit button expires)

 

I will echo that this is rushed. It feels like a summary in some ways. On the other hand, to fully explore everything that there was (and perhaps should have been) explored, would take an epic of hundreds of thousands of words, something that the author probably did not have the time, inclination and skill to pull off. Considering that, I'm glad we got what we did.

The story itself is ... good. It starts off shaky, but gets its feet by the end of the first chapter and the second one is properly decent, managing to pull me in. It did what it set out to do and told an interesting story doing it.

4/5, even if it feels a bit generous, because 3 feels too little.

 

It was fine. It touched on things embers and others have done better.
There was a good effort of getting Aang's character right, and it shows some effort in understanding other cultures. It even has a touch of how assimilation and degeneration of cultures happens.

I guess my other issue with it is the homogeneity of cultures and how monolithic they are. I would like to have seen how taku's trade changed its culture, but I suspect it would have been as Earth kingdom as omashu.

So 2.5/5. Round per your own rules.
Feels more like a sociology paper than a story in parts.