#the handbook for mortals

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Fukkin' preps. This week, V and Emily have their brains melted by not ONE incredibly stupid and obvious literary fraud, but TWO incredibly stupid and obvious literary frauds! Yes! In one week! And both involving the most infamous fanfic of all time, everyone's favorite: My Immortal. Dust off your fishnets and stretch out your middle fingers, it's time to get goffik.

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Sources

The Hollywood Reporter

EW Books

V's Handbook for Mortals tag on Tumblr

jewishkeith on Tumblr

Vox Culture

Wikipedia

My Immortal Wiki

r/myimmortaldrama

Buzzfeed News

EW Books

Buzzfeed News

Fanlore.org

[hstayafanart]

Super short snippet that got deleted from the next fic but that I thought was cute anyway. This took a couple weeks to finish! I finally landed a job in bush regeneration and I've been so tired after work haha. But I'm loving it, even if I am covered in mud and leeches!

It's not technically cannon that Nightmare's skull is shattered, but it's a headcannon I adore. This tiny snippet is meant to be set at the castle, but I didn't want to draw it in every panel so you get gradients instead.

[Unrelated, but I logged on to find a whole wave of new peeps have arrived here?? I mean, welcome! That's fantastic! But I have concerns that my A03 followers that live in my walls have invited guests. Hope you enjoy your time here <3]

[elmushterri]

hihi!!!! are the mortal wounds all customized (other than the queens)? and how intricate would they get??? asking for oc reasons, i love ur story idea so far!!!!!

All of them are customised (like you said, except the Queens, they just get the ‘Knight’ symbol.) here are some random examples!

[velvetvexations]

Handbook for Mortals fandom rise up

[an-aura-about-you]

it's frustrating reading a book, good or bad, and then it drops some casually offensive shit in your lap.

[zerozeroren]

Officially the most niche piece of art I've ever posted.

A promotional image for this fic (no I'm not the author) and a tribute to Generally Pooky and Krimsonrogue who gifted me and a dear friend of mine with many a happy hour of bad book bashing.

[theboyatthebustop]

I was on the fence about making this poll, but I realized i wanted to hear what people who don’t keep up with drama in the book community (or those aren't even in it) have to say about it.

I do want to say that this is not a complete list of book drama because it’d be way longer, so I didn’t include things like Soapgate, the A Deadly Education fiasco or the multiple controversies Cassandra Clare/Colleen Hoover were in.

also, I found out there’s a bit of character/option limit when it comes to poll choices, so I had narrow it down.

*by that, he meant if you are a woman in your 20s who wears makeup, does book tags/hauls, make high quality videos, and/or rave about YA, you’re not a “real reader™️”

**in a later interview she then tried to rectify this by saying it was actually her upbringing and mental illnesses that caused her to reviewbomb other debuts Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Reylos got involved in this.

[immortal-handbook]

Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem could have been good. It is a flawed book with just enough nuggets of silver to sift through, and I'm insane enough to try and fix it. Is the result going to be any better? It's all subjective, of course, but with more of an established aesthetic and plot, this could have been something worth reading.

This blog is to catalogue my attempts at rewriting this, as well as an aesthetic blog to keep my inspiration rolling.

More information below the cut.

Things I plan to change:

- Trim out unnecessary repetition

- Diversify the cast

- Remove the Plain White T's (and any other celebrity cameos)

- Give Sofia a personality other than "jealous bitch"

- Give Lil a personality other than "seamstress goth"

- Give other women personalities other than "jealous bitch" or "vapid clothes lover"

- Zade officially has narcissistic personality disorder and is autistic, but neither are diagnosed so she's an oblivious bitch (like I was a couple year ago...). These are both implied by the canon writing, but I doubt it was intentional.

- Mac is also autistic.

- Acknowledging that Dela uses magick as a way to not deal with interpersonal problems, and is a flawed person in general.

- Make it known (to the audience) from the start that Charles is Zade's father instead of making it a stupid reveal towards the end of the book. The other characters don't know this, though.

[rhokitten]

Credit to professorsparklepants who I stole the idea of Fanfic I Won’t Write Friday from. Still not certain if they did it first, but I still want to credit them since they’re the one I saw do it and then copied.

I had an idea of how to rewrite Handbook for Mortals inspired entirely by GenerallyPooky’s Too Long, Read Anyway review of the book. (You totally should go watch her stuff on YouTube, it’s really funny.)

So, I haven’t read the book and honestly I don’t really want to but my idea was to reframe the story so that Zade (who I am renaming Zadine because Scheherazade really is a bad name for a white, American, witch) rather than ‘running away from home to become just a normal person as a Las Vegas performer’ it’s more like Kiki’s Delivery Service where she’s going out into the world to learn from experience.

My plotline idea: 

Witches have to stay home for the first quarter centry of their life so Zade could never leave her hometown or she’d literally lose her magic. Now on the eve of her 25th birthday she has to leave town and spend the next 25 years learning on her own and refining her magic. Her mom actually suggests that she spend part of her time in Las Vegas trying to find her father. Her mom can’t actually tell her who he was, just that he was a stage magician 25 years ago. She gives Zade a butterfly hair pin that he had given to her before she had to leave and give birth to Zade (something to do with needing to be able to properly ward the land so that her child could safely learn magic). Since the book is called “Handbook for Mortals” I’m going with the idea that witches live for a really long time, to the point mundane people seem like mortals to gods. 

When she gets to Vegas she actually gets a job as a stage hand, learning how to do magic the mundane way and then building off of that with actual magic. Mac is hard on her, not because he is trying to be mean but because he wants to make sure she’s tough enough for show business. If she can’t handle his rudeness there’s no way she can cut it as part of the show. She ends up becoming Sofia’s understudy, which makes Sofia go from ignoring her to hating her because she thinks she’s going to take her place.

So, Zade is trying to find her dad, getting pulled in by Jackson who actually has three other girlfriends. Sofia actually feels bad about Zade falling for him after Zade rescues her from an accident that nearly kills her and tries to help her, telling her that it will only end up hurt if she doesn’t realize he’s playing with her.

It’s kind of fuzzy after that, but I was thinking about the girls bonding after Jackson shows his true colors, Mac tells Zade that he’s interested in her seriously, and Charles realizes that Zade is his daughter when she wears the butterfly pin for a show when she took over for Sofia since she was hurt too badly by the accident to perform.

Pros of continuing the fic:

- I honestly think it would fix the pacing, characterization, and plot

- It would be really cool if Pooky found my fic and liked it

Cons of continuing the fic:

- At that point, I’m rewriting like 80% of the book so why not just write my own book at this point?

- I probably would really need to actually read the book

[xx-obliviousfantasy-xx]

This is so fucking funny unfortunately 😭😭😭😭😭😭

This makes me think about that one fucking book "Handbook For Mortals"

I had to type in "That one fucking lady who bought a bunch of her own books to become New York best seller" to remember the title and it didn't pop up in the initial search, but i saw it in IMAGES.

losing my mind at this

[hstayafanart]

I don't think I ever explained what Blue's Handbook is. It's based on my personal set of rules for dealing with my anxiety and chronic pain that I've worked out with my psychologist. Cross' rule here is probably not super accurate to the stories I've written so far, since neither he nor Blue cope with chronic pain, but this is mostly for me <3.

Also, Spitfire makes yet another appearance.

(Note: this isn't how I deal with anxiety attacks in the moment, these are my more general guidelines. Anxiety attacks turn off your thinking brain, and require you to do physical things, like do intense exercise, talk to people, eat something really sour or spicy, or hold onto an ice pack and concentrate on how it feels. Things that will physically shock you out of the panic, at least a little.)

[elmushterri]

could an entire limb be a Mortal Wound? thinking about a farm boy and some kind of farm equipment accident gone wrong where his whole hand or lower arm is the wound

THAT would be so cool, I never considered full limb mortal wounds, go for it, absolutely! You guys are so creative.

[shit-lit-bitch]

uh hi im xander and i really like terrible books. feed me slop. uh also I wanna start a podcast or something but that would require me to actually organize scripts so who knows

i have a discord if you wanna see my unfiltered ramblings:

current book im dissecting is Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem, and my masochistic ass is rewriting the damn thing

[an-aura-about-you]

There's also the matter of execution. Any idea can be a great story if pulled off right, even kink I wouldn't normally be interested in. (Which is why my fanfic history is for me to know and y'all to never find out.) But even something that sounds like it hits all the right buttons can be done poorly.

Being kink positive makes it really hard to be a hater of media rip. I used to love watching “the WORST book I’ve read this year” booktube videos but now its like I hear them ask, “Who is this werewolf smut even for?” Omegaverse fans, next question. “Why would you write this?” Because they find it sexy, can we stop focusing on the ewie yucky kink part and focus on the fact that the author used the word knot five times in a single scene? It’s bad werewolf erotica, but it’s not bad because it’s werewolf erotica like come on

[an-aura-about-you]

am I really gonna move on with another chapter of Handbook for Mortals right now?

why yes, yes I am. because I know what comes next in this chapter, too, and I have no idea what this recap is gonna look like.

Chapter 15:

when we last left our hero, Scheherazade's relationship is on the rocks due to a make out with tongue misunderstanding that she decided not to clear up the easiest way possible and now Mac has left the show.

Chapter 15: The Tower

-the card chosen for the chapter title is actually relevant for once.

-staying true to the rest of the book so far, we skip over the entire show and go straight to the finale. we're finally gonna see a magic trick Zade performs for her job besides the high dive trick she auditioned with.

-Zade has decided to use "complex deep chaos-based magick" for this trick, which is dangerous because it can backfire if not done correctly. she does this because..... why does she do this?

once again all of Zeb's concern is 100% warranted.

-Zade has never done anything this hard or complex before, which means now is clearly a great time to start.

-Sofia got her singing job. good for her. glad to see she's living the dream. <3

-we've already started on the Incredibly Dangerous Illusion and Zade's mind is wandering to Mac. good start!

-she is, for some reason, conflicted about what she should say to Mac about who Charles is to her.

-ok so we've got the first bit of what this illusion does: generates a storm indoors. okay. neat.

-Zade reminds us twice in two back to back paragraphs that the power she's messing with is both strong and volatile AND that she hasn't quite mastered it yet. again, solid plan here. can't see how it might go wrong. definitely something you should do for Knockoff David Daddy Copperfield.

-"...it can all go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks real quick."

this book is supposedly not a YA book.

-Charles has been narrating her illusion, and she says he's a gifted storyteller like all magicians should be, but the whole purpose of magician patter is misdirection! something Charles doesn't need to provide in an illusion using Real Fucking Magic.

-next part of the illusion: the storm makes a wave crash over Zade, causing her to disappear.

-next part: rain from the storm turns to sand as it hits the stage and piles up only to be struck by lightning, leaving a glass sculpture of Zade. I feel like I'm watching a knockoff Salvador Dali painting come to life.

-we get a warning that Zade is Not Feeling So Great at this stage of the illusion.

-next part: another lighting strike, this one producing a rapidly growing apple tree complete with full grown man that falls out of it.

-"I could actually feel the wonder in the audience." really? because I kinda feel the way I would had someone put on a tame knockoff of a Lynch movie at a planetarium. I would think it's a nice visual thing with some obvious human parts working in it, but my own guess as an audience member would be this was some kind of shadowcast projection thing. all of it is impossible to such a degree that no sleight of hand is feasible for it. so without the explanation that it's all Real Actual Magic, the obvious fill in is this is some really good special effects and Zade actually isn't doing anything except acting against a projection. kinda like the Liam Neeson stuff in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.

she is, by all appearances, doing less than an actual magician's assistant would since I learned from the Breaking the Magician's Code specials that a lot of magic tricks rely on the skills of a well trained assistant or assistants.

-they throw some apples from the apple tree as a proof that it's real, which is the first thing that could possibly have a sleight of hand counterpart and thus is the first thing I as an audience member would consider a magic trick in all this.

-also are we sure chaos-magick apples are safe to eat?

-let's see, the man chops the apple tree down, wood chips fly into the audience. again, I would consider this bit a possible trick, but all of it feels like I'm just in some kind of interactive show? you know like the ones where you're like on the river rapids and it sprays water on you? this just doesn't feel like a magic trick overall, it feels like watching a short story.

-"If anyone had doubted it was a real tree they would have had to believe it at this point." no they wouldn't because it's not difficult to project the image of a falling tree, make the sound of a tree crashing into a stage, and throwing wood chips into the audience. also, why would you WANT them to think it's a real tree when you are trying to keep your magic SECRET?

-tree catches fire somehow (it is not specified as an explosion, but even then I don't know if any apple trees are also explody trees?) and a wind blows the sand up, blocking this from view.

-sand settles, fire and tree are gone, replaced by a wardrobe. the man opens the wardrobe to show it's empty, closes it, opens it again to take out a guitar and start playing. again, all things that are simple to do with projection and a sound system.

-he also puts the glass sculpture of Zade in the wardrobe

-Zade is feeling even worse and tells us she has to hold it together for just a bit longer because the illusion is almost done. good.

-wardrobe is struck by lightning, splits in two, and Zade is revealed. she then pulls an apple from her pocket, takes a bite, and faints. the man catches her, kisses her, and she wakes up. she gives him a bite of the apple, he disappears. so the man appearing and disappearing could be an illusion. that makes like 2-3 disappearing/reappearing tricks all in one with a whole bunch of special effects around them that I don't care about.

you know what's more impressive to me? the simple illusions. in fact, one of the ones that still gets me every time I see it is how the Phantom disappears at the end of The Phantom of the Opera as performed at the Royal Albert Hall. it's a simple but effective execution and stands out even more since it's not a magic show but a musical.

but this, this is SUPPOSED to be a magic show! there should be a LOT of magic! and it can be impressive to see multiple displays of the same kind of trick, especially with a specialist in it, but the thing about disappearing/reappearing act is it's the same visuals over and over again! idk maybe that's my bias since I tend to not care as much for disappearing acts, but I literally just cited a disappearing illusion as a favorite!

here, let's look at a simpler display I find more impressive than whatever the fuck Zade is doing with chaos magick. this is Francis Tabary, a magician who specializes in rope illusions:

I first saw a variation of this routine in the mid-90s on The World's Greatest Magic and I still enjoy seeing it. every single trick is just done with a rope, but it is visually varied and interesting. I get the feeling I could be sitting less than three feet away from him and I still wouldn't be able to fully see how he does it.

(also I love when he has to do his patter in English because he says, "I hope you will understand what I say and not what I do.")

-that was a nice detour and now I'm gonna go back to the book.

-Charles puts the cloak on Zade, who feels like she's dying inside. Me Too, Girl.

-lightning strikes Zade and she disappears. apparently with the magic going wrong she actually felt the lighting. why would you subject yourself to this when you didn't have to? literally you didn't have to. there was no reason to do a trick like this. why did you build the trick like this?

-Charles then picks up an apple, takes a bite, and disappears. that's it, the trick is finally over after 10 pages of description. this is the thing Zade has been working on with Charles that merited a big red carpet premiere. I want my $2 for the children's admission ticket for the planetarium field trip back.

-pfffff piece of shit dad out there taking his bows not even noticing that Zade's not out there to bow with him because she's suffering from magic internal bleeding.

-also, damn, gotta say Cam's doing a good job running this show on the fly. not one missed cue! that we know about, anyway. let's be real, that does seem like even odds on this being either a detail Sarem would ignore completely or would spend a solid 2/5ths of the chapter going over.

-the cat is sitting on the book again. also me, he is sitting on me.

-Zade manages to collapse in Zeb's arms, which wouldn't have been her first choice because she'd much rather do that with Jackson. but Zeb is like one of the few people who's gonna know what's going on! this is like the ideal situation once shit's fucked!

-Zade tells the gang backstage to call her mother before things go black.

then we get this:

That's the last thing I personally remembered from that day. Later, after I'd had some time to rest, I pulled out the memories of what everyone else saw and what happened.

so good news, we know Zade is gonna be perfectly fine! no need to worry about pesky things like tension!

-apparently fucking the magic up enough has left Zade in a state where she's practically choking on her own blood.

-Mac came back in time for all this btw. and instead of anyone trying to put Zade down in the recovery position (which idk if that's even appropriate for this but that seems moot since magic malady) or listen to the 911 dispatcher that Tad had Riley call, they just let Mac take over holding Zade.

-oh my god, even with all this going on, Zade notices in the memories that Zeb looks somewhat upset and thinks, "Maybe he didn't hate me after all." priorities.

-Charles says he's going with Mac to the hospital, and Mac is burned by this but at least has the good sense not to argue right now.

-omg Zade has to tell us the memories are painful to see because all of the people who love her are hurting soooooo much to see her suffering~

-Mac has enough of himself put together to be pissed at having to drive Charles and Charles is too upset to notice.

-Zade is actually getting care from a doctor that is implied to be the head doctor of the hospital. nothing but the finest for our mary sue.

-oh boy here we fucking go guys: the doctor asks for a member of the family since Zade is unconscious and can't consent. after being pressed, Charles reveals that he's Zade's father.

was it worth it?

-Mac then says he saw Charles and Zade kiss, which clearly grosses Charles out. also a lie since remember he couldn't bare [sic] to watch Zade and Spellman kiss.

-I don't know why Mac needs to talk about this now when the doctor obviously needs somebody to give the go-ahead on something. which also doesn't make sense to me because it seems like they could still do something to at least stabilize Zade, but maybe they're at that point and it's just not specified.

-omg Mac asks Charles if Zade knew this and he said yes. the book is right here confirming that Zade has known that Charles is her father. 0 excuses for any of the bullshit she's been pulling.

-apparently Zade found out recently, but by "recently" we mean "since basically the start of the book and that's when she came to work for him," which still means "the whole time," for our purposes.

ok to be fair it is not made clear if she knew before or after she actually got the job. it's possible this reveal happened during the conversation we were not made privy to in chapter 2. but it's ambiguous enough that it's possible Zade has known since chapter 0.

-Mac rethinks everything and considers how it makes sense now, but I still thing Zade's behavior has incestuous tones, like how she tried to reassure Mac about Spellman taking her to dinner with, "A girl's gotta eat." Zade obfuscated everything in the worst possible way when she could have used other tactics.

-also as far as why Charles hasn't said anything until now, he said he was abiding by Dela's wish to keep it secret. it is not made clear if this is some kind of binding magic taboo or not. it's certainly implied to be, but so far we haven't been made aware of the terms of this taboo. which seems pretty important since not only has he just broken it by telling the doctor, it seems possible that he ALSO broke it by telling Zade!

this also puts chapter 0 in a different light if the catalyst for Zade leaving home was finding out Spellman is her father, which would actually make sense. but again, if that's the case, then that means Zade knew the entire time and has been emotionally tormenting Mac for no good reason.

-I Would Like It If This Book Stopped Talking About The Concept Of Zade And Her Dad Making Out.

-Charles then tells Mac that Zade kissed him on the cheek, making the make out with tongue paragraph from the last chapter even worse since we were just gonna see the same thing in THIS chapter!

-Mac said Zade wasn't lying, but she was!! it's called lying by omission! she was intentionally leaving important information out!

That!

Is!

Lying!!!!!!

-oh hey Lambo Girl is here! she's here just to be seen for some reason. who knows why.

-the doctor makes an offhand mention of Dr. House and the book grinds to a halt for a full page to explain who House is because Charles didn't get the reference.

-man, it's so sad seeing Zade in her ICU hospital bed all covered in IV lines and tubes knowing full well she's gonna be perfectly fine by the end of the book.

-Dela calls Charles right after they all get settled in the room. damn, this is what you're using your magic for?

-Dela knows what's wrong. Charles suggests she come to Las Vegas. Dela insists they have to bring Zade to Tennessee. WHY? doesn't this sound like the more dangerous thing to do?

-Dela's explanation is that she needs her tools and her altar. I'm calling bullshit. you can bring your tools and build an altar where you need to. even if it needs like a special altar, you don't think you can find one in Vegas? we already know there are other people who know magic here; if it's like a church thing where it doesn't have to be an altar you build yourself, why not use one there? and if it has to be one you made, why not make one? this just sounds like putting your daughter through needless risk.

-"She could die. Couldn't she?" but she won't because she's telling the story.

-Dela is laying out tarot cards during this conversation. "She examined the cards carefully as if she were deciphering a code. That's kind of how reading cards goes." the narration says that like it hasn't shown us Zade doing the most incompetent card reading I have ever seen.

-why is Zade giving us a tarot card lesson while recounting her near-death experience?

-"Only sometimes can you change your destiny but that is hard and is a subject for another time and a later book." are you seriously giving me your discount knockoff May Those Who Accept Their Fate Be Granted Happiness, May Those Who Defy Their Fate Be Granted Glory speech, Miss "The Cards Haven't Told Me Which Boy I Should Marry"? not to mention a Michael Ende-esque hint to tantalize at another book.

-we get a full paragraph to explain the waxing and waning moon. not just the significance of those times in witchcraft, which even that's dumbed down, but what waxing and waning themselves mean.

you've literally covered this book with the triple moon symbol.

also Dela mentions the moon is waning. this could have been the opening to give the context that would explain it without having to go all baby dictionary on us, like saying the spell will have to be done on the night of the new moon.

-I'm glad the doctor likewise thinks letting Zade fly to Tennessee in her condition is nutso bananas.

-oof, the doctor's gonna make Charles sign a release that he understands that Zade is now his responsibility and that this may kill her. his priority, according to the narration, is avoiding a lawsuit. good god, does ANYONE in this book have even a shred of compassion? possibly not considering Sarem's callousness.

and the chapter ends with Charles telling Mac the two of them need to take Zade to Tennessee and reaffirming everything we had just learned from Dela.

just to rephrase this, the chapter ends with our big strong powerful honest to goodness magic using not like other girls protagonist at death's door for reasons that are pretty much her fault and needing to be rescued by her mother, her father, and the guy she's been kissing but they have not defined their relationship and parted on bad terms when they last saw each other and also she's been lying by omission to him. I think that covers everything.

[wileycap]

Selected Excerpts From The Fire Nation Royal Palace Servants' (Unofficial) Handbook

Or: Revisions To Normal Protocol After The Ascension Of Agni's Exalted Flame, The Dragon Of The Sun, et cetera, Fire Lord Zuko

1. Agni's Exalted Flame, The Dragon Of The Sun, et cetera, Fire Lord Zuko should not be referred to by his full titles and styles, no matter the context. This appears to annoy him. "Fire Lord Zuko" and "Lord Zuko" are acceptable, as well as "your majesty" and "my Lord".

1.1 "Lord Hotman", however, is unacceptable.

1.2. Even if the Avatar specifically requests you to address Fire Lord Zuko as that.

1.3. In fact, any attempts by the Avatar, the Lady Beifong, the honorable Tribesman Sokka or even Master Katara to get you to address Fire Lord Zuko by anything other than his proper title should be disregarded.

1.4. Referring to Ozai of the Fire Nation (titles rmvd, dishon.) as "The Loser Lord", however, is acceptable.

2. Fire Lord Zuko is aware of the concept of mortality, but does not seem to understand how it relates to His Majesty. Following activities should be discouraged: Free climbing, glider usage, contact with exotic animals larger than a turtleduck (or smaller, if the animal is known to be venomous), amateur theatre productions, cooking, sailing, spelunking, botany, please see full list in the Matron's office.

2.1. It should be noted that His Majesty's belief that mortality does not apply to him does not appear to be completely unfounded. After several "close calls", it has been decided that upon his demise, Fire Lord Zuko should lie in state for at least two weeks.

2.1.1. We do not want another incident.

3. The turtleducks in the Western Pond do not need to be fed by the servants any more.

3.1. However, the turtleducks should be rotated out at regular intervals in order to prevent overfeeding.

4. At any official social functions, at least three servants should be vigilant in case His Majesty tries to tell a joke.

4.1. It should be noted that there is no concern for His Majesty's jokes being offensive, crass or otherwise contrary to good taste. They are simply very bad. His Majesty always ends up embarrassed.

5. Any children left unattended in the Royal Palace for more than 15 degrees can be retrieved from the Fire Lord's office.

6. Should His Majesty go missing, the following places should be searched: roofs and any high places, cellars and secret passages, the fur of the Avatar's sky bison (which is surprisingly deep), and every place that an ordinary five-year-old would think to hide in during a game of "Hide and Explode."

6.1. All of the Imperial Firebenders as well as any soldier who wears a mask during the course of their duties should be questioned.

6.1.1. Important note: Some of the soldiers who are especially close to His Majesty can perform a passable imitation of him. Efforts should be made to prevent an uneducated soldier from, say, conducting a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture.

6.2. After the recent incident, that list is expanded to include the Kyoshi Warriors and any other groups that might wear concealing full face paint.

6.3. If all of these measures prove ineffective, a letter should be sent to The Dragon of the West, Prince Iroh, asking His Highness to return His Majesty.

6.4. If a ransom note is delivered, it should be immediately checked against the handwriting samples from the honorable Tribesman Sokka as well as Avatar Aang, before any other actions are taken.

6.4.1. Replying "Good luck, he's your problem now" to a ransom note is absolutely unacceptable.

6.4.1.1. To further drive home the point, the Royal Archives are required by law to preserve every single piece of royal correspondence. That thing will end up in a museum.

This handbook will be updated should it prove necessary.