MuffinLance

Fan
Name:
Alias(es):	MuffinLance
Type:	fanwriter, writer
Fandoms:	Avatar: The Last Airbender
Communities:
Other:	[1], personal and fic tumblr
URL:	AO3 profile FFN profile RoyalRoad profile
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Muffinlance is a fan and author who has been publishing fanfiction in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom since 2019. She rose to prominence quickly and became one of the most prominent fans during the 2020 ATLA Renaissance, inspiring or encouraging numerous headcanons, AUs, and recursive fics.

Muffinlance began writing on Fanfiction.net but migrated to AO3 and no longer updates her stories on FFN. She also publishes original fiction on RoyalRoad.

Notable Fanworks

Muffinlance has published 13 fanworks, all in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom. Fans of her work sometimes refer to the stories collectively as the "MLCU" or "Muffinlance Cinematic Universe" , as a play on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

• Salvage, AO3 FFN (deprecated), a canon divergence story in which Zuko is held ransom by Chief Hakoda. As of September 2021, this is the most popular ATLA fanfic by kudos on AO3.
• Towards the Sun, AO3 FFN (deprecated), a Book 3 and post-canon divergence AU in which Zuko did not succeed in escaping the Fire Nation Capital on the Day of Black Sun. In addition to the ever-expanding consequences of this change, the story examines politics within the fire nation, decolonization of the western Earth Kingdom, and the relationship between Zuko and Azula.
• Little Zuko v the World, AO3, a book 1 AU in which Zuko finds the avatar in his first year of banishment, when he's 12 (Azula, Mai, and Ty-Lee are equally aged down but all other characters are their canon ages). Mostly a comedic or even parodic adventure story, it branches into Fire Nation and Northern Water Tribe politics later in the story.
• Cheating at Pai Sho, in which the Gaang accidentally joins Zuko's hunt for the Avatar.
• A Dark Night in Ba Sing Se, in which Zuko's sword skills when he fights Jet are noticed by the city guard of Ba Sing Se, and they try to recruit him.

Li's Book of Friends

Cover

Inspired by the many hybrid animals that she and other fans invented, particularly as pets for Zuko across the MuffinLance Cinematic Universe and related fanworks, MuffinLance proposed a coloring book to collect these and other hybrid-animal designs. She put the call out, recruited artists, put the book together, and handled sales. Over 40 artists contributed designs. Originally called "Zuko's Book of Friends", the title was changed to "Li's Book of Friends: Horrible Pets to Protect You from the Horrible World" to avoid copyright infringement as the book became a commercial (though non-profit) project. Proceeds are donated to WIRES, an Australian wildlife rescue organization. As of June 2021, over A$3500 has been donated to WIRES through this project.

Other Fandom Impact

Genfic

Promotion of gen fanfic. (TODO: find links to discussion on her tumblr). Noticeable increase in Gen fanfic during the 2020 ATLA Renaissance has somewhat jokingly been credited to her influence as "the Muffinlance effect".

Emphatic about keeping her own works gen: here's one link but there's older discussions in which she goes into more detail on her position

Zuko's animal companions

Fans took notice of Zuko's fascination with Appa and general interest in and kindness toward animals in "Little Zuko v the World". It became a recurring thing to come up with animal companions for Zuko matching each of Muffinlance's AUs, and eventually for AUs not associated with Muffinlance's stories specifically. Some invented by Muffinlance herself, others proposed by fans. Excitement over this eventually led to Muffinlance proposing the Zuko's Book of Friends project, discussed above.

(See also Haircrescendo's series "What We're Given" -- maybe just the first fic though.)

Zuko Adopts Bingo

A fan described a central theme of Muffinlance's work as "who adopts Zuko this time", and it became an injoke among Muffinlance's fans, as well as a prompt to propose other characters within the world who could take Zuko under their wing, such as the Herbalist from the episode "The Blue Spirit" (spawning the Herbalist!Zuko AU); Hama (Muffinlance snip); the Yu Yan Archers ("Literal Dragon of the Yuyan", Yuyan adopt Zuko); and even Vaatu ("Chaos Avatar Zuko AU"). As well as short stories written by Muffinlance herself, these ideas led to numerous fanart and fanfic by readers of Muffinlances blog (see previous links for examples, and also below).

Recursive Fan Content

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Muffinlance's popularity, active participation in fan spaces, and encouragement of other fan creators has led to large amounts of fanart, recursive fanfic, and other fan activity. Over 200 fics have been gifted to her on AO3.

Fanart

• I have drawn what I believe to be all of @muffinlance ‘s Zukos and their affiliated pets. by foiblepnoteworthy

• Salvage laundry scene and cooking scene by Sapphizzle

Fan videos

• The MLCU Title Sequence Nobody asked for by i-would-like-some-tea

Fanfic

• Dragon of the Yuyan by 00AwkwardPenguin00
• Speeding like a Dead Comet, a recursive fanfic that is a crossover between Towards the Sun and Salvage

Resources

• Tvtropes page for Salvage
• TVTropes page for Towards the Sun