Spirit of Winter: Notes
Herein lay extensive, exhaustive Author's Notes for Spirit of Winter (you should of course read the story before reading the notes. Be warned: this is about 5,000 words without even any narrative.
On Finland's Winter War
The Winter War began November 30, 1939 and lasted until a peace treaty signed March 13, 1940. It was overtly an effort by Finland to guard its neutrality as what became the Axis and the Allies stormed across Europe, but it also became an expression of unity among a divided Finnish nation.
The Finnish Civil War of 1918 was short, bloody, and brutal, reflecting tensions affecting the world in the aftermath of World War I. Finland, formerly a part of the Russian Empire, declared its independence on December 6, 1917; its citizenry almost unanimously supporting sovereignty from the Russians, the Swedes (who had ruled Finland from the Middle Ages until 1809), the Germans, and any others who sought to control the new Republic of Finland. What the citizenry couldn't agree on was how to rule that new republic.
Like Russia, which "enjoyed" eight months as a democracy between the February Revolution that ended Czarist rule and the October Revolution that brought Lenin and other Bolsheviks to power, Finland soon divided itself between communist and capitalist idealists. As the Russian armies retreated, Finnish defense forces rose in their place, soon forming the White Guard that sought alliance with Imperial Germany and the Red Guard that allied itself with Bolshevik Russians. The conflict was brutal, dividing Finland though the White Guard ultimately emerged victorious. Thousands died in battle and in terror campaigns organized by both sides, and the 1920s and 30s were a time of uneasy peace.
The Winter War, in which Finland came together against the Soviet Union even as they ultimately surrendered to its demands to cede territory for strategic defense, is seen by historians to have healed those wounds caused by the Civil War and its aftermath. That feeling of national unity in the face of outside threat is referred to as "The Spirit of the Winter War".
I think it needless to say (but I will say it anyway!) that that unity inspired and guided what this story became: a mini-epic of three people, three parts of Finland, working together and overcoming their differences for a common cause.
On Sexuality
This story was a challenge for me in writing about a romantic and sexual triad. I am an extremely monogamous, extremely heterosexual, extremely mainstream individual - the type who is a supporting character in stories and television shows and such. The one who is almost boring in comparison to the leading characters, for I suffer more from cluelessness and self-criticism than from apparent outer sources, qualities that make a good foil for the drama and comedy of narrative. I have been with the same partner for almost ten years now: the first person I kissed, the first person I held hands with; we are a very stable unit, the kind held up as an example of the ideal monogamy, where both partners are equal and bring out the best in each other, challenge each other and grow together. This doesn't mean it's better than any other lifestyle choice - just that I've found what's natural and healthy for me, and that's a very, very mainstream monogamous relationship.
As such, I wrote the relationships between three partners, between bisexual men, as an outsider since I have no real experience with those feelings. What unfolded on the screen before me seems real, seems like the emotions such a relationship would inspire between its participants, but I honestly don't know as it's so very foreign to how I relate to people and to my own partner.
"Homosexual activity" was criminalized in Finland from 1889 to 1971, punishable by up to two years in prison. As such, I wrote both Jet and Zuko as being unaware of their attraction to men until they met each other; there was doubtlessly, inevitably a gay subculture throughout that period, but I chose to exclude them from it. I wanted to develop their characters as not knowing how to face or even recognize their feelings, to express them in typical male competition and violence until forced and coaxed into realizing, acknowledging that attraction and how to build on it. There are a lot of stories out there where Zuko and Jet are gay and aware of it, or Jet is gay and through his acquaintance Zuko realizes his preference (whether bisexual or homosexual); I wanted to write a different dynamic, where they think they are competing but that competition is actual an outlet for the deeper feelings neither of them yet realize.
I feel that this made the relationship between all three characters stronger; that they all need each other to really be happy. Katara seems equally attracted to, equally in love with both Jet and Zuko to the point where she would rather have neither than be forced to choose one, while it is through Katara that Jet and Zuko learn to relate to each other on a romantic and sexual level. I'm quite satisfied by how it turned out and it leaves me with a pleasant feeling, since I am, at heart, a monogamist and by my definitions that is a relationship of equals. In that way, I can sympathize with the three of them, despite having no interest or desire for a three-way relationship.
On Naming
Any personal name not taken from Avatar canon is Finnish; "Harmaajärvi," Katara's surname here, means "grey lake". "Vapaus," Jet's surname, means "freedom."
Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo is the only "real" person in this story - he was the actual commander of the JR 27 Regiment that arrived in Suomussalmi on December 8. I fear that I've given an unfavorable impression of him here when in fact I know nothing about his character or leadership one way or another. I do think, though, that regardless of his skill in command, men like Jet would grumble about officers and strategy and their fancy maps.
Lieutenant Aalto is sadly a red shirt (that's a Star Trek reference, not a Bolshevik reference), and Captain Heikkilä is notable because "Heikkilä" is roughly the Finnish variation of my own surname, which has as many variations across Europe as you would expect from the root name "Henry." My surname is apparently a very localized variant of a regional variant of that same root, which translates roughly to "home rule." Incidentally, Captain Heikkilä might be a self-insert. It's hard to tell, given that I don't know who I would be if I were a male Finn army captain in 1939, but maybe. I also think he's gay - the sort of man who quietly came out in the 1970s with his partner of 30 years, and understood some of the tension our triad faces.
For the record, as a vulgar American, I have no idea to pronounce most of these names, and indeed don't bother to when I'm reading. I've written "Suomussalmi" enough times now that I know how I would say it aloud, but I can't say that would be the correct pronunciation. All the ä and ö and ii sounds totally defeat me, as do stringing multiple consonants together in un-Anglo ways (sv? hj? gah). Thank the gods that I'm a writer, not an actor, because copy-and-paste is what's saved me on keeping this story "sounding" right.
On Other Avatar Characters
As this was originally supposed to be one to two thousand words, thank the gods I never tried to weave the other Avatar characters into this narrative - I'd've ended up with yet another epic AU dragging out into months of meticulous planning. I do have some ideas for a few of them, though.
Sokka, as stated, joined the relatively small Finnish Navy, which helped defend Finland from attacks across the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south. His ship was home-berthed in Helsinki, where he met Suki, who was serving in the Lotta Svärd as part of the , the only armed female combat unit during the war. They married basically as soon as the war ended and returned to Suki's village just south of Oulu, where the last scene of this story is set. Katara, lacking any reason to go anywhere else, followed her brother there for something familiar.
I don't know what's happened to Hakoda or Gran-Gran in this, where they are or what they're doing except that they're absent. Similarly, I have no idea who Aang and Toph are in this world - what they're doing or where they are or if they ever meet with our triad. I think it'd be awesome if Toph were an ex-pat American heiress touring the world before returning to take over the company, but it'd be awful if Aang were a Gypsy survivor of Nazi or Soviet camps.
I also don't know what the Dangerous Ladies are doing. Zuko's reaction to Katara showing interest rather than boredom in political history to me sounds like he knows Mai, but I really don't know, nor do I know who Ozai is or what his relationship with Zuko was like. I don't know if Ursa survived the terror and returned from exile after the country stabilized in the wake of WWII, or if she truly perished in the streets during the Red Terror of 1918.
I do know that Iroh is in Helsinki and is probably a senator or senior military official or the like. I think Zuko and Jet stayed with him for a time after they were discharged - or maybe one was discharged before the other, necessitating a wait. I imagine that there was a very touching reunion between the two former generals and that Iroh took to Jet and vice versa like two houses on fire and together they teased Zuko mercilessly until both took pity on him. Iroh then used his sources to help them figure out where Katara had ended up, following the trail from the Lottas to the medical school, back into the Lottas and finally to her little Kiviniemi clinic. I imagine the three of them visit every summer or winter, and that Iroh has laid his blessing on their quiet union and challenged them to produce twice as many grandbabies as they would have with a conventional coupling.
On Race
While researching, writing, and editing Spirit of Winter, I took great pains to avoid thinking about or describing any racial characteristics of any character or characters. So should you.
On History and Setting
As much as possible, I used things exactly as they happened, as far as I could determine. The position of units, the 15th and 16th Detached Battalions and the JR 27 (I anglicized the names for consistency in the narrative) described during the Battle of Suomussalmi were there, under those designations, and together with JR 64 and JR 65 nearly destroyed the Soviet Army's 44th Division. For those of you who haven't researched military hierarchy, a division is typically composed of three to five Regiments. The Soviets had two divisions and the Finns had three regiments engaged during the course of the battle, and… but we'll get to that staggering disparity later.
What I don't know is where exactly they were, how they were physically distributed and dug in, or what the names of the companies and platoons and squads stationed there were. For those details, I used my general research into military command and hierarchy to make some educated guesses. To the best of my knowledge, what I portray is accurate to what generally would have happened, though I am the first to confess that I could be completely wrong in that portrayal.
I took the same approach with the summer volunteer camp on the Karelian Isthmus. Several Wikipedia articles mentioned that "volunteers and students" helped fortify the Mannerheim Line in the summer of 1939, but that's about as specific as any of the articles got. I used my own background in summer camps and volunteer projects to fill in what I found relevant to the story, as a setting for the important parts: Katara and Jet's interaction there.
The dates and events in the broader world are also as accurate as I could make them, given the resources available to me. I assembled a timeline of the events, using Wikipedia articles for a background of the events that led up to the Winter War and the battles during it. I'm fairly sure that the dates and actions are accurate in this; As the Battle of Suomussalmi progressed into the Battle of Raate Road, I'm less sure about the army units involved and have taken my best guesses. One Wiki article says it was the Finn's 9th Division split into four "squadrons" that hunted down the Soviet's 44th Division, another says it was the JR 27, JR 64, and JR 65… but I'll get to my Wikipedia warning later. These anyway are the kind of facts it's easy to quibble over, when the point of the story isn't the numbers and the details, it's the characters and their stories and this narrative takes place at the platoon and company level, far below Battalions and Regiments and Divisions. Which is no excuse for sloppy research, but that too is for later.
It was surprisingly easy to weave Katara and Jet and Zuko's narrative into what actually happened that year and was quite enlightening to me. As an American, I knew nothing about the Winter War, the later Continuation War; Finland's shifting alliances with the Germans and the British and other nations during seven long years of conflict. How could I, when American public schools and even university classes focus on American and Anglo involvement in global conflict - a disturbing bias I only truly considered this past week when researching and writing this story. I have some small hope that this story will interest others to explore a little farther than the texts and lectures and History Channel specials share.
Other things in this story are made up within the 1930s setting I'm familiar with through reading and television and movies and my own background. Zuko's master's defense, the library at Helsinki, the brief training in Hamina (I know that there is a Reserve Officers' Training School there; I find it logical they'd have an enlisted staging ground there during a build-up to war) - these are things that I can say to have made up, but I made them up with some knowledge of them. I've defended a master's thesis (and the old-school ones were apparently far scarier than my powerpoint presentation), I've been to a number of university of libraries, my grandfather trained army soldiers during World War II and my father completed officer candidate school for two different service branches and spent a career in the employ of Uncle Fed. My mother was also in a position equivalent to an enlisted sailor and met my father while in the service, so I've listened to stories of how to discreetly date across that sacred officer/enlisted line without anyone's superiors ever knowing.
Anywhere I could use "primary source documents," I did - why make stuff up when you can easily borrow? The radio broadcast Jet and Katara listen to in the volunteer camp is the one recorded here, an English-language broadcast from Warsaw on September 1, 1939. The book titles in the very beginning are actual Finnish books in my alma mater's inter-library-loan system; Floranna was kind enough to translate the titles for me to add that little touch of authenticity to the scene.
On Injuries and Field Medicine
I've found that while injuries - concussions, lacerations, infections - are an excellent plot device to force and guide character interaction, they are one of the easiest ways to reveal whether or not an author has actually bothered to research their subject. On several occasions, I've had to stop reading a story when it became apparent that an author's only source of knowledge on trauma was television and their own imagination - I'm by no means a medical professional, but I do know the basics.
Contrarily, when I scribble out my own stories, I'll often just write something like "head wound - concussion?" and then hurry forth to write the aftermath, the interaction resulting from the head wound or concussion or whatever. I usually have to force myself to go back and elaborate and figure out all the other details - of whether the "head wound - concussion?" is even the appropriate injury to cause the desired reaction in the narrative.
In this story, I originally had a bullet grazing Zuko's head and the fall down the ravine giving him the concussion - dramatic and messy, without being too much of either. My medical consultant (who is also my WWII consultant - more on that later) pointed out that even a minor bullet wound like that would shear the skin down to the skull, which is rather more gruesome than I really wanted to get. He suggested instead that Zuko taking a glancing bullet across the helmet would concuss him pretty severely without damaging him too badly, and incidentally is a lot less convoluted than significant-but-not-too-significant-head-wound + unlikely dramatic concussion. I agreed.
That was only the first hurdle, though - the second trap that writers can fall into is how the injury-as-plot-device gets treated. I have what's called Wilderness First Responder training - that's an intensive nine-day course designed to address the question of "Your climbing partner didn't secure his/her belaying line securely, fell 20 feet onto exposed bedrock, and now has a serious head laceration, an unstable spine, and falling levels of consciousness. The trailhead is a two-hour hike away, the nearest phone another half-hour drive beyond, and dusk is falling. What do you do?"
The answer is not "take him in your arms and smooth the hair from his fevered brow as you tearfully confess your attraction," for the record. I luckily have never had to practice the appropriate treatments in real life, but I do have that background - and I still find myself writing clichéd television treatments if I don't pay attention.
Zuko's treatment in this story is accurate insofar as I understand. It's standard practice these days to wake a concussion patient up every hour or two to make sure they haven't gotten worse; that response is pretty ingrained into us as What You Do For A Concussion. In reality, all it does is tell you whether or not you should call 911 again, because in the emergency room they can drill into your skull open to relieve the pressure on your brain that's making you "worse." In the field, really all you can do for a concussion is wait and see if it's bad enough to kill you. You can also withhold water - dehydration will lessen the inflammation response - but Jet's assessment was correct: you'll either die or you won't, and there's not much you can do to stop the dying unless you have a drill handy. Incidentally, anyone remember that episode of Doogie Howser? Aw, yeah.
Zuko, luckily, wasn't that badly concussed - his semi-conscious condition was a combination of moderate concussion and hypothermia and later dehydration, so really warmth, rest, and water were all he needed to recover fully.
On Artistic License
The one real liberty I feel I've taken with history is allowing Katara to go out with Jet and Zuko's platoon during the Battle of Suomussalmi; the call for guides and allowing a civilian, a woman, to accompany combat units into a battle. I have no evidence one way or another if this would be allowed or sanctioned. I think it's logical to assume that it might have happened, given how it's documented that the Finnish strategies were described as "unconventional" during that conflict and my WWII informant says it's plausible, but I really don't know. Nor do I care - what use is writing historical fiction if one is not allowed some fiction in it?
The other great leap of faith is in Smellerbee's sneaking into the regular army. It's pretty doubtful that could have happened in reality, "unconventional" or no, but who is Jet without Smellerbee and Longshot to back him up?
I also sort of think that Jet, Zuko, Katara, and probably everyone else out on the line should have been smoking cigarettes like chimneys, as was pretty common in that era. I'm not a smoker though, and while it's a very nice atmospheric visual in movies (especially in black and white), I just can't get it into the narrative. I don't know what it says about me (self-described prude that I am) that I can more easily imagine and write bisexual threesome sex than smoking, but that's the way it is.
Otherwise, I have tried to very much keep this story within the facts as I have discovered them. I owe more thanks to Floranna for finding details of Finnish history and geography that are very hard to find if one doesn't speak Finnish or Russian, and I owe great thanks to my other half who (luckily for me) is quite knowledgeable in field medicine and has studied WWII tactics, artillery and weaponry, and other details that I am less than interested in. For the record, his response to reading the tactical maps of the Battles of Suomussalmi and Raate Road was "Oh, shit - that's a meat-grinder."
On War
Speaking of the Battle of Suomussalmi, it has apparently become a textbook example of how a small force can conquer a large one with certain advantages. As I said earlier, the Soviets committed two divisions to the battle while the Finns committed three regiments (I think) - that's a difference in numbers of between four thousand and ten thousand soldiers, depending on the size of the units.
The Finnish Army held their positions despite those numbers - and nearly obliterated the Soviet's 44th Division through a combination of factors that included knowledge of the terrain and the ability to move effectively through it, as well as the utter incompetence and unpreparedness of the Soviet Army at the time. Stalin's brutal purges of the 1930s had eliminated nearly every military officer with intelligence, drive, and experience, leaving political tools and inexperienced corpsmen to lead an army - with bloody results. Most of the 44th were Ukrainian recruits from far to the south (the same latitude as Germany, parts of France and Italy), thrown into one of the coldest winters on record, ill-supplied and under inexperienced leadership, under orders from a distant Moscow that cared only about seizing strategic defense points.
This story may be about the Finnish people, about defending their country and their homes and their independence, but I hope readers are able to empathize with the Soviet Army ranks as well. Stalin was one of the most brutal leaders in human history, a true madman and flanked by people who knew they would be killed if they so much as hinted at disagreement; a fact reflected in the way the Red Army was organized and deployed. Wikipedia has a description of the average soldier's plight during the Winter War, attributed to historian William R. Trotter: "the Soviet soldier had no choice. If he refused to fight, he would be shot. If he tried to sneak through the forest, he would freeze to death. And surrender was no option for him; Soviet propaganda had told him how the Finns would torture prisoners to death." Between 13,000 and 27,000 Soviet soldiers died in the Battle of Suomussalmi, with another 2,000 taken prisoner.
On Sources and Research
I almost exclusively used Wikipedia and Google Maps to research the background and geography of this story, and feel reasonably confident that I've portrayed it more or less accurately within the bounds of historical fiction. You'll also notice that I've linked to Wikipedia articles throughout this very long author's note to give readers a place to start their own research.
HOWEVER. If I were writing this for publication or for peer review, I would go much, much farther than Wikipedia for my facts. Wikipedia is an excellent resource for what it is: a sprawling encyclopedia that encompasses and introduces a delightful array of obscure topics. That does not make it accurate. Encyclopedias in general aren't that accurate, despite what Britannica will have you believe. Historical research is a part of my life and a part of my career - I would never cite Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia as a reference for an article or paper or book away from the sphere of fanfiction and blogging, nor would I even trust them to be accurate.
I've learned to have an eye for them - I can tell that much of the Finland articles were written by someone who speaks Finnish as a first language, rather than English, and when articles list facts and statistics and numbers, they're often accurate since those are things easily copied from other sources and easily checked by others. This doesn't mean that I trust them, though - there's no knowing what Joe Internet wrote there last night when he got all feverish about the fifteen remaining American lightships (or is it twelve? Sources can't seem to agree, ever since #84 sunk in Hoboken a decade ago).
What Wikipedia is useful for in formal research is as a starting point and for finding more sources. Any Wiki article worth reading has a list of citations at the bottom (and if it doesn't, don't take it too seriously) - follow those and see what they are, and follow their sources back as far as you can. If you're writing for a class, take advantage of whatever library systems and databases you have - go find that article in the Engineering Library periodicals and photocopy it if they won't let you check it out. One of the things that happens with the research process is that the original research and conclusions can get diluted and distorted by, let's face it, student papers and websites. It's much more useful and informative to find who said it first, so you can see what they actually said.
Plus, research is fun once you get past the initial "oh god, why am I going to the library on a Saturday afternoon?" Go in with a question to answer but let yourself get sidetracked (this is why it's better to not procrastinate on your research papers, incidentally). I once spent three hours sitting on the floor of my undergraduate library, reading old issues of Newsweek from the 1950s and 60s. I went in looking for articles about the Apollo space program to write about its impact on the popular consciousness, and ended up learning in detail about all these events I've heard of, but didn't really know of (disclaimer: Newsweek is not a good research source unless you are researching the popular consciousness, but it is damn fun to read). It was fascinating, and helped explain why people my age will never truly understand what 1968 was like, how crucial Apollo 8 is to the baby-boom generation.
All this being said, if anyone reading this finds any out-and-out errors in the story, please let me know. I know from experience how irritating it is to be reading along happily only to be flung out of the narrative by something that is just wrong, how it colors the rest of the narrative because if the writer was wrong about that, why should he be right about anything else in the story? I strive to not be that writer, or subject my readers to that experience, as best I can.
In Closing
Thanks, as always, for reading.
I write, as all writers should, to share ideas, to strive to lay it out in hopes of understanding it better and helping others to see the same ideas and build on them and introduce their own ideas back into the mix. Part of why this story ballooned into the mini-epic it did is because of the heinous lack of Jetkotara in Avatar fandom. There's smatterings of it, and people talk about it lots as their OT3, but I've yet to find any long narrative stories featuring their developing relationship, beyond finally getting together for epic sexing (and if I'm wrong, please send me a link - I would love to be proven wrong on that finding).
And that's not to say there's anything wrong with skipping to the epic sexing, just that I find epic sexing to be ever more satisfying if I see the build-up and the aftermath of it. I'll regard this fic as truly successful if I start seeing more Jetkotara emerge in its wake, inspired by or in reaction to Spirit of Winter.
On Finland's Winter War
The Winter War began November 30, 1939 and lasted until a peace treaty signed March 13, 1940. It was overtly an effort by Finland to guard its neutrality as what became the Axis and the Allies stormed across Europe, but it also became an expression of unity among a divided Finnish nation.
The Finnish Civil War of 1918 was short, bloody, and brutal, reflecting tensions affecting the world in the aftermath of World War I. Finland, formerly a part of the Russian Empire, declared its independence on December 6, 1917; its citizenry almost unanimously supporting sovereignty from the Russians, the Swedes (who had ruled Finland from the Middle Ages until 1809), the Germans, and any others who sought to control the new Republic of Finland. What the citizenry couldn't agree on was how to rule that new republic.
Like Russia, which "enjoyed" eight months as a democracy between the February Revolution that ended Czarist rule and the October Revolution that brought Lenin and other Bolsheviks to power, Finland soon divided itself between communist and capitalist idealists. As the Russian armies retreated, Finnish defense forces rose in their place, soon forming the White Guard that sought alliance with Imperial Germany and the Red Guard that allied itself with Bolshevik Russians. The conflict was brutal, dividing Finland though the White Guard ultimately emerged victorious. Thousands died in battle and in terror campaigns organized by both sides, and the 1920s and 30s were a time of uneasy peace.
The Winter War, in which Finland came together against the Soviet Union even as they ultimately surrendered to its demands to cede territory for strategic defense, is seen by historians to have healed those wounds caused by the Civil War and its aftermath. That feeling of national unity in the face of outside threat is referred to as "The Spirit of the Winter War".
I think it needless to say (but I will say it anyway!) that that unity inspired and guided what this story became: a mini-epic of three people, three parts of Finland, working together and overcoming their differences for a common cause.
On Sexuality
This story was a challenge for me in writing about a romantic and sexual triad. I am an extremely monogamous, extremely heterosexual, extremely mainstream individual - the type who is a supporting character in stories and television shows and such. The one who is almost boring in comparison to the leading characters, for I suffer more from cluelessness and self-criticism than from apparent outer sources, qualities that make a good foil for the drama and comedy of narrative. I have been with the same partner for almost ten years now: the first person I kissed, the first person I held hands with; we are a very stable unit, the kind held up as an example of the ideal monogamy, where both partners are equal and bring out the best in each other, challenge each other and grow together. This doesn't mean it's better than any other lifestyle choice - just that I've found what's natural and healthy for me, and that's a very, very mainstream monogamous relationship.
As such, I wrote the relationships between three partners, between bisexual men, as an outsider since I have no real experience with those feelings. What unfolded on the screen before me seems real, seems like the emotions such a relationship would inspire between its participants, but I honestly don't know as it's so very foreign to how I relate to people and to my own partner.
"Homosexual activity" was criminalized in Finland from 1889 to 1971, punishable by up to two years in prison. As such, I wrote both Jet and Zuko as being unaware of their attraction to men until they met each other; there was doubtlessly, inevitably a gay subculture throughout that period, but I chose to exclude them from it. I wanted to develop their characters as not knowing how to face or even recognize their feelings, to express them in typical male competition and violence until forced and coaxed into realizing, acknowledging that attraction and how to build on it. There are a lot of stories out there where Zuko and Jet are gay and aware of it, or Jet is gay and through his acquaintance Zuko realizes his preference (whether bisexual or homosexual); I wanted to write a different dynamic, where they think they are competing but that competition is actual an outlet for the deeper feelings neither of them yet realize.
I feel that this made the relationship between all three characters stronger; that they all need each other to really be happy. Katara seems equally attracted to, equally in love with both Jet and Zuko to the point where she would rather have neither than be forced to choose one, while it is through Katara that Jet and Zuko learn to relate to each other on a romantic and sexual level. I'm quite satisfied by how it turned out and it leaves me with a pleasant feeling, since I am, at heart, a monogamist and by my definitions that is a relationship of equals. In that way, I can sympathize with the three of them, despite having no interest or desire for a three-way relationship.
On Naming
Any personal name not taken from Avatar canon is Finnish; "Harmaajärvi," Katara's surname here, means "grey lake". "Vapaus," Jet's surname, means "freedom."
Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo is the only "real" person in this story - he was the actual commander of the JR 27 Regiment that arrived in Suomussalmi on December 8. I fear that I've given an unfavorable impression of him here when in fact I know nothing about his character or leadership one way or another. I do think, though, that regardless of his skill in command, men like Jet would grumble about officers and strategy and their fancy maps.
Lieutenant Aalto is sadly a red shirt (that's a Star Trek reference, not a Bolshevik reference), and Captain Heikkilä is notable because "Heikkilä" is roughly the Finnish variation of my own surname, which has as many variations across Europe as you would expect from the root name "Henry." My surname is apparently a very localized variant of a regional variant of that same root, which translates roughly to "home rule." Incidentally, Captain Heikkilä might be a self-insert. It's hard to tell, given that I don't know who I would be if I were a male Finn army captain in 1939, but maybe. I also think he's gay - the sort of man who quietly came out in the 1970s with his partner of 30 years, and understood some of the tension our triad faces.
For the record, as a vulgar American, I have no idea to pronounce most of these names, and indeed don't bother to when I'm reading. I've written "Suomussalmi" enough times now that I know how I would say it aloud, but I can't say that would be the correct pronunciation. All the ä and ö and ii sounds totally defeat me, as do stringing multiple consonants together in un-Anglo ways (sv? hj? gah). Thank the gods that I'm a writer, not an actor, because copy-and-paste is what's saved me on keeping this story "sounding" right.
On Other Avatar Characters
As this was originally supposed to be one to two thousand words, thank the gods I never tried to weave the other Avatar characters into this narrative - I'd've ended up with yet another epic AU dragging out into months of meticulous planning. I do have some ideas for a few of them, though.
Sokka, as stated, joined the relatively small Finnish Navy, which helped defend Finland from attacks across the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south. His ship was home-berthed in Helsinki, where he met Suki, who was serving in the Lotta Svärd as part of the , the only armed female combat unit during the war. They married basically as soon as the war ended and returned to Suki's village just south of Oulu, where the last scene of this story is set. Katara, lacking any reason to go anywhere else, followed her brother there for something familiar.
I don't know what's happened to Hakoda or Gran-Gran in this, where they are or what they're doing except that they're absent. Similarly, I have no idea who Aang and Toph are in this world - what they're doing or where they are or if they ever meet with our triad. I think it'd be awesome if Toph were an ex-pat American heiress touring the world before returning to take over the company, but it'd be awful if Aang were a Gypsy survivor of Nazi or Soviet camps.
I also don't know what the Dangerous Ladies are doing. Zuko's reaction to Katara showing interest rather than boredom in political history to me sounds like he knows Mai, but I really don't know, nor do I know who Ozai is or what his relationship with Zuko was like. I don't know if Ursa survived the terror and returned from exile after the country stabilized in the wake of WWII, or if she truly perished in the streets during the Red Terror of 1918.
I do know that Iroh is in Helsinki and is probably a senator or senior military official or the like. I think Zuko and Jet stayed with him for a time after they were discharged - or maybe one was discharged before the other, necessitating a wait. I imagine that there was a very touching reunion between the two former generals and that Iroh took to Jet and vice versa like two houses on fire and together they teased Zuko mercilessly until both took pity on him. Iroh then used his sources to help them figure out where Katara had ended up, following the trail from the Lottas to the medical school, back into the Lottas and finally to her little Kiviniemi clinic. I imagine the three of them visit every summer or winter, and that Iroh has laid his blessing on their quiet union and challenged them to produce twice as many grandbabies as they would have with a conventional coupling.
On Race
While researching, writing, and editing Spirit of Winter, I took great pains to avoid thinking about or describing any racial characteristics of any character or characters. So should you.
On History and Setting
As much as possible, I used things exactly as they happened, as far as I could determine. The position of units, the 15th and 16th Detached Battalions and the JR 27 (I anglicized the names for consistency in the narrative) described during the Battle of Suomussalmi were there, under those designations, and together with JR 64 and JR 65 nearly destroyed the Soviet Army's 44th Division. For those of you who haven't researched military hierarchy, a division is typically composed of three to five Regiments. The Soviets had two divisions and the Finns had three regiments engaged during the course of the battle, and… but we'll get to that staggering disparity later.
What I don't know is where exactly they were, how they were physically distributed and dug in, or what the names of the companies and platoons and squads stationed there were. For those details, I used my general research into military command and hierarchy to make some educated guesses. To the best of my knowledge, what I portray is accurate to what generally would have happened, though I am the first to confess that I could be completely wrong in that portrayal.
I took the same approach with the summer volunteer camp on the Karelian Isthmus. Several Wikipedia articles mentioned that "volunteers and students" helped fortify the Mannerheim Line in the summer of 1939, but that's about as specific as any of the articles got. I used my own background in summer camps and volunteer projects to fill in what I found relevant to the story, as a setting for the important parts: Katara and Jet's interaction there.
The dates and events in the broader world are also as accurate as I could make them, given the resources available to me. I assembled a timeline of the events, using Wikipedia articles for a background of the events that led up to the Winter War and the battles during it. I'm fairly sure that the dates and actions are accurate in this; As the Battle of Suomussalmi progressed into the Battle of Raate Road, I'm less sure about the army units involved and have taken my best guesses. One Wiki article says it was the Finn's 9th Division split into four "squadrons" that hunted down the Soviet's 44th Division, another says it was the JR 27, JR 64, and JR 65… but I'll get to my Wikipedia warning later. These anyway are the kind of facts it's easy to quibble over, when the point of the story isn't the numbers and the details, it's the characters and their stories and this narrative takes place at the platoon and company level, far below Battalions and Regiments and Divisions. Which is no excuse for sloppy research, but that too is for later.
It was surprisingly easy to weave Katara and Jet and Zuko's narrative into what actually happened that year and was quite enlightening to me. As an American, I knew nothing about the Winter War, the later Continuation War; Finland's shifting alliances with the Germans and the British and other nations during seven long years of conflict. How could I, when American public schools and even university classes focus on American and Anglo involvement in global conflict - a disturbing bias I only truly considered this past week when researching and writing this story. I have some small hope that this story will interest others to explore a little farther than the texts and lectures and History Channel specials share.
Other things in this story are made up within the 1930s setting I'm familiar with through reading and television and movies and my own background. Zuko's master's defense, the library at Helsinki, the brief training in Hamina (I know that there is a Reserve Officers' Training School there; I find it logical they'd have an enlisted staging ground there during a build-up to war) - these are things that I can say to have made up, but I made them up with some knowledge of them. I've defended a master's thesis (and the old-school ones were apparently far scarier than my powerpoint presentation), I've been to a number of university of libraries, my grandfather trained army soldiers during World War II and my father completed officer candidate school for two different service branches and spent a career in the employ of Uncle Fed. My mother was also in a position equivalent to an enlisted sailor and met my father while in the service, so I've listened to stories of how to discreetly date across that sacred officer/enlisted line without anyone's superiors ever knowing.
Anywhere I could use "primary source documents," I did - why make stuff up when you can easily borrow? The radio broadcast Jet and Katara listen to in the volunteer camp is the one recorded here, an English-language broadcast from Warsaw on September 1, 1939. The book titles in the very beginning are actual Finnish books in my alma mater's inter-library-loan system; Floranna was kind enough to translate the titles for me to add that little touch of authenticity to the scene.
On Injuries and Field Medicine
I've found that while injuries - concussions, lacerations, infections - are an excellent plot device to force and guide character interaction, they are one of the easiest ways to reveal whether or not an author has actually bothered to research their subject. On several occasions, I've had to stop reading a story when it became apparent that an author's only source of knowledge on trauma was television and their own imagination - I'm by no means a medical professional, but I do know the basics.
Contrarily, when I scribble out my own stories, I'll often just write something like "head wound - concussion?" and then hurry forth to write the aftermath, the interaction resulting from the head wound or concussion or whatever. I usually have to force myself to go back and elaborate and figure out all the other details - of whether the "head wound - concussion?" is even the appropriate injury to cause the desired reaction in the narrative.
In this story, I originally had a bullet grazing Zuko's head and the fall down the ravine giving him the concussion - dramatic and messy, without being too much of either. My medical consultant (who is also my WWII consultant - more on that later) pointed out that even a minor bullet wound like that would shear the skin down to the skull, which is rather more gruesome than I really wanted to get. He suggested instead that Zuko taking a glancing bullet across the helmet would concuss him pretty severely without damaging him too badly, and incidentally is a lot less convoluted than significant-but-not-too-significant-head-wound + unlikely dramatic concussion. I agreed.
That was only the first hurdle, though - the second trap that writers can fall into is how the injury-as-plot-device gets treated. I have what's called Wilderness First Responder training - that's an intensive nine-day course designed to address the question of "Your climbing partner didn't secure his/her belaying line securely, fell 20 feet onto exposed bedrock, and now has a serious head laceration, an unstable spine, and falling levels of consciousness. The trailhead is a two-hour hike away, the nearest phone another half-hour drive beyond, and dusk is falling. What do you do?"
The answer is not "take him in your arms and smooth the hair from his fevered brow as you tearfully confess your attraction," for the record. I luckily have never had to practice the appropriate treatments in real life, but I do have that background - and I still find myself writing clichéd television treatments if I don't pay attention.
Zuko's treatment in this story is accurate insofar as I understand. It's standard practice these days to wake a concussion patient up every hour or two to make sure they haven't gotten worse; that response is pretty ingrained into us as What You Do For A Concussion. In reality, all it does is tell you whether or not you should call 911 again, because in the emergency room they can drill into your skull open to relieve the pressure on your brain that's making you "worse." In the field, really all you can do for a concussion is wait and see if it's bad enough to kill you. You can also withhold water - dehydration will lessen the inflammation response - but Jet's assessment was correct: you'll either die or you won't, and there's not much you can do to stop the dying unless you have a drill handy. Incidentally, anyone remember that episode of Doogie Howser? Aw, yeah.
Zuko, luckily, wasn't that badly concussed - his semi-conscious condition was a combination of moderate concussion and hypothermia and later dehydration, so really warmth, rest, and water were all he needed to recover fully.
On Artistic License
The one real liberty I feel I've taken with history is allowing Katara to go out with Jet and Zuko's platoon during the Battle of Suomussalmi; the call for guides and allowing a civilian, a woman, to accompany combat units into a battle. I have no evidence one way or another if this would be allowed or sanctioned. I think it's logical to assume that it might have happened, given how it's documented that the Finnish strategies were described as "unconventional" during that conflict and my WWII informant says it's plausible, but I really don't know. Nor do I care - what use is writing historical fiction if one is not allowed some fiction in it?
The other great leap of faith is in Smellerbee's sneaking into the regular army. It's pretty doubtful that could have happened in reality, "unconventional" or no, but who is Jet without Smellerbee and Longshot to back him up?
I also sort of think that Jet, Zuko, Katara, and probably everyone else out on the line should have been smoking cigarettes like chimneys, as was pretty common in that era. I'm not a smoker though, and while it's a very nice atmospheric visual in movies (especially in black and white), I just can't get it into the narrative. I don't know what it says about me (self-described prude that I am) that I can more easily imagine and write bisexual threesome sex than smoking, but that's the way it is.
Otherwise, I have tried to very much keep this story within the facts as I have discovered them. I owe more thanks to Floranna for finding details of Finnish history and geography that are very hard to find if one doesn't speak Finnish or Russian, and I owe great thanks to my other half who (luckily for me) is quite knowledgeable in field medicine and has studied WWII tactics, artillery and weaponry, and other details that I am less than interested in. For the record, his response to reading the tactical maps of the Battles of Suomussalmi and Raate Road was "Oh, shit - that's a meat-grinder."
On War
Speaking of the Battle of Suomussalmi, it has apparently become a textbook example of how a small force can conquer a large one with certain advantages. As I said earlier, the Soviets committed two divisions to the battle while the Finns committed three regiments (I think) - that's a difference in numbers of between four thousand and ten thousand soldiers, depending on the size of the units.
The Finnish Army held their positions despite those numbers - and nearly obliterated the Soviet's 44th Division through a combination of factors that included knowledge of the terrain and the ability to move effectively through it, as well as the utter incompetence and unpreparedness of the Soviet Army at the time. Stalin's brutal purges of the 1930s had eliminated nearly every military officer with intelligence, drive, and experience, leaving political tools and inexperienced corpsmen to lead an army - with bloody results. Most of the 44th were Ukrainian recruits from far to the south (the same latitude as Germany, parts of France and Italy), thrown into one of the coldest winters on record, ill-supplied and under inexperienced leadership, under orders from a distant Moscow that cared only about seizing strategic defense points.
This story may be about the Finnish people, about defending their country and their homes and their independence, but I hope readers are able to empathize with the Soviet Army ranks as well. Stalin was one of the most brutal leaders in human history, a true madman and flanked by people who knew they would be killed if they so much as hinted at disagreement; a fact reflected in the way the Red Army was organized and deployed. Wikipedia has a description of the average soldier's plight during the Winter War, attributed to historian William R. Trotter: "the Soviet soldier had no choice. If he refused to fight, he would be shot. If he tried to sneak through the forest, he would freeze to death. And surrender was no option for him; Soviet propaganda had told him how the Finns would torture prisoners to death." Between 13,000 and 27,000 Soviet soldiers died in the Battle of Suomussalmi, with another 2,000 taken prisoner.
On Sources and Research
I almost exclusively used Wikipedia and Google Maps to research the background and geography of this story, and feel reasonably confident that I've portrayed it more or less accurately within the bounds of historical fiction. You'll also notice that I've linked to Wikipedia articles throughout this very long author's note to give readers a place to start their own research.
HOWEVER. If I were writing this for publication or for peer review, I would go much, much farther than Wikipedia for my facts. Wikipedia is an excellent resource for what it is: a sprawling encyclopedia that encompasses and introduces a delightful array of obscure topics. That does not make it accurate. Encyclopedias in general aren't that accurate, despite what Britannica will have you believe. Historical research is a part of my life and a part of my career - I would never cite Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia as a reference for an article or paper or book away from the sphere of fanfiction and blogging, nor would I even trust them to be accurate.
I've learned to have an eye for them - I can tell that much of the Finland articles were written by someone who speaks Finnish as a first language, rather than English, and when articles list facts and statistics and numbers, they're often accurate since those are things easily copied from other sources and easily checked by others. This doesn't mean that I trust them, though - there's no knowing what Joe Internet wrote there last night when he got all feverish about the fifteen remaining American lightships (or is it twelve? Sources can't seem to agree, ever since #84 sunk in Hoboken a decade ago).
What Wikipedia is useful for in formal research is as a starting point and for finding more sources. Any Wiki article worth reading has a list of citations at the bottom (and if it doesn't, don't take it too seriously) - follow those and see what they are, and follow their sources back as far as you can. If you're writing for a class, take advantage of whatever library systems and databases you have - go find that article in the Engineering Library periodicals and photocopy it if they won't let you check it out. One of the things that happens with the research process is that the original research and conclusions can get diluted and distorted by, let's face it, student papers and websites. It's much more useful and informative to find who said it first, so you can see what they actually said.
Plus, research is fun once you get past the initial "oh god, why am I going to the library on a Saturday afternoon?" Go in with a question to answer but let yourself get sidetracked (this is why it's better to not procrastinate on your research papers, incidentally). I once spent three hours sitting on the floor of my undergraduate library, reading old issues of Newsweek from the 1950s and 60s. I went in looking for articles about the Apollo space program to write about its impact on the popular consciousness, and ended up learning in detail about all these events I've heard of, but didn't really know of (disclaimer: Newsweek is not a good research source unless you are researching the popular consciousness, but it is damn fun to read). It was fascinating, and helped explain why people my age will never truly understand what 1968 was like, how crucial Apollo 8 is to the baby-boom generation.
All this being said, if anyone reading this finds any out-and-out errors in the story, please let me know. I know from experience how irritating it is to be reading along happily only to be flung out of the narrative by something that is just wrong, how it colors the rest of the narrative because if the writer was wrong about that, why should he be right about anything else in the story? I strive to not be that writer, or subject my readers to that experience, as best I can.
In Closing
Thanks, as always, for reading.
I write, as all writers should, to share ideas, to strive to lay it out in hopes of understanding it better and helping others to see the same ideas and build on them and introduce their own ideas back into the mix. Part of why this story ballooned into the mini-epic it did is because of the heinous lack of Jetkotara in Avatar fandom. There's smatterings of it, and people talk about it lots as their OT3, but I've yet to find any long narrative stories featuring their developing relationship, beyond finally getting together for epic sexing (and if I'm wrong, please send me a link - I would love to be proven wrong on that finding).
And that's not to say there's anything wrong with skipping to the epic sexing, just that I find epic sexing to be ever more satisfying if I see the build-up and the aftermath of it. I'll regard this fic as truly successful if I start seeing more Jetkotara emerge in its wake, inspired by or in reaction to Spirit of Winter.