Everything Changed When I Finally Watched ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived in peace. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation decided to try out colonialism. People aren’t kidding when they say Avatar: The Last Airbender plays with some very heavy themes. 

Anyway, yes, I have finally seen ATLA. Rejoice!

I decided earlier in 2020 that I would watch ATLA if the pandemic didn’t let up. Before then, well, all my friends had seen it and even my family had watched it without me while I was away at college. But it still took some convincing for me to want to watch it. 

The funny thing is, Avatar:The Last Airbender is so popular that I knew about 15% of the spoilers by indirect exposure….not to mention being a captive audience for the movie once when on a road trip with my family. (Sigh) that was a long night. 

(IDK why my family bought the flop movie, don’t get mad at me.)

Reddit

When I was at college I took a creative writing class during spring term my sophomore year. We studied haiku during our poetry unit. One day during break someone pulled up “The Tale of Sokka” from “Tales from Ba Sing Se” on YouTube because haiku. (Now that I know the context for that I feel bad for Zuko in that incident). 

Then in my senior year I took a Literature of the American West class (one of my favorite classes, actually). For their term paper one of my classmates did an analysis of how “Zuko Alone” and “The Chase” drew from classic westerns.

And then there’s also the fact that ATLA spoilers are frequently discussed on Tumblr, particularly Zuko’s arc in comparison to other well- or poorly-made “redemption” arcs.

BYU Memes

My tipping point? Overly Sarcastic Productions. Red frequently references Avatar: The Last Airbender in her “Trope Talks” videos–because obviously the show does the tropes so well. 

Funny story: last year ATLA was released on Netflix. I personally do not have Netflix, but it’s interesting that ATLA is having a little revival just when I’m getting into it for the first time. 

I watched the series on a sort-of bootleg site. Thank goodness my pop-up blockers worked. Once in a while the video would crash, but I was cool with that because I would hit refresh and look at memes while it loaded. I started the day before Thanksgiving, and I finished a few days before Christmas. I posted updates of my viewing journey on my Facebook, and there was excellent feedback.

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 Avatar:The Last Airbender really deserves all the accolades from its fans. The storytelling is top-notch. The worldbuilding is complex and absorbing. The character development is truly exceptional. The characters themselves are memorable and wonderful and their chemistry together is astonishingly potent. Team Avatar–or, as the fandom calls them, the Gaang–is a squad that meets all the squad goals.

And the humor spliced in is just outrageous. While most of the animation is serious and sort-of realistic, for comic relief the artists don’t shy away from cartoonish exaggeration. 

Amino Apps

Most importantly, I love how the show took the audience on the journey with the characters in a physical and a character-building sense. This blog post is about how I reacted to the series and what things I specifically liked about it. I probably don’t have anything earth-shattering-level unique to say about the show but I’m putting my thoughts out there anyways.

Silver Linings of 2020

This is sort of a belated Thanksgiving post. 2020 has been a rough year for everyone and I am not exempt from that. Thus far, I haven’t caught COVID-19 and no one else in my immediate family has contracted the illness either. My mom works as a labor and delivery nurse at a local hospital, but she and her coworkers have only had a handful of patients with the disease, and they are consistent and thorough with their safety precautions. 

My personal problems are limited to the sinus infection I’ve been fighting off and on for a year and everything being canceled. Well, cancellations aren’t as much of a problem for me because I haven’t been working and consequently I don’t have money to spend at events like comic conventions anyway, much less travel to them. So that’s more of a mixed blessing. 

In spite of all the things being cancelled, some good things have come out of this year’s crisis. I would like to share my thoughts on a few of them.   

#1 An excuse to stay home

There has never been a better time to be an introvert, as you may know already. I myself am a little socially challenged. As I said, my health has been a little sketchy this year because of the sinus infection that wouldn’t go away (I am currently taking medication to treat it, don’t worry). For a good part of the year, all of my usual social activities, most of them connected to my singles ward, were completely cancelled. Now they are slowly starting to resume. 

The rule of thumb is, if you don’t feel well or you’re medically vulnerable stay the heck home. I have asked my mother the medical expert multiple times, my sinus infection would not make COVID-19 a worse or better experience for me if I caught it. 

‘Buzz Lightyear of Star Command’ Twenty Years On

You have heard of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story franchise. But did you know he had his own television show?

The premise is simple. In Toy Story 2 (1999), Woody the cowboy doll discovers he is merchandise for a vintage children’s show called Woody’s Roundup. So someone at Pixar had the idea to give Buzz Lightyear his own show, a cartoon about the hero that inspired the toy in Andy’s world, a show about Buzz the Space Ranger fighting the evil Emperor Zurg and protecting a galaxy full of weird aliens and fabulous spaceships. 

The DVD/VHS cover for ‘The Adventure Begins” (myreviewer.com)

The debut film Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins came out in August of 2000. The series began to air on Disney’s affiliated channels a couple months later. This year marks the 20th anniversary of that premiere. 

But there hasn’t been a peep about it from Disney. 

Disney Collect put out some limited edition digital trading cards. I have seen a couple of tributes from fans. But yeah, no acknowledgement from Disney/Pixar and little noise about it overall online.

I know that Disney likes anniversaries. According to Disney+ it is the 80th anniversary of Fantasia and the 30th anniversary of Home Alone (which they can now celebrate because of the Fox deal). Why pass this one up?

Or did people celebrate earlier this year and I just missed it? It’s been a crazy year, you never know.

Buzz Lightyear and His Space Friends

In a time not so long ago, in a galaxy not quite so far away, there was a Galactic Alliance that unified the different inhabited planets and sentient beings. While parts of the galaxy were populated and connected, there were still many places that were unexplored and mysterious. The Alliance employed a force called Star Command, made up of all species who took the title of Space Rangers, to police yes but also to protect and defend the galaxy at large.

The greatest of all the Space Rangers was the one and only Buzz Lightyear. However, he could not, indeed did not, protect the galaxy alone. In a dramatic turn of events, he ended up taking not one but three young rangers under his wing.

12 YouTube Channels To Cure Your Quarantine Blues

So, COVID-19. Yeah, I’m not too thrilled about it. The way I see it, however, there’s no reason to run around like a chicken with its head cut off, either.

Chances are you’re not working right now. I’m not working, either—I’m unemployed in the first place and I haven’t gotten around to job hunting recently. Chances are, though, if I did have a job, I might still be working at the moment since I live in a small town and we haven’t had any Coronavirus cases closer than fifty miles from here. But it’s only a matter of time.

However, if YOU are quarantined and looking for entertainment that will make the most of your time, I have a few suggestions, and they’re all on YouTube, so if you aren’t subscribed to any other services then you’re in luck. It’s just a short list of some of my current favorite channels and programs.

You may notice that several of these are animal-related. It just so happens that watching animal videos is one of my favorite pastimes. If you like animals too, then maybe some of these channels are for you. Also, if you’ve got kids stuck at home, some of the channels I have listed could help you keep their education going.

1) Men of the West

 

Interests: Literature, Fandom, Tolkien

Let’s start with something geeky. If you’re really into the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien lore, then you might want to check it out. The videos are ten to twenty minutes long and each one covers a topic in the history, kingdoms, beings, and leading characters of Arda (Middle Earth + the rest of the world that J.R.R.Tolkien created). The host, Yoystan, has done background research on ALL the extra books you don’t have time to read, but you can also play it in the background and listen to it like you would a podcast. The presentation visuals include movie stills but also lots of fan artwork and vintage illustrations. If there’s a topic in Tolkien’s universe that you’re curious about—the Nazgul, elven lords, even artefacts—you’re likely to find a video about it.

Channel Link: Men of the West

New Year, New Decade, Carrying On

I feel the need to start off this decade with some brutal honesty about the last one. Okay, more like 70% brutal honesty and 30% spin.

A Decade in Review: 2010-2019

In 2010 I set off on the great adventure called Adulthood. Naturally,  I began feeling optimistic and confident about what I was doing. Predictably, I soon realized that I was in over my head.

Cougarland

The first part of the decade was devoted to my university education. In Spring 2010, I was accepted to my dream school, Brigham Young University—I wouldn’t have been happier if I’d gotten my actual acceptance letter to Hogwarts. BYU is a challenging school, and I had to work really hard to stay on top of my grades.

When I graduated from high school I wanted to be a fashion designer. My freshman year of college, I learned the hard way that fashion design probably wouldn’t be a good career choice for me—taking a sewing class that kicked my butt, for instance. 

The Joseph F. Smith Building at BYU, with a view of the Y.  Taken in 2012.

After a few months of figuring things out, I decided to do what made me happy and officially switched my major to English. I never regretted it. Even with all my employment hardships. I learned early on that what you study in college can have little or no bearing on your final career. I embraced the truth of the BYU philosophy of higher education: education is not just career training but expanding the mind, the spirit, and the heart. 

College was a time of self-discovery. I learned to embrace the things that make me different as well as finding things that make me happy. Whereas in grade school I had had problems with making friends, in college I met lots of people who were like me and that I easily made friends with, and I also befriended people who were different from me but that I was able to find common ground with.

I think in the 2010s as my generation (the millenials) came of age, a lot of us learned that there is nothing wrong with being in touch with the stuff or your childhood or never completely “growing up”—in fact, it can be healing to retain a sense of wonder. 

A Short History of the MCU in Memes

If you’ve been able to see Avengers: Endgame, good on ya. There will be a review post coming soon, I hope. There has been a lot going on on my end. Keeping with the spirit of commemorating the last eleven or so years of Marvel films, here is a walk down memory lane that shows you the funnier side of this universe.

The early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were in the early days of the internet becoming a hub for social media and meme culture. Memes as a form of humor, to my recollection, exploded in 2012, around the time The Avengers came out. You could argue that Marvel fandom invented online fandom and memes. If not, you have to at least agree that this fandom and memes have more or less always gone hand in hand.

The MCU fandom has spawned billions of images with funny captions or screenshots of Twitter and Tumblr text posts.  This saga, that many are now referring to as the Infinity Saga, is the story that the digital generation grew up with. They have celebrated it in countless ways: the examples below are just a few.

1. Iron Man Not Having a Superhero Identity Crisis

*mic drop*