Time to get back on this blog. Time to get on the year-in-review post, before anything else. Summary: 2021 was a lot better for me than 2020 was, even if the rest of the world continued to spiral into insanity. Let’s dive into the reasons why.
Remember how I had that sinus infection starting in fall 2019? In September 2020 I saw an ENT and got treated for the throat irritation that was causing it. The medication started to slowly work. Then in February 2021 I got COVID-19. COVID the first time–it did weird things to my brain. But after I got over COVID I started to feel better overall. Less sinusy. I felt well enough to go start doing things. So that made a huge difference.
I still spent way too much time in bed I had a bad habit of binging political commentary videos while playing solitaire on an electronic device, even when I was healthy. One of my New Years resolutions is to cut it out–I do think it is very important for me to make sense of the current issues, but the way I was doing it was not contributing to my overall wellness, I think. Seven days out, I haven’t relapsed. Now to fix my sleep schedule.
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.
Screenshot
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.
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.
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.
I wasn’t sure we would even GET a season two of The Mandalorian this year with the plague going around, but as it turns out producer Jon Favreau has some foresight from the Force and began shooting in November, and they finished in March. So thank your lucky stars because Baby Yoda is back!
We now have a trailer out and I have some thoughts. Most of these aren’t related to the trailer but it will come up. The beauty of season one was that it told a great story in itself but it left a LOT, I mean a LOT of openings for future adventures and mysteries to be solved.
First of all, let me comment on something that some of us may have figured out by now: Baby Yoda a.k.a. the Child is Lucasfilm’s ultimate marketing weapon. It ages slowly enough that for the entire duration of the show, for however many seasons it lasts, it will stay smol and cute. By the time the sequel trilogy era rolls around it will be getting toilet trained!
The Jedi Path
I wonder what Kuill would have told Mando about the Force if he had lived, because it’s apparent that they didn’t have that conversation about what little he knew for some reason on the trip to Nevarr. Din Djarin probably didn’t bother him while he was working on that new pram.
The voiceover in the trailer is the Armorer’s instruction to Din at the end of chapter eight of season one, telling him to return the child to “its own kind”. What does that mean? I don’t know if I want too much of the history behind Yoda or Yoda’s species de-mystified.
ON THE OTHER HAND, and we have confirmation that this will be the route that The Mandalorian will take, the Child being Force-sensitive means that it (he? she?) is a candidate to be a Jedi. The story being set after Return of the Jedi means that Luke Skywalker is out in the galaxy somewhere building a new Jedi Order (ultimately doomed to fail, thanks sequel trilogy).
Disney did the universe a favor by giving us Hamilton for the Fourth of July, instead of making us wait a year and a half. As yet, I have only seen it once. I watched it on Independence Day eve with a group of my cousins. I was going to wait, but I felt like I would enjoy it more seeing it with family, even if I wasn’t allowed to sing along this time. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t throw away my shot. This is just a few thoughts on my first viewing.
In the last five years, I have seen enough memes, photos, and GIFs of the original Broadway production of Hamilton that I already knew the show, to an extent. I’ve seen several of the Ham4Ham videos and I’ve even saved a couple to my YouTube playlists. I’ve even made my own memes and fan edits. So actually watching it all the way through was like seeing it for the tenth time instead of the first.
Yup, I’m one of those people (Pinterest)
Looking back on this weekend, I am easily tricked into thinking I actually DID watch the show on stage instead of a recording. Maybe that is because the TV it was on was 55”.
Because of the online fandom, I knew there were things I was missing from not actually seeing the stage performance, stuff that people online had discussed/revealed for the benefit of those who hadn’t seen Hamilton on Broadway or elsewhere.
He is the best bounty hunter in his part of the Outer Rim.
He is a skilled tracker and fighter, armed with blasters, bombs, and a rifle with a disintegration setting.
Whenever he walks into a crowded cantina, heads turn, eyeing his beskar armor with jealousy.
No one has seen his face. No one knows his name.
He is a Mandalorian. Those who know of him call him THE Mandalorian.
Coming Soon
Now, he’s a adoptive father of a small green creature with big ears. No one ever thought him the type, but it’s true and he would do anything for his Child. And they are the protagonists of Lucasfilm’s first live-action series set in the Star Wars universe.
The thing is, my family didn’t finally bite the bullet and buy DisneyPlus until mid-January. Up until then, I had to deal with unsuccessfully dodging spoilers.
As a rule, ever since Lucasfilm was bought by Disney I have been skeptical of any and all new Star Wars content. I was not terribly interested in The Mandalorian when it was first announced. But then the series debuted last November and episodes dropped one right after the other and the the next thing I knew *picks up Baby Yoda* I was having THIS shoved in my face all over the Internet.
baby be like “What did I ever do to you, Lizy?” (Tenor)
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
The Apprentice Chronicles 