#outrage clicks

[leggy-is-sick-of-your-shit]

you just KNOW they wrote that headline the way they did for outrage clicks.

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

I love when the people who complain the show doesn't follow the books unintentionally reveal that they have never read the books.

[camellcat]

CAMPBELL BAIN U MEAN EVERYTHING TO ME I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

fun extras since this took me FOREVER!!

anddd finally, here's a playlist of the music I listened to while working on this! it's definitely not my usual tunes but I swear I was just so much more productive and better at drawing him when I switched to these hahaha

[minecraftian1213]

[faunandfloraas]

Tbh nothing represents the tumblr user base as being all bark and no bite more than the fact I reblogged a petition the other day that had 10,000 notes and then when I went to actually sign the petition it had less than 2,000 signatures. Like yeah, that's tumblr.

[highfantasy-soul]

Re: Netflix's live-action Avatar the Last Airbender

I was 12 when the animated series started airing.

I caught episodes as they came on Nickelodeon, but I didn’t watch it religiously start-to-finish. I caught episodes when they happened to be on and I happened to be watching TV (I was NOT part of the generation that had unlimited access to shows - tv/computer/video game time was strictly monitored in my household) so there were some episodes I saw over and over again, and others I never did see.

I think it was around middle/high school (honestly can't remember - it was one of the two) that the show got put on Netflix and I started watching it from the beginning with my brother and some friends. Needless to say, I've been a die-hard fan ever since.

I think the animated show is incredibly well done and the storytelling is super on-point for what I love in media. Zuko's redemption arc is still the best arc I've ever seen, and the character growth is amazing.

I had never really fallen into the 'it's not perfect, but…' way of analyzing media, so I never dwelt too much on its flaws - I'd much rather focus on the things it got right as literally every piece of media has flaws and things that could be changed to make it better.

So yeah, hyperbolically, the animated version of ATLA is 'perfect' - but since people insist on anything that's not perfect being drug through the mud and hyperbolically being called 'garbage', I guess I have to dredge up the things I didn't care so much for in the animated version while analyzing how the live-action handled it (or avoided handling it).

I was super excited for the film adaptation - again, announced while I was in high school. I was looking forward to it so much - then, well, we know what happened there.

Things were changed that didn't make sense to change (the pronunciation of character names, the 'test' for figuring out who the Avatar is, the poor bending where movements didn't align to what was happening with the CGI, casting of white people when the characters were always meant to be indigenous and all asian ethnicities, among other issues people have made many essays about)

So, when this was first announced, I was SKEPTICAL.

While the trailer looked good, it seemed very safe - I recognized everything in it and it looked well made, but like, that doesn't mean the whole thing will be good - or justify its existence.

I tried to ignore any 'leaks' or interview quotes because those are always misconstrued so much and people hear one sentence and create a massive narrative in their head about what that sentence means and usually, all their bellyaching assumptions they made from that piece of info is just a non-issue once the show actually comes out.

I didn't give any credence to people screaming about "Sokka isn't going to be sexist anymore?? It's ruined!!" or "They're going for a Game of Thrones tone?? They don't understand Avatar at all!!" or "No side-quests?? They don't understand the point of the show!!"

First off, invoking the demon that is Game of Thrones is just a marketing tactic - that's all it is: MARKETING!! Just like EVERY YA book for years was 'The new Hunger Games' now it's 'The new Game of Thrones' even when the story at hand is NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THOSE THINGS!! It's literally, let me cradle your face gently in my hands, JUST a marketing ploy to get you to see a recent title you DO recognize and have (assumedly) heard good things about (ie popular) so that you then pick up the thing that they slapped that name onto.

Creators rarely have say in what their creation is likened to, they're told by marketing companies to go with it (if they're told anything at all) and they just say "yes, marketing team I have no control over, whatever you say".

Also, a passing comment in an interview is off-the cuff and when someone makes a comment like that, people read WAY too far into it and it's usually not nearly as deep as people make it out to be. That's why I just wait for the actual thing to come out and just watch it and judge it based on what it is, not some narrative someone else has created for it based on half a quote from some random interview.

So going into this: why the live-action adaptation? Why was it necessary?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is the thing many fans hate the most: altering the original story.

A beat-for-beat remake isn't necessary - the original is right there, so in order to 'earn' the right for this adaptation to exist, that necessitates changes to be made that add to the themes, deepen the lore, and delve into different aspects of the world in ways a child's cartoon can't.

So, I'm looking for not a 1-1 remake, but rather an adaptation that enhances the themes, irons out some uneven characterization/pacing, updates the story just enough to really get what they want to across, and delve more directly into some of the harsher aspects of the war.

I have always felt that Iroh's involvement in the Fire Nation military was glossed over a lot in the cartoon - I suspect because he's supposed to be a good guy and we can't have our good guys be overtly war criminals responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

The effects of hard decisions made during war are shown in the animation, but the decision making process itself is rarely talked about until the very end with the gaang's struggle to keep helping people while also knowing where to focus their energy and Aang's struggle finding a way to stop the firelord without killing him.

something this adaptation can do is actually show the people making the decisions - and directly talking about the horrible effects of it. I'll get to it later, but that's one of the major themes in Episode 4 that I'll talk more on then.

Especially in Book 1, like many first books/seasons, the worldbuilding isn't fully fleshed out and the themes that really come to fruition later aren't as tight as they could be at the beginning. If the adaptation can go ahead and seed/tighten the themes that become big deals later on here at the beginning, it will 'justify' it's existence as the story retold after the whole story has already been plotted out.

Just like with the Percy Jackson and Wheel of Time adaptation, those writing for the show have the benefit of knowing how the story ends and all the stuff that's added to the world building as time goes on that wasn't necessarily known by the authors when they wrote and published the first books - the benefit of hindsight allows the show's script to take into consideration these additions and seed them early on to make the story more cohesive and reinforce themes.

So, this analysis is going to be long and filled with minute details, beat by beat for the episodes.

I have seen so many takes that I just sit and scratch my head at and think 'that was so obvious in the show - how did you miss/misinterpret that thing so wildly?' that I guess what I took for granted as obvious in the show, others didn't, so here's me being pedantic and over-explaining everything so maybe others can see that 1) they aren't the only ones who saw this interpretation and 2) maybe others will see the scenes a different way

Still trying to decide how to break up the analysis as the episode recaps are going to be LONG and since people now demand to see all the citations for stuff, the character analysis posts will be long too as I pull direct scenes to show why I feel the way I do.

I don't want to overload the posts and make it so they're just annoying to read, so I'll probably break them up into the sections of the episodes and maybe break up the character posts.

[Masterlist of my NATLA thoughts]

[francesderwent]

to the anon who sent me a twitter link, I have a policy not to click on things sent to me by strangers. feel better babes ✌️

[cliveguy]

people on twitter are still trying to have 'rational' arguments with extreme transphobes. like sorry i think graham linehan might just be a tiny bit too far gone to be fixed by watching the matrix.

[travisdermotts]

if it isn't "load management is stupid" it's "why did he play game 82"

if it isn't "willy is invisible out there" it's "where is he? why isn't he in the lineup?"

if it isn't "rick tocchet said too much about injuries to the media" it's "sheldon keefe isn't saying enough

[acadianideals]

some ghoul [and harold] doodles

[mahounoaho]

I clicked for frogs, and I didn’t get frogs...

[greenlikethesea]

i may be swinging a bat at a hornet's nest here, but what is this website for if not controversy: i do think it's a little funny that every time a mediocre to bad pitchfork review comes out for a tumblr fave, their fanbases act as though it's the only time the publication has ever done this. they're an outrage machine. their staff has very specific tastes, and have given albums that were universally acclaimed by other publications middling ratings. it doesn't mean that the reviewer doesn't understand your blorbo. they just didn't like it. your blorbo is doing just fine because of YOU.

[21stcenturyschizoidfag]

my post has officially reached the wastoid part of this site

[alienscumbag]

I think it's very ridiculous that people can understand that 100 dollars right now doesn't give you enough groceries for a week but can't understand why an artist would charge 100 for a commission that will take them several days

[caparrucia]

The thing that irritates me about YouTubers making video essays about fandom drama long past is the way it's almost always presented as a stupid, nonsense anthill made out to be a mountain.

And like, the most important thing I learned in journalism and investigative reporting is the value of empathy for the people involved. You're an outsider, of course you don't care about it. Of course you're tempted to look at it from hindsight and assign easy roles to the people involved, but it never fails to highlight how these people look at others as entertainment fodder. The fact they are monetizing their cruel navelgazing is just another layer of gross.

The reason things escalate in fandom the way they do, it's because people care about it. And if you come in and fundamentally refuse to extend even the smallest bit of empathy to try and understand why people care so much, I just don't care what you have to say about it, because the whole exercise is for the sake of making you come out as the smartest, most rational person.

It's also a deeply white thing, because it's the main MO of whiteness when encountering social structures it doesn't consider its own. It's such a gross "let me explain why people are stupid" kind of vibe, you know?

It's never about the people who get hurt, it's always about the people who do harm and in a roundabout way, how the people they've harmed sort of deserve it, because they didn't see it coming.

It's just gross.

No one cares about your opinion on a fandom feud two decades old, but to come out and say "yeah, the asshole in question was an asshole, but the people they hurt are kind of stupid for not seeing it coming"? That's just embarrassing.

[odessastone]

Funny to see people like “wait I thought they canceled the story missions??” like if you’d read any of the actual announcements about it you’d know they never said that lol