leia organa truly has one of the best bait-and-switch character introductions of all time because when you meet her she's this brave, stoic picture of elegance and justice and always knows just what to say to vader and tarkin and is clad in white like an angel and is this perfect two-dimensional archetype of pureness of heart. and then approximately half an hour later into the film she meets luke and han and she IMMEDIATELY shows her true colors as a sarcastic, bitchy control freak with a massive impulsive streak and a deep mine of hyperspecific insults. 10/10 character design i'm obsessed with her
I’m sorry but….this is hilarious to me😂. Zuko literally leaving his fighting pose to yell at his little sister is both so in character and such a sibling move.
This is the second half of a post about two things: season 2 of Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender (which I enjoyed) and the fan reactions I've seen to it online (which I have not enjoyed).
It was supposed to just be one post, but it got so long that I split it into two - you can find the much more fun and upbeat half here.
The Fan Reactions (sad)
(Under a cut due to length)
Picture it: last weekend, having just finished the last episode, filled with glee and fan feelings, I go into the 'live action Avatar' tag to see if there are any gifs I can repost.
Not only are gifs extremely difficult to find, probably at least half of what I find is hate. (The other half is Zutara shippers doing giddy frame-by-frame analyses of every scene that's even remotely relevant, which, I'm genuinely glad you guys are having fun even if I don't join in your specific joy. That right there is a time-honored fan activity.)
First of all, there's the Exhausted Fandom Old reaction of "Come on, guys, don't put your hate in the tag." Second of all, the reactions I saw until I was too depressed to keep reading seemed to be:
It's not how I wanted them to do it, so I hate it
It's not how I wanted them to do it, so they obviously hate us and the show
How dare they leave out/change/reorder/not exactly replicate x from the animated show
I watched the trailer for Season 2 and drew a lot of conclusions that are objectively correct to me and that's why I'm not even going to watch the show at all
People who do watch the show are not true fans
(There was also a frankly ridiculous amount of fatphobia directed at Mai's actress, which I have decided does not deserve a bullet point because those people are just enjoying getting to bully someone who can't respond to them, and frankly it's embarrassing.)
A Note On Adapting Things
I've watched a lot of adaptations in my time, and some have been good and some have been bad and most have been somewhere in the middle. Book to movie, animated to live action, show to movie, movie to show - there are a lot to choose from. I'm going to use the M. Night Shyamalan ATLA movie adaptation to illustrate several of the missteps a creative team can make in an adaptation:
Length. Shyamalan had a 20-episode source text he was trying to make into a two-hour movie. That's at best a challenge and at worst impossible. There's simply no way to fit all of the plot points, fan-favorite beats, and character development into a two-hour movie. You have to pick and choose, and unfortunately for all of us, Shyamalan chose:
Prioritizing the plot over the characters. What we ended up with was a whooole lot of voice-over narration, which made the movie feel rushed. It was like sitting through a checklist, not a story, and having so much character development happen offscreen made it feel soulless to boot.
Failing to navigate the medium change. On the face of it, animation to live action seems like it would be easier than, say, book to movie, because at least you're dealing with two visual mediums. You don't have to worry about what fan consensus (lol) might be about what bending might look like - you have it right in front of you! The work is already done! Shyamalan managed to fumble the bending visuals, and that made the whole movie hard to take seriously. If you've seen his version, I'm sure you remember the entire group of Earthbenders working together to make a small rock fly across the screen in a straight line. It certainly still haunts me.
How the Live Action Netflix Show Adapted Things
Obviously, being better than the famously awful 2010 movie is a low bar to clear, and using it as my comparison above is a little unfair (but only a little, because I know I am not the only one who watched the live action series with the movie in mind).
However, since the Netflix showrunners were taking a 20-episode animated show and turning it into less-than-10-episodes-per-season live action, they did have these same things to deal with too. It meant they had to cut stuff, reorder stuff, and make everything look good. They needed to do it in such a way that fans recognized what they saw but weren't bored stiff by the execution. They needed to nail the balance between longtime fan engagement and new viewer comprehension, and they needed to do it within the parameters (budget, runtime, etc) of the Netflix number-crunchers who greenlit the project.
That's a difficult plane to land! And not everyone is going to agree with how it worked - not every thing is for every person - but personally, I felt like they succeeded. The bending and the costumes look good, I'm so thrilled to not have a white-washed cast I can't even articulate it, and they've concentrated on the characters, which at the end of the day are the heart of the show. They can't fit everything in with the runtime they've got, but I'm honestly astonished by how much they did fit.
I can't suddenly watch this show without any memory of the original animation (or the live action movie, rip me), so I can only come to this table with longtime fan perspective. I enjoyed the nods to the stuff that had to get cut, and I felt like overall they did capture the spirit of the original even if they had to rewrite a lot. Seeing how they restructured the narrative made the show feel fresh and not predictable. And some of the characters even get more development than they did in the animated series! (A more exhaustive list of my likes is here - this post was wordy enough already!)
Are there things I didn't feel landed quite right, or bits I didn't think worked? Of course! But overall the balance was tilted much more heavily towards things I did like, and very few things are going to ever be completely awful or completely good. Most of existence falls on a continuum between horrible and excellent, and I have learned to appreciate the overall average. And by my standards, the overall average of season 2 was great.
I Didn't Watch It And If You Did You're Not A Real Fan
Look. If you don't want to watch the show, go ahead and don't watch the show. There's too much cool stuff in the world to spend your time sitting through something you're not going to like. Not every thing is for every person. But a) you don't need to put it in the tag, and b) you sound a lot less authoritative than you think you do when you grab ahold of a bunch of conclusions you've made based on a trailer and then don't check to see if those conclusions were correct before presenting them as facts.
Is pointing out the downsides and failures of pop cultural touchstones an important conversation to be had? Is it your right to share all of your thoughts and feelings?
Yes, definitely, to both of those things. To grab one example, I would be astonished if the backlash to the casting choices in the 2010 movie didn't play a big role in the beautiful multicultural cast we're now getting to enjoy in the live action show. But there's a difference between engaging with something critically, and loudly declaring something worthless without having watched it.
(Caveat, because I'm sure someone will bring it up: no, this does not apply to Harry Potter. Engaging with Harry Potter enriches and gives greater cultural power to a bigoted creator who is actively trying to hurt people. In Harry Potter's case, the most compassionate thing to do is refuse to talk about the show at all once it's released, and let it die in obscurity.)
This is the first half of a post about two things: season 2 of Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender (which I enjoyed) and the fan reactions I've seen to it online (which I have not enjoyed).
It was supposed to just be one post, but it got so long that I split it into two - you can find the less fun and more metatextual half here.
My Reactions (happy!)
Presented in no particular order, and under a cut because of both length and spoilers:
It was a very long shot, but omg it would have been so funny to have The Rock play The Boulder.
I like that they're giving Sokka's grief over Yue time to breathe - it sometimes felt a little sidelined in the animated series. Also it is hilarious to see him watch Katara jump on an ice surfboard to go fight a sea monster and go "That's not safe!"
Zuko during the fight with Iroh: "Everything bad that has happened to me was because you didn't want to be Firelord." OW. That's true, and also ow.
I love the backstory we get of Ursa. That actress is very good.
I like that we get to see how toxic Ozai is as a parent and a husband - it really lays a lot of groundwork for *gestures* Zuko and Azula's everything. By the time we hit the final fight under Lake Laogai all they have to do is exchange a look and there's about three years of foreshadowing that pays off.
I like that we get to see Toph as an awesome earthbender (I really love how they show her earthbending in contrast to everyone else's) and also as an authority on court politics and manners. She may hate everything about high society, but she knows her stuff.
All the Toph-and-her-mom parts are very juicy. There is some interesting psychology happening in the mom's head for sure.
I wish that we got a little more of Sokka-the-planner - they're leaning mostly on his comedic role (which the actor is very good at) but I like it when we get to see that he is both goofy and smart.
That having been said, I love him and Suki so much.
I also love that we get Suki and Katara! So fun!
Sokka and Katara sibling moments! The messing with each other parts and the serious conversation parts, I love them both.
Having Sai carry the Great Comet plotline was very clever.
I like the Blue Spirit being a Fire Nation folktale.
The Joo Dee stuff is SO CREEPY, well done show.
I am so intrigued by some of the Azula-Mai-Ty Lee groundwork they seem to be laying - I'm looking forward to that payoff in season 3.
They managed to keep Toph and Iroh talking over tea!!!
When Iroh turned the corner and saw the tree from 'Tales of Ba Sing Se' I said 'oh no' out loud. For a minute there it seemed like it was just going to be a nod, and then OH NO.
I love that they combined Sokka's poetry battle with him-and-Toph character development, that was very clever. Actually, the way they worked so much of 'Tales of Ba Sing Se' into the season was really clever too.
The Spirit Library has books with RAISED CHARACTERS!!! YES!!!!
Katara and Aang fighting the sea serpent was so visually cool.
Having the former Avatars in the Spirit Library was excellent.
The scene of Zuko and Azula's mom trying to flee with her kids, augh.
The actress playing Azula (big Azula, I mean, although little Azula was also very good) is so much fun to watch. I hope she's having as much fun as she seems to be.
Toph, The Boulder, and Xin Fu all trying to teach Aang their own approaches to earthbending at the same time made me laugh.
I really like the way they handled Iroh's arc this season. ATLA has long been the standout example of a well-handled redemption arc (Zuko) and seeing Iroh get one too makes me realize that it was a missed opportunity in the animated series. The symmetry of it is nice.
Longshot and Smellerbee are so good and I wish there had been time for more of them. There must be a great fic somewhere about what they're up to in Ba Sing Se while Jet's doing his... fall from grace, is all I'm saying.
I do feel that while Zuko's attempt at being 'good' was believable and I love that they kept his dramatic mindset change fever (such a theater kid, also the fever dream was very well done), his face-heel-turn afterwards didn't feel quite as earned.
I wonder if season 3 will dig in a little more to the fact that Azula genuinely thought Zuko was dead until partway through season 2. They're going to be interacting directly a lot more from now on.
They are laying the groundwork for Boiling Rock and I am anticipating.
Ahahahaha Toph's nicknames for Aang: "Flight Risk". "Bald Sing Se".
[Image s are lineart headshots of 7 black male DC characters, focusing on their hairstyles.
Wally West/Kid Flash - shaved sides with criss-crossing cornrows on the top that fall in little braids at the back. He's the only one where we get a reference photo.
Duke Thomas/Signal - shaved sides and short twists on top with gold cuffs.
Jace Fox/Batman - natural hair and a goatee.
Luke Fox/Batwing - a halo of twist-outs or loose locs.
John Stewart/Green Lantern - shaved sides with thick cornrows on top that become long braids, and a circle beard. Images below the cut show the style first without the long braids and beard, and then just without the beard, and finally in the finished version.
John Henry Irons/Steel - shaved sides with what might be sponge twists on top, and a van dyke beard.
Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning - neat beard, sides in cornrows (I think), and short locs with a side part.
Ryland Grace and his popularity as a character feels like such an important step in repairing the cultural tsunami left by the long running trope of every genius character needing to be an insufferable asshole to everyone in a ten mile radios about it.
Conversely, Eva Stratt is doing wonders for repairing and inspiring a appreciation for commanding women with dubious moral convictions who are fully willing to bend laws for the greater good without hesitation.
Ooooh, we have a bunch of really fancy pedestrian traffic lights in Germany! I need to share:
Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):
The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:
Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):
Traffic light lady in Bremen:
Karl Marx light in Trier:
Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:
Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):
A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:
Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:
Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:
