#dori rambles

[aangarchy]

I just keep thinking how genuinely stupid it is to already explain why you left out certain stories or changed certain aspects BEFORE the show is even out. Fans are now deciding whether or not they'll watch based on this. Talk about shooting your own foot

[tetralea]

Should I write lestappen again?

[sunflower-dori]

Visiting my dead brother's grave for his birthday and leaving the gate to the cemetery slightly ajar to piss him off like any sibling would

[dorinahv2]

So here’s my little story in my head for (adult )Jane whom is married with (adult )Peter. They are about to get divorced, due to them both growing apart...sort of. It has more to do with each others negativity influencing each other. Peter being worse of the two. When it started to crumble down was when Peter crushed Jane’s dream to write books aimed to children and early teens. Calling it nonsense, a waste of time and no potential. This is kind of a sad twist for the boy who ended up growing up rather bitter. They do not have children due to circumstances. Even tho at some point they did discus it, but those were better times. I wont tag this because I dont want to bother people in that tag

[aangarchy]

Opinions. I have them and I want to share them. On the Netflix live action specifically.

It's a little over a year since the release of Netflix ATLA and since then I've kind of just been stewing on it angrily as if it's insulted my mother or something, and there's more things that I've been meaning to say that I never mentioned in my original reviews, specifically on why I think this live action is doomed to fail. It all has to do with media literacy, because these writers don't seem to fucking have any.

An example I want to talk about is the waterbending scroll. I want to bring this up specifically because this is a mistake m night shyamalan's movie also made. I will be referring to them as Natla (netflix atla) and tla (the last airbender movie).

Both natla and tla have the waterbending scroll in their story. I'm sure the writers gave themselves a pat on the back for including this important story element. But what is very apparent is that they do not understand why this scroll is in the story, because in both live actions Katara gets handed the scroll by someone. In tla she gets it handed by strangers who tell her it was stolen from her people by the fire nation and that she should be given it back. In natla, she gets handed the scroll from gran gran. In both of these instances this scroll can be replaced with literally any other object. It could be a rock that strengthens a bender, it could be a letter written by someone, it could be a stick. In both versions, the narrative reason for the scroll being there in the first place is missing completely.

In the original show, the scroll is specifically part of the story to develop Katara's character, because she doesn't just get it handed to her, she steals it. And it's a decision she makes herself without discussing it with anyone else. Katara going out of her way to steal the scroll from pirates, and not really seeing an issue with it because the pirates stole it from someone else first, tells us a lot about Katara's moral compass and how she sometimes likes to twist her ethics to fit her own narrative. In any other instance Katara would tell people stealing is wrong. Literally later on in book 3 she tells Toph something similar, that she can't just scam people just because they were scamming her. But because this scroll is something she desperately wants so she can improve her own waterbending, she tells herself it's fine to steal this because it didn't belong to those pirates in the first place. She believes as a waterbender she has more right to own this scroll than those pirates do. It shows us how committed she is to learning waterbending and connecting to that part of her culture, because she's willing to go quite far in order to achieve this. Later though she gets faced with the consequences of her own actions, because stealing the scroll lead to the pirates teaming up with Zuko and chasing her and her friends, which ends up endangering Aang.

In this episode she also obsesses over the scroll to a toxic degree. One of the excuses she uses to justify her stealing it is because she wants Aang to learn too. But it becomes obvious that this is just an excuse, because she tries to claim the scroll for herself by saying Aang can have his turn after she learns, even though it's kind of more prudent for Aang to learn first as the Avatar (because the episode before this we literally just learned about the comet and our end of summer deadline to learn all four elements). It shows that Katara isn't some goodie two shoes, and that she has some ugly sides to her. She can be sneaky, selfish, stubborn, immature, and has difficulties letting go when she has her mind set on something. Then when Aang gets caught by Zuko she realizes that she caused all of this, and she apologizes to Aang who then tries to be a good boy and tell her it isn't her fault, but then Iroh kind of throws it back in her face that yeah, this is in fact her fault.

This episode also shows us development between Aang and Katara's relationship. We learn that Aang being naturally better at something is a difficult thing for Katara to swallow, and while Aang tries to make her feel better by encouraging her and telling her she's a great teacher, he doesn't manage to solve the problem which is that she feels inferior to him here. Later on, he acknowledges that just like him, Katara is a waterbender. She doesn't just know some waterbending moves, she IS a waterbender. Then they work together to escape, this makes Katara feel better, and it strengthens their bond.

This entire plotline is the reason for the waterbending scroll existing in the original storyline, but all of that is missing from both live actions even though they also have the waterbending scroll in their story. I'm sure these live action writers don't see the problem, they probably think the pirate episode is just filler they can cut without consequences, because the scroll is the only thing that's retained in the rest of the story after this episode. But that's simply not the case. This episode is much more consequential, even though it's not immediately obvious or visible, and that's what these live action writers do not seem to grasp, which is what I mean when I say they lack media literacy. They think the only thing that makes that episode worthwhile is the object that is obtained, and because they don't want to go through the hassle of adapting the whole pirate episode the only element they keep is the scroll. But everything about this scroll and why it's narratively necessary is removed.

This lack of understanding of character development and how to write a good story is why Katara's character is so bland in both live actions. All her agency gets removed. She doesn't decide to steal the scroll, she doesn't decide to help Aang save the world, she doesn't decide to ignore Sokka's instincts on Jet, she doesn't decide to deliberately ignore the northern watertribe's customs on bending.

The worst part for natla specifically is that the writers seem to understand that certain moments in the show need to happen, but they don't understand why. Katara needs to fight Pakku because she's so angry about the northern watertribe's sexism, this ties in to Sokka's sexism earlier in the season. She went through the trouble of traveling all the way to the north, stealing a waterbending scroll, getting burned by Aang on accident to discover her healing abilities, and now she's being told she can't train to fight simply because she's a girl? She's been confronted with sexism her whole life and she knows she's capable of more, so she's done succumbing to it, she fights the patriarchy by fighting Pakku. In natla she fights him too, but her anger lies solely with Pakku not willing to teach her, and not with sexism as a whole. She didn't fight that whole season in natla in order to learn waterbending, she just simply trained a bit and got better because boys told her she was strong, so there's no anger for her to feel towards Pakku because there's no buildup. The writers know the Pakku fight needs to happen but they removed everything in the story that leads to Katara fighting Pakku.

A similar thing happens with certain side characters. The writers understand that Teo and The Mechanist are important characters, and we need to add them so we can have them show up for the invasion too. But they don't understand what their purpose was in the original show in the first place, which was character development for Aang. Similar with Jet, he was there for Sokka's character, this episode showed us Sokka is intuitive and intelligent, but doesn't get taken seriously because he's the goofy nonbender older brother. That also gets removed in natla, because Sokka doesn't even interact with Jet more than once. He doesn't even get told Jet's name at all!

This is the biggest writing flaw that is recurring throughout the whole first season of natla, and probably won't be solved in the next seasons. I've seen a lot of people say natla is good because they got more things right than tla, but imo natla is just as bad as tla with similar reasons. Just because the costumes looked more like the original, or because they added more things that happened in the original than the movie did, does not mean natla is good whatsoever. I'd argue it kind of even makes it worse, because natla shows the trouble these people went through to have more accuracy than the shyamalan movie, and yet they still missed the mark this badly. I'm honestly angrier at this live action than the movie, and I might not be the only one.

[aangarchy]

Just cried while watching the finale of book 1, specifically after the chief of the north said he is so proud of yue, but so sad to lose her, which i've NEVER cried at before

If this is what this rewatch is gonna be like for me i'm absolutely fucked at the book 3 finale i'm gonna see that kataang kiss and i'm gonna sob

[aangarchy]

I'm gonna be transparent for a sec

You may have noticed I'm not as active this year as I used to be in the past. Partially this is because I just don't frequent tumblr as much anymore as I used to, and I'm starting to feel less and less involved in the atla fandom as a whole. I also just feel like a lot of jokes and a lot of thinkpieces have already been made several times over, and I don't feel like rewording the same point or remaking the same critique/analysis over and over just to make something new.

The fandom on twitter (specifically the kataang community) has reignited some of my passion for the show, and obviously I will always love this show and I still do my traditional rewatch every year. But I just haven't felt as inspired or haven't had anything new to say about it recently. Another problem is that tumblr has basically become a graveyard of old deactivated users and bots. I have over 20k followers, most of which are inactive. The numbers barely mean anything anymore.

I also turned 26 last summer, and I'm starting to feel more like my life is becoming less and less online as I'm growing in my career, making irl connections and hopefully one day starting a family. I'm way more committed to my real, physical life nowadays which in turn leaves me even less time to casually scroll tumblr to find stuff to reblog.

What I'm thinking is that I'll still post once in a while but it'll just be way less frequent than it has been up til now (switching from every three/four days to once a week or even once every 10 days, or just whenever I have something to say or a joke to make), and I'll be using my queue more than I have been. This will probably change to more frequent again once new content drops (the new show or the next two seasons of the netflix la, a new book, etc).

But yeah this is my announcement for a partial activity hiatus. I'm really grateful for the time I've spent in this amazing community on tumblr, and I'll always have great memories to look back on.

[aangarchy]

me: hey the agent wants me to unblock this client's account and i know i'm not allowed to do it but he's insisting what do i tell him?

my small angry sicilian coworker: tell him "fuck you".