OMGOMGOMG THISSSSS

hakoda hugging his kids knowing he might never see them again...

“is it real”

we’re so starved for atla content lmao

Finally ran into them!

I hope they don't capture me...

ARE YOU KIDDING ME THIS IS THE CUTEST SHIT EVER

begging the Netflix ATLA crew to stop giving interviews, every day there is a new article inflaming the Internet and you can literally see the Sims relationship decline animation happening in real time

Kataang moments of the videogame Avatar Quest of Balance

you guys remember the northern water tribes Secret spirit oasis??

you know, the one that is hidden and not general knowledge because it's the home of two real spirits in defenceless koi fish form????

the SECRET OASIS???? THAT IS SECRET?????

So Avatar: The last Airbender Quest For Balance is a flop, as we all suspected the moment the trailer for the game dropped. Honestly, instead of working on that game, they should have given these two games a remaster and ported them to modern consoles:

I had a lot of fun playing these two games as a kid, especially Into the Inferno. The battles went smoothly. They had none of the stupid puzzles that Quest For Balance seems to love for basically every boss fight. The best part? These games actually got the costumes for the character's right, something that I noticed Quest For Balance failed to do, especially with Katara. Like, why is she still in her book 2 outfit during the book 3 fights😭. It looked so weird, especially during the Last Agni Kai boss fight.

Yet Into the Inferno managed to get it right. A game that came out back in 2008. Seemed like the developers back then put a lot of time and effort into making this game, compared to the developers of Quest For Balance. The entire game just feels lazily done.

Avatar The Last Airbender - Quest for Balance Review (Switch)

Ooh, interesting...I've never played an Avatar game before; wonder if this will be any good. Kind of reminds me of Zelda [possibly?]

I wonder if you can be everyone

Can I master the elements if I can't even Jump right?

(I was wondering for a while if I should edit this post to be neater, or erase the things I've already said, but after all I decided to keep it just as it was, because over the past few months I was adding more and more thoughts to it as I edited, and I wanted to keep them that way, unedited and just the way they came to me. so here are some thoughts I had while editing the newsletter)

editing LOTR to go chronologically felt like constantly finding some hidden gems that can only be found when you read that way, and wondering if they were put there intentionally (and knowing jirt, they most probably were). it was a truly, deeply special experience, and a unique way of experiencing LOTR to me

there are so many fragments where jirt says what happens after everything! the ponies were okay, Pippin cried when he heard horns after the battle of Pelennor fields for years to come, even the prologue reveals some information about who survived the War

the long breaks in Rivendell and Lórien were very interesting in this format. some people were remarking how they liked thinking about the fellowship just chilling during those breaks, and I think it created a nice effect of both the characters and us forgetting how close the danger is for them. it let us take those breaks with them!

the only part of the quest that doesn't have a date assigned to it takes part in Lórien, it's the one where Frodo and Sam sing about Gandalf. and it's SUCH a good detail! Tolkien kept track of every event, of dates and even times of day for the entire duration of the quest, but this fragment is just Somewhere There, because in Lórien time seems to stand still, and you can never know when you are

the only other fragments which are confusing time-wise take place during the dark days with no sun, which is of course a great writing choice, but even they are described in Appendix B - the Lórien fragment has no date, no reference point, nothing

it doesn't hit you that much when you read the book, but the battle of Helm's Deep happened literally just one (1) week after the breaking of the Fellowship. Aragorn was out there having the Worst Week Of His Fucking Life

I loved feeling the impact of certain events more while reading chronologically (the three hunters running for days made more impact on me when I was sending yet another entry and they were still running)

before actually going through TTT and ROTK, I was preparing for very long entries for each day. but after the Tower of Cirith Ungol and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (March 15th), the next ten days before the Ring is destroyed are so... empty in comparison. and it works amazingly well when you read according to dates. we hear just enough from Aragorn and the Host of the West to let the tension grow and grow. we hear just enough from Frodo and Sam to feel the oppressive atmosphere of these entries. but on the other hand, the entries are short enough to set our imaginations to work and make them fill in the rest. to me it's the perfect balance of the horror you read about and the horror you know is still there even after you close the book. this is what I mean by hidden gems, because it works that well only when you read day-by-day - in the book those fragments are just a few pages long, and you can get through those ten days very fast. but when you read according to dates, the torment is spread over so much time

the previous point is why I loved seeing the pacing in LOTR this way. in LOTR, so much can happen in ten days; and yet so little happened between march 15th and 25th besides fear and suffering

there was one part that gave me a headache because I spent so long trying to figure it out I forgot to eat - March 10th-14th in the Frodo and Sam subplot. it was a huge relief when I opened my atlas of Middle-earth and found its author Karen Wynn Fonstad had the same doubts when she'd been researching for the book that I did (and also that she arrived at the same conclusion).

apart from the March 11th-14th fragments, the most challenging day to edit was March 15th because Everything Happened So Much, and many things - simultaneously. it was a choice between chopping certain fragments into really small bits or sacrificing the impact of certain scenes

the only thing I'm sad about losing in this format is the ending, because Frodo getting ill and leaving Middle-Earth in fall, the same season as when he first set out, brackets the plot of LOTR such a beautiful and heartbreaking way and underlines one last time that "there and back again" is never really just that - you always end up somewhere else than where you started

NEW SUKKAAAAAAA (from atla: quest for balance)

Zuko's redemption and his sister's breakdown. Iroh's crimes and his quest for his own redemption. The way war disproportionately affects different nations and internal, smaller communities. The anti-imperialism/colonialism. The martial arts forms and the way they all feel so thoughtful. The world building. The richness of the cultures, and the references to real life cultures. The pro-pacifism and pro-multicultural messages.

The richness of the characters who grow and change and never stay the same, whether they gain more patience or more skills as they train. The balancing of the humor with the drama and the gorgeous animation. The action and the character growth.

The uniqueness of all the characters, who are never just one-note, who all have different motivations and ways of doing things.

The perfect ending, with its pacifist and optimistic tone.

The healing of the world. The end of an empire. The beginning of a near era of peace.

There will never be another show like ATLA.

If there is any property that actually deserves the term "peak," it is ATLA.

it cannot be ruined by any following adaptation, because we will always have that one perfect thing.