NATLA Review - spoilers

Woke up today still feeling annoyed after finished the Netflix ATLA remake last night, and I think I've figured out the core reason.

It's the fact that: If they had held truer to the original source material, we could have had a truly great show. I disagree with those calling it a complete disaster. The acting was good, great in some cases. The effects were very well done, the bending looked about as good as it can in a live action media. The scenery was lovely.

But what happened in the writer's room?! The way they just reveal all the back stories up front EVERY TIME is honestly insulting to the audience. It's like they're so terrified that smartphone culture has made the public so accustomed to instant gratification that they have no faith we will stick around and keep watching if they make us wait for anything.

They're also clearly terrified of complexity. One of my biggest gripes with this remake is Jet's story. They completely took out his plans to murder a whole town of innocents in order to get a few enemy soldiers. Now, Jet isn't my favorite character, but his story is so important. Because it is real. The world is full of people who have been so brought down by injustice that they lose their sense of right and wrong, and we need to see that on screen. If Jet is too complex for them, how will they handle Ba Sing Se in the second season.

This goes along the same lines as removing Sokka's sexist moments. They felt they had to do it to make him more 'likable.' Yet the writers themselves went full sexist on Katara's character. They've taken out so much of her spark, her righteous and justified anger, and they've done it because even in 2024, people expect women to be more passive to be palatable. Enough people have already commented on them removing Aang's choice to run away. Heaven forbid the main character not be an absolute paragon. Did y'all notice that they even made Hahn likable? Hahn?! What reason do you have for making Hahn likable Netflix?! His role in the narrative is to be an example of toxic masculinity that is clearly the bad choice compared to Sokka who has learned and grown out of his own.

Don't even get me started with what they're doing with the fire nation family, I'm not ready to tackle that. In general, I have no problem with Azula getting a little more backstory and humanizing, but why season 1? Throwing in all these extra scenes just sacrifices screen-time where they could've actually fleshed out the real season one plots instead of rushing through things at breakneck pace. (ex: Aang escaping Zuko's ship in about 2 minutes flat)

At the end of the day, the scenes I most enjoyed were those that held true to the original like the Blue Spirit sequences. They could've easily done more of this, held onto the important plot points and even more important character complexity, while maturing it for an adult audience. I'm not disagreeing with every change they made. Go ahead and take out the silly Nickelodeon gags, add cussing and more realistic violence to get your mainstream viewers. Go ahead. They could've easily made a darker more mature version of the show and still held onto all the old fans in my opinion. But claiming that you're making a 'more mature' version and then removing the complexity and subtlety because they didn't think viewers could handle it...

What makes me most sad is that there are a lot of people who will experience ATLA for the first time through this show. There are a lot of adults who are not willing to watch original ATLA because they refuse to acknowledge an animated series can be anything other than a kid's show. Those people will watch this and think it's the real deal, and that just makes me sad.

If you've read this far, a very sincere thank you for listening to my rant. If you're an OG fan who enjoyed it, I have no problem with you. It was a fun watch, I was just hoping for more. If you are a new viewer who has never seen ATLA before, I sincerely want to hear your opinions. Is it a great show to someone who isn't holding it against the context of the original? And do you plan to watch the original now?

One of the great joys of learning a second language : learning about outside perspectives of your own culture. credit : ARTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j1UDBqR-oM&t=308s

Austria almost got me with their inexplicable song about Edgar Allen Poe, but the Albanian Addam’s family has stolen my heart with their mini rock opera. 

ESC2023 semifinal

So far tonight:

Croatia served deranged Village People do the macarena, later possessed by Wario. 

Moldova served ancient sorcerers cast a spell on the audience complete with dwarf killing it on mysterious pipes. 

Czechia served girl power coven with hair whips ?!

Finland served fluorescent goths escape from local haunted house. 

Who the heck am I supposed to vote for ?! 

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

2,121,566 people are not Amanda and counting!

We’ll find you Amanda.

Too many thoughts on this to just do a comment, so time for a rare re-blog that only 2 or 3 people will read. I am also an American doing her best to make a new life in Europe. I came here to do a masters degree as a long-game to find a job and stick around. (school now finished, but getting a full-time job still in progress). 

I was one of those Americans who had only rarely left the US until I came here to study. In my case, I had been to Canada (since I’m from a Northern state very close to the border), and I had gone on one college student trip to Italy (which I had won a scholarship for). Before that trip to Italy at age 20, I had never been on an airplane. My father has never been on one in his entire life, and considering he’s now an old man, likely never will. Growing up, my parents always said ‘flying is for the rich.’ I never made more than 30 k before deciding to go for the masters at age 35, and that was only in the past couple years when I was working a job I hated which had me work seven days a week, and acted like they were super generous to give 5 days vacation (which were ALSO the sick days). Of course, those days were mostly only for show because I could only take them if business was slow enough that they could spare me. Usually when I did take days, they would still need me to check my emails and work phone voicemails while I was gone in case something came up that needed to be handled urgently. Before that job, I had been doing gig economy combo of multiple part-time jobs and generally made 20k or less per year my entire adult life. 

Saving the money to get over here meant I spent many years living like a nun who shunned all material success and worldly pleasures. (no, I had no help from my family, they don’t have money either) Anyway, I know that’s a lot of backstory, but all this to say when I arrived and started meeting European classmates and telling them about my life in the US, they were utterly shocked. They had never met someone like me. They had no idea working-poor Americans existed. They had no idea we have basically no worker’s rights and aren’t even entitled to sick days in most of the country. They had mostly only met those rich Americans who had that lucky combo of high income and paid-time off that allowed a European vacation. (a dream for many US citizens) Now, to be fair, most Americans don’t know a lot about the differences in European life either. I don’t think we need to get down on each other for not being experts in each others’ cultures and gov. regulations. It’s just normal to know more about your own country/region than the rest of the world. No one can be an expert on everything

Things aren’t perfect in Europe work-life either. Yes, many EU countries have tons of vacation time (per the American perspective) but incomes are generally lower and taxes are higher. Most Europeans also can’t afford to buy expensive plane tickets to visit the states or other faraway places. I haven’t met that many Europeans who have done very distant travel like that or if so, only once or twice much like how Americans rarely go to Europe. People who are acting like Europeans are so much better travelled need to remember that the distance a French person goes to travel to Spain is the same as a New Yorker going to Virginia, and Americans do little trips like that often. The difference is when you go a short distance in Europe, suddenly everyone is speaking another language, while in the US you can drive for days and still be in the same country. It’s just a different frame of reference. 

Anyway, one could talk about all the implications of this for pages, but closing point, the reason Europeans are shocked when I tell them about my former work life is because the US is seriously far behind on worker’s rights in terms of developed countries. We have less vacation/sick time and less workers protections than all of the western European countries we usually measures ourselves against as peer-countries. It doesn’t have to be that way. Studies have found workers are actually more productive if they have more rest time, so companies don’t lose their edge by allowing workers time off. Even classmates from less developed countries were very surprised to hear about US working life because they just assume that everything is better in the US. The United States has been telling the world it’s the best for decades, and the marketing has worked in a lot of places. 

since moving here ive noticed europeans have no concept of how few americans ever leave USA. every american tourist youve met is of an economic crust that is vastly unobtainable to the other like. 85% generously. no matter what you have believed i can guarantee this. even getting to canada isnt really a possibility and the mexico-US border is highly controlled and militarized.

to put it into perspective. a ~2 hour flight from london to warsaw is like. 30 to 45 USD?

and a 2 hour flight from one US city to another would be about 130 USD

it was very cheap to fly here. i make over 100k USD now and i dont know if ill ever be able to afford leaving. if that gives you an idea of how prohibitive travel is here. i havent even touched on how the US has Zero guaranteed holidays by the govt. many people here go years without ever having an entire week off of work

this has had a like. massive impact on American Brain and they dont even know it because travel isnt even a consideration economically. they dont even know how much more vacation time european countries have guaranteed

I won’t pretend to be a scientist, but my friend is. 

I hope the sun explodes ferdydurke

Free Florence + the Machine

divine in the monstrous shrinewreck

Piano teacher here, just chiming in on Yuuri's piano potential. I don't want to burst any potential fic bubbles, but Yuuri being great at piano is fairly unlikely. It is true that people can have inherit musicality, and he certainly has that with dance which may carry over to singing as well. Piano skills though, aren't just about inherit musicality. That provides a baseline, yes, but you also have to put in Years of practice to reach a level that the general public view as ‘good at piano.’ 

You have no idea how often I’ve had kids who’ve done a year or two of lessons bring in a pop or disney book that they’re excited to play, which is labeled ‘easy piano’, only to open the book and realize it’s far past their level. The label ‘easy piano’, when used by sheet music editors, means easy for grown pianists. In these cases I’ve had to explain that, ‘yes, the book says easy but they mean easy for grownups, I’m sorry, it’s still hard for kids. If you keep practicing for a couple years, you’ll be ready to play these songs.’ (In reality i was still lying when I said a couple of years, most ‘easy’ level books are beyond levels 5-7 of standard piano lesson books so.... it can be 7-10 years of practice for a lot of students to get to that point. I don’t want to discourage anyone reading this who wants to learn piano. If you love music, and are willing to put in the work to be good, you WILL get there, and the joy you get from playing music is worth the effort. It usually takes less time for adult learners to get there because they understand the concepts faster. You just have to be ready to put in time and effort. 

I put time in bold because that is exactly why it’s unrealistic for Yuuri to be good at piano. Athletes at the competitive level devote hours and hours to their training daily, and don’t forget he was in school all that time too. After school work, training and dance, there’s almost no way he’d have leftover time to also devote serious practice time to an instrument unless he had some very unhealthy sleep habits (especially not recommended for an athlete). I lost many students who were starting to get good after 2-3 years of lessons to sports. It was a bummer as a teacher, but I understood that sports made them happy too, and you can’t expect kids to do everything. 

I even once had a piano student who was training to be an olympic gymnast. She wasn’t very interested in music, but her mother wanted her to see that there was more to life than just gymnastics since she knew gymnastic careers often end by 18. That kid was 7, and she was laser focused on her sport. She did cyber school to have more training time, had no free time to socialize, and always looked exhausted. She only took piano for a few months before they decided even a weekly lesson was too much to add to her training schedule. I’m guessing Yuuri’s keyboard is in the corner for the same reason, parents who didn’t really get skating wanted him to take some lessons, and probably he sometimes messes around with program music and ideas when he has the time. 

Sorry for the novel length response, but it just kinda gets under my skin when people discount the effort that goes into the arts. Sure, the arts are often intersectional, and creativity can be applied to many different forums, but both sports and musical instruments require a great deal of work in addition to talent.

As a fandom, we've NOT capitalised on these lil tidbits-

as much as we should have.

Yuuri's keyboard in particular is interesting to me. It's a fairly large one too and not the beginner's instrument you buy to tinker around with unless you're serious about the thing.

I am just saying creative people, which Victor and Yuuri clearly are, rarely confine themselves to one art form. I am fascinated with the idea of baby Yuuri figuring out what his favourite triad is and then developing a cute little tune from there.

Songwriter Yuuri x Poet Victor AU when? Maybe I should write it myself.

There is a blood disease called hemochromatosis that requires regular blood letting to get the excess iron out of the body. Usually it's done through phlebotomy, but leeches could be an option. It's a pretty big shock to find out you have a genetic disease, but a little more so when the doctor tells you the treatment is something you thought was only done in medieval times.

escaped medical leech

@plantanarchy​  I felt the need to respond to this post because you’ve mentioned in posts that you live close to the city I live in. 

I would agree that this is often true of the American experience, but the reason this is true is that Americans have embraced suburban living on a level unseen in most other countries. Of course people don’t form communities when they’re dead set on putting giant yards and fences between themselves and their closest neighbors. That seclusion was the whole goal of suburban life. 

This lack of community is not always true in city neighborhoods though. I can’t speak for the whole country of course, but in the city neighborhood I live in, there is a strong sense of community. I haven’t lived here all my life, and I am not a home owner, but I know everyone who lives on my street by name. We always say hi on the street. We frequently share bitch sessions about the gentrifying businesses coming in and stealing our parking. We’ve got each others’ backs. The pharmacists and bank teller in my community know me by name. There is a community garden here, where you can go on any given day in the summertime and be sure to find a fellow neighbor and have a nice convo if you are feeling lonely. Back before covid times, I could walk to the bar here on certain nights of the week, and be sure I would find friends without having to text anyone in advance. Hell, sometimes it feels like Sesame St here because you can’t even walk down the street without running into people you know. 

One of our fellow gardeners was in fear of eviction this winter because of covid job loss, and the rest of the community came together to pay months of her rent. (note, on average this is a very low income community, so these donations meant a lot). I live alone, and for a while during the beginning of the pandemic, I was worried about what would happen if I got sick and couldn’t take care of myself, but then I realized a number of neighbors would be willing to drop groceries at my door if I couldn’t get out. I don’t have to feel alone or afraid here.

This sense of community does exist in America. I wish everyone could experience it, because it honestly does feel warm and fuzzy and wonderful and occasionally like we’re living in a sitcom. I love my community with all my heart. To anyone looking for community outside of church, I’d suggest, start at the garden.    

wow yeah

I know one of the artists who worked on this amazing mural. 

Black Lives Matter murals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Busking observations 12/23/19

I’ve mentioned this before, but if you are a street performing and it is warm enough to busk around Christmas where you live, always take the opportunity. It is the best time of year to busk. People tend to be in cheery moods and the music just spreads the delight all around. My highlight this year was an adorable toddler singing Jingle Bells with me, giggling the whole time. The one silver lining of climate change is that it is making this more possible in my Northern city every year.