In praise of Avatar

I am now completely smitten with Avatar. "Oh," you say, "You mean the James Cameron mega-hit block-pulverizer that is sending geysers of money into theaters around the world?". Nice try, but no! I speak here of the Nickelodeon kid's cartoon titled "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I resisted watching this show for the longest time. I remember Nickelodeon from my younger days, and I associate them with at best the grotesque and funny like Ren and Stimpy and at worst the grotesque and boring like Rugrats.

So avatar had two strikes against it. One, it was aired on Nickelodeon, and two, that kid has a blue arrow on his head! But after all these years, I've heard it recommended from multiple sources whose opinions I trust, and the mind-reading robot at netflix gave me an 80% chance of rating it 5 stars. So I finally decided to give it a try, and boy am I glad I did.

Avatar is set in an unapologetically Asian-flavored world composed of four kingdoms, each dedicated to one of the four classical elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water). Talented individuals from each kingdom can control their native element through the art of "bending", a fusion between magic and kung-fu.

Our hero is a boy named Aang, who is the reincarnation of the Avatar, a hero who is reborn in each generation, and who has the ability to bend all four elements. Through most of history, the Avatar has used his (sometimes her) power to preserve peace between the four nations. However, Aang had the misfortune of getting frozen in the middle of an iceberg. And it seems like about the time he disappeared, the Fire Nation decided it was a fine time to make like the Japanese in WWII and conquer the world. The show begins a hundred years later, when Aang finally gets thawed out of the ice, and finds that the Fire Nation is coming close to sealing their victory after a century of war.

Video Games | | Avatar the last air bender (intro)

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

So far, it doesn't sound too atypical, but it is the execution where Avatar shines. Avatar contains better storytelling and greater depth that I have ever seen in American television animation.

At its core, Avatar is an American anime. For those of you who have not experienced this wonderful storytelling medium, anime (pronouced ah-ni-may) is a term for animation in the Japanese style. My full extended hymn to Japanese cartoons and comic books is material for a separate post, but suffice it to say that if you have no experience with them, you are missing out.

The drawing style of Avatar, in the way light plays across surfaces and in the basic character designs, shows clear influence from anime. But maybe the most critical influence is in the acting. TV animation is necessarily produced with a lower budget than its theatrical cousin. But most American TV animation saves on budget by giving its characters atrocious acting. When they are not just talking heads (a la South Park) they are prone to weird arm-flailing gestures that no actual human ever makes.

Japanese animation does not have this problem. Quite the opposite, they draw their characters with giant eyes and exaggerated movements that combine to give them a greater-than-human range of expression, even when on a minimum budget. Avatar combines this with excellent writing and voice acting to produce the most convincing, most alive characters I have ever seen in American TV animation. Special mention has to go to Sokka, Aang's traveling companion from the water tribe. A lesser show could have easily made Sokka into a mere comic buffoon or a punching bag for his water-bending sister's girl power. Certainly he contributes to the comedy elements of the show, roughly half the time at his expense, but he also has many genuinely touching moments. He conveys very well the struggle of a boy who is forced to assume the responsibilities of a man at a young age, and he grows into a capable fighter, despite having no bending powers.

The fight scenes are another area where avatar shines. For the elemental benders, fighting does not consist of standing placidly and shooting blasts of fire and ice at each other. Instead, their bending appears to be a projection of their skill at kung-fu onto the external elements that surround them. Avatar involves the best martial arts choreography I can remember seeing on any TV show, animated or otherwise. It even includes a few epic battle sequences, which are likewise superb. But despite this, Avatar remains true to its position as a children's cartoon. There is plenty of excellent action, but very little real violence. It has neither onscreen killing nor implied offscreen killing, as the heroes are content to simply knock out or disable the Fire Nation minions they fight, or blast them out of the arena, or send them running away in startled retreat.

Indeed, Avatar is just the kind of entertainment I would want my children to grow up with. Though it is a kid's show, it never dumbs itself down. Even though it has little immediate violence, it is refreshingly honest about themes that you would expect a kids show to shy away from, about the reality of death and the horrors of war. It is a constant hardship for Aang that all the people he knew before becoming frozen is the iceberg have died in the intervening century. One of the most touching moments in the first season comes when Aang reunites with a former playmate who is still alive as a hundred-plus-year-old man, and discovers that even though his friend has changed so much, their friendship has not.

There is more to love. Rather than running for season after season until its popularity and artistic merit runs dry, Avatar again borrows from the traditions of Japanese animation by telling a complete story arc over its three seasons. But it also retains the best aspects of American animation, such as the brilliant slapstick that is our legacy from the Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. Overall Avatar does so many things wonderfully right that it becomes more than sum of its parts. I have only finished the first season, but every single episode so far has been a winner. I am hungry for more.

My Life Among the Engineers

Disclaimer: Because I am one I can make fun of them ;)

For a long time the engineer has been considered one of the more mysterious and frustrating of all the majors.

There are several explanations for this. Some claim that they are impossible to understand due to their strange dialect which only scientists and other engineers have been able to decode. Others claim it is due to an arrogance and attitude of "better than thou", to which many engineers will respond that they're simply better, and that it should just be accepted. Some even claim that it due to an abnormal lack of social skills that would allow them to mesh better with the rest of society.

I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do hope to shed some light on these strange creatures by recording my observations from my time spent among them.

The first thing that caught my attention was the lack of female in the species. True there are a few, and I am told that the number is growing, but the fact is that few males can hope to find a partner of their own kind and will have to look to other majors. One may think this wouldn't be such a huge problem, but the fact that engineers speak a strange dialect, and they do not understand that a girl just wants to see a musical sometimes... or talk about clothes. They also do not understand that when a woman shares her woes and problems, she doesn't necessarily want them solved, which is the natural instinct of and engineer.

Now, while it is commonly observed that these creatures hold any major not associated with their own, I also discovered that there is a hierarchy of clans within the species. It is a very convoluted system so I can only guess, but here is my best theory: The Engineering physics clan is at the top, followed by the electrical and mechanical clans.this seems due to the fact that no one actually knows what they do. At the bottom is the industrial clan, also called "imaginary" engineers. despite this, they will all unite against, say, a business major.

Yes, it is a harsh society, but the engineers seem to like it none the less.

The engineers have only a few natural predators. The two that come immediately to mind are writing and presenting. Classes have been instigated to help protect, but only those who put great effort into evolving will survive I fear.

Hopefully my brief observations will help others to understand these creatures. If you too have spent time with and have some observations of these poor majors, feel free to share.

~your friendly neighborhood Princess

As some of you may know I like to fold paper stars, and my most recent thing has been to turn them in jewelry.

I would love to turn the stars pictured here into a bracelet, and I guess I wanted to know If any one would buy it for 5.00? What can I say? I'm a poor college student ;).

And if you happen to attend SAA I'd be totally be willing to add a hold medal to make it dress code appropriate. No matter what it would be given a coating to make it durable and waterproof. (Though I wouldn't submerge it if I were you)

So step out in style and let me know if you'd like to buy it.

~Princess

Welcome

Don't let the title scare you. Hopefully this blog won't be too emo. Now you may be wondering what I'll talk about on this blog. To be brief: everything. But more specifically I'll be rambling about one thing or another, reviewing something, letting people know when I have a star bracelet to sell, etc. My brothers will be doing something similar.

So I hope you'll read and enjoy!