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Up to date, hwah!

Now am caught up on Avatar, finished the Day of Black Sun and all. Thanks for everyone who took time out to assure me that it stopped sucking after The Beach, y'all were very right. XD

Blood-bending episode was utter win. Nicely creepy (I like that Toph heard people screaming underground :3 but why did they stop?) and full of evil. It makes sense in a horrible sort of way.

The invasion was awesome, if somewhat improbable. I can put aside my disbelief long enough to accept that Sokka and the Mechanist invented the submarine in who knows how little time, but I find it difficult to believe that at the end of season two, nobody actually had a conversation with anyone else. Here are examples of conversations that could have happened:

"So, about those girls who turned out to be from the Fire Nation and who took over my kingdom, I kind of told them all about our plan to attack them during the eclipse."

"Hey, Earth King, about those girls who turned out to be from the Fire Nation and who took over your kingdom, did you tell them anything of critical strategic importance?"

I was very pleased when the arrival of the Fire Nation balloons indicated that, yes, we still remember when that happened. But Avatar is good at not forgetting those kinds of details. On the other hand, I might have forgotten something. Like, why didn't anyone ask the Northern Water Tribe for help? Last I checked they had a powerful kingdom and an army of waterbenders. Why did we recruit hillbilly swampbenders, but not the army that's held the Fire Nation off the north pole for a hundred years?

I'm pleased that Zuko is getting his act together ~~and ditching his sorry girlfriend~~ and was trying to help Iroh, who is now at large with or without his help.

I love watching the bending; it's so beautiful and creative. I guess being an acrobat is kind of helpful, though. There were some mighty impressive ninja feats going on in the fight with Azula. Did she eat Ty Lee's brain after the heart-to-heart on the beach to steal her flexibility?

What happened to Suki damnit. :(

I don't know where or when the episodes actually air. (Uh, okay, I can guess it's on Nickelodeon.)

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Item 1: The Invasion Force
As Sokka said in the first episode of the season, it was just a collection of friends and allies from around the Earth Kingdom. They probably wouldn't have been able to make the trip all the way to the North Pole and back in time.

Item 2: If the Earth Kingdom is China, the Fire Nation is Japan. So of course Azula is ninja.

Item 3: Azula is not Sylar.
She's just not. Because if she were, the universe would implode upon her out of sheer awesome.

Item 4: If this hadn't been a Nickelodeon program, Sokka would have stabbed Azula to get info on Suki.
At present, until there is any confirmation, the Kyoshi Warriors exist in a state between life and death. Schroedinger's Kyoshi Warriors, if you will.

(The following are items you didn't touch upon, but I think are worthy of pondering.)

Item 5: For a while now, it's been assumed that Iroh was the more gifted firebender, being the eldest child. Azula is a prodigy, but lacks experience (still mastering lightning as of the beginning of Book 2). Ozai however, not only projected lightning, but did it with BOTH hands, something we haven't seen before. (And then Zuko was all sexy and "hahaha!!pwnzed j00!)

Item 6: I'm really hoping Zuko, now on the run, can call off The Combustion Man. (Who always wears gloves when he bakes cookies. Not to protect his hands, but to protect the tray.)

Item 7: Regarding Haru's 'stache.
"My name Haru. You ~~kill~~ imprison my father. Prepare to DIE."

1: Assuming the maps are relatively to scale, sailing from end to end of the Earth Kingdom isn't much shorter of a trip than going to the North Pole. BUT I accept your explanation, because it makes sense.

4: Since you pointed it out, given that this IS a Nickelodeon program, I think it's likely that Suki (at least) is alive. But man, Azula is eeevil. Think of what could have been! I like it.

5: I seem to recall that they actually did imply that Iroh was the more gifted firebender, but I might be lying. Either way it's good to know that Ozai can also use lightning. My first thought is that the both-hands thing is less "he's better" and more "that was the position he happened to be in at the time" -- since bending is very much motion-oriented, using both hands all the time isn't always possible. Buuut, that's still not to say he's not better. He is, after all, the baddest guy in the world, and if Iroh could eat him, we wouldn't need Aang to save the day.

6: That is a good point. Just because Zuko has defected doesn't mean his hitman has. XD

7: That moustache is seriously weird, I didn't recognize him until Katara greeted him. XD

In my timezone it airs on Friday nights at 7:30pm. The wierd thing is the invasion hasn't aired yet... This past Friday was the episode where Aang kept having nightmares beforehand. You might want to put up a spoiler warning. Although I'm really confused now. But I have my DVR set to record it, so I shouldn't have missed anything. Do Nick episodes leak to the public before airing? Heh. ^_^;;;

Both parts of "The Day of Black Sun" got leaked online (no-one's quite sure how yet) and are on most of the major video sites (except YouTube, which all Viacom subsidaries watch like hawks now).

No episode this week, but next week we get a full hour of pure unfiltered awesome. :)

Friday at 8pm, Nickelodeon
T_T And then... mid-season hiatus. (see icon)

Ah ha! Thanks for the info!

Whoops. D: I'll fix that right away. I can see where I meant to suggest that there were spoilers through the invasion, but since the invasion hadn't aired yet, I can see where you might have read that line another way. I'll fix!!

I would definitely have written that line differently if I'd known the episodes hadn't aired yet. XD But since I was watching them online, all I knew was that at least two or three different people on my flist had lj-cut posts about how awesome the invasion was in the last week or two, so I assumed it HAD aired by NOW.

Fridays evenings is good information, thank you!

No worries. After I had mentioned it I reread and thought it was pretty obvious what you were getting yourself into. I was just confused because I didn't know how that was possible. But I do now, so I learned something. ^_^ Now I wonder if I should seek it out or wait another week....hmmmm....

Not to be a downer, but I'm not entirely sure that Suki is alive. The series isn't overly hesitant to kill second string characters, as it were (see: Jet, Suki, so on) though I admit the writers are also not kill-happy by any means.

You make a good point, I'd forgotten about Jet (and Yue*). But I'd argue that Jet's death is still only implied in the canon, as far as I can recall -- no one directly mentioned it (besides Toph's oblique comment that he was lying when he said he'd be all right) and no one has mentioned it ever since. They even might have avoided situations where they'd have to mention it (e.g. the Duke and Pipsqueak are part of the invasion, but Longshot and Smellerby are not -- I was waiting for them to get off the ship and for Katara to ask where Jet was, but it didn't happen).

Clearly Azula did keep Suki alive for a substantial period of time in order to ~~torture~~ taunt her. It's possible that she's dead, but I will continue to doubt that they took it that far until such time as they tell me she is (or else the series continues for another season without anyone mentioning her again, which may be their way of handling death, thanks Nickelodeon).

*I don't really know if I consider Yue "dead" in the same sense that Jet is dead. Obviously Yue lives on in the moon, etc. They've played with that enough.

Can't Sokka keep a love interest?!

I think Jet's death might be confirmed in an interview (but then, I tend to go eh at the canon status of interviews). But in any case, I suspect Suki is still alive, but I just feel it's certainly possible that she's not. (I'm glad they brought her up, though; I was surprised that Sokka hadn't ALREADY gone nuts over wondering where Suki was and if she was hurt.)

Yeah, I agree -- there's a difference between something being canon in interviews and other extra material and something being canon in the actual program. I mean, I think Jet's death is definitely canon, as the creators intended him to die; but the fact that his status could still be ambiguous if you only watch the show itself says to me, at least, that they're not quite that ballsy about killing off secondary characters.

Suki is awesome and Sokka does not need to lose another girlfriend. :( I want her to be aliiive.

Hi there. As an aspiring writer (stuff here (http://writing-glow.livejournal.com/profile), if you're interested), I decided to get in touch with people whose works I've enjoyed or whose writing abilities I admire. I created up a little writing survey, just to get an idea of how other people are going about the writing process and their general fandom interests. These results will not be published in any way. If you have a few minutes, please respond to the following questions, and be as detailed as possible. Thanks!

1. Why do you write? What do you enjoy or not enjoy about it (in general)?

2. What inspires you to write? What promotes your story ideas?

3. What genres do you generally like to write for most often (ie. drama, romance, meta)?

4. How do you go about writing a story (planning, letting the words flow, etc.)?

5. Do you plan on or would you like to publish a novel or short story collection someday?

6. What fandoms do you most frequently write for? Why do you like them or what interests you about them?

7. What character types attract you or intrigue you to write about them? Does gender have any role in what subjects you choose to write and why?

8. How long are your works generally? (multi-chapter, one-shots, drabbles, etc.). Do you think there is a reason for this?

9. What are your strengths and weaknesses in writing? (what are you good at and what do you think you can improve?)

10. What do you look for in a good piece of fiction? Does length have a bearing on whether you will read or enjoy a work?

Happy to help.

1. I write because I am full of creativity and this incessant well of ideas that I think would be really cool, and I want to express those ideas and share that with people. I also write because I think I'm really good at it, and also I would like to make money someday doing something I'd be doing for fun anyway even if people weren't giving me money for it (see: fandom).

2. Everything. Literally. All sorts of little things, like, "Why does everyone always glorify fire and admire water but no one ever thinks about how powerful EARTH is?" or "The King of Spain told Hugo Chavez to shut up in public the other day. Man, I wish I could write about a character like him." It's often my first thought when I see something neat: could I write about that? How? Also, being at work and hypothetically doing productive things is GREAT for inspiration. :\

3. I most often write gen fanfic with a HINT of pairing, introspective character/relationship pieces, and occasionally things that are evil.

4. Right now I have three files of "original" ideas which are just a collection of things I thought were cool, and a huge long list of fanfic ideas I'd like to try and write, some as vague as "Character A on dancing" or as specific as "Character B is nervous now that Character C is actually as cool as he thinks he is and she's been avoiding him but Character D comes to give her a pep talk and tell her that she's been lying about her interest for DECADES and isn't it time to stop playing this game, and then he gives her candy." Generally, I like to know exactly what I'm writing before I do -- for example, "Character A on dancing" won't get written until I've had a few minutes to sit down and think about it and have decided what, exactly, she wants to do with dancing, and who she wants to do it with if anyone.

Original ideas must have a substantial bulk of story before I'll start writing for them, but I rarely outline. I just keep notes, although the notekeeping itself can be very inspirational.

5. Absolutely I would like to write a novel, although my current goal is to write the script for a video game.

6. Generally I only have one big fandom at a time; right now it's Bleach, which I love because the characters are unique and detailed, the relationships are significant and subtle, and because the plot interests me. Those are the big qualifiers. Previously I've been into Kingdom Hearts, Kyou Kara Maou, and Megami Kouhosei enough to write substantially for them.

7. I'm not going to lie -- my favorite characters are the ones with spirit to whom bad things happen. I love it when bad things happen to good people, when they get pushed almost to breaking. Hinamori and Renji and Rukia, Roxas and Namine... I don't like it when characters are always right or when they/the canon takes them too seriously. I like people who have fun more than the "cool" characters. Gender has no bearing on my affections for a character, although I think I may reflexively "lean" more on a female character.

I also LOVE a good villain.

8. Buh, I love drabbles, but outside of drabble prompts, I'm usually best at one-shots in the vicinity of 500-2000 words. Writing anything longer will only end in tears. There are still people praying I'll finish writing Institution XIII, and man, I remember that way overambitious Gundam Wing/Megami Kouhosei crossover of awesome... I have a short attention span, it's a bad idea to try and write multi-chapter anything, because the more people want to see it, the more guilty and averse to working on it I feel.

9. I think I'm very strong at analysis, and thus characterization and relationships. I'm usually very good at writing dialogue -- I'm VERY proud of some of my work on the video game script in particular. On the other hand, I suck at attention span. I'm waaay overambitious. I haven't worked on my game script in months (sorry

madfnorder!) but at least that's something that I can go back to. Chances are that once I fall out of a fandom, I'll never really go back there enough to finish anything. So even though I have awesome ideas (there's still so much KKM and KH I'd love to write, and so many Bleach fics I'd love to write) I almost always ignore an idea that I couldn't complete in a oneshot.

10. Creativity -- I don't want to read the eighteen bazillionth fic about how Character X raped Character Y and now Character Z must HEAL HIM. I want a summary that will catch my attention and tell me that something is going on here that I couldn't read in a way better romance novel.

For that matter, I want the summary to tell me that I'm looking at something in my fandom, not generific. If I read the above description, it might as well be Character X/Y/Z instead of Aizen/Ichigo/Grimmjow, because none of those people would ever be in that situation. I want to know before I ever click that the author understands these characters, as opposed to "the author has wish fulfillment fantasy and wants to see Ichigo cry and then get sex from my favorite Ichigo-boyfriend of choice, so let me pick a random person to molest him."

And finally, ugh, I generally shy away from reading multi-chapter or way too long fanfic. I like it when things know where they're going and get there, and if you're on Chapter 12 of your sequel to your previous 25-chapter fanfic, I assume you can't do either of those things. Also, by the six thousandth word of internal monologue, I will kill myself. ~~I'll also stop reading if your LJ layout makes it too difficult to read your damn fic.~~

Though, okay, I do like Zuko/Mai -- in that it had development in the Nickelodeon Avatar magazine we're meant to treat as canon though, alas, I didn't get a copy! But, I do, whatevs.

Azula was so bad-ass it was hard to take. Good point on the conversations thing. Poor, completely retarded Earth King.

He is a little retarded, so I guess that kind of excuses him? XD

I can't like Zuko/Mai, but probably in large part because I'm not really a fan of Mai's. I read scans of the sidestory but it still feels awkward to me -- but I mean, I think a lot of my cringing is actually just the way it's portrayed. I'd cringe if Ichigo and Orihime started making out every time they were both involved in the same conversation, and I do ship that. Keep your PDA to a tactful minimum, I guess. XD

Just completely slipped his mind? TIME TO PLAY PATTY CAKE WITH MR. BEAR!

Mm, I understand that. Actually, despite how much I like Avatar and do not hate the ships, I do not love them as much as many of the people I know and respect do. And the PDA did put me off at first, too. Their relationship, I gather, is very much a poking fun at teenagers, especially emo-goth teenagers (I don't hate you too), which doesn't necessarily mean it isn't serious and they don't like each other, but.... YEAH. Didn't really get enough of Zuko's reaction to her in Season Two for me to be totally comfortable with its development, even if he had bigger things on his mind (which he does now so okay), even if I actually like the ship.

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