(More awesomer than awesome. Source)

Hi, little blog. I hope you haven’t been too lonely lately. I’ve been shamefully neglectful of you.

I’ve got good reasons, though.

I was in the process of applying for a fellowship to do design with a nonprofit in India, actually living there, and that kept me nice and stressy for a while. I didn’t get the fellowship, but whatever. There will be other chances! The position went to someone very qualified, and I wish him the best. The organization is still one of my favorites, and you can find their info here: Design Impact

But the biggest reason? DragonCon is coming up very soon (in two days – eep!) and I have been crafting like a mad thing in preparation. On top of that, my dear friend Madhavi is being elevated to the Order of the Laurel this weekend, and I’ve made her some swell things that I will share as soon as she’s seen them (no spoilers). As usual, I waited until the last minute to work on them, so I spent a good amount of time embroidering on the couch, watching things on Netflix.

It was in this manner that I watched the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender series. No, really. The whole thing. All of it. I kind of wish I hadn’t, because it is so amazingly good, and I want to keep watching it forever and ever. Thank you, show, for having really amazing female characters. Thank you for making Prince Zuko awesome in the end. It was such a rich, engaging story with great writing and lovely characters. Team Avatar, all the way.

So then I had some more sewing to do last night, and thought, well, the movie can’t be as bad as everyone says it is, right? I watched it. And no, it’s not as bad as everyone says.

It’s worse.

My issues with it are the following (1 and 2 are pretty much the issues everyone has with it):

1. If you’re going to make an adaptation of a highly successful show, at least watch an episode so that the actors pronounce the main characters’ names correctly. Aang as in angle, not as in yawn. Sokka, like sock-a, not soh-ka. Yeesh.

2. Mr. Shyamalan. Manoj, buddy. Let’s have a chat. The original series was wonderful because its cast of characters was diverse. It wasn’t stereotypical. The main lady hero has dark skin! So does her brother! Nobody’s Anglo! Why, then, as a person who is presumably invested in making sure that the white=good/dark=bad stereotype goes the way of the dodo, would you cast dark-skinned people ONLY as the bad guys in your film? Okay okay, so Zuko is debatable, but geez, man. Why in, a village that appears to be comprised mainly of native North American-types, would you put a small and heroic family of white people? Why are the native people only accessory background characters? Why are the white people the heroes? Why can’t they be native, too? Aaargh.

3. Katara is a fantastic role model for young girls, in that she’s smart, she takes charge, she’s powerful, and she’s pretty much not at all that helpless girl that gets pushed at little girls by cartoons. She’s not in sexy, revealing outfits. Much of what happens in the cartoon’s story is driven by her decisions and actions. She takes initiative. She makes things happen. So why, then, did you push her to the background and make her this weak, worried little person, who follows her brother around as he makes all the decisions and does the things she’s supposed to do? Not cool.

It was obvious that the film was intended to be one in a trilogy that will likely never happen. Maybe if somebody else makes the film? I dunno. All I know is that Prince Zuko is still my favorite character, and that every time I saw Sokka, I couldn’t help but think, “Sparkly vampire guy from Twilight? What are you doing at the South Pole?”

Yep. Expect mad blogging after this weekend. I expect epic goings-on.

(Incidentally, I think Jackson Rathbone is a really fantastic, old-fashioned name, like Reginald Stumblypot, or Aloysius Weatherbottom, Esq.)