the_gneech | Entries tagged with legend of korra

I don't know why I've felt like crap so much this week, but I'm going to combat it by thinking about things I love and that inspire me. Today's topic: the two Avatar animated series.

Watch on YouTube

I think I need to re-watch both of these shows. Starting today.

-The Gneech

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Ginger Court

Today was largely an exercise in keepin' on keepin' on. Got some more progress on the second draft of my novel, did a shift at Starbucks, then came home and finished of Legend of Korra. I might do an extended discussion of that at some point later, but the tl;dr version is "It's a good series that is occasionally great, but never quite reaches the same level of extended awesomeness as the first series."

Finished off the evening with a meditation; after a somewhat bumpy start where I kept getting distracted by noises around the house or needing to shift, I eventually settled in. My original plan was to try to focus on some "law of attraction"-style meditation on the topic of

lythandra's job hunt, but that wasn't really getting me anywhere, so I simply started focusing on all the things I was grateful for... and wow, did the floodgates open. O.o I just went on a long stream of consciousness, thanking the Universe, or God, or my higher self, or whatever the Great Unknown is, for everything I could think of. Laurie, the cats, my job, my neighbors, old friends, new friends, family members, people I haven't thought about in years, the Twitterponies, Kerry, FrostDemn, the ability to feel joy again, the ability to feel pain again, the opening of my heart and my mind and my soul, I just went nuts with it. By the end, I was a mess, with tears streaming down my face, but very happy.

So now I'm off to bed, but it was a good day. :) If you are reading this, consider yourself hugged, and thanked. ;)

Three Good Things For Today

Legend of Korra

Getting some writing done.

Mind-blowing transcendent joy. ;)

Three Goals for Tomorrow

MOAR writing!

D&D prep: I'd sure like to be able to run this weekend!

Just relaxing a bit.

And finally, as a reward for your patience, have a blast from the past that has been randomly haunting my memory all week:

Good night, world, and have an awesome tomorrow. I love ya. :)

-The Gneech

Current Mood: content
Current Location: The Staircase (working title)
Current Music: It's in the video!

Spent today driving up to Front Royal and Skyline Drive with

lythandra and

hantamouse, which was fun and scenic and stuff, and resulted in mostly minor injuries and a torn pair of pants (but I wont say who's pants they were). I will say that my new rule of field trips is that we know it's time to go home when

hantamouse loses hit points.

When we got home, I tossed my birthday present into the Blu-Ray player and finished off the first half of season four of Legend of Korra. Seeing Varrick get a soul was a nice moment, and I can't help but think Zhu Li is playing a long game, but we'll see.

Can I just say, please, Too Much Meelo? Yeesh.

Three Good Things For Today

Told by the manager of another Starbucks that she's been hearing good things about me. Always nice!

Gorgeous vistas and fun with friends.

Legend of Korra, 'nuff said.

Three Goals For Tomorrow

A 20-minute meditation session.

Write at least another chapter of the second draft.

Clear out some e-mail backlog.

Anyway, I've got a shift tomorrow afternoon, but I hope to get some writing done in the morning. In order to make that happen, however, I need to get some sleep now, so I guess I'll get on that. Good night, world, and have an awesome tomorrow.

-The Gneech

PS: Have a present.

You were expecting something from Back to the Future, weren't you?

Current Mood: content
Current Location: The Staircase (working title)
Current Music: Marvin the Paranoid Android– Marvin I Love You

Where have all the journals gone?

Once upon a time I used to post several times a week about what was going on in Gneechland, with varying levels of entertainment value and/or snark. I'd enthuse about minutiae or gripe about the daily grind, or occasionally go on ill-advised rants about things that got under my metaphorical fingernails.

And now, for whatever reason... I don't. And I find that curious. What impelled me to start journaling in the first place? And what brought it to a stop?

Some of it is the venue. When I want to just toss up a link or a bon mot, Twitter is much better suited to that sort of thing. If I want to share a video or a cool piece of artwork, Tumblr works better. Although they've made some interface improvements, LiveJournal is still pretty well stuck in 2001, which means text and basic HTML.

I think also in my case, I simply wanted to stop talking about what was going on in my life, because for a while there it was frankly bleak and I didn't want the whole of my output to be wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is a lot of truth to the notion that what you project to the world becomes what you attract, and I didn't want my life to become a never-ending litany of grief, depression, and sadness.

But, things are getting better now. :) Money is still tight just at the moment, but I'm back in the saddle at Starbucks and Laurie has some very hopeful prospects in the works, so I expect that will fix itself shortly. Suburban Jungle is still stalled, alas, but for a good reason: I have been spending the past months furiously writing a novel (and a good one, I'd like to think), which I plan to start shopping around to publishers by the end of the year.

So hopefully I'll get back into the habit of journaling again, now that I have happier things to say. :) But I'll warn you beforehand:

I am all about setting boundaries these days. I used to be willing to put up with a lot more BS, passive-aggressive behavior, or abuse than I am now. I also used to be a lot more eager to jump in and try to fix everybody's problems, which attracted a lot of what I call "psychic vampires" into my life. These days, not so much.

I have been going through, for lack of a better term, a certain amount of "spiritual awakening," as evidenced by my recent posts about meditation and past-life regression. This is kind of an awkward subject to talk about reasonably, as people tend to fall into two knee-jerk categories: the mocking deniers, and the pyramid-power rainbow crystal true believers. I am in neither of these categories, myself. But I do think there's more going on than meets the eye, and I am looking into it.

My politics have shifted to the left over the past few years. Seeing the real-world results of the U.S.'s relentless march to the right has convinced me more than ever that it's completely the wrong direction. You're welcome to disagree with me on that all you want, but do it in your own space, please. :)

Now all that's out of the way, if there's anyone still out there, hello! And welcome to what I hope will be the return of my LiveJournal. ;) For your patience, have a Korra video.

-The Gneech

Current Mood: content
Current Location: The Staircase (working title)
Current Music: Boney M– Rasputin (in my head)

So in the rare moments I haven't been writing my brains out (~64,000 words and in the middle of the final big action sequence) I've been binge-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is a series I heard praised to the stars and back again, but in my mind it has always more-or-less served as a prequel for Legend of Korra rather than an end to itself.

In the case of LoK I got mired in the crunky part of early season two and never finished, so I wanted to go back and power through that to get to what I'm told is an awesome rest of the series, but I decided that this time instead of just hopping on at the beginning of that series I'd go back and watch A:tLA first.

I'm pleased to say, A:tLA lives up to its hype! I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through the second season (which puts me just about halfway through the entire series), and I'm digging it. Strong and fun characters, interesting setting, engaging story, lovely art, what's not to dig? It reminds me of all the best parts of Pirates of Dark Water, but with better animation and more cohesive writing. There are a few clunky bits here and there and I have a few pet peeves, but this series does so much very right, that it's hard to complain about the few bits that irk me. My main peeve is the villains, who are either Obvious Redemption Bait (e.g., Zuko) or Shut Up and Go Away (e.g., Jet, Princess Azula and her flunkies). The only serial baddie who's really worked for me so far has been Admiral Zhao, who was a complete nonentity, but was a threatening and dangerous nonentity whom I was glad to see get it in the neck.

With that in mind, here is a boatload of random observations, more-or-less as they came to me while watching.

Avatar: Master of the four elements, and chosen one! ...Is into extreme sports. That... actually makes sense now that I think about it.

Hey, it's that guy! And that guy! And that guy! So far I've identified Mako, George Takei, James Hong, and Mark Hamill. I wonder if Pat Morita or Victor Wong are in here?

I am going to like General Iroh. I can tell.

"All your friends and family were wiped out, Aang! And here is the desiccated corpse of your surrogate dad, surrounded by the bones of his enemies. We thought about having a note next to him that said, 'If only Aang hadn't run off...' but we couldn't work out the logistics of it." Harsh, show, harsh. At least Aang's parents weren't shot in Crime Alley walking home from The Mark of Zorro.

I like that they firmly establish that the avatars are all reincarnations of the same spirit. I also love that the spirit flips genders between incarnations seemingly at random and it's no big deal. "Oh yeah, I was a girl in that life. I totally kicked ass." The implications of that are staggering if you follow them to the natural conclusions.

Sokka the Butt Monkey. I hope he gets to do something sometime.

Humor is very hit-or-miss. Usually the jokes feel like the script said "Insert joke here." But when this series nails a joke, it nails it. "If you get me out of this, spirits, I'll give up meat and sarcasm."

"I am a warrior, but I'm a girl too." Yes, that's cool, but y'know what? Even if she weren't a warrior, that's no way to treat a girl either, Sokka! Argh.

This Just In: Zuko is obviously going to be the new Fire Lord by the end of this series.

Hello, spirit world! I see someone's been watching Studio Ghibli. I approve of this.

General Iroh saw Aang in the spirit world! O.o That's gotta be important.

...The identity of the Blue Spirit took me by surprise.

Evil Firebender Princess Twilight! Nuuuuuuu! Along with Harley Quinn the Bending Blocker, and Bored Sociopath Chick. Bleah. I'm not going to like these three, I can tell already. There are villains you love to hate, and villains you wish would just go away. These are the latter.

Ba Sing Se, name-checked again and again. I smell foreshadowing.

Honestly? Aang should have been all over learning healing from Bender Cleric while Katara was trying to get Master Dickweed to teach her to fight. He's the friggin' Avatar! Bridge between worlds, uniter of the divided, and all that jazz? Healing should be right in his portfolio.

On the subject of Master Dickweed, do we really need a "He-Man Woman Haterz Club" story in this day and age? And do we really need a "boys get to kick ass, which is awesome, girls are only good for patching holes, which is boring" cultural assumption? Give me healer heroes any day!

Now I get where all the "I once dated the moon" jokes come from. Second most abrupt romance I've ever seen! At least Sokka wasn't a douchebag this time around.

Earthbender McNutso attempting to force the avatar state: the Mother of All Bad Ideas.

Yo, Earth Nation hippies dude! Like, wow. I guess Lorenzo Music wasn't available, eh?

So this is the infamous Toph. Basically "Lucy Van Pelt, the Earthbender." I can see why she's popular, even if she's not likely to be my favorite. (Pretty sure General Iroh wins that.) "Look! There it is!" says the blind girl, pointing at random, just to stick it to the rest of the group.

Jet, you're just a dick. Go away.

I just imagine a picture of Zuko with the caption, "My life has been a series of bad decisions."

And boom, here's where "Team Avatar" comes from. It works. And hey, they all turn to Sokka as the idea guy! Given that he is the only non-bender, I love that they actually depend on him for something!

Um, Katara? Toph already knows how to be girly. "That's it, we're going to the spa!" is not a transformative experience for her, it's putting the same fake skin on she grew up with.

...Except it isn't, apparently. Le sigh.

The Story of General Iroh. Right in the feels. "Dedicated to Mako." Right in the feels again!

Blegh. I know there's supposed to be conflict and all, but I really didn't want Ba Sing Se to be The Village. Could you just not, show?

That's it so far. :) More observations as the watching continues. Currently I'm hoping that the Ba Sing Se Is the Village stuff gets resolved quickly. I'm also hoping that the defeat of Azula is the big climax of season two, and that she and her flunkies don't return for season three, but I suspect we're stuck with them for the rest of the series.

-The Gneech

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: The Staircase (working title)

Foalpapers Commish Teaser by ~the-gneech on deviantART

Teaser for the commission I'm currently working on. I'm not sure if it's the largest, most complex image I've ever done-- but it's certainly close. Tonight I finished the background, of which this is just a piece. Next step, two scenery bits in the background, a prop in the foreground, and it's time to start drawing ponies.

So. Many. Ponies.

In other news! While I drew tonight, I started watching The Legend of Korra. In three words: IT IS AWESOME! In several more words: Wow. Where to begin. Korra is an incredible protagonist! So very right on so many levels! The proto-Chinese Revolution background! The serious story with touches of humor! The animation!

Wow. Did I say that?

So. Yeah. Legend of Korra rules. And it's also hitting a lot of sympathetic notes with a certain other project I may or may not be working on.

I am a happy camper. :)

-The Gneech

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: The Hobbit Hole

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the_gneech

gneech.com -- John "The Gneech" Robey's writing, comics, and art.

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Things I Love: Avatar, The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra
Your Evening Gneech Report for October 22, 2015
LiveJournal! Do the Thing!
In Which I Don't Talk About Anything
Avatar: The Last Air-Binger
Foalpapers Commish Teaser-- and Legend of Korra

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What Was I Saying...?

Personal Ramblings by The Gneech

Entries tagged with legend of korra

Things I Love: Avatar, The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra

Your Evening Gneech Report for October 22, 2015

Three Good Things For Today

Three Goals for Tomorrow

LiveJournal! Do the Thing!

Three Good Things For Today

Three Goals For Tomorrow

In Which I Don't Talk About Anything

Avatar: The Last Air-Binger

Foalpapers Commish Teaser-- and Legend of Korra

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April 2025

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