Looking Back and Moving Foward

Ah, yes, a new year, new opportunities, things learned in the past will effect the present...

you get the point, this is a new year's post.

Moving on.

Each year a do a HUGE purge of my room. I guess I keep a lot of stuff that I really don't need, that I won't get rid of because of nostalgic reasons, because this year I found a lot of things that I just... I have no reason to keep this junk! Why was it even in my room in the first place? So a lot of things got thrown out, things that used to be important but no longer mean anything to me.

Now I have so much more room for more random stuff I don't really need xD

Looking back - 2014 has been a great year. Here are some highlights:

-Finished FMA:B. That show was nothing short of amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants an action/adventure/fantasy show!

-My sweet 16! I had a great party and it totally lived up to the childhood dream of an epic 16th :)

-Spring Kraken Con, which I wore my Azula cosplay to

-I was in my first major production, "Into the Woods"

-A few friends and I went to prom and had an awesome time!

-A very close friend of mine moved. This isn't so much a highlight as in a good thing, but it's something important that happened.

-Mexico trip!!! I had lots of fun and met a group of interesting people there :)

-Started Junior year. School reforms, honors courses, and my own ambition made school much more enjoyable.

-Made lots of new friends at school

-Fall Kraken Con with one of my best friends :D

-Dickens Fair/San Fran trip with my family

-Lots of rainstorms, which is something much needed where i live

-Legend of Korra beautifully concludes my favorite fandom.

Moving Forward - 2016 seems to have a lot of awesomeness in store!

Every year, I pick up something new, or focus on something I already do. Not really a new years resolution, but one goal to count my progress by the end of the year. In 2013 I made it a point to draw every day, even if what I did wasn't that great. Y'all saw my progress, and I really think I improved over that year. Unfortunately, that didn't give me much time to read. At all. And I love to read. So, in 2014, my yearly goal was to read 52 books. Now, let me explain a thing: 52 books would mean 1 book a week- and that doesn't take into account school insanity and not having a book available or being too sick to read. 

So I read 25 books and figure that it's good enough. I'll try again some other time. 

So now it's time to look forward to my next big undertaking: writing a book. I have been planning on writing this book for years- I started designing characters in the summer before 8th grade. I started writing it then, too, but it just wasn't that great, and I lost those files, so I can't use them as reference. Well, I was talking to Kaitlin, and she mentioned that she is doing a re-write of her book, so we decided to partner up and keep each other going in our writing! We also made some character designs (yes using fashion doll generators is a totally legit way to quickly design a character lol)!

                                                

  

So theres the villain's daughter and two of the main characters. I'm really excited to see how the story goes! I really like the new direction I'm going with it, and it's really started to flow better now that I'm a more experienced writer :)

Alright, well, that's all for now. How was your Christmas/New Years? Happy holidays! 

~Shaak

And Now It's Over

Last night, the very last episode of the Avatar franchise aired. The very last episode of my absolute favorite series... ended. I was so excited and so sad and so not ready for it to be over. But all good things come to an end, I suppose. 

I had always intended to do a post about ATLA and LOK, but I never had the time or motivation. Well, now I do, and it's time to say goodbye. Perfect timing. 

Here's a little history of how I even got involved: back when I was younger I saw a promo for Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was showing for the first time that night. I thought it looked kind of cool, and a little while later I was watching it. I don't remember much, I don't think I even watched the whole thing. The point is, I saw it, and I remembered it enough so that when the movie came out it 2010 I wanted to go see it (also, judging by the preview, 12 year old me thought it would be awesome. I did think it was awesome).

Unfortunately, I liked the movie so much I had my dad buy the DVD. Whoops. Now that's sitting in a box somewhere and I will probably deny that I own it. I am kind of thankful for it though, because if I hadn't seen the movie, I probably wouldn't have watched the show. 

Now, fast-forward a few months. My brother was sick, we were trying to find something to watch, and so we checked out Nick... and there it was: ATLA- The Southern Raiders. Sure, my first episode of it wasn't from the first season, and I didn't even see the first half of the episode! But it became a weekly event where my brother and I would watch ATLA re-runs (which were not shown in any specific order that I know of) on Saturday mornings. 

I didn't watch it in order the first time I saw it. Or the second, or third. I started randomly picking them and eventually was able to piece together the whole show. Eventually Mom decided to watch it since Dante and I loved it so much, so we watched it as a family, in order. 

Never had I seen a show with such amazing characters, plot, depth, animation, emotion, or music.  

The characters felt like old friends once I finished the series. I loved them so, so much. If I was sad, I would watch it. If I was lonely, I would watch it. If I was happy, I would watch it. I would watch it and watch it and watch it, and these characters became real to me. Y'all know how much I love FMA, right? And how much I love the characters? Well, it's like that, but x10, or x20, or x100 (being in the fandom for 5 years probably has something to do with that haha).

The heroes were well rounded, the villains were well rounded, the random side characters got their share of development, too. It's rare to see such excellent characterization in any show, let alone an animated kids show!

My Azula costume... she's probably one of my most favorite characters ever!

There are so many layers in ATLA, and every time I watch it I get something new out of it. I'm not saying that kids shows can't be deep or have good meaning, but a lot of them don't, so it's refreshing to see something so amazing made so that kids can understand it and teens and adults can enjoy it, as well.

The music  THE MUSIC is just beautiful and amazing and sooo perfect. So much effort went into ATLA and it's been a HUGE part of my childhood :')

When I found out that there was going to be another Avatar series, I flipped. I was sooooo happy that we would be having 12 more episodes of Avatar awesomeness! Ha. Ha. Ha. Little did I know that this so called "fun mini-series" would become a 3 year ordeal that would become one of my favorite shows.

remember when this was 

all we had of Korra

You can imagine my excitement when Nick called for 3 more seasons! About half way through season two, I got a little disappointed with the writing and plot direction (which was something I could forgive for season 1, they only had 12 episodes to work with, after all), but I still loved it. Season three's writing proved to be a huge improvement from seasons 1 and 2. The writing was better, the villains were darker, the over-all plot was much more enjoyable and intense, and the characterization was fantastic. We got to see sides of character that we had never seen before, new and well developed characters entered the mix, and friendships developed between old characters. Something that I really enjoyed about seasons 3 and was the lack of romantic sub-plot between the Krew. I think that was a let-down for the fans during season 2.

Fan-made trailer for the finale

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, thank you Avatar, thank you Bryke, and most importantly, thank you Fandom for such an amazing 5 years. ATLA was a real treasure of my childhood, and LOK was a wonderful part of my high school experience. I'm sure our fandom will last for quite a while, it was still going strong between ATLA and LOK, so I don't doubt that there will be plenty of fanworks for the years to come, but it's still sad to see such an awesome series end,

Good bye, Avatar, goodbye.


*and then I sob for about 10,000 years*