Do they serve an orthopedic function?

[geebs]

Heh, started on s3 of Avatar. Okay, Zuko and Mai are hysterical as a couple. "You're beautiful when you hate the world." HA!! That was pretty shrewd of Azula though, giving her brother the credit, so in case the Avatar survived, she had a convenient scape goat. EVIL!

"Fire nation colonist" Katara is hot! Don't know what it is about having her hair down, but it works! Plus, I never really noticed it before, but she has the blue eyes/brown hair combo I favor. And I kinda take back what I say about Aang/Katara. The "Footloose" ep (i.e., Aang shows the Fire Nation dancing is good!), he surprisingly has game! Not bad for a little kid.

Speaking of animated shows, I'd heard Funimation took over distribution of Black Lagoon after Geneon went under, but it looks like they finally have an actual release date for the first DVD of the second season, 8/19. Interestingly enough, Gossip Girl s1 comes out that day also. Awesome. But I'm glad they're finally coming out with Second Barrage, as the second season of Black Lagoon was better than the first, IMO.

More TV commentary:

The commercials hinted at something bad happening between Brenda and Fritz, and I thought it would be an exaggeration, but that's pretty bad! I mean, I know she was trying to get justice for that one guy, but not only poaching the perp from the FBI, after PROMISING Fritz her team would back off, then trying to convince him to pick life in prison over acting as a CI for the FBI, is she trying to torpedo her engagement?! She's not the only one with a job to do! Yeah, she doesn't want some guy who murdered someone in cold blood to get off by turning state's evidence. And the fact that the dead guy was skimming off the top and trying to sell out his friend, she would be hard pressed to convince Fritz that bringing that particular guy's killer to justice would be better than taking out a huge drug dealer! She can be kinda a bitch at times, she has no problem using others to close a case, but its never a two way street with her.

And its hilarious she doesn't even see anything wrong with what she did. Or rather, why Fritz would be extremely pissed at what she did! Because he's right, not only is it a double standard with her, she doesn't even realize she's trying to play him when she was trying to excuse what she did.

Comments

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

"Fire nation colonist" Katara is hot!

I totally agree. It made me sad when she switched back to her Water Tribe fare, sigh!

S3 really is the best; almost no filler at all (if any?). But I do kind of get tired of Katara going off the deep end (in s3) and wrecking everyone's plans just because she's stubborn and angry about some random people getting disenfranchised. C'mon, you can fix that crap later, there are more important things to do, yo!

[geebs.livejournal.com]

Heh, but if she wasn't all goody goody lame, she wouldn't be the "Sugar Queen". They switch her back to her water tribe outfit? That is indeed sad.

Is she supposed to be one of the best water benders out there? They say Azula is a genius firebender, and I get the impression Toph is equally as high amongst earthbenders, but I wasn't sure if Katara was supposed to be one of the best of her kind. She's definitely pretty powerful. The first ep and the ep when the one water bending master wasn't willing to teach her because she was a chick and she was getting mad and subconsciously cracking the ice, I got the impression that wasn't normal and she had a lot of potential.

Oh, and I think they make water bending a little too powerful on the show. The insta-ice thing makes it comparable to earth, and being able to whip even a small amount and cause cutting (or rather lethal instead of bashing in WW terms) damage makes it just as lethal as fire, I think. Not to mention healing, and being able to control plants and people, it seems to be very useful.

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she eventually switches back to her boring Water Tribe outfit. Boo!

Katara is implied to be one of the most powerful water benders, even if it's not stated. Later on in s3 she learns a very difficult waterbending technique that was stated as only able to occur on the full moon, but she uses it fairly easily later on in s3 when it wasn't the full moon. That kind of solidified her power-level for me.

I don't consider the insta-ice thing a big deal; ice is simply a different state of H20. I don't think they necessarily have to deal with it in one form or other, it's just usually easier to use water in its liquid form to do something useful. In the series finale, Katara whips out a "whoa..." type move with water/ice bending. You'll know it when you see it. Now that's farking powerful! (also, I do realize that the waterbenders also get healing powers -- ah well, someone had to have them and water makes the most cents)

And anyway, Toph is able to bend metal which was one of the big weaknesses of the standard earthbenders -- they just weren't trained well enough or didn't have enough latent ability to be able to do it. I guess it's kind of like lightning bending for firebenders. I am guessing that Toph can also bend/solidify lava similar to katara's water-to-ice thing, it's just that Toph isn't ever in a position on-screen where she can be shown doing it.

Also, realize that you haven't yet seen all that firebending has to offer, let me just put it that way. Azula's the first one to display the "wait, what did she just do?" firebending thing and then later you see Ozai do it in the series finale. This technique (you'll *probably* know it when you see it) definitely evens the score.

Firebending's weakness (from my perspective) is that it can't really be used to do anything but destroy stuff. It's not very utilitarian. In nwod terms, it's like having combat powers and nothing else; most games a group is probably not involved in combat, and so your tank-ish char is useless and you sit there bored while everyone else does all the useful stuff. All the other bending styles have secondary usefulness that don't involve destroying everything.

[geebs.livejournal.com]

It seems like Toph metal bending is very special case. Because of her blindness and the way she earth bends, she can "see" the earth impurities in the metal and is actually bending those rather than the metal itself. So a normal earth bender would be extremely hard pressed to learn how to do it. Of course, its odd that earth banders have that issue, but water benders seem to have no problems bending "mixes".

But yeah, fire is very good for destroying and not much else. Its also very offense oriented and not much defense. Of course, they also seem to be of the "the best defense is a good offense" mindset. But it does seem to be the only element that doesn't need to be in the presence of the element to be use. Fire benders can spontaneously create fire, which seems to one of their advantages. Of course, an air bender is almost always in the presence of his element, otherwise he has something bigger to worry about (i.e. not suffocating to death). But that disadvantage would apply to everyone, since they need to breathe too!

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

My feelings on the metal bending are that all earthbenders can probably learn how to do it, it's just that they needed someone with a special set of circumstances/level of genius (like Toph) to figure it out first. Complicated stuff is easy for regular folks to do once a smartypants figures it out first. I can do calculus since someone showed me how, but there is no way I could've dreamt it up myself, for instance.

And yeah, I can't imagine how impractical firebending would be if the firebenders couldn't spontaneously generate fire. Fire is just not an "always present" naturally occurring substance (in enough quantities to be useful) like the other three are. That exception, though, evens the score in my book.

I still think waterbending is the most powerful and versatile.

[geebs.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, I guess if they didn't have that caveat, then firebenders would be at a big disadvantage.

I think another advantage water has in the Avatar universe is how easily reusable it is, or rather it doesn't seem to be consumed as easily as in other settings. I think fire can dissipate it enough, but if it splashes against an earth shield, the water person seems to be able to just suck it back out and continue using it. Same for air, if it doesn't break the water up enough when blocking, the water bender can just pick it back up and continue to fight with it. And even a small amount is useful- I hear Katara ends up using her sweat (ooh, kinky!) to water bend, but they don't seem to actually need too much water to do things like the water whip (which seems to be able to cut through steel if they so desire!) So as long as you have a small canteen (as Katara often does) you're good.

Earth seems to get the short end of the stick in this regard- carrying around a bunch of dirt doesn't seem as useful since earth isn't nearly as versatile as water. So in a place where one couldn't access earth or water, a water person with a canteen of water would seem to be able to do more than an earth person with a bag of dirt or rocks.