#i noted every single time down during my rewatch i hope i've got them all

[loopy777]

Non-Review: Free Comic Book Day 2021 - The Legend of Korra (Also Featuring Avatar: The Last Airbender)

With all the hype around 'Suki Alone,' it looks to me like most of the fandom missed that an additional Avatar comic with a story from each cartoon's era was just released for Free Comic Book Day. You can read them for yourself on either Dark Horse Digital or Comixology where it's mislabeled as being for ages 17+ (free accounts are required for both), but I'm sure one of the reasons you all love me is because of my willingness to jump in between you and these comics like the deadly bullets they can be. Well, I'm happy to die (metaphorically) for the sake of (a little anonymous internet) love, so I'm doing a full snarky review for each ten-page story. Also, I'm bored, and it's more fun to make fun of mediocre stuff than to praise stuff I like.

It's time for me to review "Free Comic Book Day 2021 - The Legend of Korra (Also Featuring Avatar: The Last Airbender)" or more specifically "The Legend of Korra: Clearing the Air" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender: Matcha Makers."

CLEARING THE AIR

The cover makes this look like a story about Jinora and Ikki having a sibling conflict. That's a lie. The Air Sisters arguing is merely the inciting incident for Tenzin telling a story of his youth. I should note that, as inconsequential as the Air Sisters stuff is, it's actually written very well because it posits Ikki as a victim of circumstance and Jinora as a bully who terrorizes her little sister with threats of getting thrown in jail by Metalbenders for an accident, cementing the characterization from the cartoon. This is not sarcasm. I really do think Jinora is presented by LoK as a Holier Than Thou little snot who just so happened to be naturally gifted with magic spirit-powers, but for some reason the rest of the fandom doesn't agree with me.

Anyway, Tenzin comes in to find the arguing (and Meelo just running amok for the fun of it and so far these characterizations are perfect), and rather than telling Jinora to shut her stupid face, he delivers a tale of his youth about conflict resolution.

So the meat of the story is how, when Tenzin was "a few years older" than Jinora, a pair of vandals got onto Air Temple Island and burned some graffiti into the spinning-panel things that Korra will destroy out of frustration during her Airbending training. Literally, the vandals are depicted as scorching the wood with enough smoke to be seen across a plaza. Tenzin goes after the vandals and they flee across the bay back to Republic City proper (one of the vandals is a Waterbender with a surf-plank). Tenzin pursues, catches them, and attacks them hard enough to smash some dockside crates. They are all then arrested by Metalbenders and dragged before Chief Toph. She's going to let Tenzin go (yay Toph!) and throw the vandals in jail (YAY TOPH!) and makes this face, and this entire comic is worth it:

However, Aang arrives and instead arranges to forgo the jail-time in favor of an Air Nomad Conflict Resolution Ceremony. This is nice and in-character, but I'm totally with Tenzin that these vandals should have been thrown in jail. They literally burned insulting graffiti into antiques from a genocided culture. But instead, Aang demonstrates conflict resolution by having Tenzin explain why he's hurt and what needs to be done to redress the wrong. And so the vandals help Tenzin scrub the graffiti off the panels with water and rags and mops- how, I don't know, since they were literally burned.

They also do a ceremony thing where they each take turns bending their element into a central space between them to 'clear the air' (GET IT GET IT HA HA IT'S ALMOST LIKE A PUN BUT NOT), so it's a good thing they were all Benders because this is kinda racist. This fixes all the problems and everyone is friends. Yay!

In the present, though, things are not so nice, because Tenzin's kids are still screaming at and provoking each other. Korra comes in with Asami at the end to ask what's going on, and Asami says nothing, so I still think everyone is characterized with perfect consistency with the cartoon.

I made this sound silly, but (aside from the spinny-panels getting cleaned with a little water and elbow-grease, which doesn't matter because Korra will eventually blow them all up anyway), I actually like this one. It has Tenzin demonstrate how much he's always had to work to be the Perfect Air Monk that everyone expects him to be, and Aang acknowledges how this is unfair but that Tenzin will never let him down no matter what. It also has Katara come in at the end (for just one line, boo!) to acknowledge that this was an especially easy little conflict for Tenzin to practice on and he'll eventually face worse. I found it a nice adult moment in a story that's otherwise clearly aimed at 8-year-olds.

The art is good. It's simpler than the LoK cartoon, with flat colors, but it captures the story and has enough liveliness for everyone's character to come across in their look and body-language. The brief action-sequence where Tenzin attacks the vandals is well done, moving quickly but showing the full flow of the fight and every move Tenzin makes.

MATCHA MAKERS

Apparently, "Matcha is finely ground powder of specially grown and processed green tea leaves, traditionally consumed in East Asia" according to Wikipedia. I had to look that up. I'm curious how many people understood the full reference in the title, especially since these comics are aimed at kids too young to be allowed on the internet.

This is a very simple story about Iroh in his tea-shop in Ba Sing Se. He has an assistant/waitress named Feng, a new character who wears glasses, ruining the hopes and dreams of all the fanfic-writers who were so sure he'd rescue Jin from the Lower Ring. A frequent patron of the tea shop is an elegant, older lady (very clearly Upper Ring material) named Li-Mei, who cannot go a single panel without giving Iroh a HEY BIG BOY look. She is very clearly smitten. Also, I feel the need to clarify that she knows his name is Iroh, so apparently Ba Sing Se is okay with the Dragon of the West serving tea to their wealthy. I don't say that as a criticism, I'm just noting it.

That night, Iroh meets up with his friends- the Pokemon-style spirits that we saw in Legend of Korra. (I don't know if they're the actual spirits from LoK, or just new spirits in the same style. This is because I would sooner grind matcha into my eyes than rewatch Book Spirits.) He serves them his special blend of tea and talks about how he's totally into Li-Mei but isn't going to pursue it because he's feeling old and doesn't want to take a risk. At this point, I could stop describing the plot because between the title and what I've said so far, I'm sure you could figure out every single plot beat that will follow.

The next day, the spirits trip Feng so that she drops Li-Mei's tea and Iroh needs to bring a replacement, and they've drawn hearts on top of the replacement tea with foam or sugar or milk or whatever. I don't know because I've never bought tea in a place that will even put the bag in the hot water for me. Iroh gets out of the situation without starting any love-affairs and runs into the back to tell the spirits to knock it off, dudes, they're totally embarrassing him! The spirits respond by giving him a flyer for a romantic restaurant. I don't know how they got it, so I can only assume that some Upper Ringer had their mail diverted.

Iroh refuses, so when Li-Mei orders more tea and he brings it to her, the spirits hover just out of her sight and threaten to smash the furniture. I am not making that up. They literally threaten to smash Iroh's furniture unless he asks the lady out. He submits to their tyrannical threats, Li-Mei happily accepts the date, he happily accepts her acceptance, and the story comes to a close. Iroh thanks his spirits friends for opening him up to new experience, but hopes that next time (so I guess Iroh is signing up for Tinder after this?) they won't threaten his shop.

At best, I can describe this story as 'harmless.' But it's been a long week and I just got a bunch more extra work at my day job that I really don't want to do, so I'm going to go ahead and call this story 'dumb.' It's rote, leans towards humor without actually being funny at all, and turns the spirits of the setting into Pokemon. And not even the cool dragon kind.

The art is strangely stiff. The coloring is soft and nice, but the drawings seems more 'assembled' than actually drawn. I swear there are even a few panels that reminded me of 'How I Became Yours' with janky poses, horrifying expressions, and just enough resemblance to the original cartoon to make me think a screenshot was partially traced and then ruined. (I'm not accusing the artist of tracing, BTW. I wouldn't even condemn the artist for tracing if they did. I'm just describing that HIBY feeling I got.) It was so stiff that rather than hear Iroh's dialogue in Mako's rich tones, I instead imagined Greg Baldwin doing a stiff Mako-impression with no naturalism to the delivery.

This story is definitely worthy of its "Also Featuring" billing. I'd rate it below Gene Yang's Mai and Suki FCBD short stories, but above everything else he wrote for Avatar.

So there you go. Overall, this is very middle-of-the-pack for Avatar FCBD stuff. It's very much of the nature of the 'Team Avatar Tales' stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Iroh story was a leftover from that project. On Free Comic Book Day, you often get what you pay for.

[thestarlightsymphony]

Do you by chance have like anything written or something like that for the character traits/personalities of everyone on the BeBop? You just write them all so accurately and I'd love to just study off you and I hope there would some way for you to share your knowledge, if not I completely understand. I've been writing my own fic and honestly it's like baby shit when compared to your accuracy!!

heart eyes motherfucker

You Have No Idea What That Means To Me Holy Shit. I would love to share my knowledge! But also, I will say: Every person’s interpretation of this crew will (and should!) be a little different! Something I identify in them may not be what you see or jive with, so take my words as one interpretation and not Bebop Gospel, as it were ;) 

Um??? Where do I start?? Well.... an easy one is I’ve rewatched Cowboy Bebop about a thousand times at this point and I’ve Taken Notes. Physical movements, identified particular wordings, focused on their actions and reactions to each other. I reference specific scenes a lot in Spike’s nightmares and internal exploration bc I really wanted to draw on the source material and have it be a literal Part of the story. I’d also really recommend looking up Session XX if you haven’t already; a hefty amount of Faye’s growth came from analyzing her sessions, but also seeing where she falls at the End of Cowboy Bebop vs. where she is during Session XX (which is arguably halfway through the show).

Next, and I’m fighting the instinct to be embarrassed by this, but I did a personality analysis using the Enneagram (kinda like the myers briggs but with fewer, more articulate options imo). My roommate’s hella into it and we’ve spent Hours talking about their personalities and lemme just say holy Shit I am convinced of several things:

Spike is an 8 wing 7 (impulsive, control-oriented, deflects, speaks with his actions, passionate, has a hard time being vulnerable especially emotionally, craves autonomy).

Faye is a 7 wing 8 (spontaneous, material, pleasure oriented/ indulgent, avoids negative feelings, self-reliant, craves independence).

They compliment each other. But they also have a high potential of clashing. I don’t use the enneagram as like a “this is the only inspiration for scenes i get” but it HAS helped me when i’ve been like “fuck how WOULD they respond? what makes the most logical sense?”

Bonus: Jet’s a 1 and Ed’s a 3 (i think). Ed’s harder to pin down bc she’s a kid, and I haven’t done as much exploring with them, but I think I’m still pretty good on those lines.

The hardest part of writing Bebop past Real Folk Blues is that the majority of the content we have for them is a lot of the growth happens at the Very End of the series. I’ve struggled with Faye bc most of her life we see on screen is about Running, and Keeping Moving and being so fucking mad that she has no past; when she finally remembers that past, it’s lost its weight, and then when she realizes she has a home, THAT gets broken, too. The last shots we have of Faye, she’s crying, heartbroken and angry and (in my interpretation) hella confused. I’ve struggled with Spike bc in the end, it’s hard to fathom what he’d be like after losing two of the largest reasons for being alive. In those last scenes with Jet and Faye, is he numb? Decisive? Did he already die with Julia, or is he genuinely just going to end it with Vicious and then see where/ if the world turns afterwards?

Who’s to say, either way?

You, the writer. A lot of my stuff has been written on instinct, with a goal in mind. The closer I got to the characters, the further the goal got, bc I realized in order to write the characters, you have to respect them. Which is a weird way to say it, but like.... It’s the best way I can describe it. You have to accept their faults and strengths; stubbornness is cute to play with, but it can also be an incredible source of conflict. Oh sidebar, every single fucking memory of the Bebop is stubborn. Opinion or fact? Yes.

I could go on for days. I definitely should, maybe I’ll make character analysis posts if people are interested, idk ;) 

Most importantly though (and this is gonna be just straight up writing advice): don’t be so hard on yourself. Blah blah blah, you’re your own worst critic, I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but it’s so true. 

Those first fifteen chapters or so, I’ve reread through for details and to get a hold one where I want to go, and I BIG cringe at them. I had no sense of timelines and my heart just wanted them to Get the Damn Together Already, but once I got a better sense of who they were, the rhythm and motion of their push and pull became so much more natural and something I’m more proud of. 

You’ll get better at writing the more you write. I just spent the past two months of my life working on this project, and I’m fucking Excited to keep going. How?? How did this happen??? I just wanted Spike and Faye to make out?!?!

Listen. Listen well. Trust your instincts. If something feels off but you still want to explore an idea, don’t dump the whole chapter, just put it to the side and write again. I’ve written multiple chapters that way: I started writing, it felt off, so I KEPT the chapter, but I reworked the order, or took lines and mashed them in a way that changed the meaning. Writing is a process.

Second, write what you want to write. What you want to read. I’d defo recommend reading a bunch of different fics, see how other writers interpret the characters and such, but don’t let them (or me!) influence solely how you write the crew. Find your own voice in this world. Rewatch Bebop and take directly from the source material if you have to; break it down and ask the question “why did they use that Exact word? Why did they make That choice?” and then answer it in a way that feels honest to You.

Hope any of this helps! (P.S. if you are so inclined, dm the the title of your fic and i’ll try to take a gander!)