Fanfiction

For all ya'all who don't know, I love me some Avatar: The Last Airbender.  If I'm honest, I think I like Legend of Korra better, but a part of me bows in respect to the origin of a series that has matured many-fold into such a beautiful creature.  I'm not here to compare though.  I'm here to talk about fanfiction.  ... I like fanfiction.  No judge, plox.  

My favorite type of fanfiction involves the act of changing one or two small details that change EVERYTHING about the characters and how they interact.  The best truly try to archive these alternate realities with as much integrity to the source material as they can.  It's a wonderful mental exercise and I truly believe that young people echo participate in this exercise, be it about Master Chief or just straight slashfiction, will grow greatly in doing so.  

You know what's coming next.  An example.  Here we go.  Let's try to create a new universe out of the Avatar universe.  What if we just swapped air with fire?  What if the fire benders were the peaceful, nomadic benders and the air benders were the army republic?  "Everything changed when the air benders attacked."  This begs the questions then: how are the air benders to match the destructive force that the fire benders were in the show and how are the fire benders going to make sense as pacifist nomads?  

Air benders could be brutal if they were not pacifists.  Air benders could be flying dervishes of lethal pressure blades, they could launch others sky high and let gravity take care of business with all the ruthless efficiency of physics, an air bender could even suffocate their foes if they simply did not let them breathe.  Good villains?  Check, but we will have to modify the respective characters to fit their new world.  Perhaps Zuko's father severed his hand instead of scarred his face.  How would this change his attitude and his legend?  

In the third book, Aang learns that fire does not need to be about rage and destruction, but instead can be seen as the primal fire of the heart-- the spark of life that animates the clay of our bodies.  Perhaps fire benders in this fic practice pacifism to align their lives towards this belief.  Their flames would shine like the heavens as they defended.  A touch could draw that life force away to stun or even to radiate to revive and revitalize.  Pursued far enough, I believe the flame of a fire bender could solely sustain the human body, allowing these nomadic healers to never need to eat (they'd drink a lot though and need to pee all the time).  Aang's whole journey and struggle for nonviolence remains intact with this small detail switched, but all the details change.  Who teaches Aang the gentler side of the ruthless air bending?  What kind of children would he and Katara had?  How would this new historical legacy of fire mesh with the existing spiritual mythos of the story?  

These questions and the details they reveal are the keys that make this exercise so powerful.  Every question is an act of creation.  You take a young and imaginative mind and just start getting them to ask these questions and explore in the endless universe fountain of their imagination about whatever it is that interests them.  Be it a book or a movie, a video game or a garden, this exercise is not only fun, but also intense training in a skill that is absolutely necessary in the dire straights my generation is in.  

So yes.  That, dear readers, is why fanfiction is the national pastime of my brain.  Have a nice day with that.

Avatar state

I had a dream recently that was awesome.  This dream started off more like a meditation.  I found myself in a calm, blanketing canvas of mystically deep waters.  I gained a moment of lucidity and invited a friend.  Adara showed up and I asked her to teach me how to firebend a la the show Avatar.  I proceeded to lose lucidity at this point, but what I partook in was the bending equivalent of a philosophical jam session.  

I'll continue in first person now to get deeper into that moment.

Adara showed me first: "it feels like this."  Her thumb on my head shares with me a moment from her past.  The fire that ignites in my hand feels like pure creation.  It is like holding an entire army of Celtic fiddlers all pouring their souls into an astonishing piece about life's perfection.  It is like coming up with an idea that will change the world.  It is like being pregnant with the universe.  My heart overflows into movement and every flicker of action is creative and full of pure life force.  Wherever I move, the burning passion of life in its prime wreathes me as I go.  I swathe fractals in flame limited only by the life in the infinite being of all existing within my heart.  I believe in my strength when I firebend because in doing so, I am life itself-- my breath is steady and my fire can warm, soothe, dazzle, or protect all the beauty this universe has to offer.

"It feels totally different from my native element, water."  I raise my palm in yang to show her.  To bend water, one's mind must be at the bottom of the ocean; dark, but constantly moving, the source of all nourishment, yet so easily tugged around by the moon and by man.  I become infinitely humble as to never be broken.  A double helix of water rises as my arm paints upwards.  Now arisen, I slide humbly and exhale out.  Water humbly follows with all the strength of the tide.  This tidal force envelops all that my communicating and healing waters touch, wholly and completely.  I am in perfect communion with the one truth that all things share.  I believe in my strength when I waterbend because my depths are unfathomable-- I can contain within me any anger thrown at me and unleash a calming deluge in response, exactly proportionate to the situation.

"Now, Adara.  Where in water and fire, one communes with a force of the universe beyond them, air is entirely and completely different.  Air is purely movements of the self."  With a movement of my hand across my body as I lower my presence, a vacuum opens and the wind pours in to fill the void created by my movement.  Slowly, at first, but as my gestures become more bold, mighty oaks may fall to the movements of my soul.  With air in mind, there is action and reaction, movement and the fury of the storm that follows.  I must be careful, but I have nothing to fear, for my gentle hand touches all.  I believe in my strength when I Airbend because I know do not have to change anyone-- I need but change myself, the world will align by causality.

"As with fire and then water, it is wind and then earth."  Earth bending feels surprisingly weak of power in my physical form.  It is an allegiance and a bond with the earth that respects the fragility of me, but when fully realized, my strength is infinite because it is the entire earth moving to aid me.  Each pebble believes in me so much that I need but point and the earth itself flocks to experience what I believe is there.  I am a YouTube celebrity.  I am but a piece of clay on this earth, yet others believe in me.  I need but move my arms up defensively and this world bends its entire might to shelter me from harm, for I am important.  I believe in my strength when I Earthbend, but only because I know that I am but a pebble with a voice to inspire.

"To envision the avatar state, I must inform you of what it is like without."  When I waterbend, my entire being was water.  My focus is so heavily on the connection and the unfathomable depths that my mind cannot experience the exact opposite of the infinite high of conducting a symphony of fire at the same time!  To do both at once is surely impossible.  To bend more than one element at once is to feel multiple experiences at once.  It is to experience multiple lives, all lives even, and pull out of that sea the movements that rewrite fate itself.  To fly away backwards on a cloud while flinging boulders, one has to be both completely focused on moving the self while needing those movements to inspire the earth itself to leap to action.  To slam my fist into the ground and encase my target in electrified water, I must fill the unfillable depths of my soul with the intensity of the fire I hold in my heart.  Each combination is unique and each feels more like I am looking at myself from the void of time than it does feeling and moving and acting like each element individually.  All four elements at once, like the caging of Vaatu, is a feeling of such intense unification, I have a hard time describing it.  In bending all four at once, I become the world I bend.  It is no longer me bending my surroundings, it is my surroundings bending to make way for my will on this earth.

...

Ok, I hope you enjoy.  I feel like an ABSOLUTE nerd at this point and feel like I should go hide in a corner forever.  kthxbai