Avatar: The Last Airbender

When I started seeing ads for the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie from M. Night Shyamalan, I was a bit surprised. All I knew of the animated TV series was that it was on Nickelodeon and everyone knows that there are two kinds of shows on that network: drivel aimed at keeping kids quiet while their parents do something else and shows that get canceled fast (c.f. Invader Zim). Throw in the confusion caused by the James Cameron movie, Avatar, which had nothing to do with the show, and I just needed to watch a bit of it to get the facts straight.

So, with every expectation of hating it, I watched the first season on Netfix via their TiVo instant-watch player. I was hooked.

To be sure, it's a kid's show. The characters are mostly children; the stories tend to be simple morality plays; and there's all the cute animals you could want (or orders of magnitude more if you're like me). So why did I like it? For starters, it's a solid story that's well written and that always draws me in. For another, the story isn't your average U.S. fare.

Let me describe the outline (spoiler-free), first. The story takes place in a fantasy world where four nations represent the four alchemical elements of fire, air, water and earth. This is not merely symbolic. There's a sort of shamanistic magic called "bending" in this world, by which people can manipulate these elements (the Fire Nation's benders can manipulate fire, and so on). These nations are currently at war and the only one that can end the war is Aang, the Avatar. An Avatar is born to each generation and has the ability to manipulate all four elements, but the current Avatar is 100 years late and a child who hasn't been trained in anything but the art of air bending.

The tale goes pretty much where you'd expect: he seeks out masters of the other three arts to train him and encounters friends and adventures along the way. Standard children's fantasy. Except...

What I didn't expect was a story about the nature of personal transformation and the acceptance of responsibility for one's own destiny. The story explains, in the basic terms of a show aimed mostly at children, many of the Eastern traditions of energy manipulation and meditation along with reincarnation, karma and some anti-totalitarian politics for good measure. It's a bit like the Promethea comic, but aimed at a younger generation and with far less sex.

I strongly suggest seeing the original before M. Night takes a swing at it. Even if his movie is excellent, I really don't think you'll want to watch the series after the movie, just because it's such an investment of time.

We're just about to start the third season and can't wait to find out what happens to our now favorite characters.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Worgen and Goblins?

MMO-Champion's data-mined image of the Goblin and Worgen masks.

Yet more news pours forth from Blizzard's best marketing outlet: datafile updates. In this week's data-leak extravaganza two new masks for the Halloween event were put into the datafiles. For those who don't know, every Halloween, World of Warcraft holds an in-game event known as Hallow's End. One of the items that players can randomly get from participating is a mask that they can place over their faces in order to disguise themselves as another race (the masks look like masks, they don't transform your character or anything). These come in flavors of each of the playable races, one male and one female. In the recent update, two new races were added: Goblin and Worgen (werewolves). I've touched on the reasons that Goblins will likely be a playable race in a previous post on Cataclysm. However, Worgen are a bit of a surprise.

If true, this would throw current speculation about factions into question. If Goblins were going to be the only new race, then it was clear that they would be able to choose which side they'd play on. However, with two races, they could choose a faction for each race or proceed with two neutral races. There's no way to be sure, so we'll just have to await the Blizzcon announcement.

A Worgen as they appeared in the original game. Image from WoWWiki

Again, for those who don't know: Worgen are imports to Azeroth from another world, summoned to Azeroth by a mage who wished to use them as an army to fight the undead Scourge. It's not clear what their society is like or if more of them are coming to Azeroth. They cannot transform into humans by default, though some were cursed with such transformation by Arugal, the mage who summoned them. Their natural form is that of a large, humanoid wolf with a muscled, but gangly appearance. In the masks that have been datamined, it's clear that Blizzard has come up with a much softer appearance for the female version. So far, only male Worgen have appeared in Azeroth.

One other hint that suggests that Worgen are being added as a playable race would be the interview given by one of Blizzard's designers, in which he said that prior experience had shown that players need to be eased into new races and given an attachment to them in the game before they appear. Note that Worgen appeared in Northrend for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for what appeared to be a throw-away return of the arch-mage Arugal as a servant of the Lich King. Certainly if they were being "seeded" as a playable race, then this sub-plot makes more sense.

Butterfly Effect 3... THREE?!

Every now and then I come across a direct-to-video sequel like Prophesy 5 or The Crow 4 that just begs the question (yeah, yeah, colloquial usage, blah blah, get over it): what were they thinking... and when exactly did the other ones come out? Well, I had that feeling again today with Butterfly Effect 3. Three? There was a two?! Well, I guess there was.