(no subject)
So I don't normally practise speaking foreign. It's not like grammar or vocabulary or anything, since for those you can just go over the textbooks from time to time. My pronunciation tends to be fine anyway, except when it comes to pitch. I just figured: today, everyone else is out of the house, even the builders... And there's some kind of thing on down at the town centre which I have no idea about, but that means the streets are kind of quiet too.
I've got a very big personal bubble, and most of the time there are other people invading it which kind of defeats the point, but just for a few hours today there would hardly be any. I thought that would make it all right to just, you know, go over some of it. I wanted to feel better about hardly having done any schoolwork since the start of the holiday. And I wanted to memorise some of the vocabulary, because writing it down wasn't helping. I can recognise a word I've seen before no problem, but I've gotten into a habit of just checking WWWJDIC whenever I forget its meaning instead of trying to remember myself. Turning off either of the computers is a no.
...And I still got embarrassed! With basically nobody within twenty metres' radius, windows shut, door locked, really obnoxiously loud air conditioning switched on, everything, I got too embarrassed to get the book out and read "ko-re wa ka-ba-n de-su ka". Maybe I do need therapy.
---
Anyway, I've been properly introduced to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Torrented all of seasons 1 and 2, eventually. Yeah, yeah, more kids' cartoons for me, whatever. I actually think it's pretty decent. Of course, I'm always going to be comparing everything I watch to Digimon and that is my childhood, so I think I'll be staying in Digimon fandom. But Avatar's a good show. I just had to get accustomed to the differences.
- different art. How can anyone mistake it for anime? It's emphatically not.
- kids actually sounding their ages instead of everybody above the age of nine suddenly being a teenager. Not something I expect with American voice actors.
- borrowing from an entirely different culture. I think calligraphical script (?) looks much messier than normal printed characters, you can barely recognise them through all the blotches and scribbles. D: Seal script hardly looks much better. Seriously.
- if they're going the whole Chinese thing, why aren't there... *counts* five country-element-things? Metalbending could've been so much cooler than just Toph kicking doors around, plus we already kind of saw how scary Woodbending could have been.
- not using stock footage over and over again. Okay, this is more of an improvement. I practically know the majority of Digimon fandom wanders off to get a drink during the evolution sequences and comes back when everything's being fluffy.
...I'll have time to collect my thoughts and put them nicely under an eljay-cut later. But in the meantime, I'd like to say I ♥ Sokka. It's not that I'm immediately taking to the male characters who do sound like teenagers, he is actually awesome. Even when he's high on cactus.
Okay, karma person or thing, whoever's in charge of this stuff. If I can just get out of this situation alive, I will give up meat... and sarcasm. Okay? (Ow!) That's all I got. It's pretty much my whole identity. Sokka: the meat and sarcasm guy. But I'm willing to be Sokka: the veggies and straight-talk fellow. ...Deal?
---
Final note - I've actually been putting my GJ to some use! Only a couple of lyrics up now, but just you wait a few years. And maybe I'd put my own songs up there... Why not? It's not like anyone I used to RP with would know they were there. X)
I've got a very big personal bubble, and most of the time there are other people invading it which kind of defeats the point, but just for a few hours today there would hardly be any. I thought that would make it all right to just, you know, go over some of it. I wanted to feel better about hardly having done any schoolwork since the start of the holiday. And I wanted to memorise some of the vocabulary, because writing it down wasn't helping. I can recognise a word I've seen before no problem, but I've gotten into a habit of just checking WWWJDIC whenever I forget its meaning instead of trying to remember myself. Turning off either of the computers is a no.
...And I still got embarrassed! With basically nobody within twenty metres' radius, windows shut, door locked, really obnoxiously loud air conditioning switched on, everything, I got too embarrassed to get the book out and read "ko-re wa ka-ba-n de-su ka". Maybe I do need therapy.
---
Anyway, I've been properly introduced to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Torrented all of seasons 1 and 2, eventually. Yeah, yeah, more kids' cartoons for me, whatever. I actually think it's pretty decent. Of course, I'm always going to be comparing everything I watch to Digimon and that is my childhood, so I think I'll be staying in Digimon fandom. But Avatar's a good show. I just had to get accustomed to the differences.
- different art. How can anyone mistake it for anime? It's emphatically not.
- kids actually sounding their ages instead of everybody above the age of nine suddenly being a teenager. Not something I expect with American voice actors.
- borrowing from an entirely different culture. I think calligraphical script (?) looks much messier than normal printed characters, you can barely recognise them through all the blotches and scribbles. D: Seal script hardly looks much better. Seriously.
- if they're going the whole Chinese thing, why aren't there... *counts* five country-element-things? Metalbending could've been so much cooler than just Toph kicking doors around, plus we already kind of saw how scary Woodbending could have been.
- not using stock footage over and over again. Okay, this is more of an improvement. I practically know the majority of Digimon fandom wanders off to get a drink during the evolution sequences and comes back when everything's being fluffy.
...I'll have time to collect my thoughts and put them nicely under an eljay-cut later. But in the meantime, I'd like to say I ♥ Sokka. It's not that I'm immediately taking to the male characters who do sound like teenagers, he is actually awesome. Even when he's high on cactus.
Okay, karma person or thing, whoever's in charge of this stuff. If I can just get out of this situation alive, I will give up meat... and sarcasm. Okay? (Ow!) That's all I got. It's pretty much my whole identity. Sokka: the meat and sarcasm guy. But I'm willing to be Sokka: the veggies and straight-talk fellow. ...Deal?
---
Final note - I've actually been putting my GJ to some use! Only a couple of lyrics up now, but just you wait a few years. And maybe I'd put my own songs up there... Why not? It's not like anyone I used to RP with would know they were there. X)