Gene Roseberry

Disclaimers first. I am a fan of Avater: The Last Airbender the cartoon series. I have watched every episode of that show twice. I have not seen the movie. I also have not closely followed the controversy around the races of the actors cast in the movie, although I have been aware of such a controversy. On that subject I have some things to say here. I haven’t seen the movie, so I’m not defending it’s quality or content, I just wanna talk about that whole race debate part.

On the left is cartoon Aang, the main character of the show. He is played by Noah Ringer in the film. He looks like that picture on the right. Oh the humanity! They look so different! The cartoon is clearly Asian and this putz over here is so white. He probably can’t even jump.

On the left is Katara. She’s another major character. On the right is her portrayed in the film by Nicola Peltz. OMG OMG OMG. My eyes! Why would you cast such a white chick to play someone from the South Pole of a fictional world?

I could give other examples. As far as I understand people are upset that pretty much every actor in the film is white, while, in their opinions, pretty much every actor should be Asian. I’m going to skim past people lumping many diverse cultures into one gaint group based on fatty eyelids  and the general problem of over representation of upper class white people in the media and say that these “Avatar should be Asian” chanters are wrong, and maybe racist. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon about a fictional world. The voice actors speak English with no accents or affectations (except Iroh, but he’s not a major character) and they are drawn as… well, mostly cartoons, but I think they look like they have European ancestry.

The reason other people think they are Asians is because the cartoon is drawn in the anime style and the fictional world has many traditional Asian themes, like martial arts and some of the clothing and architecture. These things don’t mean the people in the world all have to be Asians, though. It is a fictional cartoon and it’s own world and nothing in it necessarily spawns from anywhere on our planet. Assuming that every cartoon wearing a pointy hat or doing roundhouses is Asian is more a much worse example of latent racism than casting white actors to play cartoon characters.

I think the cartoon characters are intentionally universal. They are supposed to appeal to all children and probably be potential role models for children of any race. I don’t know, but I suspect the creators want all the kids to identify with Aang, no matter how skinny their eyelids are. Carrying that to a live action movie is challenging, and I suspect, pretty impossible. I’m not sure what the casting situations were, and I’m not sure I would do what they did, but I am glad they didn’t try to cast one person of every race. Hopefully they were looking for acting ability and fit with the part instead.

Race based casting makes sense only when a character is strongly linked with the race, and an actor not of the race would through you out of the fiction. The characters of Avatar have no strong races, especially not of the real world, so there is not need to burden the cast with strict racial boundaries.

Yip Yip

one is none.
two is poo.
three is pee.

Look. That’s what happens when I bash my leg with a pen in a specific way. hehehehe.

Sidney came down for a day last weekend. With her mother. We watched one of the brothers play baseball. On the way home from the game the car in front of us got cut off by an old lady running a red light. There was a minor impact. It happened right outside a fire station, so the fire men came jogging over pretty quick. It wasn’t a real wreck, but it still counts as excitement.

And in the same vein Lauren and I saw a women being escorted from Costco by the police. She appeared to be Asian, early middle aged, and alone. Of course, we caught barely more than a glimpse of her and know nothing of the situation really, but we suspect shop lifting. If I were a shop lifter I don’t think I’d target Costco. Their tendency to strap everything together into 12 packs seems like good theft deterrent to me.

Pretty much every time I leave the house it seems the authorities have to intervene in situations around me. I will do my part to help society by staying indoors, maybe even in bed, as much as possible. You’re welcome.

Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast/Dungeons&Dragons I enjoy your products very much. And you do cool stuff to make it better, like making this D&D Compendium. At least I think it would be cool. A huge, comprehensive, searchable database of all things D&D. What a useful tool! Oh wait, it’s only useful for people who pay a monthly subscription. Boo!

I get that you’re a company and you want money, and I also understand that subscription gets you more than the D&D Compendium, but come on. You are doing yourselves a disservice. This compendium is exactly the sort of thing that when offered for free encourages interest in your products and ultimately makes you money.

If I knew whenever I had a spare moment or a stray thought about D&D I could plug in a quick search to the compendium and scratch an itch, I would be all over this compendium. And while I’m search for the exact wording of Feat X, I’d see there is another feat I didn’t know existed, and I’d find that it was in The Planes Below which would get me thinking about how it would be cool if my party did x y z. And I’d search for y or z and find more things in The Planes Below of interest to me. And then, what is your thinking? I just find everything from The Planes Below in the compendium and copy it down on note cards? NO! I go buy your book. And you get my money.

*sigh* I think that my scenerio is way more likely than someone going to your website and thinking, “Hey, neato, a compendium. Sure I’ll pay $7 a month for this.” Plus there’s general good will amongst your customer base.

Ok. Rant over. I do think they’re missing out. And I really want to use the thing, but I can’t justify paying for it when I don’t even have any 4e games going. /pout

I finished American Gods about a week ago. I definitely wasn’t incited to write a review. I decided to give it some time to see if thoughts would collect. Unfortunately, even despite a bit of effort, not much coalesced.

It was fine to read, like, in the moment. I wasn’t bored or annoyed or anything like that. It was entertaining. That’s pretty much the highest praise I can give it, though. When I try and think of a review, I find, I can’t really figure out what the book was about. And even while I was reading it I always felt that way. I kept looking for clues to the rules of the world, which there never really are, or clues to the giant metaphor of the whole novel, which if there is one, I didn’t catch it.

In the end I think it kinda falls into the category of soft sci-fi/fantasy. I call it soft because the fantasy elements are not clearly defined or fleshed out. Limitations on the fantasy are not set or explored, because that’s not really the point of the book. I think the point of the book is just to be an entertaining walk through the American Midwest and a brief tour of world religion from the rather creative position of gods being real. My problem is that the idea of gods being real, especially including “modern gods” like technology and media, is so interesting that I just wanted him to explore that more. Way more than he did, so I can’t help but be somewhat disappointed by the whole thing.

Still, he doesn’t avoid the subject, obviously. I get some exploration, and then some other stuff, which isn’t awful. And I don’t really know how you really test the limits of the “gods are real” idea without it being pretty generic or pretty stupid. Nevertheless, American Gods just seems like and okay book to me, nothing really great.

I took Lauren to see A-Team today. I’m a true romantic, I know. I’ve never seen the original show, and know very little about it, so from the standpoint of a fan of an existing property, I cannot judge. However, from outside that standpoint I would give it high marks. It was surprisingly funny. Like, funnier than a lot of comedies. The action was good as well, and the plot and story wasn’t totally stupid. I mean, it’s all ridiculous, but what isn’t these days? The biggest gripe would be the shoddy CG in the finale action sequence, but looks aren’t terribly important to me. I was expecting to think it was alright, but I liked it more than that. If they kept the same crew together I would definitely check out a sequel.

http://www.dumbassdaily.com/2010/06/former-mayorprincipal-wife-accused-of.html

How A Super Mario Galaxy 2 Level Is Born – Wii Feature at IGN.

Well, that’s not very good. It’s not going to be particularly difficult to cut drink bags from my diet, as they were never a very big part, but I am motivated to do so anyway.

Story’s here.