Mirei World

WARNING: Avatar and Korra spoilers herein. If you haven’t yet seen the wonderful Avatar, or don’t wish to know anything about Korra,  please skip this post. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Legend of Korra premieres April 14 at 11 AM. As you might know, this is the follow-up series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, set 70 years after Aang’s defeat of Lord Ozai and the end of the war.  The series centers on Korra, the next avatar. She is a strong, rebellious 17-year-old girl hailing from the Water Tribe, making her way in Republic City. The world we knew from Avatar seems to have vanished–there is steampunk technology, an anti-bender movement.

I know a little more about this show, but that is all I care to know right now. As everyone may know, Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of my most cherished fandoms.  Avatar is a spectacular show. I don’t know if Korra will stack up to it. I don’t know if I can embrace Korra and all the new characters like I did the cast of Avatar.

I’m afraid it won’t be as good and I won’t love it.

As I logged on to Distant Horizon this morning and arrived on the Korra page, ready to sift through the information and make sense of what was to come, I stopped myself. When Avatar came out, I knew so little about it–I knew there was a war among four nations, a child who would stop them, and some weird guy with a scar.  I knew almost nothing. I figure the less I know about Korra, the more likely I might be able to accept it, instead of comparing it to Avatar from the get-go. Instead of whining, “Oh, they didn’t have gangsters in Avatar,” or “Oh, that brooding Fire Nation guy; he’s like Zuko but not as cool,” I will watch Korra not knowing what’s in store.

I’ll respect the differences–maybe admire the contrast between it and Avatar, and maybe come to love it.

Me!

I got my acceptance letter today. It came in a big envelope that said “Do you like Smith?” Still, I grit my teeth and opened it.

There was a folder inside the envelope. I opened the folder, and there it was.

My acceptance letter.

I’ll be on cloud nine for a few days now. I’ll see you when I come back.

Much love,

Mirei

As the racist proverb goes, white people can’t dance. Yes, that includes me.

There I was, harmlessly playing Just Dance 2 with my friends. The song: “Rasputin” by Boney M.  I was happily paying more attention to the lyrics than the dancing avatar on screen, nodding my approval at their half-assed accuracy.  I was freestyling it like a Cossack dancer on his day off, and then….

I leapt into the air, joyfully bouncing about with gleeful, girlish abandon, I landed wrong on my left foot.

CRUNCH.

For a shocked moment I sat on the carpet and yelled while my friends happily danced around, momentary devotees of the Mad Monk. Eventually I hauled my sorry self up and did the rest of the dance on one foot. My left foot swung uselessly under the curtain of my flamenco skirt, while my entire right leg grew weary of bearing the brunt of my dancing.  When the song ended, I flopped onto the couch, gasping for air. Thankfully, the party ended half an hour later. I hobbled out to my dad’s car and took Ibuprofen when I got home.

A visit to a walk-in clinic this morning revealed that my foot was sprained rather badly. I spent the day on the couch with the offending extremity elevated. I played Angry Birds and spent hours on our Wii’s Netflix channel, watching Benny and Joon and old episodes of Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.  My brother called me an invalid, but fetched me food and drink when I requested. However, I was able to hop around one-legged several times today.

School tomorrow should prove interesting, as should my next theatrical endeavour. My audition is tomorrow, and rehearsals should follow reasonably soon.

It’s a musical. Those usually involve lots of song and dance.

Sprained feet take 3 to 6 weeks to heal.

You do the math.

Good night.

For those of you unfamiliar with my blog, last year I decided to do a year in review post on New Year’s Eve. Last year saw plenty of changes in my life, and this year saw even more. Shall we get started?

JANUARY: Nothing really major happened to me this January. It was a time to adjust to the new year and to look at all the things I had lined up for 2011. Oh–wait, I remember. Connecticut was HAMMERED by snow–I don’t think we had a full week of school the entire month!

FEBRUARY: More snow. But, more importantly, I traveled to Europe for 11 days. I visited Spain and France. My eyes were opened to a new culture, new history, a completely different way of life. I aim to return to Europe someday.

MARCH: This was the awful, laggy, “I’m back from Europe” month. For all of March, as the rest of the the northern hemisphere moved towards spring, I was trapped in a mental prison, a dichotomy of Spanish sun and Parisian fog. But reality eventually caught up to me–it was spring of my junior year.

APRIL: I appeared in our drama club’s production of A Chorus Line. Relegated to the ensemble because of my poor dance skills, I began to wonder why I even liked to do this. While the rest of the world was caught up in Will-and-Kate wedding fever, I myself caught a mild case of prom fever. Junior prom proved to be quite fun.

MAY: AP tests and end-of-the-school-year projects and events swamped me for a while. Osama bin Laden was killed, which seemed to me very strange. I traveled to New York with my choir to see Chicago, which was fantastic. Oh, and I saw The Patriot for the first time. That was cool. There was a good song for this month–Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody….

JUNE: I celebrated my birthday. I spent more time with my cousin Michael, who is unquestionably one of the coolest human beings on the planet. The inevitability of the college searching process had reared its ugly head, and I geared up for what I thought would be an unpleasant summer.

JULY: This was the best month of the year. I visited Smith College twice and fell in love. I went to ConnectiCon and vastly enjoyed myself–that place is like a big happy nerd-family reunion. A chapter of my childhood came to a close with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. I discovered the hilarity of LittleKuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. I visited Bennington College and was less than enamored.

AUGUST: I paid visits to Muhlenberg College and Salem State University. College didn’t seem so scary. Hurricane Irene came up the East Coast, knocking out power for several days and delaying the start of the school year by two days.

SEPTEMBER: My final year of high school begins. It’s really fun being at the top. In botany class, I met Linus, my baby poinsettia.

OCTOBER: I take advantage of National Coming Out Day. The East Coast is hit by a freak nor’easter two days before Halloween, knocking out power for a week and cancelling school for a week too! Am I ever going to graduate? Also, hell froze over because I joined Facebook.

NOVEMBER: I visited Smith College for a third time and was thoroughly convinced that it was the place I needed to be.  I had my interview at Smith too. That went swimmingly. Additionally, I created this video for my AP Spanish class and I’d like to share it with you all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jByLXMcgwYk

DECEMBER: I apply to Smith and Muhlenberg. Smith was Early Decision, so I should know by the end of January. I had a marvelous Christmas. I brought Linus home from the school greenhouse. I wrote this blog post.

Wow. What a year this was.

Have a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous 2012.

…but I’m alive. Don’t worry. I’ve just had a lot to do recently. It’s four days until Christmas, my good friend’s mum just died, I’m knee-deep in college applications…

Yeah, I’ve got a lot going on. But I’m all right. I’ll have a year in review post up next weekend!

Merry Christmas.

I saw it today!

I was eager to see one of my all-time favorite movies in 3D, so today I went with Joey, my dad, and my grandpa. I held my Simba plushie in my lap–that was my inner 5-year-old coming out!–and put those darn 3D glasses on–usually they bother my eyes, but I decided that this time they were worth it.

From that iconic first shot of the gold-and-red sunrise over the savannah, I knew I was in for a visual ride. The 3D was actually well utilized here, despite the traditional two-dimensional animation. A couple times I could almost see the different layers in the animation–the shot in the very beginning, for example, featuring a flock of storks in flight. Overall, the 3D enhanced the already stunning visuals of this movie. I was slightly disappointed, however, at the audio quality. I was under this bizarre impression that the audio would be remastered as well, but eh. What can you ask for when one of your favorite Disney movies comes to theatres in 3D?  It was wonderful. If you love animation, go see this movie! If Scar is your favorite Disney villain, go see this movie! If you just love The Lion King, or just Disney movies in general, go see it. It’s worth it.

Six years ago, when I was starting middle school, Hurricane Katrina roared in and walloped New Orleans. Photos of the flooded streets, of citizens standing on their roofs waving T-shirts and homemade signs desperately trying to attract help from the sky stayed in my little eleven-year-old brain. I could not imagine being in such peril. I said a prayer for all those in New Orleans and went on with my middle-school life.

Now Hurricane Irene is barreling up the Eastern seaboard. Hooray! As an adolescent East-Coaster about to experience her first hurricane, I’m a little scared. But what can I do? I’ll just stay inside with my flashlight, a few candles, my Frollo doll, and a big pile of books and hope everything turns out okay.

Hurricane Irene is almost here, guys. Good luck and Godspeed to all evacuees.

I wrote this last Friday night, and I’d like to share it with the handful of readers I have. Enjoy. =]

***

Thank You

I pulled out of her grasp, smoothing her twisted curls from the planes of her pale cheeks. I kissed her swollen, sensuous lips one more time and slowly untangled myself from her lap. “Let me see him…”

She rolled her eyes but let me go and I moved across the coach seat to him.

He sat alone, brooding. In the heat of the night he’d cast off his robes, leaving him in his frock coat and trousers. His lovely, lovely face was turned in profile, one buttoned forearm a column to support his chin. I sat beside him on the leather seat, tapping his shoulder. He looked over at me, and a small smile flickered over his crookedly shaped lips. I cozied up next to him, dropping my head on his shoulder. We wrapped each other up in a long embrace. His lips touched my hairline and stayed there. In a low voice, he thanked me. Thanked me!

“Thank you, my Eleanor.”

***

Dear J.K. Rowling,

When I was scarcely five years old, I found a book sitting on the arm of a chair in our living room. I opened it up and read the inside of the book jacket, wondering about this mysterious Harry Potter boy. I was horrified to see that he lived under the stairs, that his aunt and uncle were cruel to him (coming from a loving family, this shocked me), and that he’d never had a birthday party. Then, once I read that he went off to a magical school, my kindergarten fears were assuaged. It would be another year and a half or so before my mother began to read this book aloud to me.

Over the next three years of my life, that book and the ones that followed shaped my childhood. Every time I opened one up, I knew I would instantly fall deeply into a magical world so intricately crafted I was reluctant to leave it. I fell in love with the characters, the spells, the magical creatures, and Hogwarts itself.

I regret that I lost interest in the books when I was about ten–I was just self-possessed and didn’t have the patience to digest the byzantine plot of the later books. But when I turned fifteen, I devoured the last four books in one summer. I couldn’t get enough. All I wanted to do was live at Hogwarts. I Sorted myself into Slytherin and imagined myself going to classes and eating with my friends in the Great Hall. Fifteen, I was! I just got sucked back in to all of it.

Thank you for writing the books that became my childhood.

Dear Warner Bros. Studios,

I don’t know who all of you are, but I cannot thank you enough for taking J. K. Rowling’s magnificent Harry Potter novels and bringing them to life. Your casting department did a truly marvelous thing, recruiting some of Great Britain’s finest actors and actresses to staff Hogwarts and fill the ranks of Death Eaters. Wonderful job!

Thank you for taking my favorite books and making them into films.

Dear Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson,

You three were the idols of my youth. Ever since seeing the first movie when I was eight, the three of you embodied Harry, Ron and Hermione for me. The wonder on your faces in the first film mirrored my own happiness as I immersed myself in Hogwarts. I’ve watched you grow up–and you’ve all grown up so nicely! I’m so proud of you three–like your characters, you’ve all come so far!

Thank you for breathing life into Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Dear… everyone else involved in Harry Potter!

To all the cast and crew… thanks so very much! You truly fleshed out the story and world I love so much. Thanks to John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, Nicholas Hooper, and Patrick Doyle for the music. Thanks to Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell and David Yates for their directing. Thanks to Judianna Makovsky and Jany Temime for gorgeous costumes. But an enormous THANK YOU to the many notable actors and actresses who lent their tremendous talents to this series… particularly to Alan Rickman, who brought tears to my eyes multiple times in his final performance as Snape. Severus was always my favorite.

Thank you all, all the thousands of people involved in this great series over the past decade. You are all, in some way or another, embedded in my childhood forever.

Thank you, Harry Potter.