I Can See Right Through Your Skin

[redbrunja]

I swear, my journal is bipolar between "Avatar=squee" and "School=eeek."

Any suggestions on what I should post on next to break the monotony?

~~~

I'm sure you'll all sick of Heath Ledger posts, so I'll just say that it's a shame: he was a good actor, had a young daughter, and was by all appearances a decent guy. Also, I can't believe I don't have the soundtrack for '10 Things I Hate About You' on my computer.

~~~

So, this is something that's been bugging me about a couple Avatar fics I've read, and some fanart that I've seen, often committed by really good authors.

Okay, remember "The Puppetmaster"? Remember how upset Katara was when she used bloodbending? I really wish you would.

I have come across the 'Katara uses bloodbending' troupe a couple of times (often against Zuko), and only ONCE has the author seemed to have any sense of the gravity of the situation.

Now, I am not saying that Katara wouldn't lose her temper and use blood bending, or even use it for selfish reasons.

I am saying that she once she realized what she had done, it would hit her like a punch to the gut.

This is a girl who broke down crying after using bloodbending to save her brother and best friend against a woman who had been kidnapping innocents for months.

Broke down crying.

How do you think she would react if she used bloodbending against someone who is on their side, because she's irritated with him?

Thinking about that, I got bunnied. So, yeah, I have a feeling I'll be writing that fic. And I was pondering titles last night, and remembered a great poem (that I had to go to skip 75 on musesfool's poetry tag, and it's even more perfect for Katara and bloodbending than I remembered:

In Mind
by Denise Levertov

There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured, and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is a light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation ---

               but she has
no imagination.

                 And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who know strange songs ---

but she is not kind.

~~~

Speaking of that old women, does anyone else love

the scene when she's breaking out of prison, and walking away, and when the guard tried to get up, she doesn't look back, just lifts her arm and shoves it down, and the guard's head slams into the floor?

Comments

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

I haven't read that much recent fic for Avatar; most of the bloodbending fics written after the word became known but before the episode aired have Katara being utterly badass and either using blood spilled on the battlefield as an emergency water source (like she did with the sweat) or being even more badass and ripping it out of the enemy's body.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

See that? Would be totally awesome and in character, and I'd love links to though fics. I've just come across several where it's treated casually and that, to me, is both worse than using it against an enemy, and out of character for our Katara.

(I've actually had the image since before the bloodbending episode of Katara and Pakku getting trapped/captured somehow, and Pakku slitting his throat to give her water so she can escape - I can see the blood splattering across her face, and that one moment of horror before she wrecks havoc.)

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

Yep. The general agreement is that the unofficial bloodbending would be both more badass and less creepy than the official version.

And it would be easier for Katara to use; someone wants to spill her blood, she'll make use of theirs. To injure or kill the enemy in battle is less personal, less intrusive, less horrible than bending them to her will.

Eeeeeek. Tears in her eyes, she'd make sure that not a drop of his sacrifice went to waste.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

See, I love how creepy the official version is, and thought is was plenty badass (seriously, Katara gets all the best fight scenes). However, I do think that fanfic should use the 'not aired by Nick' freedom and make it much more intense.

Yeah, the fact that Katara managed to use bloodbending against the woman who... reinvented it, shall we say? That's pretty damn impressive. My personal fanon is that Katara is just as much a prodigy as Azula - actually probably more so than Azula, since Katara was largly self-taught, and Azula had teachers since she was very young.

*nods* Yep, she's take Pakku's sacrifice and make who ever had captured her so, so sorry they had.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Any suggestions on what I should post on next to break the monotony?

Um...music? More poetry? Makeup?

...yeah, my brain is kind of fried right now, sorry.

(But speaking of MakeupWhoredom, there's a Shiseido GWP (http://www.sca.shiseido.com/index.cfm?select=Event.cfm?promo=93) going on right now, if you need to stock up on any skincare stuff. Just make sure to check in wherever you usually shop even if the search function on that page doesn't turn anything up, though -- right now it's saying there's nothing anywhere near me, and, um, I've got a cute little quilted bag full o' samples here that says they're wrongity wrong wrong about that.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are good possibilities. And I am really sad that I just bought my skincare products for the next six months. *pout*