As many of your have already discovered, there's a thread on that love meme thing going around with my user name on it. Your supportive comments have been excellent ammunition against the idea that I have had zero effect on the universe and will become a forgotten entity. I still need a working framework on how to not be terrified at the reality of legacy and historicity, but thank you all the same for your comments.
I have become enamored with Friendship is Magic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my Best Pony is Pinkie Pie. Significant Other's is Twilight Sparkle, whose negative qualities I identify too much with to be a proper Best Pony. If I am fortunate, perhaps I will be able to get caught up in time.
I have entirely too many links to go through. And chapters to write on my analysis project. And games to play. I do not have enough time for all of these things. Grr, argh.
Also, I am reading![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amarie24's thoughts about Avatar, the Last Airbender, which are excellent in their analysis. This is oddly combining with Ponies above, such that I am somehow casting various ponies into their Avatar world counterparts.
Rainbow Dash is by far the easiest to cast - she's Zuko in the original and Korra in the sequel. Their shared hothead nature and lack of preparation makes it easy. (No, Rainbow Dash is not an airbender, despite being a pegasus in the source.)
Next easiest is Applejack - she's a Beifong in both of them, first Toph, then Lin in the sequel. Hard-working, stubborn, well-connected with the earth - yep, that's it.
Pinkie Pie is a little more difficult, but the prankish nature and desire to befriend everyone makes her Aang in the original and Bolin in the sequel. Pinkie Pie would make a most interesting Avatar, that's for certain. Her Reality Warper powers would be up to 11. Maybe in the same level as Discord?
Fluttershy is difficult. There's nobody that's really shy in the Avatar stories, so we have to go off that iron core that only comes out when she's put under pressure. That suggests Katara, but Katara doesn't wait until everything is on the line before showing her hand. No, it seems best to make Fluttershy into Suki, leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, for the original, and then Asami, the Future Industries industrialist, for Korra.
Rarity is also difficult, as her fashion interest doesn't immediately translate, but she's also exacting in her requirements of herself, and capable of meeting those requirements, even if she does occasionally go off the rails into drama territory. She's also got a voracious interest in her chosen profession, so I'm going to slot Rarity in as Katara for the original and Jinoora for the sequel.
Which leaves us with Twilight Sparkle, who is incredibly strong in her element, determined, but also obsessive, neurotic, and prone to panic for no good reason. Her best fit would actually be Azula, but if we have to keep it on the heroic side, then Twilight Sparkle best fits in as...Cabbage Guy. Heh. It's not actually easy to put in an otherwise competent but super OCD character into the hero team. Until you get to Korra, that is, and then it's quite clear that Twilight Sparkle is Tenzin.
Why not put Twilight as Sokka? Because Spike is Sokka, right up through the projecting masculinity and being regularly overshadowed by others, despite being quite good at what he does as well. Spike translates to Mako in Korra, for similar reasons.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders in Korra round out the rest of Tenzin's family - Sweetie Belle is Ikki, Scootaloo is Milo, and Apple Bloom is Pemma. (Or possibly the very newest of the family, grown up some.) In the original Avatar, they might substitute wherever kids are needed.
And then there's Princess Troll, err, Celestia, who is clearly the trickster mentor with a much bigger perspective on everything, trying to guide their student along to the best possible outcome. Celestia is Iroh in the original, and can be either Bumi or Toph in the sequel. I'm leaning toward Toph, myself.
Princess Luna is a bit trickier to handle, mostly because she doesn't show up a lot. As a Dream Eater and Princess of the Night and the Moon, though, she can comfortably be Kanna or Yugoda, the woman Katara learns some of the healing properties of waterbending from. In Korra, Luna might be best as Avatar Won, or possibly the spirit of Rava, (which could technically apply backward, even though we don't meet Rava in the original series) but there aren't many places to put in the Princess.
One other thing rattling around in my head - that a lot of projects, fandoms, and parts of society that take the idea of "fics or it didn't happen", or that only those who produce tangible objects matter. When at Open Source Bridge, there are lots of presentations that were talking about how to get non-coders into open source projects by having them do documentation or human interactions, and to value those contributions as much as the ones that provide code. Creative endeavors have one or two names as the headliners, but if you watch their credits, read their acknowledgements, or think about the corporate structures where they operate (or don't), you realize that a whole lot of people do impressive work over their lives, but not necessarily getting credit or their names in lights for it. It's the House Hufflepuff issue again, and it's rattling around because it's touching on an existential crisis and source of anxiety for me about leaving some mark on the world, about a profession that does great work without necessarily getting a lot of recognition, and all those sorts of things that lead to to the conclusion that, well, it's not likely that anyone is going to remember me in a few generations. These are problems, though, that I would like to either not think about, because they have no answers, because they're only going to be sources of anxiety, or because they've been replaced with a plan and/or overarching goal that will be long-term enough as to focus the attention for years, instead of letting my mind spin its wheels. It's a shift from earlier in life, because there was a plan - get through school, get job, get financial security, and so on. As with all battle plans, it didn't survive contact with reality, and now, while most of those things happened, there needs to be reworking of the plan, and I think I'm floundering on that, and getting torqued up about the possibility of mortality without legacy or plan, because I don't exactly want to go to the grave without the life's work accomplished. If only I knew what it was. And trying to tell myself that I still have time for this, and that it's statistically unlikely that things will end at this point, we'll, I'm sure the rational brain agrees, but the anxiety production isn't coming from the rational brain, and the weasels just won't leave off.
So, basically need to get into the better practice of meditation, need to be patient enough to understand the plan will appear, and need to stop with the needs and shoulds and just be patient and okay with myself. Even if that includes a lot of playing match-three games and other such things as distractions and mental calming.
I have become enamored with Friendship is Magic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my Best Pony is Pinkie Pie. Significant Other's is Twilight Sparkle, whose negative qualities I identify too much with to be a proper Best Pony. If I am fortunate, perhaps I will be able to get caught up in time.
I have entirely too many links to go through. And chapters to write on my analysis project. And games to play. I do not have enough time for all of these things. Grr, argh.
Also, I am reading
amarie24's thoughts about Avatar, the Last Airbender, which are excellent in their analysis. This is oddly combining with Ponies above, such that I am somehow casting various ponies into their Avatar world counterparts.Rainbow Dash is by far the easiest to cast - she's Zuko in the original and Korra in the sequel. Their shared hothead nature and lack of preparation makes it easy. (No, Rainbow Dash is not an airbender, despite being a pegasus in the source.)
Next easiest is Applejack - she's a Beifong in both of them, first Toph, then Lin in the sequel. Hard-working, stubborn, well-connected with the earth - yep, that's it.
Pinkie Pie is a little more difficult, but the prankish nature and desire to befriend everyone makes her Aang in the original and Bolin in the sequel. Pinkie Pie would make a most interesting Avatar, that's for certain. Her Reality Warper powers would be up to 11. Maybe in the same level as Discord?
Fluttershy is difficult. There's nobody that's really shy in the Avatar stories, so we have to go off that iron core that only comes out when she's put under pressure. That suggests Katara, but Katara doesn't wait until everything is on the line before showing her hand. No, it seems best to make Fluttershy into Suki, leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, for the original, and then Asami, the Future Industries industrialist, for Korra.
Rarity is also difficult, as her fashion interest doesn't immediately translate, but she's also exacting in her requirements of herself, and capable of meeting those requirements, even if she does occasionally go off the rails into drama territory. She's also got a voracious interest in her chosen profession, so I'm going to slot Rarity in as Katara for the original and Jinoora for the sequel.
Which leaves us with Twilight Sparkle, who is incredibly strong in her element, determined, but also obsessive, neurotic, and prone to panic for no good reason. Her best fit would actually be Azula, but if we have to keep it on the heroic side, then Twilight Sparkle best fits in as...Cabbage Guy. Heh. It's not actually easy to put in an otherwise competent but super OCD character into the hero team. Until you get to Korra, that is, and then it's quite clear that Twilight Sparkle is Tenzin.
Why not put Twilight as Sokka? Because Spike is Sokka, right up through the projecting masculinity and being regularly overshadowed by others, despite being quite good at what he does as well. Spike translates to Mako in Korra, for similar reasons.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders in Korra round out the rest of Tenzin's family - Sweetie Belle is Ikki, Scootaloo is Milo, and Apple Bloom is Pemma. (Or possibly the very newest of the family, grown up some.) In the original Avatar, they might substitute wherever kids are needed.
And then there's Princess Troll, err, Celestia, who is clearly the trickster mentor with a much bigger perspective on everything, trying to guide their student along to the best possible outcome. Celestia is Iroh in the original, and can be either Bumi or Toph in the sequel. I'm leaning toward Toph, myself.
Princess Luna is a bit trickier to handle, mostly because she doesn't show up a lot. As a Dream Eater and Princess of the Night and the Moon, though, she can comfortably be Kanna or Yugoda, the woman Katara learns some of the healing properties of waterbending from. In Korra, Luna might be best as Avatar Won, or possibly the spirit of Rava, (which could technically apply backward, even though we don't meet Rava in the original series) but there aren't many places to put in the Princess.
One other thing rattling around in my head - that a lot of projects, fandoms, and parts of society that take the idea of "fics or it didn't happen", or that only those who produce tangible objects matter. When at Open Source Bridge, there are lots of presentations that were talking about how to get non-coders into open source projects by having them do documentation or human interactions, and to value those contributions as much as the ones that provide code. Creative endeavors have one or two names as the headliners, but if you watch their credits, read their acknowledgements, or think about the corporate structures where they operate (or don't), you realize that a whole lot of people do impressive work over their lives, but not necessarily getting credit or their names in lights for it. It's the House Hufflepuff issue again, and it's rattling around because it's touching on an existential crisis and source of anxiety for me about leaving some mark on the world, about a profession that does great work without necessarily getting a lot of recognition, and all those sorts of things that lead to to the conclusion that, well, it's not likely that anyone is going to remember me in a few generations. These are problems, though, that I would like to either not think about, because they have no answers, because they're only going to be sources of anxiety, or because they've been replaced with a plan and/or overarching goal that will be long-term enough as to focus the attention for years, instead of letting my mind spin its wheels. It's a shift from earlier in life, because there was a plan - get through school, get job, get financial security, and so on. As with all battle plans, it didn't survive contact with reality, and now, while most of those things happened, there needs to be reworking of the plan, and I think I'm floundering on that, and getting torqued up about the possibility of mortality without legacy or plan, because I don't exactly want to go to the grave without the life's work accomplished. If only I knew what it was. And trying to tell myself that I still have time for this, and that it's statistically unlikely that things will end at this point, we'll, I'm sure the rational brain agrees, but the anxiety production isn't coming from the rational brain, and the weasels just won't leave off.
So, basically need to get into the better practice of meditation, need to be patient enough to understand the plan will appear, and need to stop with the needs and shoulds and just be patient and okay with myself. Even if that includes a lot of playing match-three games and other such things as distractions and mental calming.
