Vid: Katara and Sokka Belong

[attackfish]

Disclaimer: The music for this vid is Pat Benatar's "We Belong". The footage in this vid comes from Avatar: the Last Airbender, which belongs to Nickelodeon, as well as to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

Summary: Happy, fluffy Water Tribe siblings.

Creator Commentary:  In celebration of getting my new Critical Commons account, I finished up the vid I was working on for the holidays.  So, Happy Holidays, and enjoy the beautiful, happy, healthy sibling-ness of Katara and Sokka.


Katara and Sokka Belong

Comments

[opusculasedfera]

Aww, this is very sweet. They're such real siblings. I loved how you showed them as a unit and then happily within the Gaang. It's nice to see a depiction of really close togetherness that isn't at all exclusionary.

(Teeniest of notes, your link is slightly borked and keeps trying to find the url on DW. Not a big deal, but very fixable. :))

[attackfish]

Argh! Thank you, it's fixed now. I love the way Katara and Sokka can bicker and annoy each other, and this isn't a crisis, it's just the normal way families act. And you're right. It's wonderful how Katara and Sokka can be so close and so loving, and that this closeness is never a barrier from them becoming close to and loving with others. Healthy sibling bonds like theirs aren't exclusionary in the real world, but it's rare for fiction to get that right.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

I'll comment here since I don't feel like creating an account there (yet). I mean, seriously? No Disqus or even OpenID support? Get with the program, CC people!

Because I am a big fat softie I'll admit I shed a tear or two. I'd forgotten how poignant a lot of these sibling moments were. Great match of music, footage, and theme, and i was particularly thrilled when the eclipse simulation came up during a sweeping high in the music starting 2:37. Perfect sense of timing there.

On a downside, maybe my connection was slow but I could have done without the fade-to-blacks, which interfered with the flow and felt distracting. Also some of the stills felt just a hair too long.

I really enjoyed the video and loved the KaSib awesomeness. Any plans for a Zuko and Azula video as a contrast to this one? I suppose your Zuko and Azula vids cover pretty much the same thematic ground, though.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, CC doesn't let you leave comments. It lets you leave a commentary, but it's not set up for commenting. CC assumes that you will have something like a livejournal, or probably more likely, a university forum for comments to go on instead. It is what it is.

It probably was your connection, because when I watch the straight up vid, the fade to blacks are about as short as they can go before I have headache, nausea, and seizure issues. (except a for a couple which had long fade to blacks over freeze frames to disguise the lack of footage). I was way less fade to black happy here than I am in "Azula's Jar of Hearts" or "Learn to be Still Korra", in fact. Anyway, I do use more fade to blacks than most vidders, but that's because with my visual issues, watching vids without them, depending on the state of my brain, can be really unpleasant. To be perfectly honest, this was a big part of the reason I stopped using Vimeo after the take down debacle. They had some long term jerky playback issues that aggravated my seizure disorder, and their response to it was "yeah, our site's videos don't work great in firefox. Not our problem".

I have been debating with myself whether do do an elicit contrasting Azula and Zuko vid set to Simon and Garfunkel's "I am a Rock". At the moment though, I'm doing an Ursa and Oza vid set to Sara Bareilles's "King of Anything" and after that, I'm doing a Zuko, Azula, and Ozai vid set to Bryan Adams's "Everything I Do (I Do it for You)" about their obsessive devotion and attempts to earn their daddy's nonexistent love. And well, I'm worried after especially the second one that it'll be a little redundant. I spend a lot of my vidding time and energy on the Fire royals, now don't I?

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough. I guess I'm too used to the comment format.

Maybe I was less bothered by the ftbs in Jar of Hearts because of the nature of the song. Its sadness and introspection seem to lend themselves to stills and fadeouts. And I definitely noticed jerkiness in my playback over at CC, so my connection is probably an issue. (Also maybe the fact that I'm using Firefox.)

I'm kind of amazed that you can even do vids featuring Azula when she reminds you so much of someone who terrorized you. Then again I'm sort of working out my issues through the FN royals too, so I sympathize. To me they're the faces of colonialism and racism, and I bristle when I see anything I perceive as Fire Nation apologia in the fandom, yet I'm endlessly fascinated by the Fire Nation and its dysfunctional ruling family. It's like picking at a scab over and over.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

There's also the sense that in Jar of Hearts, we're in Ty Lee's memories, which makes ftbs and still scenes fit better. But the real reason is that they prevent me from getting sick, and because I think more vids should be seizure disorder and migraine friendly *sulk*

I've gotten to the point in my recovery where I really feel the need to make people acknowledge that what happened to me was bad, and that it was a valid trauma. You're right, it's like picking a scab. It's compulsive more than a sign of how far I've come, or any particular personal strength. There's a part of me that feels bad for wanting to read and focus so much on our powerful, privileged Fire Royals, but they're just so fascinatingly warped. It's the train wreck effect. Plus, Azula, and her brother/minions hits really close to home, and... yeah.