I’m so excited.

I actually can’t wait to spend the next year editing it. I’m going to give myself a little break, though, and wait until graduation before I try to edit it. I’m fairly burnt out.

I don’t even want to write a long blog about how accomplished I feel.

I know what happened to Zuko’s mother.

from	iateajonas<iateajonas@gmail.com>
to		staff@pottercast.com
date		Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 8:27 AM
subject		I know what happened to Zuko’s mother.

Oh, and I can teach the Avatar firebending…

My name is Michelle. I shake you warmly by the hand! After listening to the latest podcast I had a desire so strong to write and explain my unearthly Avatar: The Last Airbender obsession in the hopes of joining an Avatar-related segment that it kept me up for nearly an hour afterwards. I am, without doubt, the biggest Avatard that listens to your show, to the point where my love for Avatar rivals my love for Harry Potter–something I would not have thought possible had you told me so when I was growing up. I’m currently a senior in high school, and fell into the Avatar fandom when I was a freshman. Below, I will list many of the reasons why I feel as though I’m qualified for this segment in a handy bulletpointed format for your convenience. :D

• I actually know all of their names. Jason Isaac’s character is Commander Zhao, promoted to Admiral Zhao in the episode entitled “The Blue Spirit”. And Uncle’s name is Iroh, not just “Uncle”.
• Next to me right now is a Zuko action figure that has been so loved (even though I’ve had it for less than a year) that his rubbery fire nation uniform has ripped. I attempted to fix him with copious amounts of scotch tape and a ribbon after proving unsuccessful with a hot-glue gun and the Reparo charm. The plastic “fire” that envelops his hands has been chewed down to a nub (gross, I know), but he still angstily repeats phrases like, “I MUST CAPTURE THE AVATAR!”, and “GET READY TO DUEL!!! BOOOOOSH!”
• I own all of the episodes on iTunes, and can recite many of the lines word for word.
• I memorized the show introduction a long time ago (“Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. But then, everything changed with the fire nation attacked!” et cetera).
• My friends and I regularly sit down and attempt to watch all of the episodes in one go. There’s over 24 hours of content. Needless to say, we’ve never actually succeeded at this. But still we try.
• Whenever I have to go to the bathroom, I subconsciously declare it in two of the ways that are presented on the show; “I GOTTA PEE,” from episode one, or “I have to go to the bathroom,” from the Crossroads of Destiny. Last new years, my friend Conor yelled at me to “PEE LIKE KATARA!!!” while in downtown Austin and about to use a port-o-potty. There were many curious onlookers.
• I have once attempted to give myself a Zuko scar with red food coloring. It didn’t come completely off for a couple days.
• I know that the Lion-Turtle was not, in fact, completely random. In the episode called “The Library” from season two, Aang holds up a picture of a lion turtle and says, “Look at these weird lion-turtle things!”
• I know what happened to Zuko’s mother, and I know how we can find out even more about it.

I could keep going, but I don’t want to bore your staff half to death with the obsessions in my life that are non-Potter related. I thank you for reading my (somewhat long) e-mail and considering me and/or considering doing another avatar segment in the future, though I surely hope that you do have someone on the show who actually knows what they’re talking about. Can you imagine it if you were listening to a Potter podcast where the names of Lucius Malfoy and Ron were forgotten, and nobody knew what Harry worked as when he grew up? That’s kind of how it felt for me to listen to the segment.

-Michelle

Edit: They wrote back: some chick named Chloe said, “you’re awesome” in the body, and that was it. Well… great.

On a side note, if I ever get a tattoo, it’ll be this on my right hip:

Of course, there’s always the option of the Dark Mark. Though, I wouldn’t want it on my forearm. Probably a smaller one on my ankle.

Speaking of Potter, I picked up Deathly Hallows for the second time, and the next thing I knew it was 1:30. I still can’t believe I’ve only finished it once. I’m such a bad hardcore fan.

Here’s my page, for the uber-curious:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/522745/

My only real issue here is procrastination. I procrastinate more than anyone ever should.

I’d like to write a story about it, but I really want to play sims… so, I’ll just give you the details.

Kuzco and Yzma are running up a set of windy, stone stairs. Kuzco is chasing her, but not because Yzma’s trying to steal his money/throne/emperor-status/etc.
“I trusted you!” Yzma shouts, as she runs further out of reach, “maybe not with the money, or the throne, but I trusted you.” Tears are running, not from her eyes, but from her eyebrows. Kuzco doesn’t know what to say.  ”Just admit it, Kuzco. Ever since you thought that maybe I could actually be a human, you’ve cared.”
Kuzco looks at her. She certainly did look human. She was smaller without her shoes, and much, much younger. Her skin was pale, and her red hair was short and straight. Turns out her usual form was just a cover. Her voice was no longer raspy and cold, either. It was sweet, like honey, turned sour in anguish.

DADADADAAAA.

That’s the end. Weeeeeeell, it was a pretty strange dream. I think Spongebob was in it earlier. I also remember yelling at Mallory, but that wasn’t part of the Kuzco dream.

The thing about this class is that the teacher favors me so much that it’s kind of awkward. The other day, when I asked for a pass to interview Hosbond, she asked me for advice with her lesson plan. ME. As if I can make a more informed decision on when our papers are due (of course, I lobbied for a day after she had set, just to spend some extra time with this beautiful computer).

But it gets weirder. She always calls on me in class, and she always comes over and praises me for my work (just now she handed me back my paper and said, “this was a very, very, very good one.” The rest of the class only gets their name and their paper, or occasionally a “some of you sounded like you had no idea what you were talking about!”), and all the people around just kind of look at me with expressions mingled with either envy or curiosity. It’s like, for what? Because I have proper grammar and I don’t write like a bozo?

The source of this peculiarity is Hosbond: during the first week of school, after exchanging hellos in the hallway as I passed, he asked me how I liked the year so far.

“It’s… well, it sucks,” I said, honestly, “but I like my AP Lit class, though.”

Hosbond just grinned at me and said, with his usual airy manner, “Ooh! You’ve got all the good teachers this year. I’ve been telling them all, ‘oh! you’ve got Michelle! You’re so lucky!’” Then he smiled with half of his mouth and the awesomeness radiating off of him was tangible enough to stuff in a jar and keep under my bed.

Quite frankly, NOTHING IN THE WORLD compares to being praised by someone you stalk (“You guys are the funniest drivers ever“), but when it comes in a constant stream from, well, regular people, it’s just downright weird. I still like it, yeah, and I still use it to my advantage when I come in tardy and pretend I had some important authorial duties to take care of, but that doesn’t stop it from being so strange.

Back at my own school, I was lucky to get a “I like the sarcasm” or a “very good”, but here, they’re so common that it makes me wonder what kind of fucking idiots I’m passing in the hallway every day.

I slammed Mallory’s car door eagerly, swinging my bag over my shoulder as I walked with her to her front door. The house smelled like freedom and blueberries.

So far, junior year looked fantastic. Because of our new off period, on “A” days we would have just three classes, from 9:05 to 1:53, and then we’d be free to peruse the world as we wished. It sounded like a much better use of time than economics or principles of technology. I grinned happily, and Mallory tossed me a bagel as we debated how to spend our time. I chewed thoughtfully. And chewed, and chewed.

“Don’t you have some cream cheese or something? Butter?” I asked, frowning at my unusually dry bagel. It was partially stale, and had the texture of a starchy cushion. She sighed, emerging from the refrigerator door. She was looking at her bagel with the same gloomy expression I was wearing.

“The Barnetts have some, remember? When we looked in their fridge last week?”

The Barnetts were her neighbors, a nuclear family: two parents, a plethora of cats, and two children. The mother (whom we greatly disliked) always wore an expression as if there was something foul under her nose. One of the kids was away at college, and the other, Alec, was in the grade below us. The three of us weren’t really friends, but we knew him well enough to sneak up on him from behind and attack his buzz cut. His hair felt like a moldy peach, and it was especially fun as he was six foot tall and quite against anyone touching his head. I thought longingly of the delicious tubs of strawberry cream cheese sitting in his fridge, forgotten.

“Yeah,” I said finally, “but Alec won’t even be out of school for a couple hours. And his parents are at work until at least five thirty.”

As I spoke, her eyes grew wider. By the time I finished, her expression was filled with deviancy. She grabbed my wrist in one hand and the bag of parched bagels in the other, pulling us both out of the door and across the cul-de-sac.

“Alec gave me the garage code last week,” she said, a mad grin on her face.

“Excellent!” I said, “Maybe they’ve got something entertaining to do, too. Do you realize we’ve played Mario Kart Wii about forty six times now?”

She laughed, and typed in the code. Both of us were giggling madly on the high of doing something we weren’t suppose to, and ducked under the squealing automatic garage door before it finished opening. Neither of us was keen on being seen by any of the other neighbors, who, for all we knew, spent all day looking through their blinds and curtains, waiting to spot wrongdoers.

We ran to the kitchen, where we found the promised tubs of cream cheese. But three satisfying bagels later, the fun had worn off; we’d become acclimatized to the danger of being caught. I looked up, wondering if we should just go back home, when my eyes fell on a large purple box across the room. It looked like a board game.

“Hey, what’s Cadoo?” I asked.

About half an hour passed and we were both standing in the Barnetts’ back yard, drenched in water and speckled with bits of runny, turquoise play-dough. The play-dough that came with Cadoo was more like purple concrete, so we had decided to make our own. One thing led to another (“It’s way too watery to be like actual play-dough!”), and we had ended up tossing soggy clumps of play-dough at each other outside. Of course, we didn’t want to ruin our own clothes—they were harder to wash than the basketball shorts and t-shirts we had found in Alec’s drawers.

We thought we were pretty successful; the clothes, though dripping madly, seemed clean. We changed back into our own clothes (leaving Alec’s to dry outside in the intense Texas heat), cleaned up the kitchen, and grabbed the rest of the bagels that had started it all.

Around five-thirty, Mallory and I were strewn across her bed, making plans to spend our every off period doing something exciting inside the Barnetts’ house. I gazed happily out the window, thinking of all the stories that we’d be able to tell. The excitement was immediately snuffed out, and I felt my blood run cold.

Mrs. Barnett was coming up the walk, an even more foul expression on her face than usual. In her arms were two shirts and two pairs of shorts, still sopping wet and still flecked with play-dough. I turned to Mallory in horror, who was still joyfully gabbing on about what we should do next. I poked her rather violently, and she looked up to see that awful woman coming up the walk. The doorbell rang shrilly, and we heard Mallory’s mother answer the door. The combination of her surprised tone and Mrs. Barnett’s cacophonous voice carried upstairs, and we knew we were done for.

Once Mallory’s mother found out what we had done, she lectured us for nearly an hour (“The property of others should be respected!”) before grounding her daughter and sending me back to my own house.

It’s over a year later, and the both of us are still terrified of Mrs. Barnett. If she’s over at Mallory’s house for any reason, we hide upstairs, pretending that we don’t exist. If we are forced (for whatever reason) to visit the Barnetts’, we hide our hands in our pockets and avoid eye contact. Maybe that’s our way of respecting her property, but it feels a whole lot more like cowardice. The event taught us more than to fear Mrs. Barnett tenfold, though. Next time we’re looking for cream cheese, we’ll just go to the fucking grocery store instead of breaking and entering.