I wonder if that title will catch anyone's attention? Well, I guess we'll see.

First of all, for those who's part of the Governing Council of AvatarSpirit.net, this isn't an entry written to blast your site; as I wrote to one of you, I'm fully aware of the fact that it was all my fault. So yeah, just wanted to get that over with.

So onto business.

I've logged quite a few hours in online forums. If you were to see me, you probably wouldn't be surprised. Chinese, acne (or at least the scars from them), glasses, headphones fixed solidly on the head; I suppose this is the stereotypical look of a forumgoer, one who's so devoted to a TV show that he/she is willing to debate it, discuss it, trash it, celebrate it, and all in all talk about it with many strangers about it over the Internet. I haven't met many forumgoers in real life, which saddens me. It's a unique experience. When you're in a forum, it becomes a microcosm. Simple disagreements between posters can feel as if that person has insulted you personally, which of course makes no sense (unless they did insult you personally). Even minor differences in opinion about, say...the canon relationship of a TV show, is enough to raise the terrible ire of those who can't see past their monitors and look around the room, making them think: "hey...what the hell am I getting mad about?!" It happens. It happens to many. It happens to the best of us, and it happens to the worst of us. Suddenly, that random username becomes your hated enemy that you wish to destroy at all costs - virtually, at least.

My online life and real life have, unsurprisingly, grown in parallel. It started in late 2002 when I joined Trekbbs. It was devoted to Star Trek, in case that wasn't clear. At the time, I was still...uh...innocent, I guess. Hah. I treaded carefully, making sure I didn't anger the elites of the forum; I didn't want to look like an idiot. So, I stayed behind the line, making small jokes when I can, with none of them being offensive in the least. In real life, I was livelier, but I was still very child-like. I was 15; hence I picked my name to be "PG15" (PG being my initials).

Slowly, I was exposed to more and more dissenting opinions that were different from my own. As a teen, the concept of gray areas, of allowing others to believe whatever they want, was still foreign. I would get confused, and angry when some posters dissed my favorite TV shows. Still, I lurked long enough to know the rules and didn't lash out, much.

Times wore on. I moved from Trekbbs to Gateworld, a site devoted to Stargate, my next love after Star Trek Enterprise was cancelled. My real life suffered a bit when I started having stomach problems, and a part of me started thinking "the world is giving me this annoying sickness, so now I don’t care about what it thinks". I grew jaded, cynical, and I started lashing out a bit more, becoming more "snarky", while always staying just on this side of the rules. I would get into heated arguments, and I would always return insults in kind, because I wasn't just going to sit there and take it. At Trekbbs and Gateworld, this behavior, while frowned upon, wasn't really against the rules unless you actually flame or troll the other poster. If you're just really, really snarky and sarcastic, it's still fine. Chances are, the other poster is the same way anyway.

In my real life, I grew more and more snarky and cynical as well; your typical cynical teenager, if you will. However, I was also growing into an adult, and with that comes a somewhat better understanding of human nature. I started to not get bothered by people offering dissenting opinions (unless they were really sarcastic about it, and I can find a way to exploit a weakness in their argument; then I go to town), and understood clearly that people should be allowed to voice their opinions - it is the manner in which they voice said opinions, however, that is up for discussion. I follow this philosophy until today. I am 21.

A few years back, I discovered Avatar: The Last Airbender. I loved it. The characters were instantly relatable; the animation was incredible, and the music was just plain awesome. What also grabbed me were the references to Asian culture, which I am a product of, being Chinese. I loved how much effort Bryan, Mike, and their team put into giving the Avatar world an authentic Asian feel to it. I would frequently show my mother all the Chinese words that were plastered all over the series; once, I excitedly ranted about the genius of including Chakras (yes, they're Indian; doesn't matter right now) in a series that was made for kids - I mean, how esoteric can you get?! And then there was the chant of the Lion Turtle, which, when I found out was a traditional Buddhist chant, basically blew my mind.

But before all this, I did what I always do: immerse myself in fandom. I found AvatarSpirit.net and Distant Horizons, and set up shop. At once however, I noticed something about AvatarSpirit: the moderation was a lot stricter than either Trekbbs or Gateworld. At the beginning, I saw it as a bad thing; I thought it stifled free discussion and fan interaction, but as time wore on, I begin to appreciate the mods' efforts at weeding out the idiots; what remained on the board were a tight group of intelligent people (along with a few spazzy fans who were both harmless and entertaining) that can participate in many civilized discussions, while also offering hyperbolic fan-isms (i.e. SQUEEEEEEE!!! OMG!! LIKE, WITH A PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS!!) that are done masterfully. It was a great place to hang out. Sometimes arguments broke out, and once I really offended the boss by saying his forum was like Ba Sing Se under the Dai Li because we weren't allowed to diss Nick for being jerks (which I then comfortably did on this very journal); I later apologized, and rightfully so. It was one of those heated situation where my anger got the best of me. And so, I hung out at Avatar Spirit for a good long while, adding my input, and celebrating Avatar. Good times and LULZ were had.

Then came news of the movie. I was ambivalent, but all my years in fandom tell me that a crapstorm is about to go down in fandom. Fans don't react well to change. That's a given. No matter how good or how bad the change is, the fact that it is a change will always be seen as BAD. I, however, have this irking habit of always defending those in charge of the creative process. Be they the writers of Star Trek, the writers of Stargate, the creative team behind Avatar, and now, M. Night and his crew. As more info was released, I kept trying my best to calm down those who were dissing the film, saying that they should wait and see, or that they were jumping the gun. I've seen my share of hardcore fans reacting badly to adaptations, and I knew this was about to happen to the Avatar fandom.

And then the cast was revealed. Oh boy. Things really kicked into high gear. Suddenly, my own race became the center of discussion. As a Chinese person, but also a defender of the creative process, I found myself right on the border between the two sides. But then I saw how the fans were acting and I made my choice. Racism is bad, and the problem of minority actors, including Asians, not having the chance at being the leads in a movie is a real problem and shows a clear bias in Hollywood, that they've yet to embrace new ideas. However, the fans were acting batshit insane and I hated that. The forum I once thought was a place of intelligent debate and fan celebration became one filled with incredible nastiness and hatred against the filmmakers. Not only that, but yet again we had people jumping to conclusion (specifically about the intentions of the filmmakers without knowing how we got the cast we got), which is a serious pet peeve. If there is even a tiny chance that the fans were wrongfully accusing the filmmakers of Racism, then it needs to stop; this is not an accusation to be made lightly; but what did I see? Fans tossing the term around as if they had to fill up a quota. Well, with my eye-for-an-eye philosophy in such things, I became just as nasty, but since every fan was being a little nasty, and I see fandom as one big group, I became multiple-times nasty in order to compete, as I felt as if I were the only dissenting voice in the mob.

The fandom roiled in response to the casting, LJ comms were created, movements were set in motion, etc. etc. I poked in there, and the nastiness overwhelmed my senses; I couldn't believe people could be so full of hatred and anger. Of course, writing this now makes me think of my own hypocrisy since as I just said a few paragraphs ago, the Internet has a way of whittling away the real world and making you overreact to such things.

However, I'll say this: to this day, I still believe that the majority of Avatar fans crying foul about the racism in casting is only doing so because the actors don't look like their characters. They don't care about racism as much as they care about how much the movie sticks to the series in terms of aesthetics. Believe me when I say that this makes them look no different than fans of other things that was adapted or "reinvented" (i.e. Star Trek 2009, new Battlestar Galactica); it's just that, this time, they hitched their complaints to a topic that hits close to home, and that just pisses me off like nothing else. All I see are people USING the banner of Racism to forward their puerile fandom distaste for the movie not sticking exactly to the series in terms of looks.

After all, if race and culture are so important, then Dev Patel shouldn't be Sokka anymore than Jackson Rathbone, since both belong to races and cultures that are NOT the Inuit; and yet, I see many who want Dev to be Sokka, just because of his skin color.

Shameful. Shallow. Disgusting. Ignorant.

Now, I say majority, and not all, because clearly there are those who are fighting for equality and doing it in (IMHO) the right way: through civilized promotion of the topic, and not by creating comms and forums filled with hate and then bashing the film mercilessly on their little soapboxes.

So as you can see, this is a sensitive topic. Things began to escalate, and I joined many debates that ended up being extremely heated. At one point, I decided to leave AvatarSpirit, because it was just getting too much; too many "ambassadors of the race debate" were signing on just so they can promote this idea - not by simple offerings of opinion, but by treating others who are being optimistic about the movie as uncivilized racists who needs a good talkin' to. Enough was enough. I stopped posting.

However, I continued to lurk. Nastiness aside, there were still reactions to be read, and news to be revealed by insiders. Those things kept me up to date on Avatar news. Slowly, I saw things started calming down. Disobeying my own promise, I started posting again.

Beyond all the reactions and news, however, there was one big thing that drew my attention even when I stopped posting: discussions of the actual movie. I know, it's weird. Anyway, there were threads made for the race discussion, but there were also ones wondering about how the 3 seasons were going to be paired down so as to fit the length of 3 movies. I had my own ideas, and since I had time to kill in-between homework assignments, I actually ended up realizing an entire plot line for the three movies. The challenge of whether I, a random Physics student, could craft these wonderful stories that remained true to the spirit of the Avatar series, and yet still clocked in at the right time, was too sweet to pass up. Before long, I had myself an outline of what the movies would involve; then it was a simple matter of waiting until Summer vacation to really go the full length: writing a movie script.

As days wore by, I began envisioning my scenes in my head; how I'd direct them, how I'd shoot them; how I'd frame them; the dialogue; the fight choreography (even though I knew nothing of martial arts, and only knew one form of Tai Chi that was probably crap anyway), etc. etc. I was getting really excited, wasting hours a day playing out the last fight of my version of Sozin's Comet instead of doing homework or studying.

Anyway, back to the forums. When I returned, the nastiness had died down, and I immersed myself back in the discussions. I controlled my temper, and yet still not fully. At the same time, Stargate was having its own problems, with a new series on its way that was a different approach than the previous two, and the suspicion of many fans that the previous series was cancelled to make way for the new series. My snark at Gateworld was now virtually legendary; I had 2 other online friends there whom I deemed my snark buddies; I pushed the limits of the rules, being as sarcastic and snarky as I could as people began jumping to conclusions about the new Stargate series. Still, I received a few Infraction points from Gateworld as a result. Looking back, I was again fully deserving of them.

With crap flying in both of my current fandoms, something had to give, but not yet.

Summer finally started at the end of April (that's University" Summer", not high school "Summer"; we end 2 months early), and I started to work on my "The Last Airbender" fan script. On the first day, I wanted to just write my version of the opening narration, but ended up writing 40 pages because it was just so much fun. Of course, part of the fun came in anticipating what the reactions of the fans would be, when I posted the finished script on the AvatarSpirit forums! There were a few posters there that were involved in the film industry whom I admired a lot; at the time, I really wanted to find out what they thought, and whether I had the skills to make it in the film industry as a Writer. So I kept writing. The second day, I got another 25 pages done. Third day, another 25 pages or so. The movie was clocking very long (it'll probably end up as 270 pages or so, if I ever finish it), but I didn't care; I was having too much fun!

And then the bough broke.

It's been my life experience that a tiny mistake can spell disaster. My stomach problems appeared mainly because I ate some bad Sushi; I also had a dizziness problem that was caused by running too fast up and down a flight of stairs (ok, it was 20 stories' worth, but still); both problems are still with me today.

And so, at the end of May, during yet another debate on the movie that had nothing to do with Race, I dropped a little snark about it to a poster who is known for his opinions against the races of the actors in the movie. For my part, it was an innocent little leg pulling, a hint reminding him that what he was currently doing goes against the philosophy he promoted in his posts about race. I loved pointing out contradictions. The poster focused on that leg pulling and the conversations was instantly pulled towards that direction. Unfortunately, I decided to go with it, and for a few posts, we were talking about race again.

Only problem: race was now banned as a subject in the forum we were debating in. Of course, I was never one to let things go. Eventually, the mods came and snipped the posts, like they always do. I thought it was normal; us posters go a little off-topic, and the mods come to prune the thread; I don't even try to stay on-topic at times since I know the mods will take care of it at the end; furthermore, I wasn’t the first to tease about the race topic after the ban was instigated.

A few hours later, I returned to the forum, and I found myself banned.

I was incredulous. Flabbergasted. Shocked. Stunned. And so forth. This has never happened before, ever. Not only was I banned from posting, but I was also banned from lurking and reading the forums (something I never knew about before being banned; if I knew, I certainly would've tried harder to behave. Heh.). I admit that I tried to register under another username right away, but that didn't work. I tried to laugh it off, convincing myself that AvatarSpirit has always been too strict, and that they went against their word that offenders of the ban on race discussions would only be barred from the Movie forum and not the entire forum. It was clearly too heavy of a punishment for what was really just a small tiff. But who cares; it's just a forum; I'm sure I can pick up movie news elsewhere, and though I valued the opinions of a few posters in the forum, not having it anymore wasn't going to kill me.

It was a few minutes later that I realized a horrible side effect: without access to the forums, I will not be able to post my fan script for the movie and receive critiques on it. I was instantly deflated; my drive to continue writing the script faded away. Reality hit, and I realized what I had lost.

It’s a funny thing. Like I said, the forums are a microcosm, and so is the Internet. For those of us who spend a majority of the day surfing the net, it is another world, and we are wandering it as hitchhikers, always on the look out for that motel, hotel, hostel, etc. that took the form of websites and forums; a place where you can interact with people instead of just pixels. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve found massive communities dedicated to the shows I loved; they were like virtual homes for me, places where my online buddies dwelt, always welcoming me back when I return, day after day. Thus, you can imagine the severity of being banned from one of these communities from the point of view of a literal Netizen. It’s sad, it’s stupid, and it’s easily mocked, but the truth is, it felt like being kicked out of a house, out of a family of sorts, or any group where I felt I belonged. The Internet is a microcosm; in it, trivial matters in the real world become incredibly important.

I collected my thoughts and evaluated the situation. AvatarSpirit was the place to be for Avatar talk and info; now that I’m banned, I am without a “home” for my Avatar-related activities; my shop is closed, so to speak. So what’s next? Well, I wasn’t going to give up. I started trying to find a way to get back to the forums. I tried my father’s computer; I tried to delete my Cookies; I tried to change my IP address; I tried to use one of those IP address changing sites you’d use to get past restrictions on where you can view a US-only video; I even used the Wayback machine – none of them worked. I then contemplated more unorthodox methods, like having my friends save pages of the forums as archived web pages and then emailing the files back to me; use print screen to capture a screenshot of the desktop while he had the forums open in a browser; use a webcam to film the monitor as he scrolled down a page of the forums while I watched; I was wracking my brains to think of ways to get back, not even thinking about how ridiculous I was being. I even contemplated hacking the forums so I’d be “unbanned”, but that was undoable since I know nothing about hacking. Oh, and the fact that I’d be HACKING. Jesus Christ, what am I, a drug addict?!

To be sure, it wasn’t like I was Gollum, demanding to be reunited with my precious AvatarSpirit.net forums at all costs. At the beginning, after calming down and realizing the mistake I made and that it was all my fault, I attempted to come clean with it. I contacted a moderator at AvatarSpirit and explained to her how I felt about this, and told her I knew I made a mistake, and that I didn’t understand what it was I was getting into. To be honest, even though I meant every word of it, part of me still hoped that my honesty would impress enough so that I’d be allowed back, even if while being watched closely by the mods, or not being allowed to post at all. Unfortunately, nothing ever came from that.

A month passed, and I was starting to let go. I missed AvatarSpirit and the people there, but I accepted that I will never be allowed to return on my home computer, and that was that.

And then the Teaser Trailer came. This just happened yesterday, and it’s what prompted this massive entry. At first, I thought it was cool, but I wasn’t overly impressed; as time went on, it grew on me and now I can safely say that I love it. The problem is, I really wanted to share my joy with other fans, even if they disagreed. I wanted to read the reactions of all those on AvatarSpirit; people whom were familiar to me; to see their spazzings or declarations of EPIC FAIL; it didn’t matter; I just wanted to see it. But I couldn’t.

In a last-ditch effort, I jumped on Google and searched for “AvatarSpirit forums”; anything to get me back in. I went for pages and pages, until page 13 or so, and still nothing useful. I did find one search item though that was pretty funny; someone’s sister had messed with their account and now they were banned from the AvatarSpirit forums, and this person went on [link] to ask about what he should do. There was another person who did the same thing, but he wasn’t sure at all why he was banned. Still, though interesting, they were useless to me.

It was then that I finally realized that it was over. I will need to find another home for my Avatar obsession and leave AvatarSpirit forever in the past. I was banned, and I feel terrible about it; but I suppose I’ll just have to get over it like any other inconvenience in life.

I suppose I write this so I can finally put my swirling thoughts into a coherent whole. In reality, this is beyond irrelevant, of course. It’s just a forum, an online construct about a cartoon show; but what’s also certain is that, for people like me who’d rather deal with people across the net than people across the hall (so to speak), the Internet is a microcosm, a world to be wandered about; and when I was banned from AvatarSpirit, I lost one of my safe havens in that world…and it was all my fault.

Hey, maybe it’s time to go into the real world.