This Will Probably Work

     Before I began writing this blog post, I spent some time trying to think about what I think is “funny”. My initial thought was when something unexpected happens. The first few jokes I’ve heard were structured as questions such as “What do you call a…?” or had me asking the question (knock knock jokes). I quickly realized the flaws in this because lots of unexpected things can happen without being funny (an athlete breaking a world record, a jump scare, finding out you have a quiz when you didn’t study, and more). The more I thought about it, the more I realized that humor, something I’ve taken for granted my entire life, is an intricate concept to define. Since I don’t think I can define my humor, I’ll use this blog to explain why I find a specific thing funny.  I’ve been seeing a lot of song parodies while I doom scroll, and I think I laugh at them because of two main things: absurdness and cleverness. There is no doubt that many of the people making these paro...

The show Avatar: The Last Airbender follows a pretty generic “Hero’s Journey” plot: our protagonist, Aang, is a peaceful monk living at the Southern Air Temple, but the rapid changes in the world (Fire Nation wants world domination) force him to embrace his identity as the all-mighty Avatar and travel the world with his friends to master all four elements to defeat the Fire Lord to bring peace to the world. In my opinion, what makes this overused plot line work for the show are the characters and relationships that developed in the prolonged rising action (the episodes where Aang is training). A character who shows amazing growth is Toph. She was raised by overprotective parents and joined an underground wrestling group to escape her parents’ grasp, so she is extremely reluctant to rely on others. By only relying on herself, she can regain the freedom that her parents took away. This mindset, however, causes tension with others because of the selfishness that comes with it.  It is ...