u/SquareNo5496

obviously take this all with a grain of salt as Im not showing my face/name/or music right now.

I want to be big in music. Like very well known. But I'm 27 and live in LA where everyone seems either younger or more successful and it's getting to me a bit. So without showing the actual art, here's where I'm at:

I've been making music for 10 years and releasing music for 5. I have 3 studio albums out, like 10 singles, a few music videos, 35k monthly listeners and my biggest song is at 1.7M streams. I have 30k followers on instagram (mainly from music) and 25k on tik tok (not really from music), I have a live band that performs my stuff and a manager who's super cool but not very connected, he's 27 like me. I'm in little blogs & music pages & i'm recognized slightly in the music scene mainly by strangers sometimes.

so the question is, i'm genuinely wondering, is this enough foundation to "make it" the way i want to at 27?

before u say "oh numbers don't matter ur focused on the wrong thing, if u love it you'll never fail" etc etc. I get it. I really do. but that's not the issue at hand really. also unfortunately in the music industry: numbers do in fact matter quite a bit. I believe my music to be good, i produce & engineer & record it all myself and try to think outside the box while sticking to what works but retaining my sound.

I don't feel old at all, i know I'm not. but i just feel really discouraged right now and i think hearing other musicians opinions would help right now cuz yall get it. so do i have a solid shot? should i keep going? or is this just not very likely at this point and my anxieties are signaling to stop exhausting myself for this lol

I tried. i really did. every episode i kept hoping it'd "pick up" and get better but i still find myself hoping for that during season 2. this show blows chunks. i'm a huge atla fan but even if i hadn't seen any of that, this show is still not good. here's what's so wrong:

1. the writing is god awful. the script is all exposition, minimal emotion, reads super unnatural. the pacing is too fast and too slow somehow. the episode "combinations" they did would be fine if each "mini-story" had a payoff but few do. it's just horrible writing they did not do a good job at all it's laughable.

2. hate to get on kid/teen actors, especially because the script is already so rough, but wow yea these people can't act. I cringe when aang talks. every time. i physically curl up.

3. the characters are all unlikable: aang has literally no personality. wtf happened. he's like a lovable kid in the original and now he's like my least favorite character. sokka is rarely funny, his whole thing is over-stuttering talking to girls, which again: isn't funny the 45th time, i'm actually annoyed when he's on screen. kataras alright i guess delivering the 4 lines she has per episode. iroh sucks. never thought id type that out but here we are. he's like smug i hate it. ozai isn't intimidating. azulas not intense enough. zukos character is alright but like all the rest, his lines are so OBVIOUS. and the best character: admiral chow (however u spell it). like weirdly enough that's the ONLY character that felt real. wtf. all the rest of the characters are rushed and irrelevant to me.

4. everyone loves the visuals, and i'll partially agree that the bending looks incredible. i also don't mind the wide location & establishing shots. but dude, the sets are so clearly sets i can not dive into the world at all. every scene looks like a children's show. if you look at any background for even a few seconds you can literally see where the set ends. the wardrobe looks like cosplay and the cgi animals look really bad.

5. i get that atla "is a children's show" to some degree. but anyone who's watched through it knows its way more than that. there's adult themes, intense layering, spiritually mature messages, etc. but this adaptation feels 10x more kiddish than the original. which is weird as hell to me because atla fans are at least in their 20s rn. why the hell is this show so kiddy. i wasn't expecting them to "game of thrones" it, but maturing it a bit to keep up with the audience and still retaining the spirit of the show definitely could've been done. this regressed a beautiful story into a disney-level children's series.

6. i disagree with anyone who says the casting was well done. this casting is not great. why does may look like that. fr. ty lee too. zuko does not look like zuko at all, and his scar looks like party city make up. aangs eyebrows are 3 inches thick for some reason. and i like the actor playing ozai but does anyone else feel like "wow. hes like not intimidating at all." ?? iroh, zuko, and mai could've all been the original voice actors. could've kept the spirit alive and they kind of look like the characters too.

7. there is 0 sense of danger the entire show. say what u want about atla but the fire nation felt INTIMIDATING. why do the fire nation soldiers in this show just STAND THERE😭 wtf!! there worse than star wars clone troopers😭😭. they'll be 10 ADULT FIREBENDER SOLDIERS just STARING while katara spends 15 seconds on a SINGLE MOVE and WIPES THEM ALL OUT. wtf are we doing yall. wtf. what is this. pissing me off so bad this show sucks😞 i have NO fear or worry for the main characters im supposed to root for. and that's tough when i ALREADY don't root for them cuz they're SO UNLIKABLE and one dimensional.

conclusion: i can see why the original creators backed out. this is horrible. truly a pain to get through. good job netflix you've managed to taint yet another part of my childhood for money.

i'm 26 which id assume is "too old" for this game. but goddamn dude i have fond memories of playing this game. its not like a sludge or grind like most mmos have become where theres a laundry list of "chores" to complete all over again. the game lets you like just play. and the storyline isnt too bad.

• the worldbuilding rocks
• the game aesthetic is good and consistent
• the customization and classes are fun and different
• the quests are simple and straightforward

i can't remember what the paywall is, if someone can remind me that would be dope

the only negative thing i remember was battles getting a bit repetitive, but overall not the worst complaint for an almost 15 year old game

you could basically consider this my first playthrough of the game so take this with a grain of salt. first let's talk about the good:

1. the open world is probably the best and largest i've ever played. it's insane and actually makes u feel tiny in the scale of it all (which is great) the geography is gorgeous, huge variety in biomes, you could play for 1000 hours and still not hit all the various regions it's wild. this is the best exploration game i've ever played. also ill say this now: I DO NOT CARE about outdated graphics. I honestly never have. the world FEELS real. and that's more important.

2. the music rocks, the ambience and nature sound effects - chefs kiss. it was clearly made with a lot of passion.

3. obviously, if you're a lotr fan, this game really does serve u a lot extra. so many fantasy worlds never give their audience a chance to live and explore freely in that world through a game (star wars, avatar, pirates of the caribbean etc) but this was clearly made by fans who respect the world tolkien made.

ALRIGHT now the bad:

1. the world map is a disaster. you will not know how to get to a marked spot for a quest at least once every 30m. the map is hideous and NOT THE SAME LAYOUT OF THE LAND. so often you'll run yourself into a mountain or an impossible to cross ravine by following it. it is so unbelievably frustrating and such an easy fix that's gone unfixed.

2. TOO. MUCH. RUNNING. yes this game is huge and exploration is dope. but it's not "exploring" when you go from point A to B back and forth for 30 runs just to talk to the same two npcs. and that happens alot. one questline literally had me transport to 26 locations back to back, then swim across the same lake 10 times over, run all over the map, then by the end of all that i was the same level and 6 hours had past. out of that 6 hours I spent just a few minutes fighting mobs, a few talking to npcs, and for 5 1/2 hours just simply ran around the whole time on a map i already quested through a week ago. i was bored out of my mind.

3. the quest lines get very confusing to follow and leveling up becomes slow as hell. yes i know you can "pick and choose" what questlines to follow and that's great but when Ive been the same level for 25 quests and my gear hasn't changed, skipping quests i don't like just leads me to be completely under-leveled for the ones i'd rather do. extremely grindy game in general. and not the fun kind really.

4. i won't dive into how the game is predatory when it comes to pressuring players to buy things with real money, cuz that's obvious, but i will say gatekeeping inventory and mount speed is really bizarre. the game fills ur inventory with so much bullshit you WILL NEVER have space. and the mounts are really slow. really slow. even the one you pay for (if u do) ends up being like what a normal unpaid mount speed should be. the map is massive i'm not gonna "miss the moment" by traveling faster: 98% of this game is RUNNING AROUND.

alright that's it, i fully expect heavy opposition on this post and that's okay. i do love the world they created but these bad things make the game really hard to enjoy sometimes.