u/narnarnartiger

Everything about Netflix Avatar S1 was pretty bad, including the hand waving for the bending. But somehow S2 is even worse. All the kung fu in the fight scenes is really bad, but I'll focus on Toph to keep it short:

In the original Avatar animated show, Toph's bending is based off of Southern Hakka Praying Mantis (Chow Gar mantis), the show's representation of the art is absolutely fantastic, because they got a real practitioner as consultant (Sifu Manny Rodriguez). In Netflix Avatar Season 2, what Toph does is barely martial arts, it's just imaginary hand waving. It's clear they did not even try to get a southern kung fu consultant.

I practice Hakka Bak Mei, which is a cousin style to Hakka Mantis (Toph's style). There is very little actual kung fu in any of the fight scenes in Netflix Avatar, it's just people waving their hands pretending to do marital arts. Where as the original Nickelodeon avatar, has real martial arts thanks to Sifu Kisu and Sifu Rodriguez as kung fu consultants.

As a 10+ year audiobook listener, Storm Front is without exception the worst quality audiobook I have ever heard. The entire book is loud wet saliva swallowing, wet sloppy lip flabs, deep breathing, and other loud wet mouth noises. It sounds like I'm listening to a Buffy porn parody.

The industry standard is for an editor to edit all these wet mouth noises out. Even older audiobooks I've listened too (original Wheel of Time, Legend by David Gemmel) had wet lip noises edited out.

The only other audiobook I've listened to with bad lip noises is The Prey series (John Sanford) and the amateur fanmade audiobook podcast Worm. But even Prey and Worm were better than Storm Front. I've done some audio editing myself, it's slow tedious work, but it's easy to do, and very necessary.

After a couple hours, I had to drop book 1, it was unlistenable. And moved straight to Audiobook 2 Fool Moon. Fool Moon is pretty bad too, but an improvement from book 1z and at least listenable (with the audio sped up to 1.2x), i've been told production steps up in audiobook 3. I loved Book 2 and can't wait to start book 3 tonight. I was not confused at all, as book 2 has lots of passages catching up the audience on vital info.

Once again James Marsters is a fantastic narrator, this is no fault of his. It's mind boggling how bad the audio production of book 1 is. It feels as if they did almost zero audio editing, or the audio editor for Storm Front just had a strong fetish for mouth noises.

Edit: typo

First time audiobook reader here (on book 2) - Murphy is described as an aikido black belt. And described to fight in many Aikido point sparring tournaments.

Aikido does not do any sparring.

I've been practicing and teaching Aikido for 15+ years now and been to dozens of tournaments in multiple disciplines.

Aikido is self-defense only. Joint locks and pins. Aikido does no sparring. Taekwondo and Karate has lots of point sparring, not Aikido. It's why I hated doing Aikido for the first 8 years, because it had no sparring. I had to do kung fu and taekwondo to get my sparring and striking fix.

Question: I'm on book 2 and loving the series. Do we ever get to see Murphy do Aikido? I'm starting to suspect not, because it seems the author seems to be getting Aikido confused with other martial arts.

I love books with traditional martial arts scenes. I was delighted when 'I am not the Hero' by Sour Patch, suddenly becomes a kung fu book, and the MC starts learning a fighting style called the way of water.

Favourite audiobooks with martial arts scenes: Stormlight Archives, Elantris, A Wise Men's Fear, Red Rising, I am not the Hero

did not like: Cradle, Jade City, Beware of Chicken, The Veiled Throne, Kyoshi novels, The poppy wars, The War Arts saga

I feel like I've tracked down all the popular ones out there... if you have suggestion please let me know, thanks!

Am I the only who found the way Anthony treated Tiny abusive?

When Anthony was trying to teach Tiny to absorb a core, he beat Tiny repeatly over the head with a rock. Tiny was squirming in pain and scared. Yet the book treated it as funny. It seemed like abusive behavior to me.

Instead of nicely trying to teach Tiny, Anthony went straight towards abusing him. Anthony would go on to beat Tiny multiple times.

To me it seemed like the behavior of someone who wouldn't think twice about beating their dog, wife, or kids...

I love the Stormlight Archives and The Name of the Wind (favourite audiobook of all time *Nick Poedhel version) because of the cozy camp fire feel of hanging out with the characters between the action scenes. I love all the drinking at bars, playing cards, going on dates, going to school, dinner party scenes etc. I also loved the world and exciting action too. If the series has fantastic martial arts scenes like Stormlight, Elantris, Wise Man's Fear.. then even better!

I hated Cradle, because Cradle skips over all the cozy campfire scenes. Cradle skipped all the dinner party, dating, reunion, hanging out scenes. Cradle was just training, and fighting, training and fighting...

Favorites like these (cozy campfire and action): Stormlight Archives and Cosmere, pretty much all of Sanderson, Name of the Wind (favourite), the perfect run (Maximum), super powereds (Drew Hayes), Npcs (and everything else by Drew Hayes, DCC, the rook, Expedition Force (fuck skippy, toss him out the air shoot), Legend (Gemmel), I'm not the Hero (sour patch)

Hate: cradle (the worst for what I'm interested), wandering inn (Erin too annoying), beware of chicken (I love training kung fu irl, this seems like the worst book to anyone who loves kung fu), Jade City (great kung fu, but way too much annoying family squabbling), Madman Apocalypse, Chrysalis (way character too annoying, not enough cozy hanging)

I prayed to the movie Gods that it would play at a theater in my city and the movie Gods heard and answered my prayers!

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Fantastic non stop action and a huge array of different martial arts styles including: northern+internal kung fu, southern wing chun, Judo, pencak silat, and taekwondo.

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This is one best martial arts movies of the decade. Can't wait to see what Tanigaki Kenji does next. I hope this movie is the first of many.

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Hivemind audiobooks books I've read and enjoyed:

The Rook (O' Malley) - best!

Stormlight Archives (Sanderson) - best!

Bobiverse

Legion (Sanderson)

Enders Game

Hated Hivemind books:

Mercy of the Gods (James A Corey) - Jesus Christ so friggin boring

Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)

Hivemind audiobooks books I've read and enjoyed:

The Rook (O' Malley) - best!

Stormlight Archives (Sanderson) - best!

Bobiverse

Legion (Sanderson)

Enders Game

Hated Hivemind books:

Mercy of the Gods (James A Corey) - Jesus Christ so friggin boring

Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)

The first Mortal Kombat (2021) was really disappointing and bad fight scenes, a huge step down from the fun Robin Shun movie. So I declined when my friends wanted to see the newest one in theaters, and advised them to skip the movie.

I waited until the movie came out online to watch it. And I'm glad I did. The new movie is just as milk toast and bland as the first movie.

Most importantly: the fight scenes were really bad. Very little martial arts, and the fights were mostly people shooting CGI at each other, instead of actual martial arts techniques.

And Karl Urban's Johnny Cage was all triple back flip 360 double jump kicks. Which you know wasn't Karl Urban, and either CGI or a stunt double.

2.5/10

Wax on, Wax Off