Creativity Corner

Calling all creative writers! This is a column run by Liv Akers and Mariah Lumsden to inspire readers to write. The column includes writing prompts, pieces by the coordinators, and occasional submissions from readers.

Calling all creative writers!

Welcome to The Scroll's newest column, a space for readers to write in The Scroll without necessarily being journalists! We hope you guys look forward to participating!

How to participate:

Below are a set of prompts for different styles of writing beyond journalism. The idea is that you can create some kind of creative writing piece inspired by one of the prompts, but it doesn't have to be! You can submit any piece of writing you'd like to share! All submissions should be school-appropriate.

Send in your submissions to gphsthescroll@gmail.com to be featured in the column! You are more than welcome to send in anonymously or put your name on your piece. Please just specify when emailing us. Thanks!

Prompts:

Here are some prompts to inspire your writing this month! if you try one, let us know how it goes. :)

If your favorite aesthetic were a story, how would it go?
If you could tell your past self anything on March 13, 2020 (the last day of school before quarantine), what would it be? It can be as long or short as you'd like.
If one TV show, movie, or book had to be wiped from existence forever, which one would you pick and why?
Create a soundtrack of your life. It could be a playlist, an album, etc. Write a story or poem about your life that alludes to all the songs in the soundtrack.
Pretend you’re running for some sort of leadership role in a fictional country, planet, world, etc. How would your campaign speech go?

Mariah Lumsden

The last day on earth. That’s what it felt like. I feel like I'm stuck and nothing has ever happened to me since then, but I also feel so far away from them. I honestly thought that it would go away. But it hasn’t gone away. The world has. It’s at the top of the food chain and it feels like we’re all at the bottom, fighting each other when we should just be fighting the real enemy.

I remember. I remember when I sat on my bed, reading that there would be no more school, an extra week of spring break. Spring break has gone and passed. It was summer. Then it was winter. Now, spring will arrive again soon and what has changed, but everything and nothing at all? How can that be? It doesn’t seem real. There are people that I miss. Places that I miss. Feelings that I miss. The months building up to the pandemic were so strange. It was almost like I knew something was going to change. Everything changed. Now, we’ve all turned on each other. And the world has turned on us.

It always felt hopeful and scary. They walk hand-in-hand. Just as something extraordinary happens, something terrifying follows. It makes me wonder, though, to think back to how things used to be. Have things ever actually been okay? We’ve had wars and revolutions, discoveries and explorations. There are always something that seems a little off. I suppose that’s a side-effect of not living in a utopia.

We are always trying to be better than we were a century ago, or better than the next country, or just better in general. Maybe we are evolving technologically and yet somehow devolving socially. Or maybe it’s just the same as it was a hundred years ago, dressed differently. There are still groups of people who think they’re better than a different group of people. There’s still a battle between the rich and the poor. There’s still a battle between the left and the right. There is a battle between everyone, and they are all connected. It’s not a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong, or who deserves what and who doesn’t. There’s no need for wars anymore. We don’t need to live in the past, but we need to remember that it happened.

There is something to be said by everyone and it is all-important. It is important to listen to everyone and to show compassion to everyone. During this time, it is especially important to show this by believing in those who are trying to accommodate us and help us. It has been a year since something bad happened. So why have we spent the year arguing and wasting our breath? Why have we spent the year at war when other places in the world have returned to what’s “normal”? There has been no consistency with normalcy ever in the world except for change. It is now time for there to be change, a good change into progression with society. We cannot keep repeating the same arguments to the same people with contrasting arguments until we resolve nothing. It’s not hard. It’s not easy. But it is not reasonable to keep sitting in the same place we’ve been in for a year with little to no change and arguing with each other on what is real and what is not. What is real is that there are people that have died. It is not political, and it’s not something to argue about. People will continue to die if we keep thinking it is.

A rant about symbolism in a children's cartoon

- Liv Akers

Anyone familiar with The Scroll and my work in particular probably knows by now that whenever I write anything resembling an article, it is just me screaming into the void about whatever weird, niche topic I have decided to obsess over that month. In the most on-brand way possible, I present to you all an in-depth analysis of the Aang and Zuko’s leitmotifs in the Avatar: The Last Airbender score and how they represent the perfect yin and yang designs of their respective characters.

Okay, I probably lost most of you at “in-depth analysis”, but for those of you who stayed, there are a few basics you should know. First of all, what is a leitmotif (pronounced light mo-teef)? It is essentially a melody, sound, or instrument that repeats itself or variants of itself through a show or movie, and represents a specific aspect of that show or movie. The score of A:TLA is full of them, and that is for two main reasons. One: the music team on the show only had a couple of days every week to score an entire thirty-minute episode, so it is really easy to reuse melodies or just copy and paste little bits and pieces here and there to save some time. Two: because A:TLA is a children’s show, the score is designed to trigger one’s memory. An eight-year-old cannot be expected to sit down and watch an entire episode and follow every single little detail, so the music they hear throughout the episode is intentionally meant to make them recall key moments of past episodes, and leitmotifs are an essential part of this. In fact, A:TLA does such a good job with this that there are scenes where you can use the music to actually predict exactly what is going to happen--moments before it does. For instance, when Katara is walking through Ba Sing Se with Momo in the last episode of season two, Iroh’s leitmotif is playing in the background. While it is subtle, if one were to recognize the melody and have all the context of the scene, one could technically predict that she is about to find Iroh’s tea shop.

So now that we know what a leitmotif is and why they can be so important, what does this mean for Zuko’s and Aang’s characters? For starters, A:TLA is rich with symbolism (honestly, I could write an entire article about that alone), and the music is a great example of this. The way the writers used leitmotifs is interesting; most scores have a leitmotif for each character, and usually a main theme melody or something like that. In A:TLA, however, only a few characters or forces have their own leitmotifs. The ones I will be talking about the most involve Aang and Zuko. They each have a few important leitmotifs throughout the series that represent the way their development as characters mirrors each other.

Apart from each other, Aang and Zuko each have two significant leitmotifs that are designed to contrast. One of Aang’s is a kalimba piece called “The Avatar’s Love”, and is most often played during the resolution of the episode, or as the Gaang rides away into the sunset on Appa’s back. Aang is also represented by the Avatar theme, which is a dramatic piece played by a string orchestra, or sometimes even sung with borderline opera-style vocals. It is played whenever Aang goes into the Avatar form, or enters the Spirit World, or just general Avatar-related stuff like that. Zuko is first represented by the Fire Nation leitmotif, often played on loud horn instruments, accentuated with big drums. It is played in several keys throughout the show, but the melody is pretty recognizable, and for the first season or so, that is Zuko’s theme. However, when the Blue Spirit is introduced, with it comes a new leitmotif. It is a melody played on a fictional instrument called a tsungi horn, which is most often remembered as the instrument Uncle Iroh plays. As the show goes on, that leitmotif becomes Zuko’s theme.

Aang and Zuko each develop in equal and opposite ways, and it is reflected in these leitmotifs. Aang wants nothing more than to be a normal kid and spend time with his friends, which is what “The Avatar’s Love” is meant to represent. On the other hand, he quickly learns that the rest of the world is depending on him to be the Avatar, so he accepts his responsibility and rises to the challenge, as represented by the Avatar theme. He needs to grow up enough to handle the burden of being the Avatar, but can balance it with his childish nature. Zuko, being his exact opposite, grew up too fast. He wants to please his father and find the Avatar to regain his honor and prove himself worthy of the Fire Nation throne, and is pretty much the face of the Fire Nation for the first season or so; that’s why he’s also synonymous with the Fire Nation theme. however, he needs to learn to balance his ambitious nature with staying true to himself and doing what makes him happy at the same time, which is where the Blue Spirit leitmotif comes in. Since Iroh plays such a heavy role in his development, it is played on Iroh’s tsungi horn.

Their developments are perfect yin and yang; Aang goes from an internal want to an external need, and Zuko goes from an external want to an internal need. There is one moment, however, where this becomes incredibly clear, and the music brings it all together. In my favorite episode in the entire series, season 3, episode 12, called “The Firebending Masters”, Aang and Zuko set out to complete their firebending training by looking for help from the original firebenders, the dragons. As they climb the monument of the Sun Warriors, ready to meet the dragons, something unusual plays: the ending theme. The credits don’t roll, the episode has over five minutes left, yet playing, of all things, is the ending theme. This moment is when their character development arcs more or less come to a close; they have both accomplished the goals they set out to conquer from the very beginning and reached the end of both their internal and external conflicts. Zuko has found the Avatar, even befriended him, and become his own person with his own skills; similarly, Aang has found a friend who understands him, and mastered the final element and become a fully-realized Avatar. The opening theme that follows Katara’s spiel at the beginning of every episode is associated with their beginnings (proven by the fact that the intro has remained unchanged for the entire show), pitted against each other and with goals still unattainable, and the ending theme, as proven in this scene, represents the conclusion of their combined arcs, and proves that they were intertwined from the beginning.

For a children’s cartoon from 2007, I am concerningly invested in the deep symbolism of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s probably fine. I think. But that is about enough from me; if you made it this far, thank you for reading! Thanks for sticking with me through whatever that was. I hope to read something from you guys soon!

See you next month!

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