I added an arcade to Waterbender by a visitor’s request, you can get to it by clicking on “Arcade” on the left nav bar. Also, if anyone can beat the “Pong” game, please take a screenshot and email it to me, because I think it’s impossible.

Three new files have been added to the audio page: The Swamp Fight (From Book 2, Chapter 4), Zuko on the Mount, (From various episodes in Book 2), and Princess Yue (From the finale of Book 1). In addition, several of the old audio files have been updated so that they are better quality, and in stereo, the newer files are: The Avatar State, Ba Sing Se, The Final Blow, Leaves from the Vine (Little Soldier Boy) and Safe Return.

After a long month of new audio, another speculation article, a couple new affiliates, and many, many, many technical issues, I’ve finally gotten back to my screencaps. I’ll be going through the DVD’s (thanks to Acastus of ASN for helping me figure out how to take DVD caps) and taking caps, starting with Book 2, Chapter 1. Some caps from the episodes on the Book 2 Volume 1 DVD will be up as soon as I resolve some more technical issues.

Also, thanks to all voting for me on iTopsites, I have almost 200 votes today, and am in the top 10. Thanks to all!

Edit: Due to some server issues, all I’m able to upload today is the Intro images, more caps will be up tomorrow

Edit2: The screencaps for Book 2, Episode 1, are now uploading, and should be up within the next few minutes.

Edit3: Sorry for the delay, screencaps for The Avatar State are now up!

If you’re getting 404 errors while trying to view any page in the speculation section, don’t worry, I’m aware of the problem and am working on resolving it.

Edit: The error is now resolved, and all pages and comments in the speculation section are back up. I apologize for any inconvenience. The reason for this short down time was to fix an annoying error that I had been receiving numerous complaints about. That is, if you attempted to go to “http:www.water-bender.com”, the page would not be there. However, WWW now works, and all pages are up and going with it.

In response to the recent poll, I’ve just written and uploaded an editorial on all things Toph. View it here, or click the new link in the nav bar under “Speculation”.

Several new audio files have been added to the audio page, that is, “The Final Blow” (from the episode The Drill), “Leaves from the Vine” (Iroh’s song ‘Little Soldier Boy’), “The Avatar State” (the song played when Aang finds out that the sandbenders took Aapa), and “Entering Ba Sing Se” (when The BoomerAANG Squad first sees the inside of Ba Sing Se).

All files are available in mp3, WMA, WAV, and OGG formats.

According to a recent interview of the creators of Avatar, conducted by Sci Fi Wire, book three of avatar “will culminate in an epic battle between Aang and the Fire Lord“. Also, in the article, the creators settled the debate about whether or not Jet is dead, saying definitively that Long Feng killed him, while pointing out that the scene was “not the usual stuff of children’s shows“. The full interview can be read here.

The speculation section of the site is temporarily down as I finish importing all pages and comments in order to merge the news system and the speculation system. It should be back up by tonight.

Edit: The Speculation section is back up now, and is now interfaced with the news system. Essentially, this means that when you register for an account, it will be for both the speculation section and the news system. Please note that you can only access speculation by going to “water-bender.com/speculation“, and not “speculation.water-bender.com”. The navigation bar on the left for the main page now leads to the new URL, and the other pages will be updated by tonight.

We heard several months ago that M Night Shyamalan had secured a deal to write three live action scripts based on Avatar. Apparently, according to this IESB Press Release, he is in the process of writing his script for Avatar, but working on his new film The Happening appears to be the priority. No word yet on a release date for the Avatar film.

Waterbender’s speculation section has recently been spammed quite a bit (as you can see here.) There is now a poll on the main page of the speculation section, where you can vote on whether or not the comments for the Speculation Section should be moved to a special board in WT Forums. It would stop the spam, be more organized, and I would take care of importing old comments to the forum. You would have to register a user name on the forum in order to post. Also, please leave what you think of the move in the comments for this news post. Thank you for your input!

Edit: Based on the current votes, (8-0 for “yes”), I’m probably going to move the comments to the forum. However, I’ll wait until Saturday to do this, so if you don’t want the comments moved, please let me know.

Edit2: I found a way to merge the speculation section and the waterbender news system into one installation of Wordpress (the online software I use to run both systems). This may reduce the spam the speculation section has been getting, so I’ll try that before moving comments to the forum. Any accounts registered on the Speculation site will be deleted. (sorry!)