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Author Topic: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]  (Read 30849 times)

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Bongo Bill

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Ted Belmont

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #182 on: June 25, 2012, 06:38:38 PM »

That sound you hear is just tumblr exploding.

Speaking of which:

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Brentai

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #183 on: June 25, 2012, 11:17:28 PM »

Okay.

So I'm hearing a lot of stuff about this "Magic Aang".  And I agree!

But here's the thing.

Here's how you could have made it all better:

Animate, like, 5-10 seconds of Korra closing her eyes, maybe concentrating a bit, and then, actually asking Aang and the other Avatars what she should do.

And then you can have Aang show up and just hand her the answer if you want.  Too easy?  Maybe, but remember, energybending has a long and proud history of being the bullshit solution to all of the Avatar's most intractable conundrums, so whatever.  At any rate, communicating with the spirit world, activating glowy eye mode and energybending are all special Avatar-y things that we know that Korra has the capacity to do, so it would have been nice to actually see her at least try to do them instead of it all just sort of spontaneously happening to her.

But what we got is this: Korra tells Mako she'll never be okay ever again, goes and curls up in a fetal ball, sheds the shiniest single tear ever, and contemplates suicide (maybe).

Now, the problem with this isn't the fact that, at this point, she can still bend air, which still puts her above 99% of the population and pretty much all of those other benders who got lined up and summarily executed bloodenergybentblocked by Amon while she was fucking around, and if she had just talked to Asami for like 5 minutes she'd realize she's not even the most unfairly shat-upon girl in the room.  Let's just accept that it can pretty traumatic to be the world's one super-important Avatar and not be sure whether or not your gross incompetence just fucked up the entire natural balance of the world itself.  I mean, that's pretty acceptable.

Okay.  So that's not the problem, and I'm rambling off message.  The problem is what happens next, which is that Aang just sort of... walks up behind her, taps her on the shoulder, and says "Oh hey, here's the solution to all your problems."  She doesn't even realize it's Aang at first.  Despite his assertion that she called out to him somehow, she did not, in fact, consciously do a damned thing.

Now this presents a problem for the presumed protagonist, because at this point she is not actually protagonizing, at all.  Korra really has no agency during this entire sequence, save for not deciding to tell Aang to go fuck himself.  She's already given up, in a pretty extreme sense, and made herself into just another victim, and it's up to a completely external force to step in and rescue her.  Now this is not a bad thing for a hero - it's an essential part of the monomyth, the lowest point and the rescue from without - and Aang had his own breakdown and subsequent smacking out of too.  But it can't be the resolution of the conflict.  That has to be something that the protagonist, in at least some fashion, initiates or brings about.  There's a term for a resolution without hero agency, and it gets pretty lazily applied to a lot of situations that are really just convenient for the hero to take advantage of, but in this case Magic Aang is definitely a dragon-drawn chariot being lowered by a winch.

And I for one have had it with these motherfucking drakes on these motherfucking cranes.
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Brentai

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #184 on: June 25, 2012, 11:18:32 PM »

Anyway, other thoughts:

* Asami's plight is honestly getting kind of creepy.  It's like the writers dreamed up this impossibly beautiful, rich, talented, intelligent, and morally impeccable female with a penchant for falling into the laps of men with nary an effort, and then they just... dump on her nonstop.  Name a single good thing that happens to Asami after she hooks up with Mako.  It's kind of ridiculous and I've gone from thinking of her as a laughably impossible ideal to thinking of her as a laughably perfect woobie.
* Bolin is pretty great but the comparisons to Sokka need to stop.  He's not Sokka.  Sokka is not-so-secretly the smartest person in the room and Bolin is, well, he's a schlub.  A loveable schlub, to be sure, but still.  I'll be happy if he finds his inner Sokka in season two and starts traveling with his own harem of Asami, the yet-unseen reincarnation of Yue, and Jinora.
* Mako just needs a personality transplant, for fuck's sakes.
* NO SERIOUSLY HOW DID YOU FUCKING CAPTURE THE FAMILY, THEY WERE ASS-DEEP IN FRIENDLY TERRITORY.  The only thing I can think of is they were betrayed from the outside, or Tenzin did something uncharacteristically rash and stupid.
* The Tarrlok/Noatak thing is kind of goofy in broad strokes but I thought it was executed pretty well.  You can see how Noatak more or less thinks he's doing the right thing overall and doesn't see the huge problem with being what he claims to hate the most or lying like a douche about it, and Tarrlok going from gentle kid to rounding up muggles on the street is more or less the result of his terrible abusive childhood and skewed worldview, which he realizes only after seeing what a crazy asshole his brother had become and making the connection that he's not that different.
* The wolves.  They're just regular wolves.  Come on.

I guess I'm starting to give the impression that I dislike the show or the characters and I have to admit a lot fell apart there in the mad rush to get everything wrapped up but I have a lot of hope for the next season.  Just give us a threat that's actually on the scale of the previous series (going from "total genocide of a quarter to three quarters of the world's population" to "oh no we're going to lose our mutant powers!" only works in comic books) and give Korra's friends something to do besides "be Korra's friends" and we might get something really good going again.
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Royal☭

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #185 on: June 26, 2012, 04:08:46 AM »

On reflection, Korra losing her bending should have happened in the episode before the finale. Then she could hit her low point, determine that she's going to fight Amon anyway because that's what the Avatar should do, learn she can still airbend, then have her spiritual breakthrough. And the thing is, nothing would have really changed. That's kind of what gets me about the rushed ending, it's that there was room for so much more, they just decided to cram it all into the last 5 minutes.

Niku

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #186 on: June 26, 2012, 10:33:40 AM »

* The wolves.  They're just regular wolves.  Come on.

those were coyotewolves
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Romosome

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #187 on: June 26, 2012, 09:51:48 PM »

coyotewolves actually exist you know
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upthorn

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #188 on: June 28, 2012, 01:22:36 AM »

I'm pretty sure niku meant arctic coyotewolf foxes.
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Ted Belmont

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #189 on: June 28, 2012, 02:02:28 AM »

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Esperath

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #190 on: June 28, 2012, 05:53:27 PM »

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Kayma

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #191 on: June 28, 2012, 07:29:13 PM »

I was about to say that's so great that context is unnecessary, but that thread almost (almost) justifies 4chan.
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Lottel

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #192 on: July 04, 2012, 02:31:26 AM »


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Kayma

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #193 on: July 04, 2012, 07:21:42 AM »

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Bongo Bill

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #194 on: July 11, 2012, 04:49:44 PM »

It seems they've ordered 26 more episodes of Legend of Korra, for a total of 52. Confusingly, book 2, which we were calling season 2, will technically just be the second half of season 1, and the newly-ordered books 3 and 4 will comprise the real season 2.
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Kayma

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #195 on: July 12, 2012, 07:12:09 PM »

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Büge

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #196 on: July 12, 2012, 08:34:54 PM »

Here's what they should do next: Kami War. I believe it's really the only space to progress in without repeating themselves. Korra's got the physical bending pretty well wrapped up, but she's only touched on her spiritual side. I think having some sort of great conflict in the Spirit World that spills into the Mortal World could be really interesting.
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patito

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #197 on: July 12, 2012, 08:37:47 PM »

This is starting to sound more and more like DBZ. They can probably hold another pro bending tournament on the spirit world while they're at it.
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Büge

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #198 on: July 12, 2012, 09:26:48 PM »

This is starting to sound more and more like DBZ. They can probably hold another pro bending tournament on the spirit world while they're at it.

All challenges she's faced are gone. What else is there?
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Bongo Bill

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Re: The Last Airbender [Legend of Korra SPOILERS]
« Reply #199 on: July 12, 2012, 09:33:16 PM »

A new human villain? Resurgent Equalists led by a successor to Amon who's not a megalomaniac? Crime?
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