Avatar The Last Air Bender

[Rynjin]

I think the thing with Sokka being the butt monkey is different from other series, largely because the series rarely treats Sokka as if he DESERVES the treatment he gets. A lot of stuff is played for laughs, and is jokes at his expense, but it's almost never as some sort of karmic comeuppance for his actions; the boy just has absolutely terrible luck.

The few times it is framed as him being in the wrong somehow are usually the most frustrating ones, like the joke in season 2 about needing to leave his boomerang behind even though everyone else got to grab their stuff.

[Pex]

Indeed. It's a pretty great episode all around.

Also, the episode with Jet in Book 1 has Sokka acting with a lot of dignity and ethical justification, even while imprisoned.

I liked that episode because for the first time Sokka was right and Katara was wrong. It's my own bias. I don't like it when I'm supposed to go along with laughing at the idiot jerk. Sometimes the idiot jerk is right, but the show makes him wrong, meaning the trope in general. Frank Burns (MASH), Brainy Smurf (Smurfs), Eric The Cavalier (Dungeons & Dragons), Three (Dark Matter). I'm not saying they're always right, but it galls me when they're never right even when what they're saying is reasonable. Even in Batman vs Superman Lex Luthor had a good point, but the movie had to make him the villain and be wrong by blowing up a Congressional hearing.

[Keltest]

As the non-bender in the team, Sokka is in a lot of ways the audience surrogate in the series. He's the one who gets bending and avatar stuff explained to him so that the audience knows about it, and he's the one who really pushes to understand more about how things work, and the implications thereof. He also helps to show that while non-benders are maybe disadvantaged, they arent helpless by any means.

[Lord Raziere]

I liked that episode because for the first time Sokka was right and Katara was wrong. It's my own bias. I don't like it when I'm supposed to go along with laughing at the idiot jerk. Sometimes the idiot jerk is right, but the show makes him wrong, meaning the trope in general. Frank Burns (MASH), Brainy Smurf (Smurfs), Eric The Cavalier (Dungeons & Dragons), Three (Dark Matter). I'm not saying they're always right, but it galls me when they're never right even when what they're saying is reasonable. Even in Batman vs Superman Lex Luthor had a good point, but the movie had to make him the villain and be wrong by blowing up a Congressional hearing.

Well your still on season 1.

its the most episodic season of them all. these episodes are mostly about the Gaang experiencing adventures throughout the setting to establish what the world is like, what the status quo is, and where they fit into it, and thus their conflicts are partly internal to work out the group dynamics and who THEY are before we go shaking things up.

I could recount all the awesome things that Sokka has done and the character development he undergoes, but he is a constant throughout the series and thus would be spoilers for quite a lot of it. and I wouldn't say the show says he is wrong or thinks that he is an idiot jerk, I would say people in the show don't listen to him even when they really should at times. I don't know any of those characters and never watched BvS, but I guarantee you that Sokka will not have his points be shown to be wrong because he did a villainous action, because he never becomes one.

[Rater202]

So I haven't been following the thread to closely... I notice that there was a discussion about swapping around the roles of the nations? Anyway, I'm starting to get back into it again after... honestly not touching it that much since it ended.

I never watched Korra.

It'll be neat getting familiar with it again via watching someone else get into it.

[Peelee]

The main issue with Korra is that it leans heavily into protagonist centered morality. But overall, season 1 is quite good. Season 2 is, for the most part, hot garbage, and the first quarter of season 3 made me drop the show. I hear by endgame, season 3 and all of season 4 are good though.

A good way into Season 3 now, and I'm wondering why most people hated Season 2. The first half was pretty good, even if the second half dropped the ball quite a bit. Season 3 seems worse overall.

[Anteros]

A good way into Season 3 now, and I'm wondering why most people hated Season 2. The first half was pretty good, even if the second half dropped the ball quite a bit. Season 3 seems worse overall.

It's been a while since I've watched Korra, but let me see if I can remember my problems with season 2. Season 1's villain had some solid points and I actually respected them as a villain. It explores the relationship between benders and non benders, and each character has a solid arc and grows. Season 2 relies far too heavily on the spirit world, which is largely esoteric and I think a lot of people view it as one of the weakest parts of the setting. However, the biggest problem with season 2 for me is the same problem I have with every other season on the show.

By far the biggest problem with later seasons of the show is the way it just resets everyone's character development at the start of each season so they can tell you the exact same arcs again. Remember how Bolin and Mako matured and grew more responsible by the end of the first season? Well, I hope you like those arcs because you're going to see them 3 more times. No one in the series develops or grows as a person for any length of time without it being reset.

[Saph]

I feel I should probably warn Pex that the "Sokka is an incompetent moron" thing doesn't really go away. He gets moments in Season 2 where he's portrayed as the smart guy, but the very next episode he'll go right back to being so dumb he can't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

I mean, Sokka literally spends an entire episode of Season 2 needing to be rescued after being overcome and defeated by a small hole in the ground. It gets especially jarring when you compare it to the worshipful way Katara's treated.

[Razade]

A good way into Season 3 now, and I'm wondering why most people hated Season 2. The first half was pretty good, even if the second half dropped the ball quite a bit. Season 3 seems worse overall.

The issue most people I've seen have with Season 2 is that they feel that the villain isn't really all that well developed (none of the villains Korra are well developed except maybe the Fourth Season's) and that a lot of the Spirit World stuff soft-resets a lot of stuff introduced already. I for one found the stuff with the first Avatar really cool and while the Ravaa stuff wasn't compelling to me, I didn't really need the Avatar State explained, I mostly found Season 2 inoffensive.

Season 3 and 4 seem to be the Seasons everyone loves the most. My biggest problem with the latter seasons and even a little in Season 2 is just how moppy and sad they make Korra. She's supposed to be this aggressive, go-get-em sort of character and they make her weak and scared and unsure of herself in ways that Aang really never experienced. Part of it is that Korra is older and there's less of a "save the world" narrative to Korra but another part of it was Nickelodeon's executive meddling and their attempts to sink the show because they didn't feel people would care about Korra as a character. It's why they took the 4th season and moved it off to their streaming service in its final season. The creators have put out some messages about their time on Korra and just how much of a pain Nick was over the whole production.

The worst part is those unsure, tense, introspective moments aren't even bad. They're just bad because they dominate a short run season. If Korra was as long as the first series those more mature topics might actually have been a good addition to the series. Instead they just clog up what was a passing show. I also don't see the appeal of the third season myself. That's when the mope mode goes into overdrive. The villain's message re: The Avatar was also pretty stupid and I couldn't get behind it even as a generic plot.

I wish we'd seen more of the bending sport and how they'd have to work to integrate Air Benders returning to the world myself. That was a more compelling and interesting storyline than anything they drummed up in the later season. Sad that that really took a backseat for the melodrama.

[Anteros]

I feel I should probably warn Pex that the "Sokka is an incompetent moron" thing doesn't really go away. He gets moments in Season 2 where he's portrayed as the smart guy, but the very next episode he'll go right back to being so dumb he can't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

I mean, Sokka literally spends an entire episode of Season 2 needing to be rescued after being overcome and defeated by a small hole in the ground. It gets especially jarring when you compare it to the worshipful way Katara's treated.

Spoiler: Sokka

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It's a little strange, because the other characters treat him as the brains of the team and a competent warrior, but it never really feels earned. The only plans he ever comes up with all fail, and pretty much anything he ever accomplishes is dumb luck. Even in his best episode he basically trains with a sword-master for one day, forges a sword, and then immediately loses it. He has the weakest character arc on the show, and it's not close.

[Anonymouswizard]

The issue most people I've seen have with Season 2 is that they feel that the villain isn't really all that well developed (none of the villains Korra are well developed except maybe the Fourth Season's) and that a lot of the Spirit World stuff soft-resets a lot of stuff introduced already. I for one found the stuff with the first Avatar really cool and while the Ravaa stuff wasn't compelling to me, I didn't really need the Avatar State explained, I mostly found Season 2 inoffensive.

Possibly the worst bits are the ending which requires two Deus ex Machinas to pull off, and the need to introduce Lore about Wan and then immediately remove it from importance by destroying the Avatar's past lives. It also to me feels a bit all over the pace and running around like a headless chicken, except for the Wan episodes.

Season 3 has a more active quest from both the heroes and villains, and even if Zaheer's goal is stupid he goes about it in a somewhat sensible way. And then Season 4 didn't so much undo Mako and Bolin's character development as much as put them in new situations, has possibly the best villain of the show, and spends episodes restoring Korra's character to something more like what she originally was. But it needed to explain the dark avatar business it had going on.

[Peelee]

Possibly the worst bits are the ending which requires two Deus ex Machinas to pull off

Spoiler: ATLA

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Not too different than Aang's ending which requires two Deus ex Machinas, then?

For reals, though, while I don't at all mind the out-of-nowhere ability to take away bending, he's the Avatar, and still discovering the full range of his powers and abilities, so there's at least some grounding for letting that fly. But the red-vs-blue battle afterwards, that was just unnecessary padding that could have been left off, IMO; he's already showing his strength of will be keeping to his pacifistic convictions even in the Avatar state.

As for season 3 of Korra...

Spoiler

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I kind of feel like Zaheer is massively overpowered. Firstly, he's a member of the Red Lotus without having any sort of bending, which isn't odd in and of itself - the White Lotus had a master swordsman, after all - but there's nothing saying what exactly his skills were to begin with, despite the fact that he ran with a group of enormously powerful Benders; it's somewhat alluded that he is the brains, but he doesn't really make good plans, and he seems more spiritual than anything else. Once he does get Air bending, he is almost instantly a master of it, and is even capable of taking down Tenzin, despite that Tenzin is teh son of two powerful benders, one being the Avatar, and that Tenszin has spent the vast majority of his life studying and practicing airbending. It just seems way too convenient that he gets airbending out of nowhere and, unlike every other person who gets is, is an instant grandmaster at it.

Oh, and Bolin is generally really fun, especially in Season 2, so that gave me reason to give a lot of the rest a pass. Especially since the first half of S2 overall was really fun, and I didn't start disliking it until the second half.

[dancrilis]

Spoiler: ATLA

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But the red-vs-blue battle afterwards, that was just unnecessary padding that could have been left off, IMO; he's already showing his strength of will be keeping to his pacifistic convictions even in the Avatar state.

Spoiler: ATLA

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I saw that more as a good vs evil rather then willpower thing i.e Aang was more good then Ozai was evil - if he had cracks in his morality he would have broken.

Spoiler: Korra

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I just don't think Korra post season 1 was very interesting - the villians were kindof boring, and the only think that Korra really needed to beat them was to get serious (and even then not that serious), the only reason they were really ever a threat to her was because she kept having emotional problems.
Season 2 is a bit different because of the monster from nowhere plot - but that also seemed kindof dull really.

Frankly take Korra out of the show and have the non-Avatar characters dealing with the problems (violant equality movements, unwanted cultural change, distrustful anarchy and dictatorship for a cause) might have made a better show.

[Razade]

Spoiler: ATLA

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Not too different than Aang's ending which requires two Deus ex Machinas, then?

That wasn't well revived by the general fanbase either when it happened either.

[Peelee]

Spoiler: ATLA

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I saw that more as a good vs evil rather then willpower thing i.e Aang was more good then Ozai was evil - if he had cracks in his morality he would have broken.

Imean, it clearly is, but the whole show was kind of about that, as well as Aang's moral dilemma about how to stop Ozai to begin with, so it seemed unnecessary at best and gratuitous at worst to me.

Spoiler: Korra

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I just don't think Korra post season 1 was very interesting - the villians were kindof boring, and the only think that Korra really needed to beat them was to get serious (and even then not that serious), the only reason they were really ever a threat to her was because she kept having emotional problems.
Season 2 is a bit different because of the monster from nowhere plot - but that also seemed kindof dull really.

Frankly take Korra out of the show and have the non-Avatar characters dealing with the problems (violant equality movements, unwanted cultural change, distrustful anarchy and dictatorship for a cause) might have made a better show.

Frankly, because of how I'd heard almost entirely mixed reviews about Korra to start with, I just kind of tried to sit back and enjoy the ride for what it is. And that's been going well enough (with some rocky parts, definitely) that I'm still trucking. Unlike, say, The Last Airbender, which had me break down laughing at some points because it was so bad. So very, very bad.

[Rater202]

The issue most people I've seen have with Season 2 is that they feel that the villain isn't really all that well developed (none of the villains Korra are well developed except maybe the Fourth Season's) and that a lot of the Spirit World stuff soft-resets a lot of stuff introduced already. I for one found the stuff with the first Avatar really cool and while the Ravaa stuff wasn't compelling to me, I didn't really need the Avatar State explained, I mostly found Season 2 inoffensive.

Season 3 and 4 seem to be the Seasons everyone loves the most. My biggest problem with the latter seasons and even a little in Season 2 is just how moppy and sad they make Korra. She's supposed to be this aggressive, go-get-em sort of character and they make her weak and scared and unsure of herself in ways that Aang really never experienced. Part of it is that Korra is older and there's less of a "save the world" narrative to Korra but another part of it was Nickelodeon's executive meddling and their attempts to sink the show because they didn't feel people would care about Korra as a character. It's why they took the 4th season and moved it off to their streaming service in its final season. The creators have put out some messages about their time on Korra and just how much of a pain Nick was over the whole production.

The worst part is those unsure, tense, introspective moments aren't even bad. They're just bad because they dominate a short run season. If Korra was as long as the first series those more mature topics might actually have been a good addition to the series. Instead they just clog up what was a passing show. I also don't see the appeal of the third season myself. That's when the mope mode goes into overdrive. The villain's message re: The Avatar was also pretty stupid and I couldn't get behind it even as a generic plot.

I wish we'd seen more of the bending sport and how they'd have to work to integrate Air Benders returning to the world myself. That was a more compelling and interesting storyline than anything they drummed up in the later season. Sad that that really took a backseat for the melodrama.

That's a bit ironic considering that a couple of other shows got screwed over so they could devote resources to the original Avatar.

[Thufir]

I feel I should probably warn Pex that the "Sokka is an incompetent moron" thing doesn't really go away. He gets moments in Season 2 where he's portrayed as the smart guy, but the very next episode he'll go right back to being so dumb he can't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

I mean, Sokka literally spends an entire episode of Season 2 needing to be rescued after being overcome and defeated by a small hole in the ground. It gets especially jarring when you compare it to the worshipful way Katara's treated.

I strongly disagree. Moron, maybe. Incompetent, no. As others have noted, he has terrible luck, which is what causes the hole in the ground problem, along with the fact that ultimately he is the comic relief character among other things. But when it comes to his actual areas of expertise, he is clearly competent. He is a skilled warrior, just one without the natural advantage of bending.

The only plans he ever comes up with all fail, and pretty much anything he ever accomplishes is dumb luck.

This is not at all true. Just in Book 1:
* It's his idea at the earthbender prison to have Aang airbend the coal up from the bottom of the rig. The weak point in that plan in Katara's ability to convince the earthbenders to use it.
* He thinks on his feet and figures out how to turn Zuko and the pirates against each other - a predicament they wouldn't have been in if not for Katara.
* He figures out what Jet's doing, escapes and save everyone in the village.
* He has the plan to save Aunt Wu's village from the volcano.
* He makes effective use of Katara's and Aang's bending abilities when he does his ice-dodging.
* He's the one with the idea to confuse the shirshu by spilling the perfume everywhere.
* The aforementioned bits at the Northern Air Temple.

The one plan he made which did fail was the attempt to get into the inner sanctum at the Fire Temple, and they were able to improvise around that.

Spoiler: Book 3

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Even in his best episode he basically trains with a sword-master for one day, forges a sword, and then immediately loses it.

Last I checked, "15 episodes later in the series finale" is not what "immediately" means.

[Rynjin]

I guess I'll be the odd man out that defends the way Ozai was defeated, even though it took two watches of the series for me to form that opinion.

Spoiler

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Stuff about the Lion Turtles was foreshadowed since back in season 1 as I recall (or at least early season 2), them being great masters of spiritual power. That combined with the Avatar being the bridge between spirit and matter, essentially, makes his ability to manipulate spirit make sense. Any lingering doubts I had were cleared up by season 2 of Korra, with the Wan flashbacks; the only part of season 2 I actually liked (I...really could have done without Ravaa, it ruined the entire setting for me and I'd rather pretend it's not real).

It is still a Deus Ex Machina, in the strictest sense, but it's not such an egregious one on further inspection, and no trope is INHERENTLY bad.

[Peelee]

I guess I'll be the odd man out that defends the way Ozai was defeated, even though it took two watches of the series for me to form that opinion.

Spoiler

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Stuff about the Lion Turtles was foreshadowed since back in season 1 as I recall (or at least early season 2), them being great masters of spiritual power. That combined with the Avatar being the bridge between spirit and matter, essentially, makes his ability to manipulate spirit make sense. Any lingering doubts I had were cleared up by season 2 of Korra, with the Wan flashbacks; the only part of season 2 I actually liked (I...really could have done without Ravaa, it ruined the entire setting for me and I'd rather pretend it's not real).

It is still a Deus Ex Machina, in the strictest sense, but it's not such an egregious one on further inspection, and no trope is INHERENTLY bad.

I only have one single issue with the finale:

Spoiler

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Its not taking the bending away, I thought that was great, if it could have been foreshadowed some more (though that's a tough rope to dance on without running the surprise). I'm every cool with the luck aspect of his ki getting unblocked; luck is definitely an element in life, and I actually kind of like that Aang had to be a little lucky.

Its the red/blue good/evil battle of wills when finishing Ozai.at best, it's a blunt reductive restatement of the overall theme of the entire series, let alone the final battle with the Fire Nation and the personal war with Ozai. At worst its useless padding that comes from nowhere, manufactures drama for the sake of manufacturing drama, lasts less than a minute even then, and finishes without any lasting effects or purpose. It could be deleted from the series and nothing would change.

I know I've talked about that before (in this very thread, no less!), but figured I could expand on it. Honestly, I think it's the weakest part of the whole series. I even like the Great Divide episode! But that... I can't stand that.

[Marillion]

[SPOILER=ATLA]
As for season 3 of Korra...

Spoiler

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I kind of feel like Zaheer is massively overpowered. Firstly, he's a member of the Red Lotus without having any sort of bending, which isn't odd in and of itself - the White Lotus had a master swordsman, after all - but there's nothing saying what exactly his skills were to begin with, despite the fact that he ran with a group of enormously powerful Benders; it's somewhat alluded that he is the brains, but he doesn't really make good plans, and he seems more spiritual than anything else. Once he does get Air bending, he is almost instantly a master of it, and is even capable of taking down Tenzin, despite that Tenzin is teh son of two powerful benders, one being the Avatar, and that Tenszin has spent the vast majority of his life studying and practicing airbending. It just seems way too convenient that he gets airbending out of nowhere and, unlike every other person who gets is, is an instant grandmaster at it.

Oh, and Bolin is generally really fun, especially in Season 2, so that gave me reason to give a lot of the rest a pass. Especially since the first half of S2 overall was really fun, and I didn't start disliking it until the second half.

Season 3

Spoiler

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I can see how you thought Zaheer was overpowered, but it makes sense to me. Up to the fight with Tenzin, Zaheer had been getting through based on a combination of 1: Airbending being so difficult to defend against, especially since so few people had even seen it in action, and 2: and his martial arts/assassin training. He demonstrated the latter when he went through the spinning panels: he fiercely dashed through in a straight line without ever taking his eye off the exit, just like an assassin would slip past attackers to reach his target. Contrast with Jinora, who allowed the panels to guide her in gentle, circular motions until she arrived at the other side. That was his place in the group, really: He had the vision, but he wasn't the brains, he was a weapon. Before they all got imprisoned, I'd bet the rest of the Red Lotus would cause chaos while he went in to achieve the actual objective.

But then, Tenzin showed Zaheer what an actual Airbending master could do. Zaheer was on the run almost the whole fight while Tenzin relentlessly beat him down. Zaheer actually seemed almost panicked, to me; he was barely able to defend himself and was beginning to be overwhelmed. Tenzin knew all the things Zaheer could do, while Zaheer only knew a small part of what Tenzin could do. It's only because the rest of the Red Lotus intervened at the last second that Tenzin lost. Even then, if not for their combustion bender, it looked like Tenzin could have held his own against the other three.

I wish we'd had more time with the other Red Lotus members, though. They're pretty much my favorite villain gang.

Bolin is, in fact, the best.

[Morty]

Spoiler: Zaheer

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I felt like Zaheer was the best villain of LoK... though really, the competition isn't exactly stiff. Yeah, he becomes extremely good at airbending very quickly, but he had studied the Air Nomad culture extensively and was a skilled martial artist before getting bending - dangerous enough for the White Lotus to lock him up as securely as his bending allies. And when you look closely, his airbending style does differ from that of traditionally-trained airbenders. Plus as Marillion said, Tenzin more or less has his number. He's got a more or less coherent ideology that touches on Korra's own frustration with authority figures. He's solid, if not spectacular. Better than Ozai or Zhao, for sure.

Compare him to Amon, who is all flash and no substance and the revelation that he's just a bloodbender with daddy issues renders him an utter joke. And whose successes mostly boil down to everyone conveniently failing to do anything about his Cunning Plans. And Unalaq... if he had a moustache, he would twirl it relentlessly and he doesn't keep a consistent motivation for more than five minutes.

Kuvira is the only other villain who approaches some kind of quality, even if she's not quite as good as Zaheer.

Spoiler: Lion-Turtles

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Aang taking Ozai's bending was appropriate, but I don't really count seeing one picture of a Lion-Turtle in a book and then having one show up and mumble something spiritual at Aang to be "foreshadowing". Sorry, I need a bit more than that to accept a twist that easily solves the hero's fundamental moral quandary. Bending, chi, energy, whatever... it's all fictional and can work however the writers want. Aang's struggle to reconcile his duty as the Avatar with his personal convictions and beliefs of his culture are something that you can't just sweep aside. And unexpectedly giving him the perfect tool to have his cake and eat it too did just that.

[Rater202]

Spoiler: Zaheer

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His power of flight is unlocked by letting go of all earthly attachments.

In other words, by opening the last chakra.

Meaning that his other chakras would have to be open.

The dude was almost enlightened and his chi was flowing more or less freely, so of course, he was able to get his bending down quickly.

Anyway... I kind of feel bad about plugging myself, but a little bit ago I tried to start an Avatar-themed game int he free-form roleplay section, for the purpose of playing around with the setting and metaphysics. If anyone's interested?

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah Bolin isn't broken, don't fix him. Sometimes a flat character doesn't need any development, they are just great the way they are and thats fine, sometimes a little even ground is welcome after climbing the mountains of character development whether its for up or down. that and flat characters are less a person that changes and more someone that changes others around them, like a rock bending anything that hits it. it all fits the fact that he is an earthbender: he is unchanging, but he is overall a good guy so its not like he needs to.

@ Rater: yeah I didn't say anything before, but I'm simply not interested in playing a bender. don't get me wrong I love the Avatar setting, but I consider the metaphysics and stories in it pretty much solved and done. I can't really think of anything substantial enough I'd commit to a roleplay for, and there is simply not enough there for me to be interested, and I'd much rather go for a monster/superhero game because there are some character concepts that are much more interesting to me than playing a manipulator of classical elements.

[LibraryOgre]

Some of y'all keep dressing like when you were in high school but wanna drag Bolin for lack of character development.

Teasing aside, we've been limiting our kid's screentime... but my son has realized the loophole. If he asks Daddy to watch Avatar with him, he gets more screen time, because Daddy is always down to watch Avatar.

[dancrilis]

Teasing aside, we've been limiting our kid's screentime... but my son has realized the loophole. If he asks Daddy to watch Avatar with him, he gets more screen time, because Daddy is always down to watch Avatar.

Including the movie?

[LibraryOgre]

Including the movie?

There is no movie.

[druid91]

It's been a while since I've watched Korra, but let me see if I can remember my problems with season 2. Season 1's villain had some solid points and I actually respected them as a villain. It explores the relationship between benders and non benders, and each character has a solid arc and grows. Season 2 relies far too heavily on the spirit world, which is largely esoteric and I think a lot of people view it as one of the weakest parts of the setting. However, the biggest problem with season 2 for me is the same problem I have with every other season on the show.

By far the biggest problem with later seasons of the show is the way it just resets everyone's character development at the start of each season so they can tell you the exact same arcs again. Remember how Bolin and Mako matured and grew more responsible by the end of the first season? Well, I hope you like those arcs because you're going to see them 3 more times. No one in the series develops or grows as a person for any length of time without it being reset.

I... Don't remember that. No. I remember Bolin crying like an infant over Korra kissing Mako, while Mako tried to get him home.

[Dienekes]

I... Don't remember that. No. I remember Bolin crying like an infant over Korra kissing Mako, while Mako tried to get him home.

Yup. Winning the award for “The Only Time Korra Made Me Laugh.”

Really not getting the Bolin love. But then I dropped midway through season 2. Does he get less annoying?

[dancrilis]

Yup. Winning the award for “The Only Time Korra Made Me Laugh.”

Really not getting the Bolin love. But then I dropped midway through season 2. Does he get less annoying?

Don't remember him in season 3 to much - but if I have it right:

Spoiler: Season 3

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Still kindof annoying in that to memory (whining about metalbending).

Season 4 I remember better - if I have it right:

Spoiler: Season 4

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He was better - although things happened to him they didn't seem (to memory) have him go full whining, although there was still a bit (but it was also more justified).

[VoxRationis]

Spoiler: Legend of Korra - Setting

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Spoiler: What's with the Fire Nation?

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One of the things that bothers me very much about Legend of Korra is that they never show us how the Fire Nation has changed since the first series. Now, the plot has it that things are pretty settled in the FN and there isn't much need for the Avatar to do anything of substance there, but there were four seasons to play with and they could easily have squeezed an episode into showing the FN in its modern state, even while focusing on something else in terms of the actual plot (maybe there would be a summit held there to discuss one of the season-defining problems, or maybe Team Avatar just stops over shortly on their way to go somewhere else). Instead, we see one isolated (and fairly traditional-looking) temple on one island and get Izumi's opinion on one matter of geopolitics. I liked that scene, and it's nice to see a character in that series with a sensible outlook on things for a change, but we don't get A) her opinion or ideas about anything else, or B), insight into how one of the foremost powers in the setting has changed. We've seen so much of them in ATLA, of how their society is developed with this layer of modernity over older elements, of how their people are and are not affected by the culture the leadership has worked to instill. How have Fire Nation citizens handled their abrupt demilitarization*? How has their society, which was already fairly industrialized, changed technologically? Are they prosperous, having thrown the resources they sunk into war into economic development and social programs, or have they languished from a generation of high unemployment as the military was disbanded and from a lack of resources from the former colonies? How has the royal family, an institution deeply affiliated with bender supremacy, interacted with the anti-bending sentiment in the first season of the show? Has any of that sentiment made its way to the Fire Nation? (It might well not have, if the monarchy has spent a generation administrating competently using power rather than violence, but it would be nice to see it either way.) The show spent two entire seasons examining how the Earth Kingdom has adapted (or largely, failed to adapt) to technological and cultural change since the first series, and didn't spend one episode on its counterpart.

*I understand that there were comics about that, but those were in the immediate aftermath of the war, so a generation has passed since then, and that's also supplementary material, and showing things in the core work is generally superior to doing so in supplements; reliance on tie-ins for world-building was one of the weaknesses of the Star Wars sequels.

Spoiler: The Implications of Book 2

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The other big issue with the setting was the way in which they reinterpreted the Spirit World (meta)physically and then failed to reinterpret it culturally. The Spirit World in ATLA was a reflection of the physical world, the yin to its yang and a natural counterpart. While they were separate for the most part, things in one affected the other, and it all seems like this is the natural order to things. In LoK, the Spirit World is revealed to be separate only by intentional design, and the spirits that seemed like natural outgrowths or incarnations of physical things are reinterpreted as independently existing beings, almost more like aliens, that are so inimical to human life that all of human civilization as we know it has only been possible due to the spirits' active exclusion from one half of the cosmos.
And yet, no one reacts to this. People still treat spirits with awe and reverence (except when they're being portrayed by the show as grouchy, short-sighted workaday sorts). Korra, after learning that A), everything she has ever known has been possible only because the Spirit Portals were closed because B), spirits are incredibly dangerous to human life and only a handful of people in the setting can address that danger, leaving everyone else defenseless against monsters that appear whenever people have negative emotions, chooses to keep them open, and people (and the writers) treat this as an unalloyed good, because spirits are good (again, unless the people are whiny, entitled Republic City citizens who need to cut the Avatar some slack). This is like a Christian dying to find his heart being weighed by Thoth against the Feather of Ma'at and saying nothing about it. It's baffling to have a character (or every character) confronted with evidence that shatters their understanding of the universe and then largely not react to it. If the point of the show was that people are too hidebound to change their viewpoints even when presented with firm evidence, that's one thing, but first, that's rather more cynical than even this series, which is more cynical than its predecessor, tends to be in other respects, and second, the show's writing doesn't seem to be arguing that; it's only something we can infer from what we see.

Spoiler: Why does this feel so familiar?

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Another, more minor, problem I had was that modernization in the show was often tied in with Westernization in a setting where the West in a cultural sense does not exist and has never existed. Democratic institutions spring up overnight with no precursors. (The Republics switched from a blue-ribbon panel of appointed leaders to an elected president off-screen, between seasons, in a setting where no one has ever elected anything.) Fashions change to forms more familiar to us. Language and terminology doesn't seem like it's grown from previous incarnations in the setting, but simply been transplanted from the equivalent period in our history.

That said, I don't think the setting design was all bad. Seeing the decentralization in the Earth Kingdom result in a crisis of leadership that addresses the nature of political power was good. Seeing the interplay between tradition and modernity, to the point where a religious traditionalist is offended enough by modern lifestyles to act to seize power in order to counteract prevalent cultural change (the Book 2 conflict before all that Vaatu stuff stole the show), is a reflection of times past and present.

Spoiler: Demography

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The last main setting gripe I have is one of scale. The Southern Water Tribe was depicted in ATLA as depleted by intentional genocide to the size of a small village, and the Northern Water Tribe was merely one city of moderate size, probably lesser in population than Omashu by itself. In LoK, the Southern Water Tribe has a massive, sprawling city, orders of magnitude larger than either Water population before. We know that some members of the North moved south to help rebuild, but since there was no cause for a mass exodus from the North, we can presume that this was probably a small minority of their population, and the North seems to have the level of available manpower and technological development to be on par with the South, so they're likely of at least roughly equivalent size, and thus also significantly more populous than they were in ATLA. It seems unlikely that this was due to immigration from other regions, as we never see any of the ethnic conflict that would result from that level of immigration (or, indeed, significant numbers of Earth or Fire immigrants), so we are left with the notion that the Water Tribes have experienced at least a 1000% growth rate per generation. This conflicts with the families we see in the show, which generally have somewhere between one and three children, and no one, at least to my recollection, mentions that the Water Tribes are abnormal in this aspect. The biggest family we see on the show is from Ba Sing Se, and the second is Tenzin's family (which is to be expected, since he's being held personally responsible for the task of repopulating an entire ethnic group; one wonders how he sold that notion to Pemma).

Spoiler: Legend of Korra - Plot; Still under construction

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I'll edit these in later. I've been writing practically a blog post about just the setting, and my gripes with the show are much more about the writing.

Spoiler: Platinum

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One of the gripes I have here is the introduction of platinum as an unbendable metal. (I suppose this is partly a world-building gripe, but since it is crucial to the plot and only introduced as a concept midway through, I'll I see the writing motivation for it clearly enough; since the Equalists, being nonbenders, depend on technology to compete with the benders that form most of our cast of protagonists, they are vulnerable to metalbenders, who can effortlessly sabotage their technology and disarm them. Therefore, in order that Beifong's police force can't make mincemeat of the Equalists, they needed to introduce a limitation on metalbending.
However... there are a number of reasons why the implementation of this weakness was poorly done. Firstly, Hiroshi introduces it with a taunt, something to the tune of "that wall is made of pure platinum; even [Toph] couldn't bend metal that pure." Obviously, how pure a metal is is something completely separate from what kind of metal it is, so it's not really clear (at least in the quote) what the writers actually mean to be the operating principle here. Secondly, platinum is a terrible choice for this. It's heavy, rare and expensive, and doesn't have the physical properties that make for good machinery. The wall kind of works, since it doesn't need to do anything, but when it becomes clear that Hiroshi (and later others) make war machines, sometimes quite large, out of platinum, it rapidly erodes the suspension of disbelief. Mostly, I thought what was most frightening about the reveal of the platinum wall was the idea that he could afford to build it and have enough money left over to build all the other war machines while running a profitable company.
Book 4 seems to imply that the principle here is that the machines only need to be encased or coated in platinum to function. What's strange here is that bending doesn't normally have much difficulty working past layers of unbendable material. Waterbenders can manipulate the water in a tree even though it's buried beneath a layer of wood, which they can't bend, and I think there were some scenes that showed Katara manipulating water in metal pipes. That said, maybe earthbenders work a little differently; being in a wooden cell was enough to keep Toph imprisoned in Book 3.
Anyway, as the show goes on, the platinum exception just gets more and more ridiculous from its wide use, and it really didn't have to. The Doylist explanation for platinum is that the Equalists needed to be a credible threat to the police force. They could have easily just not had a metalbending police force. Maybe Lin is still one, but metalbenders are just too rare to be able to attract a large number of them to be simple beat cops. They have powerful skills and are likely to use them to rise to the tops of whatever organizations they're in (be they militias, bandit groups, armed forces, or even village hierarchies--better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven), and a cop's salary in Republic City just isn't enough of a draw to get them. This would mean that the Equalists just have to be able to either beat Lin Beifong in spite of her metalbending or strike when she's not around, which shouldn't be difficult.

Spoiler: Start of Book 2

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We begin with a lot of change hastily compressed into a synopsis within the first minute of the first episode. Unfortunately, the changes that get glossed over here are very big things that shouldn't be glossed over. Most glaring is the development of the presidency in Republic City. This is the show's way of addressing what was not addressed in Book 1: the fact that the villain's grievances were legitimate, even if his personal claims were not. I want to stress again that democracy (or even republican systems; the very name "republic" is one of the sourceless Western elements that bother me) is not a value or even really a concept in this setting. When Team Avatar discovers in Ba Sing Se that the Dai Li are running a shadow government, their objection isn't that they're an unaccountable secret police ruling over the populace through fear rather than drawing legitimacy from it, but rather that they have deprived the monarch of his rightful (absolute) power. Moreover, no organization we have seen heretofore works on the principle of popular choice or sovereignty. Organizations seem to answer to either traditional elders, hereditary monarchies, various councils (whose processes of selection is unclear but are never mentioned to involve votes), or various forms of meritocratic unitary leadership ("I'm the best fighter/most learned of this organization, so I run it."). Characters don't ask the populace what they want; they tell them what is to be done. Even characters that we are meant to sympathize with or are considered wise and virtuous in-universe do not object to this state of affairs. Indeed, common civilians in both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra are often so obnoxious and ignorant that we as viewers may easily conclude that the common people shouldn't have a say in things. The existing Republic City council (I forget what it's called exactly), by virtue of being a federal representative group, is probably one of the most progressive governmental structures, if not the most progressive, that setting has seen, but it's still implausible that they just jump from there to a popularly elected president. (Quick quibble here: what is he the president of? Does he preside over anything? Is there a legislature somewhere?)

Spoiler: Book 4

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Continuing the line of thought of "Team Avatar fails to detect a clear and present danger until it's largely too late," no one objects to the fact that Kuvira does the majority of her unification work in her own name, with only the faintest lip service to the Earth King. Considering that styling a military coup as an act of legitimate national unification was exactly the modus operandi of Unalaaq, it's baffling that no one remarks on this. When Kuvira reveals her power grab openly rebelling against her sovereign while surrounded by powerful benders outside of her own power base and in a position of tremendous vulnerability, no one does anything.