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Thread: Avatar The Last Air Bender
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2020-07-15, 10:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Don't get me wrong, I still like Bolin. But I.... Honestly cannot say in any way I recall ANY maturity plot with him and Mako.
Mako was always the responsible, working man of the two of them.
while Bolin was the goofy, irresponsible one who's constantly involved in some kind of get rich quick scheme.
Neither was entirely mature. As evidenced by Mako and his.... Questionable navigation of the pointless and annoying love triangle. And as evidenced by Bolins.... Bolinness.
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2020-07-15, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
In Book 2 now. They're really trying to give sympathy to Zuko. It's a common story thread, but it's fine. I wonder if they'll do the sappy solution: Zuko joins Aang and the gang, helps the Avatar defeat the Fire Nation, and become the new Fire Lord. He doesn't have to become the new Fire Lord but otherwise helps to defeat his father and get his revenge or at least his Honor back despite not being the way he originally intended.
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2020-07-15, 11:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-07-15, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-15, 12:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-15, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
I'm aware of that (which was sad and I felt that episode in Book 2 that was dedicated to him was well done), but it wasn't the issue I had:
Spoiler: Book 3 Iroh
They turned the own wise mentor into someone who could have made a fair go at ending the fire nation war decades ago.
Even before he lost the seige of Be-Sing-Se he was apparently a good guy (sparing the dragons for instance).
There was debate on if he could have taken his younger brother in a fight so that might have been touch and go - except that he had an entire team that could have helped him and Ozai had no one for the most part who could have stood helped him.
Effectively had Iroh decided at the start of the series to take out Ozai he likely could have, he could have done it before the series also - and the only reason that they gave for him not doing so was 'it is the Avatar's job - if anyone else does it the system will merely continue' and other then helping Zuko he didn't really have any interest in the avatar for the most part.
I would have preferred they left him as a more or less non-action character, there to be a good guy and occassionally helpful but not someone who merely could have solved the core conflict of the series but didn't due to pseudo-aphaty.
Last edited by dancrilis; 2020-07-15 at 01:03 PM.
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2020-07-15, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
SpoilerLoK's writers came up with some very ambitious scenarios--sociological storytelling; plus a flawed protagonist who sacrifices a great deal for each win; plus an arc villain with a perspective that must be articulated and their defeat is not just physical--but then compressed each arc into a single season and tried for two seasons to have slow-reveal on who the antagonists were. They try to compress materials that could be spaced out over multiple AtLA-sized seasons and the result was...less of a success.
Villains for season three and four worked better because the writers acclimated to the time pressure. Zaheer and Kuvira are immediately identified as antagonists and a great deal of what they want is said upfront. This left more of the run-time to make them feel detailed, reveal the final forms of the plan, and give them screen time to just be people that audience engages with. Zaheer has a tight group he interacts with that makes him more relatable. Kuvira is a character isolated by her own accumulation of power, so we see less of her.
Amon...and Tarrlok and the Equalists...were a lot of story to tell in so little time, while also establishing the protagonist, the secondary characters, and the settings. Which is a shame, since I think the premise--two damaged people hiding their personal agendas inside institutions that abuse power, hijacking legitimate concerns making systemic problems worse--is really interesting, the sort of thing you could stretch over a full series. But it's a story that needs the kind of length and scope that Avatar had, and would have benefited from a deuteragonist or two.
<removes multiple paragraphs of rewrites because I like this flawed show enough to think too much about this.
Unalaq...could have been interesting if they committed to giving him a perspective, such as making him more explicitly a millenarian reactionary--trying to take the world back to Turtle-Dragon days because he can't stand the accelerating societal change--and less of a "Mostly I'm just nasty but also here's some reasons on a Post-It."
They also missed out on how cool it would be to have an four-element-bender improvising from Water techniques only, fighting the Avatar...but <removes multiple paragraphs of rewrites because I like even this trash baby of a season.>Last edited by Yanagi; 2020-07-15 at 01:17 PM.
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2020-07-15, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
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2020-07-15, 02:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2014
Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
SpoilerI think that's why season 2 seems to be considered egregious in the two series. For all its spirits, magic, and fantasy, the Avatar universe is ultimately one of humans with human motivations and human flaws, operating in human societies and with human philosophies. The first series is almost wholly about thwarting imperialism; in LoK, we also see proletarian revolts (Amon), anarchist terrorists (Zaheer), and fascists (Kuvira). Unalaaq is set up the same way; his motives in the beginning of his season fit neatly into traditionalism and a sort of religious devotion. But then it turns out that he's not really a reactionary; he's working for a giant spirit of darkness for... no particular reason in order to bring about... 10,000 years of darkness. He's pretty explicit about that, even describing himself as a "Dark Avatar." Unalaaq, by the end, doesn't see himself as a hero or a good person standing against the forces of wickedness; he's just a cackling movie stereotype. This untethers him from his human motivations and pretty much all the political setup that defined the first half of the season and turns him into an out-of-context sort of villain from a wholly different (and rather more generic) kind of fantasy, and that's really not satisfying.
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2020-07-15, 05:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
I also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
Read my fanfiction here. Homebrew Material Here Rater Reads the Hobbit and Dracula
Awesome Avatar by Emperor Ing
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2020-07-15, 05:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-15, 05:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
SpoilerI'd argue season one has many themes and doesn't resolve them well. It's not really one thing: it tries to address abuse of state power, class alienation, vigilante violence, hate crimes, an attempted pogrom? (was that S1?), and a charlatan running a cult all in one go. The premises are good, even the worldbuilding's decent...it's just too much, too complicated, for that little time. I think you could take the exact same material and write a really good multiseason arc.
I agree season two's the weakest, but there was a good armature. Unalaq worked well as a theocrat. His end goal being "become an Avatar so I use all that power to spank the world until it goes back to how it was" works well with that starting point, particularly since the Avatar he's fighting is his nontraditional, citified, abrupt niece who's trying to be more than she was trained to be.
It also works because it makes Unalaaq Wan's ultimate enemy: the force that wants not to make things just and good, but to put everyone back in fixed role and unable to change. Wan's build up to becoming Avatar is moral expansion: resisting the hierarchy of his city even though he knows nothing else, befriending spirits even though they're hostile, healing animals, saving people in a different city...trying to save everyone.Last edited by Yanagi; 2020-07-15 at 06:00 PM.
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2020-07-15, 06:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
None of my character concepts would fit Avatars setting, not even close. like its a setting thats too good in my eyes, I do not want to ruin it by introducing something completely nonsensical to what it is, and its simply too limited for what I want. Sorry Rater, but I'm simply not interested because there is simply nothing I can do with it that hasn't already been done.
like the Naruto and Dragon Ball roleplays, they work for me, because there is so much left open-ended about them that I can fill in and make an entirely different story with them because of all the stuff left behind in their long runs just used once then never explored again just there waiting to be repurposed to make something new and different. Avatar is great because its tightly written: every part of it is used efficiently and the world is focused in a way that makes the stories consistent, human and sympathetic and thus work with the themes its trying to tell, and anything I'd try to do with it would only retell that, thats retreading the same ground, so why would I want to do that? the Avatar world is great for telling a tightly written limited story, but its not so great for a roleplay in my eyes, because those thrive on having unfulfilled mysteries and plots that aren't finished, with dangling threads and themes left unexplored,, but Aang explores its themes really well.....then Korra while maybe not as good, still explores everything it left untouched complete with a contrasting protagonist that I would usually make to explore them with. Korra is already all the stuff I'd try to look at and do myself and its already done.
Sure, in hindsight I would do some changes:Spoilermake the Korrasami romance bigger and more upfront, make Zahir and Amon the two most prominent baddies for all the seasons not just one and they'd probably be partners because their equalist and anarchist philosophies are compatible with a sophisticated "always on edge" relationship to keep it realistic, while Kuvira and Tarrlok/Unalaq being there but only seasonal antagonists since their motivations are more tied to politics and their nations, change the confrontation of Vaatu to be the final fight and maybe make ZAHIR to be the one becoming the Dark Avatar in his quest for anarchy, but the Airbenders coming back earlier to change things up, to make the return of them as more of a mystery to investigate rather than a consequence, No Meelo, Varrick I'm not sure on he is weird but somewhere between being a greedy semi-antagonist and comic relief I'm sure something about him could be executed better....
...but nothing I'd consider good for a roleplay. it'd all be great changes for some fan fic, but nope.Last edited by Lord Raziere; 2020-07-15 at 06:22 PM.
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2020-07-16, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Watched The Great Divide.
Spoiler: Plot Hole
- So the village didn't decided to check up on their messenger, who would have bail him out once things get cleared up?
- And what happened to the crystal ball?
- And I know it's one of the least liked episodes, but I can't stop thinking.
Badly drawn helmet avatar drawn by me.
Rest in Peace:SpoilerMiko Miyazaki, Thanh, Durkon- Order of the Stick
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2020-07-17, 06:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Don't worry, Zuko's arc is done a lot better than it might appear at this stage. Zuko's entire arc is about what honour and family is, and as such doesn't go exactly where it seems to at first. I'm not saying Aang doesn't end up dating the Fire Lord, just that it's not straightforward. Warning white text is spoilery.
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2020-07-17, 12:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Iroh rant ahead.
Spoiler
Iroh's entire story is about his conflict with his family. He lost his son, and that tragedy hurt him deeply and gave him a new appreciation for family. This is why you see him go into voluntary exile with Zuko. Over the course of book 1 and 2 you can see him struggling to heal Zuko's wounds, but if you listen to how he talks about his brother and his father, you can tell he disapproves, but sticks with them because of family loyalty and honor.
In book three, you see a man who realizes that honoring your family is a noble goal, but not all family members deserve to be honored. He then takes responsibility for his family, and like Travis Cotes and Ole Yeller, sees it as his responsibility to put Oazi down.
Book 1 and 2 establish values and the conflict between them. Book 3 shows Iroh taking action on the values that won.
And honestly, that makes Iroh more amazing in my eyes. It's serious character development.Last edited by Sivarias; 2020-07-17 at 12:16 PM.
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2020-07-17, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
To the OP's original point:
It is a bit stereotypical to have Fire be the antagonists, and I think that might be intentional; the show is ultimately for children, and the first episodes show that the most. Having the opponents be scary fire-hurling masked soldiers in towering battleships connects quickly on an emotional level and helps sell the show initially, and then the writers can introduce the nuance that makes the show great. It's not difficult to contemplate ways in which the primary antagonists would be from the other nations (and I'll go into that momentarily), but it would be perhaps more difficult to display the conflict in a way which would resonate with children.
Making the Earth Kingdom the aggressor and Fire the victim wouldn't take much rewriting at all. After all, the Earth Kingdom is a state and therefore can mobilize for war readily, and we see that they've been the primary threat to balance in past generations. You'd basically need to swap the royal families of each state (though giving the defending nation cutthroat royal politics at the top levels while still being attacked would be a good way of keeping the nuance, so the Zuko-Azula feud might be good to keep). Maybe the Fire Nation colonized abandoned coastal areas a couple generations before the start of the conflict, and now an irredentist Earth King has attacked them, or maybe the Fire Nation always had a presence in the west, but the Earth Kings developed a philosophy that the whole continent was theirs, driving them to attack the Air Temples (which seem all to be on the main continent) and start conquering the outlying Fire Nation settlements. The ineffectual Fire Lord remains aloof to the plight of his subjects, safe on the core island from immediate harm and more concerned with royal politics. The superior Fire Nation navy can keep the heartland safe, but struggles to protect the continental settlements, both because of failures of leadership and because of their difficulty projecting power onto the land. (With a little more rewriting, you could emphasize that fire, while flashy, is in truth probably the weakest of the four elements when it comes to combat and have that influence the world-building. Firebenders don't have strong defensive techniques (against the other elements), and the other elements can defend against theirs pretty easily; moreover, earth and water both can shape the battlefield, which fire cannot. This puts firebenders at a pretty sizable disadvantage. One could see their culture focusing more on use of fire for utilitarian purposes like kilns and ovens and forges.)
Writing water or air to be the antagonists would require much more rewriting to make plausible. As it stands, neither culture has the capability to organize as an offensive force or the real desire to conquer. That said, you could rewrite the Air Nomads to be a conquering force pretty plausibly. Give them a Genghis sort of unifier who masses them into a horde, sweeping through the Earth Kingdom, outmaneuvering larger Earth Kingdom armies and pillaging the land, sometimes smothering entire cities that resist them. As the show progresses and we start to see more of the Air Nomads' perspective, we see how they've been historically relegated to mountain peaks and high steppes, starving and freezing while within sight of the fertile lowlands. By the end, the Avatar sets up the Air Temples (because seriously, there's no way those were built by airbenders) and introduces the principles of monasticism which would eventually come to define airbending as a culture.
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2020-07-17, 01:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Last edited by t209; 2020-07-17 at 01:09 PM.
Badly drawn helmet avatar drawn by me.
Rest in Peace:SpoilerMiko Miyazaki, Thanh, Durkon- Order of the Stick
Krunch- Looking For Group
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2020-07-17, 01:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-17, 01:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
I mean
Spoiler: Rise of Kyoshi and an episodeChin the Conqueror tried to claim entire Earth continent and only stopped at Kyoshi’s island, albeit mostly because he refuse to run away when the ground fell under him.
He is one of example of Earth Kingdom as villainous role.Badly drawn helmet avatar drawn by me.
Rest in Peace:SpoilerMiko Miyazaki, Thanh, Durkon- Order of the Stick
Krunch- Looking For Group
Bill- Left 4 Dead
Soap Mactavish- Modern Warfare 3
Sandman- Modern Warfare 3
Ghost and Roach- Modern Warfare 2
Gabe- Dead Space 2
Dom- Gears of War 3
Carmine Brothers- Gears of War series
Uriel Septim VII- Elderscrolls Oblivion
Commander Shepherd- Mass Effect 3
Ned Stark- Song of Ice and Fire
Apple Jack's parents
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2020-07-17, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
SpoilerI'm not sure I agree that that's character development in the sense of Iroh changing; I think a lot of that comes from our viewpoint character of Zuko changing, and so seeing Iroh differently.
Take Iroh's first conversation about Azula: "She's crazy and she needs to go down", as opposed to Zuko's "I know what you're going to say. She's my sister and I need to try to get along with her."
Or his first fight with Azula: redirects her lightning and kicks her so hard she goes from the middle of the ship straight over the edge.
I think the change you notice comes more than anything from the fact that he knew Zuko wasn't ready to face Ozai or Azula - either on a physical or mental level.Last edited by uncool; 2020-07-17 at 07:12 PM.
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2020-07-21, 07:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Apparently, Legend of Korra is coming to Netflix next month.
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2020-07-22, 04:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Read that. I was pondering seeing it as people have been giving negative reviews about it. I have to finish Avatar first anyway. I'll probably give Korra a chance for an episode or two, make up my own mind.
I'm up to where Aang the gang are in the Earth Kingdom and reunited with lost Aba. They're showing Earth benders as bad guys. It's the common trope of the King's Vizier, but it's fine. I'm not the target audience, yet I like how the show has become a bit more serious in nature. Sokka is getting respect even if still the butt monkey sometimes, and they're making me care about Zuko which is good.
I always did like watching Mako when he appeared in a movie or tv show.
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2020-07-22, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
If you like AtLA and were able to tolerate the low points of that, you'll probably like LoK too. There wasn't anything as lame as the Great Divide in Korra.
Really the worst thing about that show was that there were so many great ideas that never got executed to their full potential.
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2020-07-22, 08:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-22, 09:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-22, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
Diff'rent strokes and all, but the Great Divide is an episode so vapid and pointless even the creators don't like it. It might be vaguely entertaining in its own right, but it is the singular episode of the series that could be completely cut with no consequences on the narrative or individual character arcs.
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2020-07-23, 12:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
It's no worse to me than a lot of the other "filler" episodes like Waterbending scroll, Ember Island players, avatar day, and I'm sure a lot of other episodes that were fun but don't do much to grow the characters or advance the plot.
It also shows that Aang is willing to lie to people for their own good, which I thought was a good bit of character development.Last edited by Anteros; 2020-07-23 at 12:55 AM.
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2020-07-23, 05:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-07-23, 07:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Avatar The Last Air Bender
I honestly didn't like Varrick in Season 2, although his appearances in Season 3 and 4 were amazing.
I honestly think that Season 4 is my favourite because I just love what they did with Bolin (who's character hasn't reset since Season 3) and Varrick, along with Korra finally beginning to act like the Avatar. It also cemented Mako as my last favourite of the main characters, because urgh.