/a/ - Avatar

Well that was a pretty dark episode.

Raised up only to have it kicked out from under her a number of times.

Good though. Nice to see the actual effort and time it would take for Korra to recover from the previous season, and a great teaser for the next episode. :D

>>118195
Time to get her Jedi on. Hope we get a series of Yoda references incoming. Didn't expect Big Toe.

OMG YAAAAASSSSSS!!!!

DAT ENDING!!!

I want to see a comic "The littlest Spirit" Its travels as it watched after Korra.

Feel like it addressed the problems with the conclusion of Book 1 rather nicely, with an interesting plot hook in the form of this supposed AntiKorra manifestation (that might also address the issues with Season 2's Dork Avatar too).

So glad her suffering wasn't neatly tied up in one go. Good to see peeps push through.

>>118200
Yeah, and it's good to see her actively attempt to resolve it instead of wallowing in it or letting it completely consume her. Too many characters whose appeal comes going through "suffering porn" and writers believing their likeability comes from getting the audience to pity them.

FIVE STAR EPISODE. ALL THE APPLAUSE TO THE TEAM ;_;

-Soundtrack was A fucking plus. Notable standouts was the sendup of Korra's theme when she finally took her first steps under Katara's care and the recalling of the ATLA theme during Toph's big reveal.

-Scenery porn. Scenery porn everywhere. Korra traversed the entire planet with a quick visit to the Spirit World during this episode and all the backgrounds and vistas were some shit straight out of Ghibli.

-"Move your big toe" I know this is actually the first step to walking IRL but it felt like a shoutout to the hospital scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1. It's even blocked/framed in the same manner.

-Korra's plight, aside from the spiritual fantasy trauma, felt really human and realistically portrayed. Here we have a martial arts master that was capable of acrobatic maneuvers and feats of strength confined to a wheelchair for a lengthy period of time making very slow progress in her recovery and rehab. Her blowup at Katara was rough to watch but very understandable. Katara's already been there with Aang and it obviously stirred up some memories within her.

-Korra's little victories were there in numbers, but so were her setbacks. I felt that the portrayal of her PTSD was rather...tasteful, for lack of a better word. Korra recovered to the point that she can physically bend all the elements to her prior ability, but once she gets into any real conflict, even in a SPARRING MATCH when she's not in any real danger, her condition is triggered and she mentally shuts down. I know twitter and tumblr have completely ruined the word 'triggered' these days, but the way LoK shown it is the actual, original meaning of it. War Vets with PTSD get triggered and get flashbacks like Korra had in the show when they get in fights or are around fireworks/exploding pyro. And on top of this Korra has....

-That fucking Dark Avatar Korra apparition following her around everywhere. At first one might think it's a hallucination stemming from her PTSD, but the leafspirit-disguised-as-a-puppy can see it and has some influence over it, and the apparition managed to physically beat the shit out of Korra in the Swamp. There's some crazy Spirit World shenanigans afoot here, and Korra being unable to contact Raava might have something to do with it. Dark Korra reminds me of Dark Samus from Metroid Fusion, once Dark Samus was anywhere near you that mean you had to fucking RUN. RUN LIKE HELL.

-MARBLE TRICK MARBLE TRICK MARBLE TRICK

-One last thing, Toph's lines near the end. They were so unlike the lines we hear from Police Chief Toph in the flashbacks, especially the Book 3 flashbacks. It's like she reverted to kid Toph from ATLA. "Beats me." "Nice to see you again, Twinkletoes." That's one hell of a cliffhanger to end on.

I'm wondering if Korra's reconnection with Raava will also allow her to contact her past lives again, since that's definitely something that's caused her a lot of pain. Toph can tell the Aang in her apparently, unless the super adorable spirit told her ahead of time.

That following, freaking ominous.

http://bryankonietzko.tumblr.com/post/99732546637/faitherinhicks-avatar-e-aangs-all-grown

>Ryu drew both of these, something like 9 years apart!

>Toph calls Korra twinkle toes
>forgetting that a reincarnation is an entirely different person

I love the little Ghibli spirits, they're so cute. But I'm a little disappointed they never resolved the issue of spirits turning violent or predatory or sensitive to humans' many negative emotions, unless Vaatu's defeat already handwaved that danger away.

>>118206
She senses the Avatar Spirit
>>118207

Pretty much his bad mojo got them riled.

>>118208
To this day I think Vaatu is the biggest misstep when it comes to Avatar lore. Even Jade Empire for its simplistic view of morality didn't muddle up such key Taoist concepts so badly.

>>118209
Vaatu is more zoroastrian than taoist.

>>118210
And that's precisely the problem.

>>118211
>>118210
As in, they attempted to portray the two as an example of Taoism's Yin and Yang (they are incomplete without each other, they can't live without each other, neither one is supposed to be defeatable, etc. etc.) but the whole point of Yin and Yang is that they primarily represent chaos and order respectively, and that both are good in moderation but evil in extreme. Plus, the associations are fundamentally messed up. It's supposed to be more like light-fire-masculinity-order-militarism-violence-achievement vs dark-water-feminity-chaos-liberty-tranquility/inaction. Morality doesn't factor into it, except for some of Laozi's political commentary about Confucianism (he viewed it as excessive in Yang and demonizing of Yin, but again, that factors back into the moderation argument). The presence of such a strong Near Eastern/Abrahamic value system in a universe that has been mostly successful in representing Far Eastern philosophy and culture is pretty jarring.

>>118203
I'm pretty sure her past lives are gone for good. The issue with her being disconnected from Raava is that she can't enter the avatar state.

>>118211
How so? Avatar has always been a hodge-podge of different cultures and religions from the East, and Zoroastrianism was founded by the Indo-Iranians back before Indians and Iranians were two distinct peoples--and continues to be popular in India. Also, it's not even close to being Abrahamic.

The cosmology of the universe has never been meant to be a 1:1 corallary to any real world religion or philosophy. Combining the dualism of zorastrianism with the yin and yang is perfectly in keeping with the series' traditions.

Your objection seems to be "They got the fictional religion of their fictional universe wrong because there's a real world religion that did things differently." This objection is patently nonsensical. It is like whining that Xenogears got Gnosticism wrong because the Demiurge wasn't a mad AI or that DC Comics got Superman wrong because Moses wasn't from Krypton.

>>118214
More like, this one thing is presented as being very taichi-like so it's really jarring when the actual thing turns out to be Greco-Roman wrestling in execution. Raava and Vaatu being so good-evil was probably one of the biggest plot-related criticisms of Book 2 back in the day, I don't think people who dislike it are necessarily being whiny..

>>118215
>Raava and Vaatu being so good-evil was probably one of the biggest plot-related criticisms of Book 2 back in the day, I don't think people who dislike it are necessarily being whiny..
It is generally safe to assume that anything this particular community thinks en masse is going to be whiny, as well as being based on shoddy understandings of criticism. We fail to recognize the things that actually deserve criticism and we obsess over things that are complete non-issues.

>>118216
A lot of people didn't like Mako's characterization and while some of them were awful I don't think that means his writing is not worth criticizing because of those people.

>>118214
Not quite. Zoroastrianism and Vedism are descended from a common proto-religion but they still diverged quite a lot by the time they emerged as separate. For example, early Vedism was already monistic in contrast to Zoroastrianism's dualism, and not to mention d(a)evas and as/huras are practically the opposite between the two. And the Parsis in India are immigrants descended from Persians leaving Iran after the rise of Islam. Very few "native" Indians practice it.

For however much it's worth, Zoroastrianism at least belongs in Avatar around as much as Islam does, maybe a little less considering Muslims represent a vastly larger demographic in East Asia and have had a larger impact history-wise. Speaking of which, I'm rather surprised by the lack of representation for Islam or at least Asian Muslim culture, considering how much it shaped Asian history and Sikhism, which does get proper representation in Avatar. The closest thing I can think of is Zaheer's and a few other characters' names but that's mostly a language thing.

>>118217
Mako's characterization is worth criticizing, however, very few people in the community actually criticize it. Mostly they just bitch about it because of the social politics of nerd circles. Bitching and criticism are not the same thing.

>>118219
>very few people in the community actually criticize it
Seriously? You've got to be kidding me. Not everybody who doesn't like Mako is a frothing idiot. Even if I don't necessarily agree with their judgement of him, I've seen lots of people even on Tumblr make criticisms which were perfectly reasonable.

>>118219
That's a pretty skewed view of Avatar fandom you've got there.

>>118218
Well, even if it's got some Muslim ideas Sikhism is an indigenous Indian religion. While Islam, Zoroastrianism, Manichaism and so on are all western imports. Makes sense not to include it because Avatarworld seems to go as far as eastern Pakistan, and Islam came from beyond, even if they weren't afraid of offending people. Classical Hinduism which inspired most of Avatar's Indian cosmology passes because the theory of an "Aryan invasion" from the west that brought ideas like Brahma and avatars to India is a bunch of oldfashioned racist bullshit, and those ideas evolved naturally from inside India itself. Honestly the lack of Jainism is more surprising since it is another indigenous Indian religion like Buddhism/Sikhism/Hinduism/Vedas.

>>118222
Islam and Zoroastrianism are both Eastern religions, dude. Technically so are Judaism and Christianity. But even if you could make the argument that Judaism and Christianity have become westernized because of their popularity in Europe and the United States, the countries with the highest concentration of muslims are almost entirely in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Most "Western" religions were either wiped out by Christianity, are Eastern religions that have gained purchase in the West (like Christianity itself), or are New-World Religions like Wicca, various forms of Neopaganism, and Discordianism.

>>118221
I am sorry that you let the most unimpressive members of your community control the narrative then.

>>118224
>control the narrative
The fuck is this Illumati bullshit.

>>118223
Yeah but they're more like Near/Middle East Asia compared to South/Far East Asia. It's a given Europe is out of the equation. And that doesn't answer the question why if Islam was so important to Asia why they're leaving out even the slightest hints of Muslim culture from Avatar since not all of it is religious in nature.

>>118224
And I'm sorry that you're willing to rely on strawmen to flat out dismiss other people's opinions. Let him not like it if he wants. You don't have to agree with it, but it's a valid enough issue on its own and falls down to a matter of opinion especially compared to some of the other things that have been said here.

>>118226
Same reason why most of Russia outside the Water Tribey parts gets left out.

Not sure how much it means but my religious studies professor seemed to consider Zoroastrianism separate from the more famous Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. In her eyes, the former group which includes the "Western" religions usually views good and evil/the absence of good as concrete entities and views time as linear, while Eastern religions believe in a cyclical universe that doesn't have or doesn't care about a clear beginning or end, are marked by a distinct lack of such good and evil deities, and tend to be less hierarchical. Zoroastrianism only qualifies as "Eastern" if you want to get very technical about it.

>>118227
See, that's just it: it isn't about liking or disliking something. That's not what criticism is. That is where the majority of the community gets tripped up. They think that their opinions are "criticism," but they aren't. It's just bitching about something they don't like. It is a pure surface reading of a show which is not at all useful when discussing the merits of a thing. They are giving, at best, reviews. And more often than not, they are not giving reviews, they are just bitching.

"Disliking something I like" is absolutely fine. The problem is that the justifications for that dislike usually show a complete misunderstanding of how narrative works. Their reactions aren't wrong, but the commentary they use to express those reactions are absolute bollocks.

"I dislike Mako." <--- FINE. Your reaction is totally your own and doesn't require justification!
"Mako is uninteresting." <--- FINE. Your reaction is totally your own and doesn't require justification!
"Mako is annoying." <--- FINE. Your reaction is totally your own and doesn't require justification!
"I hated the love triangle plot." <--- FINE. Your reaction is totally your own and doesn't require justification!
"Mako is a Mary Sue because he didn't deserve to have two such hot women fall for him and the characters in-story didn't react to him the way I think they should" <--- BULLSHIT. You do not know how narrative works.

>>118230
First of all, I don't see anywhere where they referred to their opinion as anything more than that. Preferring something to have gone down a different way isn't always bitching. And besides, Bryke are not infallible. Sometimes there are places they clearly could have done better. and it's not presumptuous to point that out. Look what happened with Korra's current recovery subplot. People expressed their disapproval with how easily Korra's problems were fixed at the end of Book 1, sometimes obnoxiously, sometimes longwindedly, sometimes tersely and so on.

And just as well, there were people like you who put up the same defense that they're full of shit and "didn't get how the narrative works". But the writers certainly didn't agree, and actively took their criticisms into account and applied it. The same goes for the Red Lotus and Earth Queen subplot which at least attempted to bring in a little more moral ambiguity as a response to people's dislike of the first two villains as being too shallow because X reasons.

So we've got till Episode 7 when Korra comes back to Republic city. Think we'll get some more flashbacks of city life during that time.

I want some iron man style test scenes of Asami building prototype wing suits.

>>118232

Mike and Bryan had to pull a Word of God at NYCC Thursday about Asami creating the wing suits because that wound up being cut from the show. Thank Nick for slicing away a minute from each episode in Books 3 and 4 for more TV ads that never wound up being aired after all the bullshit went down.

>>118233
I'm thinking that may be the death of the network if they are being that miserly in seeking ad revenue. Unless someone has the bright idea to stick with Digital for future projects like this.

>>118233
We still get scenes with Wu though. Along with needed to show the love relationship with Opal/Bolin and have Kai mention how things with Jinora are sweetie, all things considered.

So if we would cut those things or never have Opal or Kai exist as love partners, then maybe we could get more Asami time or even more Korra time.

The ads still pop up for online, if you don't have certain additions active. (Does AdBlock and stuff like that mess up Nick's "numbers" in finding out how many people are watching things online?)

>>118235
We'll get some of Asami fretting over what has happened to Korra because she knows what Korra is going through and nobody else does. Korra and Toph doing the Yoda thing for the next few episodes till Korra gets her Vision and she has to head back to the City.

>>118236
Eh, I highly doubt Asami is the kind of person to be neurotic like that.

I just think something has got to happen because I can't see her being privy to that kinda information and just content to staying put without attempting to locate her or maybe tell Korra's father or Tenzin possibly.

>>118236
>>118241
Honestly who knows at this point? Maybe she will maybe she won't, but your Asami headcanon is just that, a headcanon. Half of the assumptions you make about Asami sound like they came from a very different show from what everyone else is watching. I'm probably the hundredth person to say this, but you seriously need to stop taking your yurishipping so damn seriously.

I felt the episode started well then got confusing. While Korra needing to learn how to walk after being in a wheelchair made sense (not using your legs causes the leg muscles to wither) her PTSD made no sense. Korra fought Amon and lost her ability to bend 3 elements yet didn't suffer from PTSD; Korra lost Raava after the fight with Unalaq and didn't suffer PTSD; yet for some reason fighting Zaaher while poisoned caused PTSD. Considering what Korra has already been through this mental trauma seems to have only been there for sympathy and a short subplot.

After Korra left the South Pole the episode stopped making any sense. Korra sees the Spirit Korra and sails away from Republic City, goes to a tree to try and find answers, ignores the spirits who are trying to offer her answers, walks around aimlessly, starts following the Spirit Korra which leads her to a fight for no reason, takes part in the fight against spirit Korra which could have been done at any time, Spirit Korra then attacks Korra in an alley for no real reason, and finally they fight in a forest.

If Spirit Korra is an enemy why didn't it attack Korra when they first met? If Spirit Korra is an ally why did it fight Korra rather than just lead her to Toph? I feel that Bryke is making another season that looks good but lacks any real story.

>>118243
>Korra fought Amon and lost her ability to bend 3 elements yet didn't suffer from PTSD; Korra lost Raava after the fight with Unalaq and didn't suffer PTSD; yet for some reason fighting Zaaher while poisoned caused PTSD.

Well for one thing repeated trauma actually makes it more likely that later incidents will cause PTSD, not less. But probably more importantly: Losing your bending and your Avatar Spirit isn't pleasant, but that kind of heavy metal poisoning would be excruciatingly and constantly painful. She got put through a pretty serious wringer there.

As for the rest, we don't know what Spirit Korra's deal is, and we're not intended to, so this is just straight meaningless bitching.

>>118243
>Korra fought Amon and lost her ability to bend 3 elements yet didn't suffer from PTSD; Korra lost Raava after the fight with Unalaq and didn't suffer PTSD; yet for some reason fighting Zaaher while poisoned caused PTSD. Considering what Korra has already been through this mental trauma seems to have only been there for sympathy and a short subplot.
PTSD is not a well-understood phenomenon. It's not about quantifiable measures of "amount of trauma," it's all very qualitative and subjective. There's absolutely no reason that she couldn't have found one experience more traumatizing than another even though you might consider that experience to be less traumatizing.

>>118242
Just saying if they keep that drama going about her disappearance then the one person she's told among her friends about what she's going through is going to have a reaction possibly.

>118245
Say cumulative effects from the poison causing her to have hallucinations and all those individual trauma moments to come crashing down on her at once.

One at a time she could handle but all coming in at once it overwhelmed her ability to cope as she had before.

Mercury poisoning isn't exactly something you just "get over". In real life, symptoms can last a lifetime. Some of those symptoms include:

Physical;
>insomnia,
>headache
>abnormal sensations
>muscle twitching
>tremors
>muscle weakness
>muscle atrophy
>peripheral vision impairment,
>stinging or needle-like sensations in the extremities and mouth

...and the Mental;
>mood swings, nervousness, irritability, and other emotional changes
>loss of coordination
>decreased cognitive functions
>other impairments of speech and hearing

>>118243
>I feel that Bryke is making another season that looks good but lacks any real story.
On the second episode nonetheless.