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Android Blues posted:I adored pro bending and it still feels weird to me that, despite Mako and Bolin having thrown their entire lives into the sport as of season one, they just kind of flit away from it in season two. I get that it's a result of them wanting to put the characters in new situations but it's still slightly jarring from a "wait, wasn't this like, your core motivation?" perspective. The pay was so lovely that they were living in an attic. Mako got the opportunity to get a more stable career, and he took it.
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Jul 15, 2014 03:41
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nutranurse posted:Has there been any concrete, official(ish) word given about why Nickolodean didn't order a normal season's worth of episodes?
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Jul 15, 2014 03:56
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nutranurse posted:Maybe airbending could be limited to defensive stuff, like they can only destroy the other team's projectiles? Could be interesting to add dedicated defensive aspect/position to the game. Ah yeah, a kind of goalie position would be pretty neat. I also thought of limiting airbenders to only using certain styles of attack, but I guess I was thinking it would be hard to prove. I guess air has always been pretty clearly visible when it was in use, and you would be able to see clothes/hair flapping around if someone did a big gale attack or something. I didn't think of mail delivery, but that's totally legit! Unlike earthbenders, or even metalbenders, they wouldn't damage property as they moved around, and wouldn't be limited by things like traffic. Maybe more of an elite/expensive delivery service than regular mail delivery though, since airbenders are still quite rare and a person running around a city can't carry as much as a regular old' mail car. There was actually a fairly recent anime called Gargantia that had this exact thing going on, people flying around on gliders to get mail to people on what was basically a giant ship in the ocean.
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Jul 15, 2014 04:00
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Zuko wasn't a crappy firebender by any means. He was actually quite good from the very beginning, such that he beat Zhao in a duel fair and square - Azula just made everyone look bad in comparison. Towards the end of the original series, after Zuko finished training with Aang/those sun worshiper guys/literal dragons, he actually ended up extremely skilled and able to fight his sister to a standstill, even before the final duel under the comet. So, his recent showing was really lame.
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Jul 15, 2014 04:23
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Zuko only fought Azula to a standstill because she had gone totally batshit, but you are right that Zuko was by no means a bad bender. Yes, he's the worst bender in the group, but only because Katara is the second strongest waterbender after Paku, and Toph was tied for first with Bumi. Zuko was at worst the fifth strongest firebender (behind Ozai, Iroh, Azula, and Jeong Jeong) which is pretty impressive. Having said that, I really don't care much that Zuko went down so fast, because: 1. He's a 90 year old man, which means he has a full 25 years on Iroh in the original series, and almost 30 on Jeong Jeong. He's loving old. 2. He's trying to firebend in the middle of the arctic wastes at night, which is a double wammy because a) it's hard to firebend in cold environments and b) firebenders are much stronger during the day. 3. He's fighting against one of the men he himself claimed "could take down any bender." 4. There was never an expectation he was going to stop the baddies in the first place, because if he did the plot would immediately end and that would be dumb.
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Jul 15, 2014 04:40
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Ferrinus posted:Zuko wasn't a crappy firebender by any means. He was actually quite good from the very beginning, such that he beat Zhao in a duel fair and square - Azula just made everyone look bad in comparison. Towards the end of the original series, after Zuko finished training with Aang/those sun worshiper guys/literal dragons, he actually ended up extremely skilled and able to fight his sister to a standstill, even before the final duel under the comet. So, his recent showing was really lame. Zuko wasn't a crappy firebender but he wasn't a top-tier super-ace firebender either. He was good but he only beat Azula when she was literally going out of her mind and batshit crazy. He was merely good while being surrounded by exceptional. Meanwhile here he is going up against three (later four) Benders, each of whom is considered a serious top-grade threat on their own, one of whom was considered a serious threat before they were even a bender, at least one of whom is powerful enough that a similar sort of person was someone Zuko himself hired to assassinate the Avatar previously. So he is once again good being put up against exceptional. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 04:43
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You guys do know that this fight was the bplot, right?
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Jul 15, 2014 04:48
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This show needs power levels. Two types, bending and spirit.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:01
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ImpAtom posted:Zuko wasn't a crappy firebender but he wasn't a top-tier super-ace firebender either. He was good but he only beat Azula when she was literally going out of her mind and batshit crazy. He was merely good while being surrounded by exceptional. Not so! The comet agni kai was his most memorable defeat of Azula, but he actually drove her off in an earlier episode involving blimps or something, dealing what would have been a death blow if not for Azula suddenly pulling out the Iron Man boot jets trick. It's not like going out of her mind Azula was noticeably worse at fighting, either. Zuko was always going to fail up at the north pole, but I at least thought he'd fail in a cool way. His back and forth with rock dude wasn't much more elaborate than a generic pro bending exchange, and water arms just sort of... ran past everyone and secured the objective. If Zuko had pulled out some sort of badass dragon kung fu but Zehir was like "hah, old man, it's far too cold out here for that move to stop me" or Zuko was winning until he comically threw out his back and became helpless or something it'd have at least kind of lived up to the fight's setup.
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Jul 15, 2014 05:04
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Sithsaber posted:You guys do know that this fight was the bplot, right? Actually, it's very important -- this is power levels discussion, a staple of any ADTRW shonen anime thread! We really need to hash out who would be able to beat whom, and why. 
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Jul 15, 2014 05:07
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Finally got around to watching last Friday's episodes and, well... I liked them  .For once there's really nothing bothering me. Show has been real solid for basically 5 straight eps which is a marked improvement for me. It's really nice.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:40
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nutranurse posted:Has there been any concrete, official(ish) word given about why Nickolodean didn't order a normal season's worth of episodes? They did, Book 3 and Book 4 was a single 26-episode order.
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Jul 15, 2014 09:53
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Squall posted:They did, Book 3 and Book 4 was a single 26-episode order. And they got the episode order for Book 2 early enough into making Book 1 that they could have gone for a longer season. They'd just already decided they wanted to do smaller, more focused seasons.
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Jul 15, 2014 16:50
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Ferrinus posted:Not so! The comet agni kai was his most memorable defeat of Azula, but he actually drove her off in an earlier episode involving blimps or something, dealing what would have been a death blow if not for Azula suddenly pulling out the Iron Man boot jets trick. It's not like going out of her mind Azula was noticeably worse at fighting, either. Azula was starting to slip by that episode too, but Zuko's Sun Warrior firebending definitely gave him a boost both in power and in confidence. It'd have been nice to see one fight with them both at full potential; Azula would still probably win, but I think Zuko would hold his own. And there's no way Zuko's only getting a short cameo, he'll definitely be back again in Korra to show off something neat. I'm holding out for lightningbending; he should have the mental clarity for it now. Honestly, I kind of like the idea of old Zuko not being exceptionally badass at firebending; it'd show he had more concern in running his country and raising his family than in honing his fighting skills. Edit: VVVVVV He's talking about the fight at the start of the Southern Raiders. i hate meatloaf fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 16:52
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Ferrinus posted:Not so! The comet agni kai was his most memorable defeat of Azula, but he actually drove her off in an earlier episode involving blimps or something, dealing what would have been a death blow if not for Azula suddenly pulling out the Iron Man boot jets trick. It's not like going out of her mind Azula was noticeably worse at fighting, either. You mean the one where he tag-teamed her with Sokka and his magic metal sword? Because a 2v1 fight isn't a great example of "he beat her!" I mean honestly, it feels like your complaint is "I wanted this character I liked to have a big awesome super-cool fight scene" which is something understandable but is neither absolutely justified by the character nor does it make sense to happen in the b-plot of an early episode. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 17:00
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ImpAtom posted:You mean the one where he tag-teamed her with Sokka and his magic metal sword? Because a 2v1 fight isn't a great example of "he beat her!" I'd have to come back in a few hours to link you to the actual video, but it's when Zuko charged out to meet her on top of some blimps and drove her off. She was visibly surprised all the while, as I recall. And it's totally justified by the character! This is the actual Zuko! Legend of Korra trades on the strength of the original series really heavily. Look, for instance, at how cool the Dai Li have looked in their fights against the korra krew. If all they did was lovely pro bending-style "I shoot a small projectile, then I shoot another" we'd be rightly disappointed, even if they were part of a b-plot and even if it was an early episode. Like others have said, though, Season 3's a huge improvement for Korra over all. One thing that surprised me about the most recent episodes was that Korra, like, straightforwardly and unquestionably won a fight and succeeded at a goal. It didn't occur to me until after a friend pointed it out, but through Books 1 and 2 Korra was always getting owned - she won, like, one fight against some mooks at the beginning of Book 1 and then for all of time she was either getting beaten or appearing to win until her enemy just distracts her to cut and run or pulls out some master plan that destroys her. There were no filler episodes in which Korra could tackle some problem and genuinely overcome it, because everything was bent towards building up Korra's enemies as increasingly fearsome.
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Jul 15, 2014 17:55
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Ferrinus posted:Like others have said, though, Season 3's a huge improvement for Korra over all. One thing that surprised me about the most recent episodes was that Korra, like, straightforwardly and unquestionably won a fight and succeeded at a goal. It didn't occur to me until after a friend pointed it out, but through Books 1 and 2 Korra was always getting owned - she won, like, one fight against some mooks at the beginning of Book 1 and then for all of time she was either getting beaten or appearing to win until her enemy just distracts her to cut and run or pulls out some master plan that destroys her. There were no filler episodes in which Korra could tackle some problem and genuinely overcome it, because everything was bent towards building up Korra's enemies as increasingly fearsome. Eh, the same could be said of Aang. He only "won" battles in the first season because he was able to temporarily disable the baddies and run the hell away. This is also including the fact that the foes he was facing was just one cranky Fire Nation royal plus a bunch of dudes who were stuck ferrying around the exiled Prince.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:00
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ShadowCatboy posted:Eh, the same could be said of Aang. He only "won" battles in the first season because he was able to temporarily disable the baddies and run the hell away. This is also including the fact that the foes he was facing was just one cranky Fire Nation royal plus a bunch of dudes who were stuck ferrying around the exiled Prince. This is no way changes the fact that Aang won battles and succeeded against his foes. It's not an issue of who they faced or why-- it's a pacing and storytelling thing. If all Korra ever does is fail, it gets old. Like they said above, even a couple filler episodes that let her win minor victories would've gone a long way towards lifting the stench of failure from the narrative.
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Jul 15, 2014 22:18
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I've been binge-watching TLA and Korra over the past few weeks and I gotta say I don't get why people are so down on Korra. The love triangle stuff is very poorly done, but the action and overall style and direction of Korra season 1 is way loving better than TLA season 1, most of which I really had to force myself to sit through. What an amazing start to a show this is. Based on this thread I gather season 2 is the low point, but hooooow bad can it really be? 
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Jul 15, 2014 23:33
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Hakkesshu posted:I've been binge-watching TLA and Korra over the past few weeks and I gotta say I don't get why people are so down on Korra. The love triangle stuff is very poorly done, but the action and overall style and direction of Korra season 1 is way loving better than TLA season 1, most of which I really had to force myself to sit through. What an amazing start to a show this is. Based on this thread I gather season 2 is the low point, but hooooow bad can it really be?  The right is done by Studio Pierrot who did like 2/3 of the episodes for season 2.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:36
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Hakkesshu posted:I've been binge-watching TLA and Korra over the past few weeks and I gotta say I don't get why people are so down on Korra. The love triangle stuff is very poorly done, but the action and overall style and direction of Korra season 1 is way loving better than TLA season 1, most of which I really had to force myself to sit through. What an amazing start to a show this is. Based on this thread I gather season 2 is the low point, but hooooow bad can it really be? Just wait til the saddest story you'll ever hear. Also a lot of us treat Korra s1 as the 4th season of Avatar, and that had certain built-up expectations attached to it.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:41
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Ferrinus posted:Legend of Korra trades on the strength of the original series really heavily. No it doesn't. If anything it has specifically avoided doing so. They've gone out of their way to avoid having any of the previous Avatar characters have a significant onscreen presence. Katara has been onscreen but regulated to a side role. Toph is travelling around the world where she is out of contact entirely. Sokka and Aang are dead, and in the case of Aang he's been entirely removed from the equation after being a big part of the end of Season 1. I don't want Korra to be "fanboys bring back their old favorite characters and make them do awesome things forever at the expense of the new characters." So far the show has been really good about that. I'm sure Toph is going to show up and drop a mountain on someone because they've Chekov'd Gunned that, but I also hope it is a one-time thing whereas Zuko is clearly going to be showing up again. Spergatory posted:This is no way changes the fact that Aang won battles and succeeded against his foes. It's not an issue of who they faced or why-- it's a pacing and storytelling thing. If all Korra ever does is fail, it gets old. Like they said above, even a couple filler episodes that let her win minor victories would've gone a long way towards lifting the stench of failure from the narrative. The entire narrative is about Aang's failure and inability to confront danger head-on. He fails frequently and largely succeeds against mooks or one of his friends defeats them. Korra wins more than one fight (and psuedo-fights such as Pro Bending) and has successes. Aang certainly had more Adventure Of The Week successes but going "Korra only one a single fight before season 3!" is disingenuous at best. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:46
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Genocyber posted:
I've seen the comparison shots and they look pretty bad, but I'm not sure I'll notice it in practice. Korra already looks so much better than the SD/4:3 TLA by default that I don't think it'll bother me on a first viewing. Oh Snapple! posted:Just wait til the saddest story you'll ever hear. Sure, that makes sense. I'm actually surprised at how little Korra ties back to TLA (like mainly the fact that there's no real "avatar quest" going on), but I like that it's smaller in scope and the ways in which they explore bending in a societal context are really clever and creative. Also Amon was a great, scary villain. I do admit that now I really want an interrim show based around the old Avatar gang establishing Republic City. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:51
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What I like about Korra it's that it's anti-everything. Book 1: anti-bending Book 2: The Anti-Avatar Book 3: The Anti-Gaang complete with evil airbender
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Jul 16, 2014 00:42
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Holy poo poo question popped up on an Avatar facebook fanpage: If Iroh lives in the spirit world and the spirit portals are now open, does this mean Zuko can go and visit Iroh again?
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Jul 16, 2014 01:11
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ShadowCatboy posted:Holy poo poo question popped up on an Avatar facebook fanpage: Yeah, this has been talked about since Iroh showed up again. (Someone post that comic showing this! I'm looking for it, but can't find it, so far.) Edit: I'm annoyed that I can't seem to find it no matter what search terms I use. It was so well done! Bah, I give up. Hopefully someone else has it saved. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 01:13
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ImpAtom posted:The entire narrative is about Aang's failure and inability to confront danger head-on. He fails frequently and largely succeeds against mooks or one of his friends defeats them. Korra wins more than one fight (and psuedo-fights such as Pro Bending) and has successes. Aang certainly had more Adventure Of The Week successes but going "Korra only one a single fight before season 3!" is disingenuous at best. What fights did she win in Season 1 though? She busted a training ring with the rest of the task force Tarlokk got her involved in but then went home and had the same thing happen to her courtesy of Amon. Sure the championship match was thrown in her opponent's favour for Probending but in the ensuing attack by Amon and his supporters Korra and friends were trounced quite handily. When facing off against Tarlokk to stop him from detaining an entire neighbourhood she loses and then when she attacks him in his office he beats her with surprise blood bending. Ok she could've won that one if not for the blood bending but the plot says "no" but even when facing off against Amon for the final time he gets the better of her and strips her of her bending and only through sheer force of will does she airbend Amon out the window. Hell Mako and the Lieutenant did more leg work in that fight since Mako got off a lightning strike and the Lieutenant distracted Amon long enough to let Mako and Korra get out of there. In season 2 this got a lot better and the only times I remember Korra getting really wrecked was at first because no one knew how to calm spirits and then getting surprise drowned by her cousin. Yes they learned the lesson that seeing Korra get her poo poo kicked in every week is kinda boring, so instead we saw her continue to get manipulated instead. Also I think everyone is forgetting that Aang specifically did everything possible to a) avoid confrontations and fights and b) when in them would specifically be acting defensively to get out of them. Remember, Aang is an airbender first, Avatar second. His entire culture and upbringing is about avoiding conflict at all costs because that Air Nomads are the Buddhists of his world. The only fight you could say he truly lost was when Azula shot him with lightning, every other fight he won purely because he got away safely
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Jul 16, 2014 01:33
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Aces High posted:Also I think everyone is forgetting that Aang specifically did everything possible to a) avoid confrontations and fights and b) when in them would specifically be acting defensively to get out of them. Remember, Aang is an airbender first, Avatar second. His entire culture and upbringing is about avoiding conflict at all costs because that Air Nomads are the Buddhists of his world. The only fight you could say he truly lost was when Azula shot him with lightning, every other fight he won purely because he got away safely So your argument here is that Aang won even despite being forced to run away or leave people behind because his goal was to avoid conflict? I don't really think that flies because Aang has clearly shown frustration and regret at being forced to flee or leave people behind even if it matches his upbringing. It's a big part of his character and the central conflict between his ideals and his duty as the Avatar.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:42
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ImpAtom posted:No it doesn't. If anything it has specifically avoided doing so. They've gone out of their way to avoid having any of the previous Avatar characters have a significant onscreen presence. Katara has been onscreen but regulated to a side role. Toph is travelling around the world where she is out of contact entirely. Sokka and Aang are dead, and in the case of Aang he's been entirely removed from the equation after being a big part of the end of Season 1. I didn't say that the show brings back old characters and makes them do awesome things forever at the expense of the new characters, I said the show trades heavily on the original series. Things are frequently given weight or meaning by their significance to the original show. The protagonists have just arrived at the city builty by Toph's descendants having finished fighting Dai Li agents in the tightly controlled Ba Sing Se. The show's building up to a confrontation between Aang's evil quasi-counterpart and Aang's son. Korra learned to navigate the spirit world from the ghost of Iroh. These aren't bad things and I except the sequel to Last Airbender to frequently reference and build on Last Airbender. Often, Korra does justice to referenced material. This time it sort of didn't. quote:The entire narrative is about Aang's failure and inability to confront danger head-on. He fails frequently and largely succeeds against mooks or one of his friends defeats them. Korra wins more than one fight (and psuedo-fights such as Pro Bending) and has successes. Aang certainly had more Adventure Of The Week successes but going "Korra only one a single fight before season 3!" is disingenuous at best. Well, not really. Actually, Aang (and his crew; I don't care whether it was Aang or Katara who actually last hit a particular creep, I'm talking about TLA's protagonsists versus LOK's protagonists) and his crew frequently rebuffed their aggressors and overcame the opposition arrayed against them that would have otherwise forced them to abandon their quest. By comparison, Korra's protagonists were far more frequent victims of surprise and frustration. I chalk this up to two things: 1. Raw number of episodes. Because TLA just had more room to breathe than LOK, TLA could afford to have far more filler episodes in which the protagonist encountered and defeated some minor antagonist without therefore solving the central conflict of the series. LOK actually just did this with the Earth Queen, which I applaud, but compare that to LOK season 1 - if they beat up Amon in episode 1, what are they going to do in episodes 2 through 13? So the bad guys are constantly winning or seemingly losing before switching it up and winning or getting away. 2. The status quo. Aang and crew were rebels on the run from a greater power. They'd frequently seem to get cornered by some agent of the status quo but then heroically defeat whoever the current aggressor is and get away. On paper, Aang and his friends are just constantly running away from superior foes, but they have to beat those foes to keep doing this, the same way Roadrunner keeps beating Wile E. Coyote without, like, dethroning Wile E. forever and taking over Acme Corp. or something. Meanwhile, Korra and her friends are (in seasons 1 and 2) actually agents of the status quo and basically reactionary - everything is fine, but a threat arises, and so they move to quash the threat. In order for the threat to seem a genuine threat, it has to keep twisting free of Korra's attempts to neutralize it, which, given the fact that on paper Korra is vastly more powerful than it and has vastly more material resources to devote to quashing it, means the threat has to use all sorts of skill and cleverness in order to continue thwarting Korra and remain at large. In fact, and especially in season 1 of LOK, the bad guys were most analogous to Aang and co. while the good guys were most analogous to the fire nation - Amon's people were the ones sneaking around everywhere constantly outwitting authority and completing objectives. As with point 1, this is something season 3 is doing a lot better. Now that Korra's got a quest to do travel around and do something, rather than just the conviction that she's got to prevent someone else from doing something, there's a lot more opportunity for Korra and her friends to make plans and achieve objectives rather than just become increasingly flustered as the season villain grows increasingly dangerous. quote:So your argument here is that Aang won even despite being forced to run away or leave people behind because his goal was to avoid conflict? I don't really think that flies because Aang has clearly shown frustration and regret at being forced to flee or leave people behind even if it matches his upbringing. It's a big part of his character and the central conflict between his ideals and his duty as the Avatar. Absolutely, yes. It's like how Bugs Bunny wins over Elmer Fudd.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:45
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ShadowCatboy posted:If Iroh lives in the spirit world and the spirit portals are now open, does this mean Zuko can go and visit Iroh again? I finally found the comic that I was talking about! 
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Jul 16, 2014 01:54
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Ferrinus posted:Absolutely, yes. It's like how Bugs Bunny wins over Elmer Fudd. Except Bugs Bunny doesn't win by running away and surviving. He wins by humiliating and degrading his foe and (relatively often) tricks them into injuring or killing themselves or entirely giving up the chase against him. How many scenes in TLA involve Aang going 'we'll come back for you" or "I promise this will all be over once I can defeat the Fire Lord" or the countless other things like that? That isn't a Bugs Bunny style success. That's further emphasizing why Aang needs to stop the Fire Lord because he can't win without doing that.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:21
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ImpAtom posted:Except Bugs Bunny doesn't win by running away and surviving. He wins by humiliating and degrading his foe and (relatively often) tricks them into injuring or killing themselves or entirely giving up the chase against him. Aang frequently humiliated and degraded Zuko in the course of escaping Zuko. Think back to their literal very first fight on the ship - Zuko comes at Aang, Aang slams him against the wall or ceiling with a sneak attack, Aang runs like hell. Did Zuko "win"? Well, I mean, he certainly forced Aang to give ground... In general, the Aang crew took a defensive, evasive stance for almost all of the original series, deflecting or driving back enemy attacks before opening up a window through which they could flee themselves - but that's a win! Bad guy comes at you, you backhand them away and then leap out the window or something to fight another day. Like I said, that's exactly what the antagonists in Season 1 and 2 kept doing to Korra and co. - the protagonists would go after the bad guys, and then the bad guys run away and survive, which necessarily involves frustrating the efforts of the protagonists again and again.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:32
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Ferrinus posted:In general, the Aang crew took a defensive, evasive stance for almost all of the original series, deflecting or driving back enemy attacks before opening up a window through which they could flee themselves - but that's a win! Bad guy comes at you, you backhand them away and then leap out the window or something to fight another day. It isn't a win. The show itself doesn't define it as a win. It is frequently portayed, in-show, as a loss on Aang's part because he is forced to leave people he promised to protect or leave a situation unresolved. You may personally define it as a win but the show itself does not. This is the problem. You're now trying to define the original show as a huge bunch of wins on Aang's part when that isn't what the original show was about and the plotline of the original show makes no sense that way. Aang had victories, mind you, but he was often forced on the defensive or suffered losses or failed in some fashion. This was important to the story because a major source of difficulty for Aang was a conflict between his personal ideals and the duty of the Avatar. I mean, don't get me wrong, Korra was seriously on the defensive for most of the reason but "she never had any victories because the enemies got away" feels really weird to argue. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 02:46
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't a win. The show itself doesn't define it as a win. It is frequently portayed, in-show, as a loss on Aang's part because he is forced to leave people he promised to protect or leave a situation unresolved. You may personally define it as a win but the show itself does not.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:55
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Squidster posted:The Joker hatches a fiendish plan to kill Batman! When Batman survives, did the Joker win? The Joker frequently has plans where Batman is not killed by them or the plan is stopped but still is a failure on Batman's part because he is unable to stop the Joker from achieving part of his plan. The Joker was stopped from killing a bunch of babies but he still killed their parents and murdered Commissioner Gordon's wife. Is that a victory for Batman? An antagonist foiled is very rarely a victory-by-default for heroes because the heroes are usually unconcerned with just the mere act of foiling. It's the substance that matters and what defines a good hero. It isn't as simple as "one side wins, the other loses." ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 02:58
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Squidster posted:The Joker hatches a fiendish plan to kill Batman! When Batman survives, did the Joker win? An antagonist foiled is generally considered to be a victory by default for the protagonists. The fact that Batman's totally awesome bat-escape had collateral damage just makes it a more investing story. I think you're missing the point of the argument, though. To use your analogy, it would be more "The Joker hatches a fiendish plan to kill Batman! Batman survives, but a bunch of people are killed/seriously wounded! Did the Joker win?" That's both a more difficult question to answer, and you're a lot less likely to say Batman "won" or count it as a victory in his favor. At best it was a draw. TLA was a lot of the same sort of giving ground for the greater good type thing.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:58
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't a win. The show itself doesn't define it as a win. It is frequently portayed, in-show, as a loss on Aang's part because he is forced to leave people he promised to protect or leave a situation unresolved. You may personally define it as a win but the show itself does not. Aang was the underdog in TLA. The default was that the huge implacable antagonist would cause bad things to happen to good people. Each plot foiled and blow struck was a small victory, even though the Fire Nation military machine pretty much chugged along regardless of Zuko's hired bounty hunter getting beaten up or whatever. There were significant, genuine losses in which team Aang set out to do something and just plain failed, even ending up worse than they started, but those were meaningful for their rarity. In general, I think you're confusing the tone of some of the latter darkest-before-dawn episodes for the dynamic of the series as a whole, which featured jailbreaks, daring escapes, liberation of occupied territory, fending off of military attacks, etc. Thanks both to filler episodes and to the basic fact of starting from a position of weakness rather than a position of strength, TLA's protagonists could enjoy legitimate victories over their immediate antagonists without inadvertently defusing the tension of the entire season or story arc.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:03
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^^^^^^ Nailed it. RyuujinBlueZ posted:I think you're missing the point of the argument, though. To use your analogy, it would be more "The Joker hatches a fiendish plan to kill Batman! Batman survives, but a bunch of people are killed/seriously wounded! Did the Joker win?" That's both a more difficult question to answer, and you're a lot less likely to say Batman "won" or count it as a victory in his favor. At best it was a draw. In this analogy, Korra is the joker. She didn't achieve her goals, and she didn't normally gain enough ground to make any meaningful progress for the next battle. You can tell a fine story where your hero never achieves anything, but it does show your protagonist as not being particularly capable. It can set a tone that some audiences find frustrating. I personally didn't care that she wasn't very effective - it was the least of the first two season's sins.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:05
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Ferrinus posted:Aang was the underdog in TLA. The default was that the huge implacable antagonist would cause bad things to happen to good people. Each plot foiled and blow struck was a small victory, even though the Fire Nation military machine pretty much chugged along regardless of Zuko's hired bounty hunter getting beaten up or whatever. There were significant, genuine losses in which team Aang set out to do something and just plain failed, even ending up worse than they started, but those were meaningful for their rarity. In general, I think you're confusing the tone of some of the latter darkest-before-dawn episodes for the dynamic of the series as a whole, which featured jailbreaks, daring escapes, liberation of occupied territory, fending off of military attacks, etc. Thanks both to filler episodes and to the basic fact of starting from a position of weakness rather than a position of strength, TLA's protagonists could enjoy legitimate victories over their immediate antagonists without inadvertently defusing the tension of the entire season or story arc. I think you're remembering the victories a lot more than the defeats. The Earth and Fire books were absolutely full of losses. The first book was a little more mixed with stuff like the Earth Prison breakout and a general lighter tone. Squidster posted:Right - but this is good storytelling. The Joker definitely didn't win, because he didn't achieve his objective and end the franchise that stars him. Batman may not have won either, but he's got another chance tomorrow. This is not even remotely how Batman is portrayed though. Those victories are portrayed as gradual defeats for him and that is part of why the stupid "The Joker needs to die" thing keeps coming up because Batman never actually makes any meaningful ground. Even in The Dark Knight, he defeats the Joker but still fails at the end and the sequel movie portrays his 'victory' at the end of the last movie to be another failure because it just lead to more corruption and abuses. (Batman may just be a lovely example for this particular discussion, I think, not that your argument is bad.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 03:10
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Sorry, I should have clarified I was talking about comicbook Batman or animated Batman, as Nolan's batman is basically his own thing.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:15
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