-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Legend of Korra: Book 4 |OT2| ALL HAIL THE GREAT UNITER
- Thread starter Toa TAK
- Start date
- Status
BKatastrophe
Member
Well, if you have an emotional investment, and the thing you're invested in is no longer there, then yeah. I mean, it depends on how heavy your investment is, how it ended, but I guess you could treat it like a death, I guess. I'm not afraid to admit I had a serious investment in TLoK and when it ended, it took awhile for me to get over it. Though, I just needed an outlet for the emotions, so I watched something that almost always gets a tear out of me. It worked.
I'm being serious, by the way.
I didn't think you weren't lol.
I bring this up because I'm on reddit reading a thread on this and the escapism can be heavy for some folks invested in a series. I know I use shows and videogames as a form of it.
Hell, I've been spending some of my free time looking for any korrasami fanart and fanfiction, so perhaps I don't want to let go either.
FeenixRising
Banned
I'll only post it in the thread if Toa challenges me... I already have an underground Kuvira shipping ring going on... Oops said too much :O
BKatastrophe
Member
Well, I'm also marathoning TLoK as well. Book 1 to 4, all the way through to the end. I have four more episodes left and then I'm done. I think it's a nice bit of closure for me to watch the series as a whole in one go.
m_shortpants
Member
Day 3. 01/04/2014 CE 12:29AM PST
I am still harboring anger at DC/WB/CN executives for canceling Young Justice.
I am biding time by watching Justice League and Cowboy Bebop.
BKatastrophe
Member
Good choices. I approve. Although, I was watching Young Justice as part of a shonen kick I was going through. Preceded by Hunter X Hunter (2011) and followed by Katekyo Hitman Reborn!. My very recent re-watch of Avatar The Last Airbender was a part of that, and my friend and I are currently making our way through Bleach (for me it's a first, but he really wanted to watch it with me because he loves it). I think it helped me get over it quicker, since I was watching shows of a similar genre at the time.
Atraveller
Banned
This is too cute!
Batman Beyond is really great. Not TAS great but it holds it own really well.
m_shortpants
Member
Batman Beyond is great, if only for the Bruce/Terry dynamic.
I liked Terry as a character too. Cool villians, but it kind of sucks that Terry didn't really have an extended arc or villian like the Joker.
BTW, I just watched episode 8 of Cowboy Bebop.
I felt for Roco and his sister.
Good job at watching Bebop. Such a good show.
I dunno if you reached the episode that has Spike looking for a VCR. We're about to hit those times.
One thing that Beyond missed the mark on was making the royal flush gangs daughter (forgot her name) Terrys equivalent of Catwoman
BKatastrophe
Member
Stuff like this is the reason why I really don't spend too much time arguing a series on a technical level. What I mean by that is stuff like criticizing the writers and writing directly. Things like calling Bryan and Mike lazy, for instance. It's a critique on the writers, and as much as I hate it when people say things like that, ultimately the argument goes terribly because it's a completely subjective thing, but because it's a technical aspect of the show people try to argue it objectively. Those arguments are horrible. Arguing things (like music or art styles) that are completely subjective in an objective way is awful. It always boils down to personal preference, but people try to make their preference fact, and it's one of the reasons why I vastly prefer to argue things taking place within the fiction itself. Like the arguments JadedWriter and I have had over whether or not Su was in the right to do certain things. Granted, we've agreed to disagree on that, but the point still remains.
That point is: I would much rather argue the fiction itself, as opposed to the technical aspects. At least then, it could be an enjoyable argument since everyone sees it as grey, as opposed to a technical argument where everyone is arguing black or white, when nothing really is.
Am I making sense here? Or am I just crazy?
I'm just crazy aren't I? It's really hard to put into a typed format.
Also, I really enjoyed Batman Beyond, but I always felt a little let down by the whole storyline with the Powers. Strong plot arc for season one gets abandoned for the second season. The next time that little shit of a son shows up, he's immediately placed in jail for being a bumbling moron at the beginning of the third season and the arc is never brought up again in any capacity.. Plus, we never see Blight again. Shame on that. Other than, good show.
Pretty neat. Looks like they chose to omit the villains, so maybe that's why Azula isn't in it?
MuahahahaBooooooooo! (￣3￣
I like this.
-_-
Yeah, I figured that, but c'mon.
This is going to be amazing colored.
Haha yeah, if I had it my way she would front center of that particular piece.
Okokokokokok
I don't understand those pics that tumblr keeps reposting.
This is a question that entered my own head as well after awhile. The Dai Li were basically the CIA of the earth kingdom and even in season 3 they were going strong and continuing with their own secret projects to maintain the social order and "culture" of the earth kingdom via social engineering and trying to weaponize and hypnotize people like the air benders in S3 or Jet in TLA
While they ruled the city from the shadows, it's not like the complete upheaval of social order would stop them since they have no qualms about force and violence in addition to coercion. In circumstances like when Zaheer set off the looting spree the Dai Li probably could do little to stop that, but those in the inner circles are dependent on both the military and Dai Li to maintain that separation from the lower rings. It would surprise me if at least some order didn't come back to Ba Sing Se after awhile.
The flip side however is that the Dai Li has probably never been extremely large so the moment no one fears repercussion from the government, the Dai Li lose most of their power since the Dai Li relies on the fear of their reprisal, since they don't have the actual numbers to martially control the city, they held it in place psychologically.
Toa should be pleased with the following head canon:
At the start of the campaign to help stabilize the earth kingdom during the 3 year timeskip, Kuvira is still the ambitious captain of the guard for Zaofu, and after pleading with Su to intervene she decides that she'll do it herself.
She makes her first speech in Zaofu and several members of the guard along with Batarr jr, are inspired to action and they all leave together to tour the earth kingdom and try to bring order back.
In the anarchy caused by the power vacuum and the fracturing of earth kingdom states, the rail system has broken down and Team Kuvira has to make their first do-gooder stop. They crush some local bandits only to find out that those bandits were former earth kingdom soldiers.
It's clear that the chain of command has been broken and the earth empire really is in disarray as officers with command power are insubordinate to Ba Sing Se generals (who themselves are not especially competent due to say, nepotism on the part of the earth queen/dai li in the selection process.
From here Team Kuvira resolves whatever situation is in the city/town. Have the town mayor actually give Kuvira metal to fix the rail way, and Bataar can do some kind of engineering stuff. Before they leave show a ragged orphan girl thanking Kuvira for bringing peace to the village (SEE THAT FORESHADOWING?) and some kind of close moment happens either with her and the little girl or Kuvira and Bataar (or both) to strengthen her resolve to save the Earth Kingdom.
They go on along the rails and from the windows of the hope+freedom maglev train they can see all the destruction and famine and have to turn away from stopping at every place they can because they're not strong enough yet. That or have some more people try and steal their train since it's made of fancy zaofu metal only to have team kuvira be forced to retreat due to overwhelming numbers and continue on.
Stuff happens yada yada yada...
They finally get to Ba Sing Se and they go to the inner circle to see what's left and to try and rally the remaining generals. They're apathetic and basically under constant siege by the commoners in the outer ring and so all the military in the inner ring is spent protecting the wealthy families, among them Wu's family and other royal relatives.
Kuvira sees all this and is beginning to lose hope that things will come together...
CUE THE MOTHERFUCKIN DAI LI.
They whisper in her ear about power, and all that jazz. She meets in some secret underground bunker where most of the Dai Li is still chilling having been forced underground.
They tell Kuvira they can give her the support she needs to start rebuilding and reuniting the earth kingdom. They have an troves of secrets, wealth and a distributed (albeit now patchy) network of of spies and propagandists who can build her up.
She accepts the faustian bargain.
Kuvira goes and tours the upper ring and meets Wu's family and other court officials and what have you (this is a good time to maybe have the royals show they're still out of touch with the common people, via appearance, or by fawning over the fact that Prince Wu is next in line, etc) show kuvira as being inwardly disgusted that people of the upper ring are still as they are, while the Dai Li can quip that they're easier to control that way.
Finally have Kuvira sent out on a mission in cooperation with the military to take back some other zone, at which point the propaganda of "Kuvira the Great Uniter" starts showing up.
Something else happens by her spending time with the Dai Li up to the point that Kuvira finally pulls an Azula and boots the Dai Li out of power (Preferably MGS Big Boss style) with a rad speech and soldiers and common people rallying around her as the "great uniter".
This shifts the balance of power in Kuvira's favor as a few states willingly join her at which point Bataar starts doing major logistics and realizes the Earth Kingdom needs to be modernized, which requires materials and labor, at which point reality begins to set in and Kuvira starts to borrow from the Dai Li playbook as hard realities oppose her grand ambitions.
BAM. Kuvira is now a better developed villain.
I'm not sure where Bolin and Varrick and Zhuli enter the picture, but they're not as important to the whole and can really be inserted at any point.
Bryke if you read this, you can credit me in the back of the eventual Kuvira comic that dark horse publishes. You're welcome.
Most of Tumblrs picture captions make no sense.
This is excellent and sensible, but ultimately frustrating that some dude on an obscure video game forum can make a better backstory for Kuvira than Bryke.
(no offense).Still, amazing, though I feel at this point we're better off handing in our outlines to a really talented fan fiction writer.
This is excellent and sensible, but ultimately frustrating that some dude on an obscure video game forum can make a better backstory for Kuvira than Bryke.
Still, amazing, though I feel at this point we're better off handing in our outlines to a really talented fan fiction writer.
I think it's unfortunately a product of being able to sit down at your computer and having to actually run or take part is a massive production 40 hours a week, to be fair.
Other show runners can do this, though.
JadedWriter
Member
Man so much of that Ochi post was a damn good read.
Baiting Tao like a pro
Icyflamez96
Member
I've been on 9 cruises, and on the vacationer side of things, everything is great. Tell your sources to stop going on ghetto cruises, and yes I've seen some garbage dirty looking ships docked near the one I was on. Disney is top of the line mah boy. The only thing that can cause an inconvenience is the sea sickness if you're prone to that. I've been over getting seasick for a long time now though
X
Xpike
Unconfirmed Member
I once went on a cruise to the Caribean, it was pretty decent and provided more or less all I needed. Would recommend.
FeenixRising
Banned
Atlantis
Bingo!
BKatastrophe
Member
In the case of the Dai Li during Aang's day, they were run by a separate entity from the Earth King before Azula took over. This time, they answered directly to the Earth Queen. The Earth Queen dies so then I'm curious as to what happens. Would they have tried to reestablish order themselves, or just said fuck it? If the latter, I wonder if they would've left the city or stayed and waited for someone else. We never get to see Ba Sing Se after Kuvira takes it, which is funny, because that's the first thing she did. Although, the implication that she basically scoured the city for any non-Earth Kingdom citizens and chucked them into camps was pretty out there.
This is excellent and sensible, but ultimately frustrating that some dude on an obscure video game forum can make a better backstory for Kuvira than Bryke.
Still, amazing, though I feel at this point we're better off handing in our outlines to a really talented fan fiction writer.
Kuvira's backstory wasn't even bad though. Like, that's the thing. The way it was done wasn't to everyone's liking, but the backstory itself wasn't bad. Also, other showrunners may not have had to deal with the stuff that these two did. Book 2 was apparently awful to work on and in Book 4 their budget was slashed (which is why we got Remembrances). Maybe they aren't the best showrunners. We don't know, but people seemed to enjoy working with them (at least the voice actors did). They must have been doing something right. Let's stop pretending like we can actually criticize anything about the behind scenes stuff other than what we know up front. It's getting old real fast, and it's exactly the reason why people don't like this community. I believe the term "wannabe writers" has been thrown around aplenty, as well as "entitled." Those comments aren't exactly wrong.
m_shortpants
Member
Nah, I don't really care if someone calls me a "wannabe writer", I will criticize the writing of this show to the end.
Like can people really say with a straight face that the deus ex machinas in season one or two is good writing? Or that they handled all their characters well? At the same time, I will praise book 3 for being great. I've always maintained too that season one was fucking good until the very last episode and I enjoyed it immensely.
But the very definition of a DEM is an easy way out of a conflict, and I think Bryke should absolutely be called out on those. I'll even damn the Aang vs Ozai fight as well, as much as I love TLA.
Like can people really say with a straight face that the deus ex machinas in season one or two is good writing? Or that they handled all their characters well? At the same time, I will praise book 3 for being great. I've always maintained too that season one was fucking good until the very last episode and I enjoyed it immensely.
But the very definition of a DEM is an easy way out of a conflict, and I think Bryke should absolutely be called out on those. I'll even damn the Aang vs Ozai fight as well, as much as I love TLA.
BKatastrophe
Member
I'm confused by this. Nickelodeon calls them seasons, and considers each season to be two Books. Bryan and Mike see each Book is its own season. So, that's not even something you can call them out on. Besides, they wanted the same thing for ATLA. Look at the first Book of that. It's very clear that a lot of those episodes were padding and could easily be cut out (The Fortuneteller, The Great Divide, Imprisoned). Hell, both Earth (The Cave of Two Lovers, Avatar Day, The Tales of Ba Sing Se) and Fire (The Painted Lady, The Runaway, Nightmares and Daydreams, The Ember Island Players) have it, too. So, you can't even say they "work better" with more episodes, because you have no idea how they'll use those episodes. So, you can sit there and say "what if" all you like, but it means absolutely nothing.
- Status