The Legend of Korra: Book Two – Spirits |OT| Korra Ain't Number Wan

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Goddamnit vaatu
 
So just read through Avatar: The Search part 3. I'm pretty satisfied by this. Has a couple of revelations.

I do find it funny how there's more of a mystery and spirit focus than i expscted in this while Korra is going on with her spirt journey. Cant be a coincidence.

They make specific mention of the Avatar being the bridge between the two worlds which I also found funny.

God this season sucked.
 
*Long Post Inbound*

YOU were disappointed???

Say it aint so :(

Joseph-J.-Jackson-9351230-1-402.jpg


....

Weren't you one of the fans that actually liked most of season 2? What made you turn against it?


Yes I was. Thought episode 1-4 weren't that good, but everything from “Peacekeepers” to the last 10 minutes of “Light in the Dark” was "good" to "amazing" for me. But the minute
Big Blue Korra
showed up, I threw my hands in the air and yelled (very loudly for 1 in the morning) "No fucking way. NO FUCKING WAY!" I have defended this show and it's questionable writing since the end of Book 1, and bent over backwards to remain positive and either ignore or explain away major flaws within Book 2 because I love the characters and the world. But the moment it went all
Power Rangers
level of stupid, I just couldn’t anymore.

The horrible ending made me have to reconsider my views of Book 2 as a whole. Looking back, there were a lot of problems I kept hoping would get fixed in the end that just didn't:

Note: I know most of my points have been stated elsewhere by smarter, more talented writers, but I just really got to get this off my chest. So here we go.

1) We kind of got some motivations for Unalaq (sure, they might not make a ton of sense, but at least they are there), but how bout some backstory? How did he find out about Vaatu and Harmonic Convergence? At what point (and why) did he decide it was a good idea to merge with the spirt of darkness? What was the point of forcing his brother out of power? Why were his kids so screwed up? And where the hell is my gray? What about the whole “don’t believe everything you read” line? He probably should have said “JK, lolz, you can belief everything you read; Vaatus evil, I’m evil, everything is evil in the most predictable way possible.”

2)Why did they even bother with the Civil War plot?

3)The Verrick/Republic City plot never tied back into the main plot, and as such, was just pointless filler to keep the rest of “team avatar” busy. The resolution to this plot happen why to quickly and was ridiculously unsatisfying. They masterfully built Verrick up from this whacky and eccentric industrialist to this truly menacing force (and a much better villain than Unalaq), only to piss it all away with a horrible conclusion. The only good thing I can say about this is that since he wasn’t evil evil, and he got away during the finale, we will likely get to see more of his awesome antics in future Books.

4)They botched the conclusion on the Bolin plot so damn hard. We got him being an asshole, we got him hugging with Mako (the person “Nuttuck” had wronged the most), signifying that all had been forgive, but we didn’t get his realization that he was being an asshole. That is the most important part of this whole thing, cause that where the learning and growth would, in theory, come from. Not some bull about “missing his friends now that his successful.” They took my favorite fucking character (not named Korra), turned him to shit (shit that sexually assaults women and turns his back on the brother that raised him) and forgot to turn him back to the nice guy he was before the ordeal. You can’t just sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen. Even if Book 3 Bolin is back to being nice guy Book 1 Bolin, I’m not sure if I can like him again. And what the hell is up with Boleska? She is abusive as fuck to him (but they never acknowledge that and play it for laughs), and in the end, despite not foreshadowing at all, he secretly really, really loves her? Fuck this shit. Honestly, off all the shit they did this season, the hack job they did on Bolin is what gets me the most pissed off. As I’ve said before, I’ll put up with a lot of crap story telling if I like the characters, and I really liked Bolin...and now, I kind of don’t. But hey, at least he had that epic fight in the Pro Bending Arena and “saved” the president, right? Totally worth it.

5)What is an Asami? Is that latin for a thing that serves no purpose outside of creating cheap romantic tension? I didn’t care for her all that much in Book 1, but even I’m offended by the way they handled her in Book 2.

6)Fuck me.....THIS SHOULD OF HAPPENED...and for Kya too. Give adult Aang a little redemption. There was a lot of untapped potential in the Kataang kids drama, and they created the perfect tool (The Fog of Derped Souls) to used the family drama to it’s fullest, but just didn’t. I guess the throw down in Tokyo Bay was a more important use of that precious time.

7)Lin and the great Mustache duo are idiots. They (the mustache cops) weren’t corrupt, just super incompetent, which is just horrible and lazy. Lin should’ve fired herself for being the ringleader of this circus of ineptitude. ( But man, wasn’t Lin’s one moment of glory this season sick as hell. Book 3 will be better by default if there is more this type of shit.)

8)Mako being Mako. Tumblr was right, he is a lying, cheating sack of crap with no redeeming qualities. Honestly, I don’t hate him as much as most of the fandom, but his shit (and the romance is general) is getting old. The worst part is, I think his character has a ton of potential, especially given the circumstances of his childhood, but they just seemed unwilling to explore that further.

9)Team Avatar still doesn't feel like a team....or friends....or anything really. I love Korra and (season 1) Bolin, and I want to care about Asami and Mako more, but this team stuff just feels unnatural and forced. Just cause you say they are a team doesn't make it so; that has to be earned, grown through time with interactions and collective experiences. And no adorably cute group hug is going to make me buy this “team” really being a team.

10) Then there is the problem of their concept of “balance,” or as others have put it, “Star Wars Balance.” They had this set up so fucking perfectly for the “Korra absorbs Vaatu and must find balance within herself” ending, but they fucked that up too. Go read BorkBork's post here to see what they should have done. If I may add an addendum to Mr. Bork’s opinion, I thought it would have been cool if they returned in the finale to the idea of people’s emotions (especially the avatar’s) effecting spirits. Imagine if Vaatu wasn’t evil, but just corrupted by Korra/Raava’s eternal hate for him and the what he represents (chaos, dark, ect). “To hate me is to give me breath, to fight me is to give me strength.” There could have been this moment of realization for Korra, where everything clicked, and she realized fighting wouldn’t help. Sending of “positive vibes” and being Aang levels of peaceful was the only way to sap Vaatu of his strength. Hell, once purified of Raava’s hate, maybe Korra could have even reasoned with Vaatu, made her case for balance, and had him merge with her in a consensual manner. Or maybe that’s all really stupid, I don’t know, I’m not a writer. But I know what we got was garbage. In a show that spent show much time talking about balance and stuff, to turn the spirit of “darkness and chaos” into “evil,evil, evil” is very disappointing.

11)Lion Turtles are soooo 2008, this year Jinora ex machina is all the rage. Honestly, I don’t have the same extreme aversion to deus ex machina’s that many on the internet do. But even I was left dumfounded by the Jinora thing; I’ve seen several fan theories that make a ton of sense, and all we need was one or two lines of explanatory dialogue. But hey, why talk when there is big red monster thing to body slam?

12)After all the jokes online about Korra “universe bending” and punching away all her problems, to conclude this story with her having a wrestling match with the 200 ft, walking, talking embodiment of evil, and winning by essentially beating him into submission just feels like validation of so many criticisms about Korra as a character and the show in general.

Ok...running out of hate steam. There at least a few more major points, but I don’t feel like making myself any angrier (and this post is wayyyy to long).

The worst part of all this is that there was a number of things about the back half of the season that I though were done well. Of course the animation (bless you Mir) and music (bless you Jeremy Zuckerman) were great, and the action in the last four episodes was a major step up. There was some character stuff, especially with Tenzin, Korra and their relationship, that I really liked. But what good they did is just overshadowed by the crap. Bryke created these great characters and set up this amazing world, but they just don’t know how to fucking handle it. And it makes me sad as hell. I want to love this show, like I did during Book 1, but after this colossal fuck up, that loving feeling is gone. Part of me is still hoping that some of this is just growing pains that are the result of extending a mini series, it's characters and world, past the point it was originally designed for. That next season, they will find the grove again and return to Book 1 form. But much like all my positivity and wishfully thinking throughout Book 2, I’m probably just setting myself up for disappointment.

Edit:

I will give them credit for having the balls to destroy the connection to the past avatars. Not sure if I liked it, but at least they took a risk.

Edit 2:

Sorry for this long ass post. I wrote it late last night and was in a bit of a foul mood, so I was more talkative (and negative) than normal. However, this is pretty much how I feel about Book 2, just with less cursing.

As always, forgive me for any spelling/grammar errors I missed. I never find them all =(
 
the story writing is about on par with most of ATLA, the characters are just less compelling

No, no it's not at all. It's not even close. Maybe in Book 1 of Korra I could see this being arguable, but no in way hell once you include Book 2.
 
the story writing is about on par with most of ATLA, the characters are just less compelling
Book 2 definitely did some shark jumping.
While it doesn't excuse the poor choices the writers made, we've had just 26 episodes of Korra as opposed to the 40 we had by season 2's end of AtLA. Yeah, they were just starting out in season 1 of AtLA but I think the highs from Korra were better than the highs from the first season of Atla (20 episodes in). At the same time, there were also significantly worse lows. So I'm not sure exactly where that leaves us.
 
For whatever reason, the link to the first part of Bryke's WSJ interview (here) is broken. Sorry guyz....

The only interesting piece of information that I saw was that book 3 is set "weeks" after the wrap of Harmonic Convergence. This kind of disappoints me, cause I was hoping for a time skip of at least a year, but at the same time I'm kind of excited, cause this makes it sounds like things might go really bad, really quickly. Could be cool

Given the short time skip, and the fact that it has been confirmed that Book 3 deals pretty directly with the aftermath of the events of Book 2, I'm starting to get the feeling that Book 3 (and maybe even 4) won't be nearly as "stand alone" as we were first lead to believe. Wouldn't it be interesting if Books 2-4 tells a semi-related story, while Book 1 is over there on the side by itself as this disconnected story that is never referenced again?

Now lets just hope that 3 and 4 are better. Well, they will be better by default, if for no other reason than Mir is animating every single episode.

In an unrelated note, some guy named Mel Zwyer is joining the directing crew for Book 3. Yeah, I don't know who he is either, but he worked on Young Justice, so this addition couldn't possibly hurt things. Can someone with more knowledge of the animation process tell me exactly what a director on an animated show does?
 
Book 2 definitely did some shark jumping.
While it doesn't excuse the poor choices the writers made, we've had just 26 episodes of Korra as opposed to the 40 we had by season 2's end of AtLA. Yeah, they were just starting out in season 1 of AtLA but I think the highs from Korra were better than the highs from the first season of Atla (20 episodes in). At the same time, there were also significantly worse lows. So I'm not sure exactly where that leaves us.

I don't really think so. Some of those highs in ATLA are really quite something (to be fair, that's also where most of ATLA's lowest points are too - but even the Great Divide I think is better than much of LoK's sins).

1) The Grand Finale at the North Pole
2) Roku's incarnation at his temple - genuinely an awe-inspiring moment
3) Finding Gyatso's remains and Aang's avatar state re-awakening the temples throughout the world
4) The brawl in the Abbey. Absolutely stunning choreography.
5) The Zuko/Aang fight aboard the ship in... I think Episode 2? It's pretty short but it's real good

The only thing I think is comparable in LoK in terms of pure awe is probably Avatar Wan. Almost all of Korra's 'epic' scenes were tainted by plot stupidity imho.
 
For whatever reason, the link to the first part of Bryke's WSJ interview (here) is broken. Sorry guyz....

The only interesting piece of information that I saw was that book 3 is set "weeks" after the wrap of Harmonic Convergence. This kind of disappoints me, cause I was hoping for a time skip of at least a year, but at the same time I'm kind of excited, cause this makes it sounds like things might go really bad, really quickly. Could be cool

Given the short time skip, and the fact that it has been confirmed that Book 3 deals pretty directly with the aftermath of the events of Book 2, I'm starting to get the feeling that Book 3 (and maybe even 4) won't be nearly as "stand alone" as we were first lead to believe. Wouldn't it be interesting if Books 2-4 tells a semi-related story, while Book 1 is over there on the side by itself as this disconnected story that is never referenced again?

Now lets just hope that 3 and 4 are better. Well, they will be better by default, if for no other reason than Mir is animating every single episode.

Thanks for the interview. Seems to confirm suspicions that they didn't have a singular vision for the season, that it was just a mash of ideas thrown together.

Conflicts are good, but sibling conflicts are better. Let's do that!
Civil war? Sure why not!
Let's throw in some Avatar mythology that's been percolating in the back because there's not enough going on!
Ooo the cosmic thing was cool in The Guru, let's make a giant blue avatar! Stakes!
 
No, no it's not at all. It's not even close. Maybe in Book 1 of Korra I could see this being arguable, but no in way hell once you include Book 2.

eh, I've rewatched all of ATLA over the last few days and moved on to rewatching LoK Air. The main difference for me is that Aang/Katara/Sokka/Toph were far more entertaining than Korra/Mako/Bolin/Asami. The show lost quite a bit of it's humor as well
 
Wow, that's a post length even I would be proud of. Good job getting all your thoughts down. Particularly point 12. It's what I've been saying since Book 1's end.

I appreciate you getting all your thoughts down and I think pretty much all your criticisms are valid.

Awww, thank you Veelk. <3

You should have seen the monstrosity I birthed at 3 AM Saturday morning. It was almost double the word count, and a solid 45% of it was F bombs (this is only a slight exaggeration). Really glad I didn't post that; don't want you guys to think I'm unstable or anything :|

Much of my anger has subsided, but the sadness remains. I need Book 3 to be good and heal my fractured heart, but my confidence in Bryke is at an all time low.
 
Holy shit, BBGH. That was an impressive take-down of the finale. I'm actually a little sad for you that you feel so disappointed; I appreciated your positive attitude in this thread throughout the season even though I wasn't feeling it. Really though, your long post is great. xP

Also, I was looking at the WSJ interview you posted, and I noticed they're using pictures of blue!Korra from the finale as the article image and in the sidebar where they list the most-viewed articles. I'm surprised Nick gave out those images to the press since the finale still hasn't aired on TV. They really don't give a fuck.
 
I'm wondering if the LoK staff are pissed at Nick for the way the show's been handled this season. Criticism of the actual product aside, Nick have definitely been trying to out-fox Fox for something they already paid for ahead of time. Absolutely bizarre.
 
Holy shit, BBGH. That was an impressive take-down of the finale. I'm actually a little sad for you that you feel so disappointed; I appreciated your positive attitude in this thread throughout the season even though I wasn't feeling it. Really though, your long post is great. xP

Between you and Veelk, I'm getting some mighty mixed emotions. Yay, someone actually read and (partially) agreed with my long ass post, but on the other hand, the subject of said post is the soul crushing disappointment I felt from Book 2. Regardless, thanks for the good vibes.

I assume, at some point in the wait between Book 2 and 3, my inner fanboy will reemerge, and I will be all sunshine and rainbows again in the Book 3 thread. I'm already making the mistake of getting a little hyped for Book 3 because of the few tidbits of news that have trickled out over the last few days. There is no hope for me.

Also, I was looking at the WSJ interview you posted, and I noticed they're using pictures of blue!Korra from the finale as the article image and in the sidebar where they list the most-viewed articles. I'm surprised Nick gave out those images to the press since the finale still hasn't aired on TV. They really don't give a fuck.

Criticism of the actual product aside, Nick have definitely been trying to out-fox Fox for something they already paid for ahead of time. Absolutely bizarre.

Agreed. Nick's handling of Book 2 has been nothing short of abysmal. I still strongly believe that, regardless of what people on the internet think of the quality of LoK, the average person who watches the show probably loves it. After the finale, I was a bit apprehensive about checking in on the LoK fandom cause I was certain it was just going to be a tsunami of hate, but much to my surprise, the majority of people seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the last 4 episodes, even the ridiculously stupid climax. Sure, there was a fair number of vocal naysayers (I guess that includes me now =S), but the overall reception seemed positive. There is no reason in my mind that this show shouldn't be drawing the same ratings and attention as it did during Book 1 outside Nick's piss poor promotion and schedule management. I wonder what happened between Book 1 and 2 that made Nick lose so much faith in the show. And don't say it's because they knew Book 2 would suck. This is the same network that is still producing new episodes of Fairly Odd Parents; obviously they don't give two shits about the quality of the shows that fill their time.

I'm wondering if the LoK staff are pissed at Nick for the way the show's been handled this season.

In the two posted Bryan made about the scheduling changes (Here and Here), he took a few tiny jabs a Nick, like "I&#8217;m not sure why they moved it from Saturday mornings in the first place, where it was doing quite well, but there is usually some larger plan in place" and "And what would Book 2 be without another new time?" And then during the interview with WSJ, when asked about releasing the finale online early, Bryan said "the first thing is, don&#8217;t assume that we decided that. We don&#8217;t get to decide those types of things. It&#8217;s all up to the network. We have no control over how they roll anything out." I'm not sure how much we can read into these statements, but I get the sense he's not happy with Nick's handling of the series.

i mean, Lauren fuckin Montgomery was on staff for Book 2 and you see the trainwreck the team managed to shit out

Wait.....what was your opinion of Book 2 exactly? I thought you were up on it coming out of the finale.
 
Part Two of WSJ Interview here.

Bryke answer some twitter questions. Apparently Bumi will back in a big way for Book 3 (The Adventures of Lin and Bumi?) and it sounds like they might be toning down the romance going forward. Also, the Dark Avatar is gone for good.
 
A few more questions from Twitter. @thebarkingdog asked &#8220;Will we see more of the Dark Avatar?&#8221;

DiMartino: Probably not. Korra pretty much defeats him, so.

One and done people.

Seems like they're going the Daoist route with Book Three. As someone profoundly influenced by philosophical Taoism, this would have intrigued me before I saw Season Two. Now it's like eh whatever. Stephen Mitchell's version of the Tao Te Ching's also not that great.
 
To be honest, I wonder if it's because the villain just won't come back for 10,000 years, or if they actually killed him and forgot their own rules
 
Maybe the Darkatar is still alive but he just reincarnated and is still too young to do any damage. Quick, someone check all the newborn Earthbender babies for tentacles!
 
Part Two of WSJ Interview here.

Bryke answer some twitter questions. Apparently Bumi will back in a big way for Book 3 (The Adventures of Lin and Bumi?) and it sounds like they might be toning down the romance going forward. Also, the Dark Avatar is gone for good.

Interesting nice to see we will get more Bumi in book 3 as more Bumi is always a good thing
 
Part Two of WSJ Interview here.

Dark Avatar is gone for good.

This is the kind of thing that might make me drop a series for good.

Korra fucked up royally, and the world should feel that.

It introduces a ton of potential good storytelling.

What happens if he's discovered at an early age? Is he executed/imprisoned or preemptively reformed?

Would it subtly make a good person turn rotten?

How would a normal person respond to finding out their the Avatar of destruction?

Nah fuck it. All that lipservice about change and new ages amounts to shit.


Speaking of lack of foresight, how easy would it have been to connect Unalaq and Amon? Both are the two strongest non-Avatar water benders shown in either show. A had an ability noone else was capable off. T held his own against Korra in the Avatar state. Maybe Amon really did gain his knowledge from the spirts (Vaatu and/or the library owl) and Unalaq was the backup disciple when Amon died?

GAAAAAH this show is full of missed potential.
 
The concept of a dark avatar cycle in addition to the normal one really brings me back to the HBO show Carnivale(kinda the same thing really), Clancy Brown dealing with his true nature was the best part of that show.
 
This Kaiju Korra battle is a little ridiculous.

I don't understand
is Kaiju Korra her astro projection? Why is Jinorah a spiritual badass strong enough to confront Vaatu but be bested by lowly spirit when captured? Is Vaatu dispersed/reabsorbed into Raava now? The wonder twins going back to their home planet in a return to status quo was dumb. And farewell to shipping.

Aaaack!
 
so I watched the first 4 episodes and basically skipped to this one. That Pacific Rim sized fight was kind of hilarious, felt completely like a "jumped the shark" moment. It was alot better when it was small scaled in the spirit world.
 
This should make a lot of people here happy.

From the interview at WSJ, Bryan plainly surrenders on teen romance stuff in the series:

There&#8217;s also continuing interest in whomever Korra is dating. Diane Pangilinan &#8207;@twinklelydy asked &#8220;do u have any plans for developing Korra&#8217;s love life?&#8221;

Konietzko: It seems to me that people are uninterested in that. They get completely angry when we have fun with the teen romance stuff. I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m going to leave that alone.

Konietzko: This is my new theory. Fans are more interested in imagining relationships between a myriad of pairings. But they&#8217;re profoundly disinterested in seeing any of those things manifest themselves on the show. So who knows, whatever. Mike and I as writers, we wrote it the way we found it to be entertaining, and that struck a chord with some, but maybe not with some others.
 
Just rewatched the last two episodes again.
I don't get how Korra lost her connection to the past avatars. Rava is how she connects to the past avatars. The only reason why I can see she lost her connection to them is if Rava lost her memory.
 
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