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Good grief, I came to enthuse over the new show and wound up reading pages of serious arguments about how a good society is one that forcibly removes individuals' natural talents to ensure equal opportunity for all. Yikes. Anyway, love the new show. Fire ferrets are clearly the cutest animal combination possible.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 10:19 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 00:28 |
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Chexoid posted:I disagree entirely. Adding ferrets to red pandas has removed the plump fatness of red pandas, as well as making them quick and agile when a true red panda flops around like an idiot, which decreases their adorableness by like 50%. But it increases their chittering and bounciness by like 70%, so it evens out. Though I like ferrets already, and a red panda-ferret hybrid is pretty much just "ferret, 10x cuter and fluffier". The cutest possible animal combination is probably a red panda/baby seal mix. Also, I'm with the others in wondering about how disadvantaged non-benders really are. I haven't seen any "lousy nonbenders!" sort of attitude in either Korra or ATLA. I can imagine a later episode where someone actually explains to Korra how unfair things are for nonbenders, but I'm not going to buy into that idea until we actually see it. It's interesting that all three examples of bending-related bullying (Triple Threat Triad, Mako's story, Amon's story) involve firebenders.
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 14:59 |
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ImpAtom posted:The problem there is that it's arguable that is akin to cutting off someone's hands for stealing. Yeah, they can function without their Bending, but it is a part of who they are on an innate level. For someone like Toph, removing their bending would do worse than simply remove their superpowers. Toph is a really good example of how taking bending away from everyone would be a terrible way to seek equality. Aside from that, I'm not getting where benders are automatically superior to nonbenders in every part of life. Bending is useful and even necessary for fighting and jobs that require manipulating the physical world; but there are plenty of other qualities that provide advantages in work and life which aren't conferred by bending skill. Traits like leadership ability, charisma, intelligence, organization, etc. don't come with being able to push rocks around with your mind. I think some of the benders=superior idea comes from the fact that bending is cooler to us, because it doesn't exist in our world and it's awesome magic. But so far, from what we've seen of the Avatar world, bending is just an advantage, not the ultimate advantage that trumps all other skills forever.
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2012 01:30 |
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How would Amon's ideal bending-free society even work? Even if he spirit-bended away all the living benders, presumably new one would still be born. Would there be like a secret police watching for all new talent, whisking people away to Amon Centers to get de-benderized? Or would there be a massive propaganda campaign to convince everyone that it's their duty to eliminate their bending ability for the good of society?
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2012 03:50 |
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SmokyWings posted:
Why did the last one make me laugh so much? I hope in all the serious Yakone history revelations that are surely coming up, we get to see the adult Aang gang showing some levity. It would be a little sad to have the permanent mental image of them all grim and humorless.
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| # ¿ May 1, 2012 04:26 |
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Jesto posted:Korra seems like the type of person who would invite them to live at Airtemple Island to be her hired sparring partners for bending training. Or, I don't know, something. Would an Avatar leave their friends to sleep in the gutter? I dunno, I kind of like that Mako seems to be an ordinary dude without a lot of inner turmoil, despite his broody appearance. It helps make him less Zuko 2.0, if nothing else.
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| # ¿ May 7, 2012 14:37 |
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Serella posted:Bolin's imitation of the announcer is hilarious. The truly terrible inequality is between worlds that get to have fire ferrets and worlds that don't. 
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| # ¿ May 10, 2012 05:52 |
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Finally got to see the episode. I vote Lin Bei Fong Emperor of the World. I love every minute she's on screen.
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| # ¿ Jun 10, 2012 04:30 |
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Colonel Pancreas posted:So I've spent a large portion of my entertainment time over the past month watching TLA and Korra. I finaly get all caught up, and it turns out adult Aang is voiced by the guy who is gonna play John Galt. Wait, wait, wait, the lawyer was Katara? I thought she was still missing from the flashbacks.
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| # ¿ Jun 11, 2012 15:08 |
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Man, waiting for iTunes is the worst. I come back to this thread and there's like 300 new posts and everyone's already talked about everything. I'm almost certain that bending will be restored somehow during the finale - aside from the fact that Amon seems to be doing something different from Aang's energybending, I just can't believe they would permanently depower one of the best characters on the show. Also, Lin's attack on the airships really highlighted for me the problem with compressing the story so much. It was incredibly badass, but so short-lived. I do really like that Lin, Tenzin and Pema had scenes together--it's something that would mostly go over the heads of younger viewers, but Pema was basically the younger woman who stole Tenzin away. It's kind of funny that Pema is actually a little mean to Lin while teenage girls Asami and Korra are still on good terms. The romance subplot is still a bit tedious, but I kind of hope General Iroh comes to Republic City and shows everyone what a real Zuko 2.0 looks like. He'll outbend and outbrood Mako handily and sweep Asami off her feet. vvvv Good point. I do still hope Asami ditches Mako though. Not, uh, that I care about this silly romance stuff. qa6 fucked around with this message at Jun 17, 2012 around 19:26 |
| # ¿ Jun 17, 2012 18:40 |
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Jesto posted:I added 'and shocks people' in because if I said she added nothing to the group beyond antagonizing it and annoying the viewers at home, someone would have said she was a valuable asset in battle. A tantrum, seriously? She asked Bolin in a straightforward way about Mako and Korra, and she called Mako out on it in Tenzin's kitchen. Aside from that, she's hasn't done a thing aside from being quietly annoyed*. Asami's actually been one of the more level-headed and calm people in the show from the start, and she remains extremely effective in fights (and a great wheelman). Where on earth do you get tantrum from all that? *And it's not unreasonable to be annoyed at Mako's behavior, c'mon. If anything, Mako deserves more blame for choosing to start falling all over the Avatar right in the middle of a revolution. She doesn't particularly need the distraction right now.
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| # ¿ Jun 19, 2012 03:43 |
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Baron Bifford posted:I love how you guys can spend hours psychoanalysing fictional characters from a cartoon where the story is a little rushed. A better approach would be to analyze Brian and Michael and try to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote all this. "Welp it's a show about teenagers, better add some romance."
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| # ¿ Jun 19, 2012 14:22 |
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Darth Nat posted:I kind of expect that Lin will get her bending back, just because metalbending is too cool to not really utilize ever again. They could always just introduce a new metalbender I suppose, but I can't imagine anyone getting the same reaction as "badass daughter of beloved character from the first series." If she can't get her bending back right away I'm hoping we'll something hopeful at the end of the season, like a quick shot of Lin heading alone into the badger mole mountain. 'Cause it's just too depressing that they would introduce a kickass (older, woman) fighter like Lin and then depower her completely for all time.
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| # ¿ Jun 22, 2012 14:27 |
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Just did a rewatch with some friends, and the thing that really stuck out for me was the sudden airbending. The other stuff I still have a problem with, but it's internally consistent. It was kind of funny that even her airbending comes out as brute force punching. No fancy airbender slices and air scooters for her! Tarrlok ended up being a fairly tragic character, and I'm a little sad that he's gone for good. I kind of wish the season had done a better job of building up the parallel between him and Amon/Noatok, as that was the really interesting thing about the reveal of their past. They both hated Yakone but ended up pursuing his goal of retaking Republic City anyway, with only Tarrlok realizing at the end how messed up it was. Avatar: a show about terrible fathers.
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 17:47 |
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Agatsu posted:Kids show, huh? Me and my boy just watched it, and when the boat blew up he was asking questions and I was just... stunned speechless. Like ah, yeah they were OH LOOK WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW. I thought for sure Tarrlok was going to ambiguously kill Amon, by zapping him and throwing him overboard or something. Right up until they showed the gas cap, then the actual explosion. Welp, nothing ambiguous about that. Depressed and suicidal Tarrlok was kind of 
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| # ¿ Jun 24, 2012 18:17 |
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Stormageddon posted:
I thought Tarrlok at least looked like original Yakone, but it's weird they put plastic surgery that in the flashback at all. The North Pole probably doesn't get the newspaper that often, the guy probably could've have just dyed his hair and grown a beard. Plastic surgery is such a soap opera-type detail to include.
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| # ¿ Jun 25, 2012 14:28 |
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It was also pretty wonderful that the confrontation took place via giant Sato robots.
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2012 14:08 |
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With Tarrlok, I wish he'd had a bigger presence early on, with a little more screen time to establish him as something more than smarmy/evil politician. His and Amon's history ended up being far more interesting (to me) than things like pro-bending or the love triangle, and it would have been nice to have more time to build up to the reveal.
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| # ¿ Jun 27, 2012 01:02 |
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Turtle Sandbox posted:The worst thing about Korra losing her bending was she that it lasted all of 2 minutes, then she can punch air and a few minutes later she gets it back. They could have easily taken some of the pro-bending out and not had to cram so much in the finale. It would have been nice if the Equalist revolution had taken place somewhere in the middle of the season - there would have been a lot more room for characters like Iroh and Lin to shine, and Korra's bending could have been gone for a whole episode or two.
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| # ¿ Jun 27, 2012 03:12 |
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X_Toad posted:"Pair the spares" and "rescue romance" all in one big package. As much as I thought that the Naga/Bolin's rescue was awesome, I will pass. It's amazing how much more likable a character Bolin is compared to Mako. It's like they put all the effort of writing a personality into him and had nothing left for his brother.
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| # ¿ Jun 28, 2012 00:38 |
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Jesto posted:RIP Loo-Ten Ant, you died as you lived. I was just rewatching the series today and thought there should be a compilation of Lieutenant's losses. I can only assume Amon was being sarcastic when he said "you served me well". Unless his job was to distract people by being a punching bag.
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| # ¿ Jul 2, 2012 02:38 |
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ImpAtom posted:It needs to be better paced and certain characters are dull as poo poo, but almost everything is foreshadowed and developed properly. (Aside from maybe the last five minutes which really are too fast to be considered at all reasonable.) I'll give you foreshadowed, but I'm not too sure about developed properly. Watching the episodes in one go and knowing what's coming up, it becomes really evident that a lot of important points that come up in the first two episodes--Republic City has problems with inequality, gangs of criminal benders abuse non-benders, there's a growing revolutionary movement--are largely set aside for the following episodes in favor of pro-bending and romantic shenanigans. In a longer show, neither of those would be so bad, but with LoK it means that there's much less time left to build up and expand on the problems that end up driving the central conflict of the show.
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| # ¿ Jul 2, 2012 14:11 |
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:The real issue is that the show said there was a problem, but never showed us that problem. Which lead some people to think that maybe there was never a problem in the first place. All of the complaints about benders in the show centered around violence against non-benders, which was demonstrated somewhat with the Triad guys and Asami's mother. I think this thread largely invented the idea that non-benders are oppressed beyond that, or really angry about anything else.
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| # ¿ Jul 4, 2012 15:58 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 00:28 |
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ImpAtom posted:There are quite a few mentions of Benders and Nonbenders not getting along even outside of violence. When arguing to keep the arena open Bolin (or Mako, I forget) even mentions that pro-Bending events are one of the few places that both sides get along. I thought the growing conflict between the two sides was more a result of Equalist propaganda going on for some time before Korra even arrived in Republic City. They used the existing problem of some benders abusing their powers to convince people that there was a divide between all benders and non-benders.
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| # ¿ Jul 4, 2012 19:41 |
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