(Except when Korra crashes the zeppelin, because even when she's winning, they can't let her actually be competent. Hnnngh.)

>I'll admit, the Red Lotus got to be impressive.

They did? Toddlers can defeat Dai Li agents, we saw that in episode 4. :)

>(I'm putting my vote in for Lavabending. Given his scenes with
>Ghazan here, it'd really fit.)

Ehh, I hope not. Lavabending doesn't excite me, and it has nowhere near as many practical uses as metalbending. How often do you actually need a pool of liquid hot enough to vaporize your own body in everyday life?

>On the other hand, Zaheer continues to fail to grab me as a villain.
>'Rah, bring Chaos to Order' is just generic supervillianry nonsense.

I know, right? I wonder if anyone has tried dubbing bits of Rollins's spoken-word shows over the footage of Zaheer so that he actually has interesting things to say.

And this thing with him saying he's going to let the bros go if they take a message to Korra. By "take a message to", does he mean take a message to, or be a Judas goat for? Because if the former, what the hell else has he got to say to her that he didn't already blather on about at ridiculous length in the previous episode? He already knows she's not buying his idiotic Manichaean bullshit line, and if he couldn't talk her into it himself, he's certainly not going to be able to do it by sockpuppeting with Boy With No Personality and Other Boy Korra Can't Take Seriously.

No, you guys are bait, and if you have a grain of sense in either of your heads you'll realize it and decline to follow through. The only honorable thing for you to do at this point is find out where Korra is, then head in the opposite direction and never appear on the show again. Sorry, Bo, you could've been saved, but Mako's taking you down with him. Way it goes, brutha.

>Like I said above, he and his minions got to be impressive. But that
>wasn't their plot thread to end. That should have been Team Korra
>ending it. We've had most of the season setting up a proper showdown
>between Korra and the Earth Queen. Probably as the 'mini-boss' before
>the finale with the Red Lotus, yes, but the confrontation still should
>have been there.

Agreed, although I'm not one hundred percent sure that's the last we'll hear from the Bitch Queen. They're verrrry cagey about actually saying she's dead - even Zaheer doesn't say so, and he's not one for mincing his words, particularly as he enjoys hearing himself say them so much. And, paradoxically, if they were going to go to all the trouble to show such a brutal and shocking murder on camera, why would they not then own it with the subsequent dialogue? In for a penny.

(On the whole, I would much rather have watched President Raiko suffocate.)

>Hell, it might have finally been the chance for Korra
>to face a villain that she didn't need to automatically kill because
>they were too dangerous to leave alive

On a point of order: She didn't kill Amon. Shit, she didn't even really defeat Amon. In Atomic Robo RPG terms, he conceded their last battle and escaped, and then the GM killed him in a cutscene. (That's how bad Book 1 was.)

>Never mind, the bad
>guys came in and ended that plotline. I freaking HATE when that
>happens in a story.

(quietly shelves his plan for Ozai and Beria to kill Akio and take over the Black Rose)

--G.
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True. I was thinking of it more as a chance for Bolin to pull a 'oh, if only you smug idiots hadn't shown me this fascinating trick...' moment.

>I know, right? I wonder if anyone has tried dubbing bits of Rollins's
>spoken-word shows over the footage of Zaheer so that he actually has
>interesting things to say.

Personally, I say we just go with Mad Stan.

>On a point of order: She didn't kill Amon. Shit, she didn't even
>really defeat Amon. In Atomic Robo RPG terms, he
>conceded their last battle and escaped, and then the GM killed him in
>a cutscene. (That's how bad Book 1 was.)

Well, yes, but the point remains that, really, he was the sort of crazy that needed killing.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Or Spider from Johnny Mnemonic.

>>On a point of order: She didn't kill Amon.
>
>Well, yes, but the point remains that, really, he was the sort of
>crazy that needed killing.

True.

To continue the "What Would Azula Do?"* thought experiment from the other post, I postulate that she would have headbutted him semiconscious and then shanked him in the throat, prison-yard-style, with a shard of his own mask.

My thought-experiment model of Azula is very violent. I think she's not getting enough Vitamin T.

On the other hand, I'm not sure Zaheer is that kind of crazy. The more they develop him, in fact, the more he seems like he's not crazy, he's just got a monumentally severe case of stupid idea syndrome. If he could be shown that his ideas are stupidly unworkable and his entire life's work has been a colossal, ridiculous waste of time...

... no, you're right, he's gonna have to die.

ZAHEER
This is an outrage! I shall write to my MP.

MING HUA
(rolling her eyes)
You don't have an MP, Zaheer. You're an anarchist.

ZAHEER
Then I shall write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen! Dear... Mister... Echo.

--G.
* Interestingly, WWAD is also a dance step in many first- and third-person action games.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh please not. Akio is a joke as a villain.

Jeanne

	Jeanne Hedge http://www.jhedge.com 1st Courier of the Heavenly Prophets for Tianxia "Never give up, never surrender!"

--G.

Considering that Corwin did the Aesir equivalent of supergluing Akio's foot into a bucket, that is pretty much his role in life (afterlife?) at this point.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Bonus:

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yup, cliffhanger. I liked the ep, but cliffhanger.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

Yeah, I figured as much. OK, no remarks from me until next week, then. I'm old and I don't need the suspense.

One unexpected downside of the relegation to the bush league (as opposed to the expected ones) is that whoever schedules that side isn't anywhere near as frantically triggerhappy as the person in charge of TV scheduling. Under that plan we'd have been done last week. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Fair warning, Ben; given the pacing of Season 3, and the preview clips of the finale, there's a moderate-to-high chance that we're in the middle of LoK's first and only multi-book story arc, which means that Season 3 might end Season 2 of ATLA style. (Or Empire Strikes Back style, come to think of it.)

Basically, given the pacing thus far, Season 3 is either the absolute best-paced or absolute worst-paced season of a show renowned for its poor pacing. There's a decent chance it's the latter... but I really think it's the former.

So you might be buying a years worth of suspense. Just FYI. :)

-Merc
Keep Rat

If that happens, I'm probably done with the show at last. Final straw. Seriously, I do not have the time of day for that season-finale-is-a-cliffhanger bullshit when it happens on shows I enjoy, let alone ones I've stuck with only out of a sense of obligation.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I don't recall you being this bent out of shape over it as a storytelling tool in the original show, where Season 1 ends with Zuko and Iroh adrift in a frozen, icy wasteland and the Fire Lord unleashing a mysterious new sister on us, and Season 2 ends with Aang in a coma.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Make no mistake: If I'd been watching ATLA as it ran, instead of coming to it years after it was over, it would've lost me at the end of Book 2. Go figure, it's somehow less of a hey-fuck-you from the producers when it's spread across a one-millimeter gap on my DVD shelf; but in broadcast television (or whatever the hell TLOK is now), the unresolved season finale is just about the most infuriating stunt they can pull, and I won't stand for it. Not when the production team were already on their last chance with me anyway.

--G.
-><-
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Like, I have a hard time seeing where you place the fall of Ba Sing Se and Azula deeply fucking up Aang anywhere but at the end of Season 2. Those are your big Act II finales; you put them at the end of Act II. You don't then start Act III before going to intermission.

It would only have been cheap if they'd let us think Aang had died or something.

For that matter, you've also got intraseason breaks. Sometimes your show is gonna be off the air for two months before it returns, and if you're telling a unified narrative, to a certain extent you can't control for that.

Works the same way with movies, I think. I don't think either the Back to the Future or Star Wars trilogies would work nearly as well if their second acts didn't end they way they did. Over in the MCU, Winter Soldier is basically only the first half of the story they're trying to tell, and they don't even pretend that they're anywhere else but at an act break at the end.

>but in broadcast television (or whatever the hell TLOK is now)

That one is a bit of a quandary, isn't it?

Nickelodeon isn't completely breaking new ground on this; one of Cartoon Network's current hottest properties is Pendleton Ward's Bravest Warriors, which was never broadcast on TV ever; it's online-only. Not even "through our special portal" online-only, it just airs on YouTube. RWBY and Red vs. Blue are two other good examples.

But those are all either very niche-y experiments or indie productions. I've never seen a major property leap from TV to being just online before.

To be fair, Nickelodeon has never known what the hell to do with either franchise. Both shows were always critically acclaimed and when properly scheduled and marketed had ratings more the sufficient to keep them on the air... but the demographics were schizo, all over the place. Season 1 of Korra, for example, was blowing the doors off everything else on the network... just not with the sort of eyeballs they really wanted.

And they really hated that. Nick's advertisers are, mostly, geared towards children with the occasional "intended for parents watching with their children" commercials thrown in. But AtlA and Korra drew very strongly in the 18-35 demo, and they had a lot of trouble selling ad time. That sort of thing is done many months in advance and depends a lot on pre-existing industry contacts.

We've seen this before. AtlA only grew in popularity over the course of its run; by the time Season 3 rolled around it was about at the peak of its notoriety. And yet, Season 3 is when they started doing stuff like pulling it off the air for eight months, then burning off the entire back half in one week in the middle of summer.

-Merc
Keep Rat

... except that they've already done it twice on this same show, never mind all the other shows that have managed it just fine for aeon upon aeon.

Like I said, these guys were on my last nerve anyway. I could probably forgive them - just - if I enjoyed the show, but I don't. I've only been watching it because a) I've somehow managed to end up in a place where half of my own continuity is entangled in it, b) it would've felt a bit like abandoning a friend who's trapped in an abusive relationship, and c) I was still somehow managing to hope that, against mounting odds, it was about to come good.

If, instead of doing so, it pulls a stunt I first found infuriating in about 1988 and still consider the cheapest trick a television production (or whatever)* can pull, then I'm done. Unlike Charlie Brown (and Korra!), I can only be induced to attempt to kick the football so many times.

--G.
* Movies can make this mistake too! Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Back to the Future III? No, because I didn't, after experiencing the insult that was the "end" of Back to the Future II. They might as well have just put a title card there saying "THANKS FOR YOUR CASH, SUCKER, MAKE SURE YOU COME BACK AND GIVE US SOME MORE". Fuck that. Fuck them.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

... wait, what?

The first two seasons of Legend of Korra were self-contained and not part of longer ongoing narratives. They didn't break at the end, they stopped at the end.

>If, instead of doing so, it pulls a stunt I first found infuriating in
>about 1988 and still consider the cheapest trick a television
>production (or whatever)* can pull, then I'm done.

You keep framing this in moral terms; that a cliffhanger act break (and we're using a very, very loose definition of cliffhanger here to begin with) can never be anything but a bad-faith, cheap trick designed to fleece the rubes.

I mean... if you think it's an ineffective narrative tool or a bad way to structure stories, that's a different matter. But at that point I would have to gently point out that you personally use it with no small frequency. The Exodus 2 to Exodus 3 and Exodus 3 to Movie breaks in NXE are classically constructed "hey, the story as a whole isn't done yet; only this part of it is! Come back later!" act breaks, both with non-trivial amounts of time before the situation was resolved. Half of the seals in Twilight end during a massive, ongoing brawl for the fate of the universe, often with the lives or sanity of major characters hanging in the balance, and with over a year between seals at times. Intrusion Countermeasures very literally ends with a character going "Hey! Look at that!" right before the credits roll. Forward Momentum over in CSI:NA, which ends with an enormous sucking chest wound. A raftload of Symphony pieces. The ends of Act II and Act III of Shepard's Privateers. Probably a bunch more I could find if I actually did some research rather than taking a quick glance through story titles to job my memory.

And there's nothing wrong with any of those stories. (Well, okay. There's plenty wrong with large swathes of both Twilight and NXE.) But you use a narrative structure that you are here decrying in the strongest possible terms an awful lot, is what I'm saying.

>* Movies can make this mistake too! Did I ever tell
>you about the time I saw Back to the Future III? No, because
>I didn't, after experiencing the insult that was the "end" of
>Back to the Future II. They might as well have just put a
>title card there saying "THANKS FOR YOUR CASH, SUCKER, MAKE SURE YOU
>COME BACK AND GIVE US SOME MORE". Fuck that. Fuck them.

... upon what are you basing that? Zemeckis was given considerable creative freedom by Universal Studios in creating both sequels to Back to the Future, and in fact I seem to recall that he an Silvestri were quite insistent that the films be shot together (rare at the time; still rare, in fact) and released as close to each other as practical. It wasn't some kind of cold-blooded cash grab; it was Zemeckis deciding "okay, this is where the two movies are going to demarcate." Universal actually was being exceedingly generous to the creative team in letting III come out a mere six months after II; in the late eighties movies tended to linger in cinemas a lot longer than they do now.

Again, if you want to argue that it was narratively problematic for the two films to be structured as they were, you could probably make that case; but I think your case that it was some sort of moral failing on the part of the people involved is weak.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Correct. (In both senses! You're right that that's what I meant, and it's the right thing for the production to have done.) That's sort of what being a "Book" of something means. If the third one doesn't do that, then it shouldn't be called that. If you're not going to be able to release the full run of a broadcast product in a timely fashion, don't write a storyline that's too long for your production schedule, and especially don't package it as if it weren't. You're fucking with people if you do that, and some of them won't appreciate it.

>You keep framing this in moral terms; that a cliffhanger act break
>(and we're using a very, very loose definition of cliffhanger here to
>begin with) can never be anything but a bad-faith, cheap trick
>designed to fleece the rubes.

Which is basically what I believe, yes. Again, I congratulate et cetera. If deliberate, it's an act of cruelty at the least, extortion at the worst. And if not, it is carelessness unacceptable in a professional operation.

>But at that point I
>would have to gently point out that you personally use it with no
>small frequency.

I have never willingly and intentionally dropped a suspenseful non-ending and then just fucked off for a year or more, like you're predicting the TLOK production team are about to do. It's happened plenty of times, yes, but it has never been the plan. See below for more on this.

>Half of the seals in Twilight end during a massive, ongoing
>brawl for the fate of the universe, often with the lives or sanity of
>major characters hanging in the balance, and with over a year between
>seals at times. Intrusion Countermeasures very literally ends
>with a character going "Hey! Look at that!" right before the credits
>roll. Forward Momentum over in CSI:NA, which ends with an
>enormous sucking chest wound. A raftload of Symphony pieces. The ends
>of Act II and Act III of Shepard's Privateers.

Those are all episodes of fanfics for fuck's sake, not seasons of a television (or whatever) series. You're not seriously trying to convince me that you don't see the difference?

>But
>you use a narrative structure that you are here decrying in the
>strongest possible terms an awful lot, is what I'm saying.

Yes, and I'll probably inadvertently use it again quite soon, because Real Life is about to intrude in a big way on what I'm trying to accomplish. But, you see, that's the thing: This is those people's Real Life. It is therefore no excuse for this shit on their part. That leaves carelessness or malice. (Hanlon's Razor suggests the former; economics and the network's track record suggest the later.) Neither is acceptable to me.

If I wanted amateur night, I've got it at my house every day of the year. I don't need the help of thousands of paid professionals in California and South Korea to help me leave things unfinished for months at a time.

>>Movies can make this mistake too! Did I ever tell
>>you about the time I saw Back to the Future III? No, because
>>I didn't, after experiencing the insult that was the "end" of
>>Back to the Future II. They might as well have just put a
>>title card there saying "THANKS FOR YOUR CASH, SUCKER, MAKE SURE YOU
>>COME BACK AND GIVE US SOME MORE". Fuck that. Fuck them.
>
>... upon what are you basing that?

The fact that it could only have been more obvious if they had actually included that title card? Six bucks (at the time) for half a fucking movie. They might as well have pissed in my five-dollar soda while they were at it.

Merciless Grodd, why am I still engaged with this? However you wish to argue the details, and of course you wish to argue them jointly and severally, the fact of the matter is as follows: The Legend of Korra has already nearly exhausted my patience, and if, on top of everything else, it does as you predict and goes into a most-of-a-year hiatus after some wretched Empire Strikes Back-style non-ending to the present (already tiresome) story arc, it will complete that task with a bang.

I don't want that to happen, because it leaves me in a monumentally poor - in fact, very possibly untenable - creative position myself, but god dammit, I've taken all I'm going to take from these people. I've given them every chance in the world to do something pleasing with their incredibly engaging protagonist and they've found some way to piss them all away. An ESB "ending" on Book 3 would be the cherry on top.

--G.
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

... books, actually real-physical books, don't work like that either, tho. Well, I mean, they can, but they don't have to. There are lots of trilogies and greater out there that use an extended narrative structure. I can reach out a hand right now and lay my hands on a ton of them on my bookshelf.

Many of those stories would have been considerably worse if the authors had tried to cram them into 600 pages instead of 1800. Extending the length of a work of art and then structuring it with logical breakpoints doesn't somehow make the guys doing that bad people. Some of them were bad writers, which is a whole different thing, but being a bad writer isn't a moral failing.

I mean, good god, Lord of the Rings ends with suspenseful act breaks. So do The Chronicles of Amber. I don't think either story would have been enhanced if either had had their narratives atomized so there could be more definitive breaks between parts of them, or if they'd tried to condense down into a single volume.

>If the third one
>doesn't do that, then it shouldn't be called that.

... so if it were just called "Season 3" instead of "Book 3" it would be okay? I'm confused.

>If you're
>not going to be able to release the full run of a broadcast product in
>a timely fashion, don't write a storyline that's too long for your
>production schedule, and especially don't package it as if
>it weren't. You're fucking with people if you do that, and some of
>them won't appreciate it.

This would seem to be an argument, as with books, that there should never be a television series that runs a narrative arc that's longer than a single production season. Many excellent shows would never have been made under this rubric. I mean, would AtlA have been dramatically improved if they'd tried to rush through defeating the Fire Lord in twenty episodes instead of sixty? You seem to be taking the tack that doing it any way other than that isn't just bad writing, it is the act of people not morally equipped to be helming a television show.

>>But at that point I
>>would have to gently point out that you personally use it with no
>>small frequency.
>
>I have never willingly and intentionally dropped a suspenseful
>non-ending and then just fucked off for a year or more, like you're
>predicting the TLOK production team are about to do.

... there's a legitimate difference between "we're fucking off" and "this is how long it takes to produce things." Production teams do not usually kick back on the beach for six to eight months at a time; they are working hard to bring you the next thing. The next thing may take awhile to make.

>>Half of the seals in Twilight end during a massive, ongoing
>>brawl for the fate of the universe, often with the lives or sanity of
>>major characters hanging in the balance, and with over a year between
>>seals at times. Intrusion Countermeasures very literally ends
>>with a character going "Hey! Look at that!" right before the credits
>>roll. Forward Momentum over in CSI:NA, which ends with an
>>enormous sucking chest wound. A raftload of Symphony pieces. The ends
>>of Act II and Act III of Shepard's Privateers.
>
>Those are all episodes of fanfics for fuck's sake, not
>seasons of a television (or whatever) series. You're not
>seriously trying to convince me that you don't see the difference?

Well, of course there's a difference, but there's also differences between books, television, and movies. And comics. And other forms of narratively-driven art.

The big difference is that you're an amateur doing this for free, of course. (Well, free less the price of owning an computer.) But even if you specify that free art is allowed to use narrative conventions that art you pay for isn't (and that's basically saying that people who would like to make a living from being a writer should accept artificial constraints on their craft) that would still leave broadcast TV, which is also free-less-the-price-of-access-device. For that matter, it would also specifically include Legend of Korra, which has never required cable to view; anyone with an internet connection can watch it free online with the blessings of Nickelodeon and has in fact always been able to do so.

If EPU can produce something that the production team is reasonably sure won't be resolved for three to six months, maybe a year (and you have had act breaks where you admitted up-front that was how the break was gonna be) I don't see why others can't as well.

>>But
>>you use a narrative structure that you are here decrying in the
>>strongest possible terms an awful lot, is what I'm saying.
>
>Yes, and I'll probably inadvertently use it again quite soon, because
>Real Life is about to intrude in a big way on what I'm trying to
>accomplish. But, you see, that's the thing: This is those
>people's Real Life.

Those people do not have universal control over said real lives, tho. I am sure that the creative team behind AtlA would have preferred to produce all sixty episodes in one mammoth go and release them all at once, so people could enjoy their completed narrative in a holistic manner.

That choice is precluded by the realities of actual television production, where animated shows is ridiculously time-consuming and the money men are reluctant to bankroll and release things in ways that don't maximize revenue. At that point you have to compromise your work in some way. You can scale back (and make no mistake, sometimes you should scale back) or you can work with what you've got in terms of a staggered release. I don't think choosing the latter makes you a bad person.

>>>Movies can make this mistake too! Did I ever tell
>>>you about the time I saw Back to the Future III? No, because
>>>I didn't, after experiencing the insult that was the "end" of
>>>Back to the Future II. They might as well have just put a
>>>title card there saying "THANKS FOR YOUR CASH, SUCKER, MAKE SURE YOU
>>>COME BACK AND GIVE US SOME MORE". Fuck that. Fuck them.
>>
>>... upon what are you basing that?
>
>The fact that it could only have been more obvious if they had
>actually included that title card? Six bucks (at the time) for half a
>fucking movie. They might as well have pissed in my five-dollar soda
>while they were at it.

Given the choice between 108 minutes of Back to the Future for six dollars in one go, and 225 for twelve dollars spread over six months, I am going to take the latter, just as I was pleased to pay 25 dollars for... fuck, I don't even know, like twelve hours of Lord of the Rings spread out over three years?

I quite honestly don't see how that makes them bad people. They had too much story for one movie. So they made a second movie. The realities of how movie-making work dictate that you can't really release them back to back, so they made a compromise.

... or, wait. Is your beef the incompleteness of the story after the first movie, or the fact that you weren't warned you were getting into the second part of a trilogy when what you thought you were getting was a straight sequel?

Because that's way more defensible, I think. I admit myself that I am sometimes rather irked when something I thought was self-contained turns out to not be self-contained. I'm very rarely made mad by it, although that's happened; very recently a lot of genre fiction I read has begun deliberately obfuscating the fact that they're trying to backdoor in a series launch, and that's not cool.

>Merciless Grodd, why am I still engaged with this?

... it's an interesting discussion about the intersection of morality with the practicalities of producing very, very expensive-to-make art in the real world?

I mean, that's why I'm engaged. I love stuff like this. It makes me think! If I'm very lucky and talking to very smart people, it leads me to a deeper understanding of things I love.

>, the fact of the matter is as follows: The Legend of
>Korra has already nearly exhausted my patience, and if, on top of
>everything else, it does as you predict and goes into a most-of-a-year
>hiatus after some wretched Empire Strikes Back-style non-ending
>to the present (already tiresome) story arc, it will complete that
>task with a bang.

See, I find that more persuasive in some ways, because that's an argument that the Legend of Korra does not meet your aesthetic requirements. That's not a moral condemnation of the people making it, that's just saying that it doesn't do it for you, which can't help but be legitimate on its face.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Is that a joke? The first five Amber books are practically novellas, they're so short. They only work as a compilation.

>This would seem to be an argument, as with books, that there should
>never be a television series that runs a narrative arc that's longer
>than a single production season.
(...)
>You seem to be taking the tack that
>doing it any way other than that isn't just bad writing, it is the act
>of people not morally equipped to be helming a television show.

Quite.

>If EPU can produce something that the production team is reasonably
>sure won't be resolved for three to six months, maybe a year (and you
>have had act breaks where you admitted up-front that was how the break
>was gonna be) I don't see why others can't as well.

Right. OK. Clearly, then, this is my fault for expecting that the huge, well-funded media conglomerate should maybe do a better job than some guy in an armchair in Maine.

>... or, wait. Is your beef the incompleteness of the story after the
>first movie, or the fact that you weren't warned you were
>getting into the second part of a trilogy when what you thought you
>were getting was a straight sequel?

Well, that and the fact that the combined running length of the second and third installments isn't any longer than one longish movie, and the "longish" part could've been corrected with moderately tightened editing. I mean I haven't seen the third one, but there's only about an hour of actual story in BTTF2.

Similarly, there's been zero indication apart from the lately growing sense of "hang on, even these guys couldn't find a way to wrap this shit up in 44 more minutes, could they?" that Book 3 is not in fact a story, but just the lead-up to one that maybe will come along in a year or so. If it had been billed as "Book 3: Being the First Half of the Tedious Business with Rollins Band, the Second Half of Which We May be Pleased to Present You With in 2015 Sometime", I could at least have decided not to let them waste a bunch of my neurons two months ago instead of only just realizing that they've done it to me again now.

Since about episode 304, I've just been enduring this season arc, as I endured both of the previous ones, in the expectation that it would end soon and the fitfully glowing hope that, hey, law of averages, they might still (accidentally?) do something good next year. (The sensation is not unlike that of being a Red Sox fan in a bad year. Like this one.) Instead, I'm now facing the very real possibility that a) it's not going to end soon; b) it'll be a year before it ends at all; c) there are another 12 episodes of it coming and d) there isn't going to be anything else to follow it after all. I can't help but interpret that as a fuckoff. Sorry if that offends your sensibilities in some way, but at this point it has grown beyond "a disappointment" to "a personal affront".

>... it's an interesting discussion about the intersection of morality
>with the practicalities of producing very, very expensive-to-make art
>in the real world?

... nnnnno... pretty sure that's not it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh man, I have thoughts about this, so many thoughts!

Okay, so, I have to figure Asami, being raised as a high society girl, was taught to play a musical instrument. Possibly multiple ones. Probably something like a yueqin or a pipa (Chong's instrument in Cave of Two Lovers), maybe a dulcimer.

Because Asami is made out of pure class, she loved the classical, traditional music she was made to play... but because she is also pure win, she taught herself how to play piano on the side, so she could rock out in the honky-tonks.

You gotta figure Korra learned how to play an instrument as well, because I can't see the White Lotus not trying to pour as much culture as possible into her head, but because Korra is Korra and the White Lotus is the White Lotus, you gotta figure it was more forced to learn an instrument, like when parents inform their children they can pick the piano or the flute, but by god you're learning at least one, and that Korra didn't like it much.

I can't see Mako or Bolin ever making the time to learn, given their hardscrabble origins; Mako doesn't seem like the type to be interested. Bolin would be very interested, but all of his leisure time would be tied up either in "not starving" or "training in pro-bending."

At some point Asami figures out Korra also plays an instrument and badgers her into jamming with her, which Korra discovers is so much different than demonstrating mastery for a disapproving instructor, you guys, you don't even know. And then she's like "Asami! Do you want to start a band? Let's start a band!"

And there's a lot of places you can go from there. Mako, of course, is the slightly-inept manager, because can anyone here see Mako getting up on stage and rocking out without it being just... just sad? I didn't think so. Asami is on bass (because she's the boss), Bolin on drums (because duh), Korra is the frontwoman. They could probably use second guitar and a keyboardist.

Or maybe, screw the boys, and they just recruit Jinora and Ikki and Opal and form Diqiu's first all-girl rock band and tour the Fire Nation Pat Benatar style.

Man, why can't the comics be about that instead of socioeconomic dislocation in the Earth Kingdom? I ask you.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Heh. Shades of Tsumugi in K-On! - she's the proper little rich girl who has taken classical piano lessons she was four, but given the choice she'd just as happily slam down the organ solo from the Eric Burdon & the Animals version of "House of the Rising Sun" on the nearest available Hammond B3.

>You gotta figure Korra learned how to play an instrument as well,
>because I can't see the White Lotus not trying to pour as much
>culture as possible into her head, but because Korra is Korra and the
>White Lotus is the White Lotus, you gotta figure it was more
>forced to learn an instrument, like when parents inform their
>children they can pick the piano or the flute, but by god you're
>learning at least one, and that Korra didn't like it much.

Well, that and it was the White Lotus, so it was almost certainly something lame and foreign to her, like the erhu or the tsungi horn, which would be considered Right and Proper by the EK-and-FN-biased Lotus Masters but be of no cultural relevance at all to a Water Tribeswoman.

Still, if it was the erhu, that's at least a stringed instrument, so when rock 'n roll came to Dìqiú and brought the Fender Stratocaster with it, she wouldn't quite have been starting from zero. :)

>And there's a lot of places you can go from there. Mako, of course, is
>the slightly-inept manager, because can anyone here see Mako getting
>up on stage and rocking out without it being just... just sad? I
>didn't think so.

"I don't think the problem is that the band was down, Mako. I think the problem was that there was a miniature Walled City of Ba Sing Se on the stage that was in serious danger of being crushed by a dwarf."

>Asami is on bass (because she's the boss), Bolin on
>drums (because duh), Korra is the frontwoman. They could
>probably use second guitar and a keyboardist.

Maybe this is where it unexpectedly turns out that Lin Beifong has a soul after all! ("Well... I play a little.") Probably not, though.

Man, I'm searching my mental Rolodex for other people from the show who might get tapped for those jobs, but they really don't get to meet many interesting people outside the core cast, do they? Not interesting in a good way, anyway.

>Or maybe, screw the boys, and they just recruit Jinora and Ikki and
>Opal and form Diqiu's first all-girl rock band and tour the Fire
>Nation Pat Benatar style.

Eh, too many airbenders. You let three of them into the band, next thing you know it's all sitars and crap, like the Beatles after 1966. :)

>Man, why can't the comics be about that instead of
>socioeconomic dislocation in the Earth Kingdom? I ask you.

I know, right? Kids these days.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The real question here, I think, is who has the more impressive hair-based superpower? Asami, and her ability to look like she just stepped out of the salon after spending days hiding in the sewers or after a shipwreck? Or Mugi, and her eyebrows that I'm fairly certain are up to no good.

>>Asami is on bass (because she's the boss), Bolin on
>>drums (because duh), Korra is the frontwoman. They could
>>probably use second guitar and a keyboardist.
>
>Maybe this is where it unexpectedly turns out that Lin Beifong has a
>soul after all! ("Well... I play a little.")

Lin's particular damage seems like she'd best be matched with a saxophone, really. I sort of imagine Lin learned to play something loud and brassy back when she was dating Tenzin (wind instrument, etc.) back before it had entirely sunk in to her that "spend an awful lot of time pregnant and raising more airbenders" was a non-negotiable requirement he had for a long-term relationship.

Although I can see her as one of those really weird, abrasive keyboardists who is all into strange time signatures and gets super, super annoyed if the drummer doesn't keep a proper tempo.

>Man, I'm searching my mental Rolodex for other people from the show
>who might get tapped for those jobs, but they really don't get to meet
>many interesting people outside the core cast, do they? Not
>interesting in a good way, anyway.

For a brief moment I thought "Desna and Eska?" but then realized, no, they'd just start their own two-person band, like the White Stripes, only they would skip directly to the freakish, uncomfortable phase without going through an awesome music phase first.

>>Or maybe, screw the boys, and they just recruit Jinora and Ikki and
>>Opal and form Diqiu's first all-girl rock band and tour the Fire
>>Nation Pat Benatar style.
>
>Eh, too many airbenders. You let three of them into the band,
>next thing you know it's all sitars and crap, like the Beatles after
>1966. :)

Hey man, give Aang some credit; dude was rocking that tsungi horn. I bet airbenders could put together a pretty swingin' horns section, you know?

... oh wow. Imagine what would happen if Ikki and Meelo got their hands on some bagpipes.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Yui once, in the grip of a high fever, hallucinated that Mugi's eyebrows were actually slices of pickled radish. I am not making that up.

That said, it's got to be Asami. Mugi's eyebrows don't actually do anything, other than indicate that she's probably part Tamaranian (which explains her super-strength and preoccupation with yuri, now that I think of it).

>back before it had entirely sunk in to her that "spend an awful
>lot of time pregnant and raising more airbenders" was a non-negotiable
>requirement he had for a long-term relationship.

Well, like I said in another thread, not only was Suyin's crack about Tenzin dumping Lin because she was a bitter loner a cheap shot, it was also backward. That's like the one thing I have sympathy for her about, apart from the woeful upbringing she got from the pod person who mysteriously replaced Toph sometime between ATLA and TLOK Flashback Time.

(I still think Suyin's up to something, too. I don't trust anyone who couldn't tell instinctively that Gandhi was a minion of evil, I mean, what?)

>Although I can see her as one of those really weird, abrasive
>keyboardists who is all into strange time signatures and gets super,
>super annoyed if the drummer doesn't keep a proper tempo.

Or, in fact, a drummer who gets mightily annoyed at the rest of the band for not following properly. "Saxophones - you gotta fuggin' be kidding me!"

>>Man, I'm searching my mental Rolodex for other people from the show
>>who might get tapped for those jobs, but they really don't get to meet
>>many interesting people outside the core cast, do they? Not
>>interesting in a good way, anyway.
>
>For a brief moment I thought "Desna and Eska?" but then realized, no,
>they'd just start their own two-person band, like the White Stripes,
>only they would skip directly to the freakish, uncomfortable phase
>without going through an awesome music phase first.

They'd be way more shoegazey than the White Stripes. Like a two-up My Bloody Valentine. Assuming they didn't go straight for weird, super-trancey electronica.

>... oh wow. Imagine what would happen if Ikki and Meelo got their
>hands on some bagpipes.

Do I have to?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And now Diqiu has its own Crystal Castles.

Also, what's wrong with people doing unconventional things with music and wanting to experiment with/expand upon their soun? That's how we got OK Computer, which is (as far as I'm concerned) the greatest album released since the Beatles were in their pomp.

>>... oh wow. Imagine what would happen if Ikki and Meelo got their
>>hands on some bagpipes.
>
>Do I have to?

You can't not do it now, Gryphon. You can't get the noise out of your head, the dreadful wailin' o' the Nomad Pipers as they dance an eightsome reel at several thousand feet up. Neither can anyone who pisses off the Air Nomads.

I imagine they're teaching that little gobshite to play them as well, because being a weapons-grade sonic annoyance is all the cretin was good for.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

Well, nothing in and of itself, and I'm not sure Ben was saying anything of the sort. (And believe me, if I want an excuse to argue with Ben Hutchins, I can find one.)

But, you know who else was doing unconventional things with music and wanting to experiment with their sound? The Ecole Musico-Technologique and Ragulin. :)

Desna and Eska would probably not be nearly that nakedly contemptuous of all other forms of music (this isn't to say they wouldn't be contemptuous in other, different ways), nor would their music necessarily be bad (I think Eska actually has the makings of an effective punk rocker) but I envision them very quickly going the whole "I am a very, very weird musician" route and doing things like hiring an all-spirit crew of roadies and making their entourage all dress in identical suits and masks. :)

-Merc
Keep Rat

I'm not over the fact that man is the current caretaker of Lucille.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

In his defense, it's not as if he jacked it from a museum. The ghost of B.B. King gave it to him. On purpose.

Or at least that's what he told Kate. And, well, why would he make up a story that makes him sound crazier? :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Don't get your hopes up. I may not even watch it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, fuck that. I'm going back to bed.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I did end up doing one, but I put it in its own thread just to be contrary.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

-Merc
Keep Rat