Cartoon/Western Animation General

A lot of Nickelodeon’s promos are straight, “How do you do, fellow kids?” levels of trying to be hip and cool.

@Background Pony #64A4  
This is gonna make me feel and sound just as old, but was it always like this, or was it just better at it before?
 
I remember when ‘by kids, for kids, kids rule’ was basically their mission statement, and it was easy to believe them.

It’s odd how Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are given all the credit for Avatar being as great as it was, given that a lot of the series’ best ideas came from series director Aaron Ehasz. For example, Uncle Iroh’s personality was heavily based on Ehasz’s late stepfather. Not only that, but the others had wanted to make Toph a muscular 16-year-old jock boy, and it was Ehasz’s idea to make her a smol blind girl–admittedly with the same personality that her earlier design would have had.

@TheHappySpaceman  
Bryke are like Lucas in a lot of ways. They certainly deserve credit for coming up with the idea in the first place and they’re chiefly responsible for the unique visuals, design, and nearly all the action sequences. But they’re not writers, their skill in this area is lacking.
 
They seem to like unexpected twists and turns in a narrative (even if it doesn’t make sense from a character perspective) and as soon as they get bored, they drop it. Look at Aang’s chakra dilemma, one chance for this Peter Pan to get some actual character growth but gets completely forgotten about, just so he can get the girl in end.
 
They’re not character people, I think Korra sort of proves that. Nobody, save for perhaps Korra herself (and even she fails in the same way Aang does), is compelling the way characters in Atla are. Their favoritism towards pointless melodrama, especially in relationships, is very apparent there.
 
Ehasz came up with the whole Fire Nation royal family as they’re known today, before him Iroh was evil, Ozai was literally just Sauron, Azula was a boy (from what I understand he came up with her personality too), and Zuko was just an asshole. Toph the boy was supposed to be part of a stupid love triangle with Aang and Katara, and I think that bit was recycled for Korra.

@TheSupremePatriarch  
Interesting that you would make the Lucas comparison. One of my friends (QuilSniv on YouTube, for anyone who watches my reviews) just now told me he thinks that The Legend of Korra suffers from the same problems that the Star Wars prequels suffer from, in that “they suck all the magic out of everything and try to scientifically explain everything and insert a lot of politics.”
 
It really says something that out of all the post-Avatar projects (including the comics and Korra), The Dragon Prince has had the overall best reception, at least in terms of its writing. Though its worldbuilding could use a lot of work.
 
I feel as though the creative team behind A:TLA is kind of like Pink Floyd.  
(I know this sounds like a weird comparison, but bear with me.)  
After the release of their hit album The Wall in 1979, Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright was demoted to a session/touring member, and bassist Roger Waters basically took the lead. Their next album after The Wall was The Final Cut, which was basically all Roger Waters and was a critical and commercial flop. After Roger left the band, lead guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason brought Rick Wright back in and created A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, which, while commercially successful, were nothing special and were a little boring. Since then, all members’ solo works have been kind of meh.  
What I’m saying is, it’s a team that only makes definitively great media if all the members are involved, very similar to Bryan, Michael, and Aaron. The team is only as good as the sum of its parts.

Maleficent ruined the character

@Broken Adam  
That was unabashedly the point.

@Broken Adam  
I don’t even care about that, my issue is that it spat on the rest of the cast, Phillip was until the renaissance the best Prince in disney history, Stephan was a legit likable character because he was 100% willing to have at it with his best friend because he wanted to make sure his daughter was comfortable, and the Good Fairies were amazing characters, not even les yay can make up for the insult that trash fire threw at such great characters,

@Broken Adam  
Maleficent ruined Sleeping Beauty.

@Broken Adam  
I always did like the twist in the story. I mean, the original animated movie didn’t really do much and was a lot simpler in terms of character, so seeing this new light is nice.
 
Also, I don’t like characters who are evil for the sake of evil. Those are shit.

@Scrabbleman  
funny thing is that they proved a stereotype right
 
she went from a female character who’s character is independent from males, to a female characters who’s entire character is about being betrayed by a male
 
proving the idea that Female Characters need to be tied to make characters right

@TheHappySpaceman  
Yeah, TDP shows that Ehasz is definitely a “character” writer. Though, I think it’s premature to call out the world building since its a brand new IP in its first season.
 
Definitely agree on the collaborative art. I mean writing and drawing (character and non-character) are all completely different skills.
 
Putting politics in Korra isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just really hamfisted. From Amon’s “My First Communist Manifesto” arc to Kuvira’s “Make the Earth Kingdom great again” campaign, the central message ultimately is:
 
“If the Avatar says so, its bad. And any solution the Avatar comes up with is the correct one. No exceptions.”

@TheSupremePatriarch  
Bullshit, Korra spend half the series being shown that she needs to grow up to do her job,

@TheSupremePatriarch  
I love how the show pretends that balkanizatikn isn’t going to cause a shitton more problems than it’s gonna solve

@Thanotos Omega  

 
This. So much this.

@igotnopicks  
yeah she spent the first book going off half cocked, spent book 2 letting her emotions dominate her actions, and it was only during books 3 and 4 where she actually became wise enough to effectively do her job,

@Broken Adam  
Well the logic goes that if the Avatar decides that’s what’s best, then that’s what’s best. Though to be fair, Atla has this issue too.
 
@Thanotos Omega  
All the solutions she comes up with are proven correct in the end, even her laughably naive ones in the earlier seasons. The narrative validates her all the time.
 
Just cause she gets her ass kicked constantly doesn’t change that.

@TheSupremePatriarch  
No it doesn’t, she fails quite a bit, you are just ascribing mary sue tropes purely because she ultimately succeeds and is female, while she never pulled any shit on par with the kinda BS Aang did,

@Thanotos Omega  
>and is female  
lol
 
I see you are just pointless to talk to.

I’m watching Ricky Gervais Show.
 
Karl Pilkington has an….interesting view of the world.

@TheSupremePatriarch
 
My point wasn’t that you were doing it because she was female, it was because she did it while being female, nothing Korra ever did will ever be as fuckung dumb as Deus ex lion turtle,

@TheSupremePatriarch  
True, but we haven’t even seen a map of the land. In the opening of Avatar, we at least get that. How are we supposed to have a sense of the scope of the five kingdoms if we can’t even see that?
 
I also find it curious how the sequels to Avatar seem to argue that whatever the Avatar does is best and right. While the original series established that the Avatars’ goal is to maintain balance and peace, it also made it clear that at the end of the day they are still humans, and therefore still fallible and can make judgments or mistakes that won’t necessarily lead to the best outcomes. For example:  
-Kuruk’s arrogance in a relatively peaceful era cost him his wife to Koh the face-stealer  
-Roku’s friendship with Sozin kept him from making arguably the most important choice of his life  
-Kyoshi’s solution to assassinating a Warlord was to run away from her problems, plunging the Earth Kingdom into chaos; also, she established the Dai Li, so yeah, you can blame her for that

@TheHappySpaceman  
Umm not really, Korra finally had Aang’s arrogance in his passivism really fuck people up, and Korra bumbles around like a brute trying to force everything and is prone to getting caught up in personal feelings that cause her to make bad choices, and those choices tend to have consequences,

@Thanotos Omega
 
“Deus ex Aang coming back from the dead as a spirit to magically give her her lost bending elements back and unlock the Avatar State for her” would like a word about Deus ex Turtle Lion.

@TheDog  
You clearly haven’t watched any of either show if you think the fucking avatar being helped by their immediate predecessor is out of the norm,