Avatar: The Legend of Korra

[RyanThunder]

What is it about the concept "order = good" that's problematic to you?

I'm not sure that the darkness is necessarily chaotic in this case anyhow. The first thing dark spirits do is attack humans relentlessly. They don't appear to attack each other at all.

I'm honestly not sure what the issue is with "all order all the time", personally, unless it's some kind of straw man interpretation where anything entertaining or creative is categorized as 'chaotic' and therefore unacceptable or whatever.

[evilsoup]

[Infinity Biscuit]

I'm honestly not sure what the issue is with "all order all the time", personally, unless it's some kind of straw man interpretation where anything entertaining or creative is categorized as 'chaotic' and therefore unacceptable or whatever.

You're talking to someone who believes a complete overhaul of the current economic and social order is needed

so I may have different views on the CONSTANT VIGILENCE of order being the only thing keeping us from permanent oblivion :L

[evilsoup]

even in-universe, the most prominent agents of perpetual order were the Dai Li so

[Infinity Biscuit]

there is no war in ba sing se

[Crazedwraith]

Ok, setting myself for plenty of ridicule, I am sure. But I'm going to assume to problematic issues with white=good, black=evil are racial in nature?

I'm curious as to the validity of this as a racial thing. I mean if black people are offended I can't say they are wrong to be obviously. But does the association with white as good and black as evil, actually have a basis in race? I mean blackness, evil black magic, were they originally thought to be the sole providence of black people? Evil african witches or whatever?

I mean white people = good and black people = bad. Is obviously racist. But it just seems... overly sensitive to apply that to the use of colours in any context. I mean a pitch black evil spirit is not an evil black person. Especially in a show where the title character is a POC. But i speak from the position of privilege that makes it easy to say that.

All that said, Taking the previous complex many sided series. Where all nations had equal potential for good and evil and turning into another epic good vs evil struggle seems like a step down.

[evilsoup]

it's entirely possible that the show will end with the two spirits merging or something

[Crazedwraith]

That's true. It was stated in the beginning that neither of them was destructable. That even if Rava lost she would grow inside the black one and be reborn. Eventually. Though the final fight of the episode also seem to imply that he could win a final victory of her.

edit: the whole thing sort of reminded me of the RotS novelisation where by fighting the war at all the Jedi were empowering the dark side and making their situation generally worse with Palps struck.

And that final scene with Wan dying the middle of a battle field strung with Earth kingdom stone dicus things and arrows. That was remarkably hardcore for the series.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language - they made everything Black ugly and evil.

Look in your dictionary, and see the synonyms of the word Black - it's always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White - always something pure, high and clean.

But, I want to get the language right tonight. I want to get the language so right that everybody here will cry out YES, I'm Black and proud of it! I'm Black and Beautiful!

So yeah unless I've radically misinterpreted that speech it's not just an oversensitive internet people issue

But especially when combined with the perpetual order = good and the only way to avoid permanent annihilation, it kinda brings vibes of race-based fascism? Or at least does to me.

[Bakustra]

To paraphrase, you've got to believe in chaos as a benevolent entity. You've got no choice. Existence is dependent on chaos in the entropic form, chaos in the systematic form is what generates unpredictability, and learning requires the intrusion of chaos into the ordered world of the mind.

Of course, the true enlightenment requires understanding that chaos and order are the same thing perceived differently, which is probably the only way to make the hoary old "war between chaos and order" interesting nowadays.

[RyanThunder]

Infinity Biscuit have you considered that you may be reading about ten kilometres into a decision only ten metres deep (for lack of a better way to put it)?

You're talking to someone who believes a complete overhaul of the current economic and social order is needed

so I may have different views on the CONSTANT VIGILENCE of order being the only thing keeping us from permanent oblivion :L

Well I also think it needs a complete overhaul, but I'm sure we'd disagree on the details of how and what. I'm still in favour of order.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Not once did I say any of it was a deliberate decision

but work has a lot of accidental subtext and it takes open denial to pretend otherwise

[RyanThunder]

Alright. So I think that leaves us with green and purple for things intended to be anthropomorphized good or evil. Maybe blue? I can't think of any ethnicities that might be associated with those colours.

What about light/shadow or day/night rather than white/black? How would you present those?

[evilsoup]

Tenzin is awesome
'See, this is why schedules are important!'

[evilsoup]

so it turns out that

Unalaq actually is directly working for the evil spirit dude

[Infinity Biscuit]

"I would never do anything to hurt you" Mako says to Asami

[RyanThunder]

Tenzin is awesome
'See, this is why schedules are important!'

*silence*
"I knew this would happen."

[Crazedwraith]

It's interesting that LoK keeps going on about how spiritual the air nomands were and so forth.

I mean, okay they're monks and Aang was twelve but still he knew diddly squat about spirits and the spirit world when he first encountered them. The monks were down with philosophy as far as i can see, not really 'spiritual stuff' in the sense of the literal spirits.

I wanted to like this episode but its still a little meh. And it had a big problem with going back on forth on tenzin. One seconds its all 'i love you tenzin i'm sorry i have doubted you' and the next its 'you're wrong tenzin imma going to ignore you and listen to jinora now' which is not bad persee but the episode didn't seem very self aware about doing it.

[Darksi4190]

So this show is finally picking back up with the main plot and setting the stage for an epic battle between light and darkness, order and chaos etc, and that's awesome, but are they really going to have time to properly resolve the "Varrick is a bastard and Mako must stop him" plot line?

[evilsoup]

I'm hoping that Varrick is going to be the villain of the nest season

[evilsoup]

latest episode was great

Iroh! The real one I mean. I was half-expecting him to come in and save Korra at the end, but that bird thing was pretty good too
man
what the shit is Unalaq thinking? Why is he siding with Vattu?
His line about 'what kind of a father...' was pretty funny though

All in all, pretty good. The spirit world was awesome.

[Darksi4190]

I'm hoping that Varrick is going to be the villain of the nest season

That would be pretty cool. They've done their big mythology thing with this season. I'd like to see another villain that came about through the changes in an advancing society like Amon.

[evilsoup]

It would also be a change to have a non-bender villain

[Infinity Biscuit]

if vaatu isn't actually good in his own way I'm going to be very disappointed in this show

(since I know it's not happening I already am but :L)

[Infinity Biscuit]

seriously though he's literally going all "mwa hahahaha I'm so eeeevil just you wait korra NEXT TIME GADGET"

there better be a twist coming up