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Something I would love to see in media, and it feels like an simple baby step that can be taken towards better representation of asexual and aromantic people, would be more platonic friendships between men and women without one of them having to have the "excuse" of being LGBT. Much of media in general (and a worrying number of actual people) seems convinced that it's impossible that men and women can just be friends without sexual tension (such as one side getting "friendzoned" (I abhor that word with a passion)) or an inevitable romance.

 

Been watching and rewatching Miyakxi movies after watching the documentary Kingdom of Dreams and madness about the making of his final film led me down the rabbit hole of reading interviews with him. One thing he said he hated was the fact  that a male and female sharing the same scene = romance and it was something he actively avoided in his movies which is true in Spirited away, Princess Mononoke and Nausicca. 

 

Trying to think of other examples thinking and just realised how many involved one or the being LGBT. It is really depressing. I think the Idle thumbs podcast mentioned Full throttle having a platonic male-female friendship and that's all I can think of at the moment. 

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So i'm getting close to the end of Legend of Korra.

 

It's... it's still not good, guys. I mean, it's not Season 2 bad, but their attempts at reaching for a more mature Avatar series just highlight how completely ill-equipped the writers are at handling it. The Last Airbender worked largely because it evoked the sense that there was more to the show's world, but our core characters were essentially goofy kids in a conflict with very clear sides, so it didn't really matter that their grasp of politics was weak. Legend of Korra doesn't have that shortcut - and the philosophies of the characters are still extremely surface-level, so now everyone just looks like thugs. I have a special bone to pick with Zaheer, who does at least get the chance to have a short conversation about his reasons for doing things. Problem is, he's an anarchist, and the writers clearly intend him to be an anarchist, but the writers write him as a libertarian.

 

Korra's arc is her coming to terms with the use of her power and that rushing in and kicking ass isn't a wise approach, but the treatment of her trauma is so bare-bones it's embarrassing, and it constantly feels like she's there to be the audience for a monologue rather than pushing back or responding to what anyone is telling her. She's an intensely frustrating character - much more than in The Last Airbender, they really enjoy having Korra lose and lose badly, but she keeps losing because she's incompetent, not because she was outgunned or surprised or the enemy got a lucky break, and she never seems to learn from her mistakes.

 

The vibrant worldbuilding and the philosophical differences between cultures from The Last Airbender appears to have swallowed up by the twin evils of a shortened season and globalisation. Airbending's just another colour of attack now. The different cultures appear to have been totally subsumed in two generations, the only trace being set dressing and the political structure. It hasn't escaped my notice that they keep introducing goofy characters because the core cast is so dour and humourless, either - I'm baffled that the people who deftly manage to balance Varrick on the knife edge of goofball/villain/highly competent engineer couldn't spend some time giving their core cast personality.

 

Really disappointing.

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I disagree pretty fundamentally (except for the part about Korra's characterization, I agree it's kind of wobbly), but don't have the time to go into it. One question though: how is Zaheer written as a libertarian rather than an anarchist?

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I disagree pretty fundamentally (except for the part about Korra's characterization, I agree it's kind of wobbly), but don't have the time to go into it. One question though: how is Zaheer written as a libertarian rather than an anarchist?

 

Anarchists aren't really about freedom from coercion, but about the illegitimacy of coercion. Zaheer acknowledges the legitimacy of the Avatar but believes that it shouldn't matter; an anarchist Zaheer would feel that the Avatar is illegitimate, that no-one can represent the link between spirits and humans or be the source of balance. Zaheer attempts to smash the state, to remove the power of the Earth Queen with the belief that balance will arise from the lack of order, which is very much an anarchist action; this doesn't fit with his talk of liberty, which assumes that power is granted to the people to distribute as they see fit. Lots of little islands of order is not what Zaheer wants. (Also, Zaheer's not nearly selfish enough to be a libertarian.)

 

Or at least what that's my (limited) understanding of anarchy as a political concept would suggest.

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So i'm getting close to the end of Legend of Korra.

 

It's... it's still not good, guys.

 

Really disappointing.

 

Yeah, bummer. I did enjoy Korra, and the things you see as problems or as bad simply don't register as problems or as bad to me. 

 

Like, I get that the characters and factions in the show have simplified political ideologies that don't match up well with real world ones. But I don't really feel this as a problem? It's never unclear to me what Zaheer or Kuvira wants, or why. It's not important to me that they have well developed and informed political leanings, but that they have consistent and understandable motivations.

 

I do agree with two points: that the show's potential was seriously limited by the shortened season length, and that Korra's character is a frustrating one for something like 75% of the series. I liked Korra well enough in the first season, got fed up with her very quickly in the second, but grew to like her again in the fourth. But then, I didn't find her trauma to be embarrassing like you did.

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It's not so much that they don't track with real-world ones, and more that they don't have any internal logic to them. That's a problem. The show makes world leaders recurring characters and the application of power a major theme, but then it's completely uninterested in how or why leaders do what they do or what makes a leader good.

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I guess I need to be smarter or more informed to see these inconsistencies, since I didn't.

 

Like I said, they seemed simplistic for sure, but I was personally OK with simplistic.

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Anarchists aren't really about freedom from coercion, but about the illegitimacy of coercion. Zaheer acknowledges the legitimacy of the Avatar but believes that it shouldn't matter; an anarchist Zaheer would feel that the Avatar is illegitimate, that no-one can represent the link between spirits and humans or be the source of balance. Zaheer attempts to smash the state, to remove the power of the Earth Queen with the belief that balance will arise from the lack of order, which is very much an anarchist action; this doesn't fit with his talk of liberty, which assumes that power is granted to the people to distribute as they see fit. Lots of little islands of order is not what Zaheer wants. (Also, Zaheer's not nearly selfish enough to be a libertarian.)

 

Or at least what that's my (limited) understanding of anarchy as a political concept would suggest.

 

I've got little patience for nitpicking about political ideologies in real life, so forgive for having less for doing the same in a cartoon. Anarchy, as I understand it, is about the illegitimacy of coercion, yes, but it's about the coercive power of states in particular. Zaheer can want to kill the Earth Queen and teach the Avatar at the same time and still be an anarchist, as long as you keep in mind that the Earth Queen represents a institutionalized power structure, while the Avatar is just one person.

 

As to your comments about granting liberty and islands of order, I don't understand what you're getting at. First, I don't think the idea of liberty being "granted" is inherent in any discussion of the concept, so pinning that on Zaheer seems strange unless he says something specifically to that effect in the show that I'm forgetting.

 

Anyway, why does it matter if Zaheer fits snugly into an anarchist or libertarian box? He never claims to be either, as I recall. Anarchy and libertarianism are both political ideologies that are specific to a certain historical context. It seems natural to me that the world of the Avatar, which has a vastly different political reality than our own, would have different ideologies. It's kind of silly to try to map them one-to-one to ideologies from our own world.

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This is an awfully large discussion about a relatively minor point, but I think you're attacking a strawman here, tberton: my issue is that Zaheer's philosophy is incoherent, not that it doesn't quite match with real-world ideology. It's frustrating only because Zaheer actually tries to express a philosophy that has resonance, but he's by no means the only one who has an incoherent ideology - Kuvira's argument about unity and making the tough decisions has holes you could drive a train through, and Amon's equality agitations had a pretty obvious response that was not "but bending's awesome". The series is filled with perfunctory, one-sided arguments, with villains (and allies) who the show consistently makes out have good reasons for doing what they do, but those ideas are never challenged. I don't expect a philosophical argument from my children's TV show; the only thing I want is a reply, and I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

As I said, mixing up anarchy and libertarianism appears to be a problem with American writers - the movie adaptation of V for Vendetta makes the same mistake, although it's more excusable there because the movie also changes the central conflict to be about the American religious right instead of the British Thatcherite conservatism.

 

Having finished the series, I think I gave some of the writing short shrift - a great majority of the jokes land, which is not nothing - and as I think I mentioned, Varrick is a multi-faceted character that works. I still think the series reaches for something it doesn't grasp, and so I'd still consider it a failure even though it definitely had its moments. I think, on reflection, a lot of it is that they tried to do too much - with a shortened season and the standard running time, they can't afford to split the party to try and run multiple plots simultaneously, and I think it never worked out exactly how to balance advancing the season's plot and giving the world and characters room to breath.

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My girlfriend will be relieved to hear that. She references that movie all the time. I've never seen it, but maybe I'll give it a shot now.

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If you, like me, live in the US and want to watch Steven Universe but neither want to drop the $ to buy the eps from Amazon/iTunes/whatever, but also don't want to pirate it, they just added a bunch of it & Adventure Time to Hulu, so that's what I will be watching with my boyfriend while we eat dinner for a while.

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Thanks to whoever recommended watching The Book Of Life. I found the stuff about Mexican folklore really interesting, and the artwork and sets in the movie are so much fun. This one guy's pupils are skulls that exist and animate by themselves as he's talking, what a neat idea!

 

The actual plot and characters are just about good enough to keep me in the movie, I'm more there for the imaginative world they set up.

 

Oh and, unrelated to the above, here's the sequel to SunCreature's amazing short film The Reward!

If you haven't watched The Reward, then definitely seek it out first.

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The Book of Life was sent out to die here, and like ParaNorman before it, it feels like it's a piece of animation that's leaning heavily on cultural references we don't have here. I really did not need the main character to sing a few lines of Radiohead's Creep.

 

I am absolutely ready to see more of Mexico than the Day of the Dead, luchadors, and all of the Mexican culture that's been adopted by the US, as well.

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I missed Song of the Sea during it's "regular" theater run around here, but I saw it yesterday at an arthouse-type deal and I'm so glad I did. It's breathtakingly beautiful. And touching too!

 

It reminded me that I need to see more animated films in theaters. Movies are almost always more enjoyable in a theater environment, but I'm always taken with how good animated movies can look on a big screen.

(Maybe I'd think differently if there were any actual children at the screening for this children's movie. There were not.)

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Proof of concept trailer for Kariba, a South African animated film.

 

Kariba was conceived as a modern African fairy tale, combining the historical events surrounding the building of the Zambezi river dam wall and the local legend of the river spirit that caused its destruction. “We are using the rich history and mythology around this event,” Snaddon said. “Our aim is to make something that stands out as being uniquely African, a film that respects both its source material, and its audience, while being hugely fun and entertaining.”

 

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I've watched The Gruffalo about a dozen times with my kids over the last two weeks. It is a goddamn masterpiece and I could watch it every day for the rest of my life and not get sick of it.

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Accidentally caught "Golan the Insatiable" tonight on Fox after their usual Sunday animation block.  A 2nd grader girl from Minnesota who is obsessed with the occult/goth stylings summons Golan and has his tome of spells; some jokes, picked on minnesota, looks nice - everything i go for in a cartoon

 

I thought Adult Swim was on because of the art style and sense of humor. My wife thinks its stupid, which usually means (i think) its great.  I dont know how many eps they were contracted for, but after their Fox run ends hopefully it'll get picked up on netflix or CN - assuming they have enough jokes to get past the first few episodes of chaos

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