rallamajoop

Bleh. Wow, was that ever a let down.

Like most of Avatar fandom, I had high hopes for Legend of Korra. Loved the early episodes, but by mid way through, it was becoming hard to ignore the feeling that the writers had gone a little overboard in trimming out the superfluous filler material. The overall impression suggested nothing so much as the experience of watching a full ~26 episode season squeezed down to fit into a mere 12 parts, leaving an awful lot of crucial development of characters, setting and conflict abandoned on the cutting room floor. I'd hoped that if or when I got around to typing up some thoughts on the problem, I'd at least be able to temper it with comment to the effect of, "but hey, they still pulled it all together for an awesome finale!", but alas, the final episodes only compounded the problems a thousand fold.

( Keeping the part with the actual spoilers under the cut )

There are good ideas all through the show, and good characters - I liked Tenzin and Lyn especially - and some gorgeously animated fight scenes. But Korra's 'team' never really get to develop beyond being less-emo!Zuko, earthbending!Sokka and RomanticComplication, and their relationships don't go far beyond teen romance cliches. The chance to show the audience around Republic City through Korra's eyes is largely squandered - even the technology is introduced on such an ad-hoc basis that we had no idea the Surprise New Tech in the last episode was meant to be a surprise until someone told us. The question of exactly how much truth there is behind Amon's anti-bender propoganda is left entirely to the audience's imagination, and likewise the question of whether there was any deeper significance to why Korra took so long to master airbending. And with the final battle such a bust, I'm struggling to think of a single clear, significant victory Korra has been allowed to have since way back in episode 2.

Incidentally, was it just us, or was the voice acting from episode 10 onwards all sorta flat? Everything about these episodes felt rushed - like watching the first draft of what would have been a good story crammed into far too little space and rushed out the door to meet a deadline. I really don't think we'll be back for season 2.

Still haven't found the time to write up anything detailed about Wai-con, possibly because a week later we are still recovering (if we've both been suffering from mild but persistent cases of post-con blargh it would explain a lot). Fortunately a lot of the con experience can be summed up pretty well using only three photos.

( Avatar, Birth By Sleep and Guilty Gear cosplay below )

Yes, I meant to write this as soon as I got back, now about two weeks ago. Instead, I let velithya rec me a couple of pieces of Inception fic, which is the kind of experience that you wake up from a week later trying to remember where all that missing time went (and the vague idea a spinning top is somehow necessary to help you figure it out) and not regretting a minute of it. But that's a whole other post.

So: Manifest. Quite the wild ride, and a bit of a mixed bag of what did and didn't go well, but skewed comfortably towards the positive. Details under the cut, but if you're skim-reading and not likely to get through all that, then the bit I need to point out first is this awesome-quality video of pinneagig's Azula skit which, despite all kinds of drama in the lead-up, went beautifully on the day.

( The full report + a few photos )

So that was our trip. I would list everyone else who helped make the weekend – the sadly increasing list including all our old friends who've moved over east in the last few years, all the other awesome Eastern Stater cosplay people they've introduced us to since, not to mention all the others we met at the con on the day or the terribly nice people on the tables on both sides of us in the traders hall – but I'd still probably wind up forgetting someone, so suffice to say that no matter how questionable the organisation at these cons, the company always makes up for it. <3