#like when and how does the docu release? have to be before the attack since the vamps attack because of lestat's book

[nutmeggery]

oh but you know what, though? since Daniel is making the docu with Lestat it means he'll probably be there with Lestat (and Louis) when the attack after the concert hits.. which means Armand very well might show up to save him (unlike in the book when they were already together at the concert)

[kingwuko]

Wuko in the comics

Welcome to my first post discussing Wuko in the LoK comic books!

This first post will be discussing Turf Wars- which unfortunately does not feature Wu. But there are lots of excellent Mako moments, and there are some major plot points that carry over into the next comic trilogy.

Turf Wars is the first LoK comic trilogy released after the finale. Though it was released two and half years after the finale aired, it picks up right where we left off. While the creators confirmed after the finale aired that Korrasami was canon, the last moments of the animated series were a little ambiguous (on purpose, since this was a time when queer representation was just not considered "acceptable" in children's media-it was truly the only way they could get away with it). The comics definitively remove all ambiguity. Turf Wars features multiple frames of Korra and Asami kissing, holding hands, and coming out to their friends and family. 

The overarching plot of Turf Wars is a conflict over the land upon which the new spirit portal sets. There is also conflict between rival Triad gangs, the Triple Threats and the Creeping Crystals, over turf in Republic City following the chaos of Kuvira's invasion. These two sets of turf wars overlap when a business tycoon hires the Triple Threats to secure the spirit portal for him by driving others off. The new Leader of the Triple Threats, Tokuga, is attacked by a spirit defending the portal, causing him to gain a dragon-like appearance and a new agenda-seizing control of all Republic City. In the midst of all this there is a refugee crisis, a presidential election, and Korra and Asami trying to navigate their new relationship once they return to the real world with all their responsibilities.

Notable plot points and character developments:

Korra and Asami canon is confirmed (repeatedly)-They come out to family and their friends

Business owner Wonyong Keum, who owns the land upon which the new portal sits, demands everyone vacate so he can turn it into a tourist attraction for profit-prompting Korra to enter the Avatar state to temporarily drive him away.

An unhappy spirit requests Korra closes the portal to prevent exploitation of the spirit world.

Bolin joins Mako as his rookie detective partner.

Zhu Li is running efforts to care for refugees who lost their homes during Kuvira’s attack and teams up with Asami to begin rebuilding homes for everyone displaced.

Tokuga is introduced as the leader of the Triple Threats, fighting for control of the streets with Jargala, the leader of the Creeping Crystals.

Kya reveals she is queer and gives us a history lesson on the context of LGBTQ+ history in the world.

Tokuga is attacked by the afore-mentioned spirit and his right arm and half his face become dragon-esque.

Raiko is a colossal idiot. He is way too focused on getting reelected and making his decisions based on what his campaign advisor suggests, rather than just, you know, governing his city. He calls the military to occupy the portal, prompting the Airbenders to peacefully protest.

Zhu Li runs against Raiko for the presidency. She rallies more protesters to protect the spirit portal while her husband films her for his newest project- a “docu-mover” which he presumably uses to influence the election. 

Asami and Keum are kidnapped by Tokuga and forced to make a poison gas device bring the city under Tokuga’s control.

The Krew manages to save the day of course, thanks to Asami’s wit, Korra’s unstoppable stubbornness, and back-up from Bolin and Mako. Except Mako, bless him, says he’ll “take care of Tokuga”, and then promptly loses him.

Tokuga mysteriously disappears into the spirit world.

Zhu Li wins the presidency.

Korra and Asami share a lovely, romantic moment where they exchange their first “I love you”s at the conclusion of the comic.

Mako scenes

There is no Wu in the Turf Wars comics (Unless you count one line of dialogue where it is mentioned that the Earth Kingdom is sending supplies to help the refugee situation) - however, there is plenty of Mako! Mako’s primary role in this series is as a detective trying to find and stop the Triads from waging their turf war in the city.

Our first scenes with Mako shows him back to being a detective- and his brother is his partner. He doesn’t seem super thrilled to be working with Bolin, but I think it’s just because he knows how his brother is- not that he doesn’t want to spend time with him. They are trying to track down the new leader of the triple threats and control gang activity. Mako’s arm is still in a sling, he’s got his usual brooding grumpy facial expression, and his hair is spiky again! He and Bolin arrest two-toed Ping and try to interrogate him. Two-toed Ping is weirdly proud of Mako and Bolin for rising up from being “nobodies” to a couple of “bigtime cops”.

They catch up with Korra and Asami, and the four of them are alerted by Jinora that the Triple threats are attacking the Airbenders that were meditating at the portal. Asami gets hurt in the battle and she and Korra share a kiss in front of everyone:

Look at Opal’s sweet face. She looks like she’s barely containing her excitement and is maybe squealing a bit, and she’s looking directly at Bolin which I think is a sweet moment to show their relationship. Bolin calls dibs on the first double date.

Mako probably needs time to process the information....

Mako and Bolin do some detective work to try and find Tokuga. There is an interesting scene where they are questioning Scoochy (We saw him in the first season, he’s the kid that told Korra and Mako the Bolin went to do some work for the triple threats before getting captured by equalists) Bolin tells Mako they should do “good cop, bad cop”, with Bolin being the good cop. Mako gets annoyed, and Bolin asks if he’s grumpy because his exes are dating. Mako insists he’s cool with it- though he’s got a distressed look on his face. They catch up to Scoochy and Bolin actually loses his temper and is rather menacing. Mako pulls Bolin back and genuinely connects with Scoochy- relating to his past, pushing him to do the right thing and help others. I really liked this moment because it shows how much character growth he’s had when you compare the way he treated Kai in season 3. (They are ultimately unsuccessful and Scoochy’s tip leads them to a room rigged with explosives- but I don’t think Scoochy knew that, I think he was fed false info).

There’s another touching scene, after Asami is kidnapped, where Mako notices how upset Korra seems as everyone is trying to form a plan to stop Tokuga. He steps aside to check in and see how she’s feeling. He comforts her’ empathizes with her, and reassures her that they are going to find Asami. At this point he seems to have fully processed that they are together and seems to fully accept it and is very supportive. Not easy considering the awkward position he’s in as both their exes. In this scene, Mako also informs Korra that he can’t firebend with his injured arm.

Mako and Bolin helps Korra to find Asami by requesting help from Jargala- in spite of the fact that Chief Beifong told them not to… They show up for Korra and Asami even if it means risking their jobs. They team up and fight the bad guys together, just like the old days.

We see many examples of how bad the damage is from Mako’s injury in the Colossus. He can’t bend with his left arm, it’s in a sling almost the whole comic, and he really doesn’t seem to be at the top of his game. He told Bolin he would take care of catching Tokuga, but apparently couldn’t and lost him. Mako’s injury is pretty bad and it’s probably really frustrating.

At the end, Bolin decides to quit the force (surprise. The guy loves to hop from calling to calling!). He makes a big dramatic speech to Mako, talking about how it’s time they go their separate ways. Mako is like “Um I’m going to see you at home in like two hours”, so it sounds like they are living together.

What all this might mean for Wuko

So now I’m going to try to tie things back into how all this affects the potential of Wuko- whether that’s for headcanons or fics or whatever- and just try to give you an idea of what this comic means for Wuko shippers.

Wu is governing in the Earth Kingdom right now. It is mentioned by Zhu Li that the Earth Kingdom sent supplies, so one can assume Wu has taken his place on the throne and the Earth Kingdom is in a stable enough position to be sending supplies to aid another nation. Nothing is mentioned about efforts to transform the Earth Kingdom into a democratic nation (we’ll get to that in the Ruins of the Empire comics).

Mako’s primary relationships that are explored are with his brother and with Korra. His relationship with Bolin is just as it always is. He loves his brother even if he is a little exhausted by his upbeat, enthusiastic attitude. We build up on his final interaction with Korra from the animated series and continue to firmly establish them as friends and amicable exes. Interestingly, we don’t get any meaningful Mako and Asami interactions. When he is comforting Korra, he relates to her by remembering how worried he was when Korra was kidnapped by Amon. He doesn't try to say “Yeah I’m really worried about Asami too”, which, to me is bizarre because he and Asami are friends too, right? I don’t know if we should read too much into it though- most likely it was just a writing choice that we aren’t meant to psycho-analyze- but it could also mean he is being careful with his words so that Korra doesn’t wonder if he still has feelings for Asami. The love triangle is completely resolved and Mako is out of the picture romantically with either of them and has no lingering romantic feelings. In other words, he is 100% ready available for a relationship with someone else.

The scene where Kya gives us a history lesson establishes how LGBTQ+ people are viewed in the world of LoK. In short, Korra and Asami are fully supported by their friends and family, and even their enemies acknowledge their relationship without any homophobic tones. The closest we get to homophobia is Korra's father, who, after expressing his happiness at their relationship, warns Korra to be cautious going forward because not everyone will be as understanding. Kya gives us a quick lesson on how same-gender relationships are viewed across the nations: The water tribe, being a patriarchal culture, expects discretion. The Earth Kingdom is not particularly accepting-Kya says that Avatar Kyoshi was bisexual but couldn't affect "real change" and that the earth kingdom is the slowest to accept change and is also militarily repressive (full disclosure I have not read the Kyoshi comics, maybe there is additional insight in those?). And in the fire nation, Sozin made same-gender relationships illegal when he took power (I hope Zuko undid all that when he became Firelord). The air nation is the only one that seems truly accepting-Kya paints a picture of total acceptance and says that Aang was supportive when she herself came out. Korra is worried that maybe her father was right, but Asami points out that a lot has changed over the years and everyone seems accepting, especially in Republic City. 

I think what we can take away from this as far as Wuko goes- is that in Republic City, same-gender relationships are not much of an issue, while in the Earth Kingdom it could be viewed negatively. One could make a case that Wu might have cause to be closeted, while Mako might not. (Feel free to reject this history canon and substitute your own. I’d just as soon say that no one in the avatar-verse cares if you aren’t cis or het).

In conclusion. Mako is just a guy trying very hard to be a good, supportive friend to his exes who are now dating each other. He loves them (platonically) he loves his brother, he’s kind and has matured a lot, but he still always has a grumpy look on his face so it’s time for him to move on and get together with Wu.

Well, that’s Turf Wars. I did cram the plot of three comic books into one post, so I certainly did not hit all the details. If you feel I missed something crucial, feel free to reblog with your own takes. Next I’ll discuss Ruins of the Empire, in which we get lots of Wu and potential Wuko moments, a sizable helping of angst and even some Wu & Korra friendship! RotE is a really fun comic trilogy and I’ll be breaking it down into multiple posts. Thanks for reading everyone!

Wuko In RotE part 1

Wuko in RotE part 2

[hb-pickle]

Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 - Review

Finally finished watching all 6 episodes of the Frozen 2 Documentary! My consensus is drum roll please... it was not very good.

Things I liked first: I loved watching the team get emotional when they saw their projects coming together (finishing Into The Unknown, etc). 

Watching random guys rub rocks together for sound design was funny. 

I loved looking at the Disney offices and all the merch, posters, art, etc. 

The actors/workers were very charismatic and believable. They seemed to legit enjoy their work and were happy to help. 

- -

Criticism: 

The documentary promised to be a look into all the hard work, collaboration, blood, sweat and tears, it took to make Frozen 2, but it came off more as a look into the very final stages of Show Yourself and a few unfinished animation clips. So little of the actual movie making process was shown and it was extremely misleading and frustrating.

-

Songs:

Songs and the songwriting process were definitely the aspect of F2 Disney was most comfortable showing, but that’s saving very little because the attention per song was extremely restricted and lopsided. About 50% of the entire docu-series focuses on just Show Yourself while every other song gets about 20 to 1 minute(s) of screentime (in order from most to least discussion, it goes: Next Right Thing, Into The Unknown, Lost In The Woods, Some Things Never Change, When I’m Older, All Is Found, and Vuile isn’t even mentioned by name). And even when they did discuss these songs, they only showed the lyrics that got into the movie, no cut lyrics or alternatives were shown at all. So it was just long extended scenes of Jenn and the Lopez’ trying to decide whether they should or should not add parts to the song which we, as the viewer, already know were added. And again, they showed no alternatives, so it wasn’t a choice of A or B, it was A or maybe rewrite the middle-ish but no specifics. 

They didn't even discuss the public outtakes / deleted scenes they've already released / planned to release like "Get This Right", "Seek The Truth", "Unmeltable Me", etc (they did mention “See They Sky” but nothing else). 

The last thing I’d like to mention for this category is that they did discuss the intended emotions / themes of the songs they kept in. They talk about how Show Yourself was supposed to make you feel empowered and satisfyingly wrap up the story, how Next Right Thing was supposed to make you feel just as emotionally raw as Anna, etc. So I can give them credit for that. But again, these explanations became few and far between once they got into the “lesser” songs. Nor do they explain why certain songs were added to the story; for example When I’m Older’s entire existence was justified with “kids really liked it���. “Lost In The Woods” was an 80’s rock ballad because they kinda just wanted to make a 80’s song, etc.

-

Animation:

Again, just like the songs, Disney was very comfortable showing off the animation process, but only unfinished clips, models, skeletons, etc of shots that were actually used in the film and nothing else. But, I did have fun watching animators physically act out character movements, record them, and then animate them (ex: that poor girl who recorded like 5 shots of her own face singing, all super imposed on bobbing reindeer shaped bubbles for the Lost In The Woods scene lol).

The most new/deleted content they showed were storyboards and sketches of Show Yourself  where we got to see alt. backgrounds of Ahtohallan and young Iduna and and See the Sky which was a dance-off type thing between the Northuldra / Arendelle soldiers.

-

Story:

This, and every consecutive category, is where this documentary was severely lacking. They showed no alternative scenes or storylines like “Hard Nokks” or the secret library. Nor did they go into the intended messages/significance of the story elements they did use, like why they chose to trap the Enchanted Forest in mist, why they spared Arendelle, why Elsa left Arendelle, why they chose a dam for the physical boundary they needed to destroy (even though apparently it was loosely based on an IRL dam that hurt the IRL Sami people; I got this from outside resources), etc. 

They also don’t dive into any character motivations (outside of the context of Elsa in Show Yourself/Into The Unknown, Anna in Next Right Thing, and Kristoff in Lost In The Woods). 

They very explicitly refused to discuss any changes they made to the script. In episode 5 they spend a lot of time emphasizing the importance of audience feedback but refuse to show any actual feedback (they even talk about how they gave out questionnaires but don’t even show us a blank one). This was very blatant and annoying because they spent a lot of time looking DIRECTLY at the camera going on about how important feedback was, how being willing to change was important, how they DID change things, and how change impacted a lot of the movie (ex: cutting songs and simplifying things for children), but refused to show anything. The one (1) change they did show was the prologue, so we see young Anna and Elsa playing before we see Agnarr's flashback, but that was pretty much it. 

-

Design / Environments:

Character design and dress design was not discussed at all. They do show us a few seconds of fabric physics for Elsa’s spirit dress and show us how they designed Olaf when he was pretending to be Grand Pabbie (using his snowball feet as ears and ferns as a cape), but nothing else. You’d think that since Elsa and Anna both had like 5 costume changes each, they’d want to discuss that, but no. Nor do they even mention Iduna’s shawl / the unity snowflake which had a ton of significance in the movie. They also don’t discuss the designs of the spirits or their symbols (or even water animation for the Nokk’s body which would’ve been perfect in the animation portions). 

-

Research: 

The only research we see them doing is visiting IRL glaciers for Ahtohallan in episode 3. This was neat and all, but also very bittersweet because they really emphasized how spectacular and breathtaking Ahtohallan was going to be, but it was literally just an empty cave made of ice; and not even shiny ice (like Elsa’s castle) just dark, flat, and blue. Like I know creating environments is hard but Ahtohallan is very literally empty besides a few extremely narrow hallways and dark colorless abysses. Like it may have been hard to build in a computer but it was NOT creative nor something to boast about (especially compared to the concept art they showed). But this is all my opinion...

They do show a black sand beach which greatly inspired the black sea, but otherwise they don’t show the research it took to properly replicate the Enchanted Forest (like plant life and ecology) nor any of the locations Elsa and the gang briefly passed through on the way to the forest. 

Most egregiously of all they completely omit the Sami community and their contributions to the film. They don’t address them by name or even acknowledge the Northuldra are based on them. Nor do they mention the apparent collaboration they did with the Sami community to accurately replicate their culture. The closest they get to acknowledging them or their hand in the creation of F2 was that the subtitles described Vuilie was a "yoik". Which does not count, since no one even says it out loud. You could dismiss all my other complaints about the lack of content and deleted scenes, but this is just flat out disrespectful. 

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Ending Note: 

To me, I just don't see the point of this. If this entire documentary was condensed into an hour long YouTube video and explicitly only about the songs/animation I would've been perfectly happy and would've given this an A! Maybe even more because the little parts about the sound design and interviews with the cast would've been little bonuses. But I can't because this is a 6 episode Disney+ only "documentary" on all of F2. 

Tl;Dr - I expected a lot more, but was severely disappointed. I wanted an inside sneak peak on the making of one of Disney’s most iconic and my personal favorite IP, but instead I got 240 minutes of Jennifer Lee and the Lopez’ trying to feel the vibe of Show Yourself and crying. Surely they could’ve cut some of that out to talk about literally anything else. Watching this just felt pointless and I was never engaged nor were my curiosities satisfied. 

-

Extra Note:

For about 10 minutes at the end of one episode (which may seem short but that’s like ¼ of an episode), the documentary takes a detour to talk about Ryder Buck. Ryder Buck was Chris Buck’s (one of the director) son who died shortly after F1 was released, and I mean no disrespect but the sequence dedicated to him had nothing to do with the film or documentary. One of the F2 character’s was named after Ryder, but that was the only connection (they don’t even mention if Ryder in Frozen was based personality-wise on IRL Ryder, just that they shared a name). The whole 10 minute sequence was literally just a charity event in Ryder’s name and Chris and his wife sitting on a mountain talking about how they miss him. Again, no disrespect and I’m sorry Ryder Buck died so young, but a documentary on Frozen 2 wasn’t an appropriate place or time to talk about him.

Crossing out this section because some people took this as an opportunity to attack Chris Buck and his son, which is completely unacceptable and disgusting.