Legend of Korra: The Beifong Bunch

[gandhi the peacemake]

You're right, there's no signs whatsoever of her being old and less sprightly than she used to be... aside from Toph outright saying she is and that her back is killing her anyway.

Toph has a sarcastic personality. She says she's old and her back is killing her, and then she cleans Korra's clock without breaking a sweat. I suppose you and I just read her differently. It would be quite something to see her physically fatigued, though; have her breathing heavily while she berates Kuvira, or draw some sweat on her brow, or so.

So the moon is a spirit that's also a fish, whatever, symbolism.

It's not just symbolism. Symbolism would have the fish imply the moon spirit, a thematic connection. Rather, the moon spirit IS the fish, or at least manifests itself as the fish. It's much the same as the Avatar manifesting itself in sequential human forms. (That is, at least until LoK maybe-maybe-not retcons the Avatar.) It's a higher power taking physical form.

Anyway it heals the princess as a baby for some reason. How does it heal her? Don't know. Does it regularly heal people or just her, and if so why? Never explained.

Actually... (explanation incoming)

Waterbending has healing properties, and as the genesis of waterbending, it stands to reason that it would have healing abilities. As for the specific how, I'm pretty sure they give Yue a bath in (holy?) water and pray to the moon spirit. I could be wrong on that, though. Haven't watched TLA in a while.

Does it heal people regularly? Maybe. It's mentioned that the moon spirit is the original waterbender and the source of waterbending, so one could postulate that every time a waterbender heals someone, it's actually the moon spirit doing so. That being said, does the moon spirit regularly heal people the way it does Yue? Seeing as how they don't mention any other cases like hers, the answer is likely no. As for the why...

Maybe because it sees the future or something and knows it will need to be reborn?

It's not out of the realm of possibility that it could have some sort of precognitive ability, but I think the more likely scenario is the moon spirit felt particularly generous that night. Still, it does give Yue's father a dream that she would replace it one day, so... maybe.

Aang has to explain the concept of forests regrowing to a forest spirit so obviously spirit aren't particular omniscient, or bright in some cases for that matter.

Again, this is going off of memory because I haven't seen it in a while, but I'm pretty sure the spirit is rampaging blindly against humans because humans have burned down its forest (either over the course of the century-long war or in one fell swoop, both of which would be traumatic). So even when humans try to grow new trees, the spirit has been taken over with indiscriminate hatred towards humans.

We never see any other spirit showing signs of foresight or anything particularly mystical in that respect either...

The swamp spirit, manifested in the giant tree, shows Aang his future earthbending teacher. I suppose that's one. The lion turtle abducts Aang before the battle to teach him energy-bending. The badger moles find Toph and teach her her unique form of earthbending. The guru Pathik meets both Appa and Aang at the air temple. They might not explicitly be signs of foresight, but they certainly possess an air of intent.

This ... allows Aang to turn into a giant spirit fish monster in a move that was never foreshadowed, implied, and is pretty much never mentioned or brought up again,

I'd say that it's heavily foreshadowed and implied by the very same forest spirit incident that you mentioned.

presumably having been empowered by the other fish spirit present. Really might have wanted to pull that move before the moon was killed buddy, just a thought.
...
You'd think that knowing he can be empowered by the moon to turn into a giant fish monster would be a pretty handy trick, especially now that he knows the moon personally, but again it's never brought up or explained so maybe it was a one-time thing. Whatever.

His turn as giant fish god of wrath only comes about because the Fire Nation kills the moon spirit, and the ocean spirit is reacting to it. It's an emotional response. There really isn't a way for him to take on that form beforehand. That's not to say that he (and the ocean spirit) couldn't return to that form intentionally, but that he probably shouldn't. It wouldn't be a good idea to try, if you get what I'm saying.

So Godzilla Aang totally doesn't kill anyone as he sinks ships and fights the fire army

Actually, he (and ocean spirit) fights everybody. The only reason the Water Tribe are spared is because they know their pissed off god when they see it, and so they show it proper reverence.

while it turns out the moon can be brought back because a piece of it is in the princess because it healed her as a child, and wouldn't you know it, she just happens to be standing right there

One might say that it saw all of this, or at least enough of this, beforehand, and made preparations for the eventuality. Her being at the right place at the right time could be happenstance, or it could be planning on the moon spirit's part, or a bit of both.

Iroh conveniently happens to also be there to explain all this having himself learned it from... stuff. Whatever. Again never explained.

Yes, stuff. It's never explicitly shown where or how he learns what he knows, but that's because they're not exactly important to the larger story, are they? His demeanor (different as it is from most Fire Nation citizens), what little bits of his past can be gleaned, his advice, all of it points to an enlightened understanding of the world, and when that world includes elemental bending and spirits, his understanding of them invariably heightens as well.

Anyway. Not to get too argumentative, but there you are, some counterpoints.

 

[The Madman]

Toph has a sarcastic personality. She says she's old and her back is killing her, and then she cleans Korra's clock without breaking a sweat. I suppose you and I just read her differently. It would be quite something to see her physically fatigued, though; have her breathing heavily while she berates Kuvira, or draw some sweat on her brow, or so.

It's also a bit silly to assume Toph is lying as opposed to just admitting that at the age of 80sh or whatever she is she might not be as spry as she was as a kid. People get old, it's fine, it happens to everyone who isn't named King Bumi. Is it really that hard to believe she just might not feel up to taking on one of the most powerful earthbender around alongside a force of goons, mechs, and reinfocements that are almost certainly on the way all while also putting her family in danger?

Because that makes sense to me. I just automatically understood that it was the case till I popped online and saw people debating it.

Anyway. Not to get too argumentative, but there you are, some counterpoints.

See, I did actually just watch Avatar for the first time recently, The Last Airbender is still fresh in my mind which is probably why I'm getting so annoyed with everyone praising it to high heaven while criticizing Korra for making the same sorts of mistakes the original series is rife with. I also never watched it previously so I don't have any particular nostalgia for it.

And while I appreciate the time and effort you put into that reply, it doesn't actually answer anything. It's all just assumption and educated guesswork for the most part with a few mistakes thrown in. That scene with the forest spirit getting all ragey? The forest was just recently destroyed, there are still footprints from the people who did it and it's never implied this had been going on for a while, just that it had happened recently setting off the spirits anger. A spirit which calms down when Aang gives a kids-friendly educational speech about how everything will grow back eventually as he holds up a seed, the spirit itself presumably having not figured out for itself that forest-fire happen all the time, natural or not, and that forests grow back.

This was back in season 1 where the shows creators hadn't quite figured out whether they were doing a kids show or not, thus the moralization the first season and a couple later ones are rife with.

I also don't see how a spirit tearing about houses foreshadows the ability for Aang to be turned into a giant fish monster, because unless I missed something nothing like that was ever implied or even hinted at before or after the fish-monster-transformation in question... but now I'm getting sucked into debating semantics. Surely you at least see my point?

I do love avatar, I really do, both TLA and LoK have been a blast to watch. I'm just getting frustrated. Should probably avoid Avatar-related posts and topics till the series is over.

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

snip

Fair's fair. I'd say most of your post either a) consists of points I disagree on, or b) fails to invalidate my previous statements. But that's the nature of discussion, I guess.

Anyway, Korra and co.: I've said this before, but so long as Korra and Asami end up together by show's end, I'll consider the four-seasons-long slog worth it.

 

[happyninja42]

Toph has a sarcastic personality. She says she's old and her back is killing her, and then she cleans Korra's clock without breaking a sweat. I suppose you and I just read her differently. It would be quite something to see her physically fatigued, though; have her breathing heavily while she berates Kuvira, or draw some sweat on her brow, or so.

It's also a bit silly to assume Toph is lying as opposed to just admitting that at the age of 80sh or whatever she is she might not be as spry as she was as a kid. People get old, it's fine, it happens to everyone who isn't named King Bumi. Is it really that hard to believe she just might not feel up to taking on one of the most powerful earthbender around alongside a force of goons, mechs, and reinfocements that are almost certainly on the way all while also putting her family in danger?

Bold for emphasis:

Yes, everyone who isn't King Bumi....or Uncle Iroh, or the elders of the White Lotus society who single handedley reclaimed Bah Sing Se, or the really old and decrepit blood bender lady, who had suffered decades of incarceration and was still able to be a terrifying threat. Nobody is saying that Toph is lying about being too old to fight, what we are saying is there is a difference in Show and Tell. The writers had the character tell] us that she was too old and broken to fight, but then showed us no evidence of this actually being the case. She never exhibited any stress, or signs of aging. She never grunted, or shuffled about like she was suffering from pain. If she had been shown to be winded, or winced every time she did earth bending when she was spanking Korra, then fine, I would have no problem with them establishing her as being too weak to do the fighitng. But they didn't. She appeared to be just as healthy as any of the numerous other geriatric asskickers in the Avatar-verse, so I call bullshit on the idea that she didn't have the strength to smash that gun.

This isn't a fault of Toph, this is a fault of the writing and episode portrayal. To give the example others have made of Toph being Yoda, after he lifted the X-Wing out of the bog, he very clearly was drained by the effort. It was obvious it took a lot out of him, so if they had said later in that movie that Yoda couldn't do something because of his health, it would've made sense. They would've already established he has limits, and doing stuff like lifting tons of metal were pushing it. They did no such equivalent thing with Toph. Which is why, based on what is actually shown in the episode, it made it all the more obvious that they were keeping Toph from saving the day, simply because the show is supposed to make us care about the young cast of characters. And I don't really have a problem with them doing that in theory, as I've said before, the show isn't called The Legend of Toph (though I wish it was.) So having the Big Bad Gun be active until the main protagonist destroys it is fine, but at least make it obvious that the Deus Ex Machina of Awesomeness that is Toph is shown to be weaker and unable to fight like she used to first.