#i actually prefer korra's handle of antagonists but that's a whole can of worms i'll leave closed

[starberry-cupcake]

@nero-neptune replied to your post:

as good as lok, i stand by the belief that it couldve been so much better if the team behind it didnt have to worry about whether or not they were going to get cancelled every new season

I'll reply in a separate post because I tried to summarize but I couldn't lol

It was nerve-wracking and annoying as a viewer back then to be chasing the show around and hoping it'd get its due time to close rather than get cancelled halfway. HOWEVER, I think that an unintended perk of the uncertainty, and a way in which they made it work, was that Korra got to have seasons with distinct and separate conflicts and very different antagonists, which represented more complex and conflicting ways to be opposed to the Avatar. I don't know if this journey of separate issues would have happened had they known from season 1 that they were to have 4, like they did with atla. It was also a great way to introduce more complex political and social topics for an audience which had grown up.

That being said, even with the messy situation, bryke & co had more luck with their shows than current animators do today, because nobody but Alex Hirsch seems to be able to finish an animated show on their terms. This situation with the inconsistent networks and how they pull the plug when they please is also increased by how little respect both mainstream media and animation-specific platforms have for animated shows that are for "general audiences", those which aren't "for little kids" (aka middle schoolers or younger) or "for adults" (aka shows where people curse and/or have explicit content). The Emmy nominations that came out recently continue with this trend, in which animation for general audiences, which is the most popular fandom-wise, isn't respected, not only on the mainstream platforms but also in animation ones (like the Annies, in which these shows don't fit any of the categories for best series).

So, networks don't know what to do with these, apparently. They treat them like they would any sitcom without narrative and expect creators to be able to tie all loose ends within a small af heads-up. It's been happening even to shows with big response and popularity and nobody seems to be completely safe.