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I want to give korra an entirely new set of writers

the setting and the characters deserve so much better

well they're getting at least two who worked on atla and bryan is officially no longer a writer (he's back in the art department or something)

tbh i blame nickelodeon for being so flip floppy about this show and not thinking it would make enough money so it was therefore not worth having more episodes and an expanded team

the fandom still sucks tho

if they thought it was gonna be that short they should never have brought up the fuckin' love triangle shit in the first place tho

they should've stuck to the bender/nonbender conflict, which was at least interesting until it turned out that amon was a white savior equivalent

but they did stick to it? i do agree the conclusion was p vague (concerning what happens to the equalists now that amon is fish food and the lieutenant is probably dead, it's kind of strange that they conveniently disappear in six months) but i thought it was obvious by the end the whole 'benders have privilege over non-benders' angle was bullshit.

and while the love triangle was eyeroll worthy it wasn't really all that prevalent.

they should've gone into more detail with it, i mean

i thought it was obvious by the end the whole 'benders have privilege over non-benders' angle was bullshit

i'd like to hear why you think so, because tbh that wasn't really how it came across to me at all

yeah there are good benders and it seems that generally everyone gets along just fine, but even if nonbenders outnumber benders there's still a largely unacknowledged power imbalance

the complaints by the equalists about benders abusing their powers to be shitty to nonbenders (as we saw happen onscreen), and that all the political and peacekeeping forces of the city are benders, were legitimate ones even if their leader was farcical, and none of that was addressed or dealt with in any meaningful fashion by the end of s1

wrt the love triangle, i feel like it was laid on a lot more thick than in atla (probably due to the protags being older)

and to be perfectly frank korra losing her bending but then finally being able to airbend because of her love and concern for mako was pretty much total bullshit

I just think that a power imbalance was never the point. Like, the instances we see on the show are committed by a mob guy, Korra, who tries to solve all her problems with force (and I do agree that THAT should have been explored more) and a guy who just wants power for himself and is using unnecessary extreme force and who had bought out all the other council people. And the mob guy is like, not really a good example? because not all shopkeepers/businessmen are non-benders; The fact that criminals target the weak doesn't speak to who has power in this universe.

Non-benders aren't stated to be poorer by default, and it didn't say anywhere that the council people were all benders-- at least it's not a requirement to get the position, since Sokka was one of the first people in that job, and he stuck a boomerang symbol on the table.

I agree the world-building was very poor and that a lot of things were not clear due to the narrative, but frankly I thought it was pretty clear Amon was, for the most part, fear-mongering. But, most of all, the debate on how oppressed non-benders are is one of the worse examples of slack-tivism I've seen, and this is coming from a non-white person (apparently I have to specify this in this fandom. Gag me).

SA
oh, I'm a different anon btw

i get what you mean, especially re: amon, who did make things out to seem much worse than they were

i guess it's just something i could see becoming a major problem if the political situation changed and people with ideas about bender superiority got into positions of power

Korra, who tries to solve all her problems with force (and I do agree that THAT should have been explored more)

i think this was really my biggest problem with everything?

like, she grows up sheltered from the world, used to having people respect her as the avatar and using bending as the solution to everything and she just seems so out of completely touch with reality because of it

and honestly i don't think s1 did anything to change that

bluh i wish she hadn't learned airbending after losing her other bending, and that she hadn't gotten her bending back at the end of s1 because her having to think things through and solve problems without it and actually WORK to get it back would've been excellent development for her character in s2

and maybe she and asami could have become better friends over it since she's the only nonbender korra is close to, idk

(sighs because for all that it was wonderful to see asami not get demonized (by the canon, anyway) for getting in the way of makorra i still think she was shafted)

(although at least she wasn't shafted as badly as poor bolin, who pulled some kind of reverse sokka thing where he went from having depth to being little more than the party's buttmonkey)

used to having people respect her as the avatar

anon i really don't know where you get that from because the white lotus sure as hell didn't seem to have a lot of respect for her and they're the people who raised her.

seemed more like to me korra's mentality was less, "i'm the AVATAR so that means i can do whatever i want!" and more, "i'm the avatar and that means i have to help people! okay so i broke a couple of things or two but i saved the day!! yeah!"

yeah but she gives the impression of never having been punished for the dumb shit she pulls because of who she is

in the beginning she gives off the painful glare of a sheltered kid who came to make it big in the real world and didn't realize that oh whoops i actually get in realy trouble for not following rules oh um i'm not used to this

it died off as things went on and she grew more acclimated to city life, but she still handles most situations largely by throwing the weight of her title around and being all force and no subtlety

but she still handles most situations largely by throwing the weight of her title around and being all force and no subtlety

i can't really recall a moment outside of the first episode where she really used her title as the avatar as an excuse for her actions? i mean, yeah she gets involved with the task force and her fight with tarrlok later, but really that's her doing her job. idk maybe i'm misunderstanding you.

and while by the end of the series korra's no epitome of patience, i think she demonstrated it pretty well to a certain extent. she DOES listen to mako and doesn't fight tarrlok and potentially the entire police force in public and goes to tenzin to try to get her friends released the legal way before confronting tarrlok. even then, when she goes to him she just goes to TALK. tarrlok is the one who attacks her, after that she's fighting to survive. when she's kidnapped she sits and focuses on her meditation and gets results. when she gets out and is faced with amon, she turns and leaves because she knows she's in no position to fight. when tenzin tells her to go into hiding, she listens and waits until the united forces shows up (and loses horribly) before deciding to go confront amon. she decides to try to reveal amon as a sham instead of just fighting him, which compared to korra in the first episode is a HUGE improvement. she could have still chosen to fight him with the knowledge of who he was, but she chose not to. she was also totally willing to leave after amon took off his mask, but only stayed when it turned out he had captured the airbenders.

so, yeah, korra definitely demonstrated patience and relied less and less on just punching things for answers as the show went on.

oh, she definitely improved over the course of things on that front, sure

i just think she's still got a long way to go

oh i agree, but i think bryke kind of intended for it to end on a note indicating that this was just a snippet into korra's life and she still has a lot more ahead of her. but that's just how i interpreted the final scene with tenzin myself.

Yeah, I agree there's definitely potential for the political situation to turn for the worse (since there's the precedent of the Fire Nation going crazy on superiority over everything, not just bending), just that that's not where the show was headed in this particular situation. And it does make me uncomfortable that some people are so quick to get aggressive about interpretations that don't go along with the power-imbalance angle.

Agree soooo much about Korra's character development. Like, her hotheadedness and sheltering was what caused her inability to airbend, and addressing her short-comings as a level-heade, thoughtful leader would have ironed-out the gaps in the narrative that we saw regarding bender/non-bender relationships.

And it's really weird because apparently s2 is going to deal more with the spirit world and it'd have been a great opportunity for her to explore her spiritual side. I get that when they were greenlit for second-third seasons, s1 was well into production, and I think that that screwed THAT particular aspect. Though it still doesn't excuse how clunky her character development was.

Asami was preeetty much shafted :( her conflict with her dad would have been great to see explored better.

That's... that's actually the best way to describe what happened to Bolin, too. Dang.

sadly, practically EVERYONE'S character development was clunky, probably for that very reason :(

it's kind of a commentary sad state of the world when i'm happy they bothered to devote any time at all to asami's conflict with her dad

if hiroshi really is coming back next season, i hope they do more with it

(though really i want them to do more with asami and korra because dammit the avatar universe needs more solid female friendships)

hiroshi's va confirmed awhile back he did recordings for season 2. also since asami has to run the company and has no idea how i imagine she might have no choice but to visit her dad.

i'm sorry anon i had to go out to dinner and this reply is super tl;dr.

basically, the two points you bring up concerning the politicians and the police force being benders was never actually brought up in the show. amon never said, "it's a problem that the council is made entirely up of benders". he never said, "it's a problem that the non-benders on the police force are reduced to park duty". what he said was, "we need to get rid of benders". that was an incredibly fucked up solution, considering, like you said we know there are good benders. but it's also pretty troubling that no other equalist went against this. none of them said, "well hey wait a minute something about this sounds fishy". why didn't hiroshi with all of his money try to work with the police force? i'm sure the non-bending police sure would have liked those electric gloves and nets and whatnot.

anyway we know from the flashback non-benders are allowed on the council. there was literally no indication that this had changed between then and now, so i'm actually going to say it hasn't. if it had tenzin, the only fucking benders on the council who stood against tarrlok's bill, sure as hell would've brought it up. if the government favored benders over non-benders it would've been mentioned by someone IN the show. and not to be a smart alec, but we don't actually know if the representatives from the swt and the ek are benders. if they were, then you know it was probably a really shitty coincidence that happened to have timed with amon's uprising. regardless, amon made it clear during his attack on the probending arena (in which non-benders were in the audience and being threatened by equalists) that the equalists didn't give a shit if you were a bender or a non-bender: if you stood in their way, they would get rid of you. the equalists weren't exactly oozing sympathy. the representatives are also chosen in their respective home countries, which imo is a lot more messed up than them all being benders. the council itself is a pretty flawed concept that probably worked a lot better in the city's earlier days, now that i think about it.

concerning the police, imo the structure of the force is incredibly vague, because there are only thirty metalbenders tops so i can't see what they would need that hugeass building for. is lin chief of the metalbending police or the entire force? because tarrlok had a task force of what could only be waterbending cops, mako is a firebender and a cop, and again there was our park cop who wasn't a bender. i'll partially concede this point on the grounds that we don't know enough about the police force to say whether or not it favors benders over non-benders. the show focusing on the metalbenders so much probably had more to do with them being run by toph's daughter than it had to do with oppression.

like, anyone can tell you benders using their powers to oppress other is bad. korra fights triads members in the first episode, and she fights tarrlok later on when HE abuses his power. tenzin fights against him (verbally) in the council meeting. an entire race of benders was nearly wiped out at one time, waterbenders were nearly extinct in the south pole, earthbenders were round up and sent to prison camps. i'm not saying this to try and prove that benders are the actual oppressed, but to point out the idea that society in avatar favors benders is ridiculous. but when your criminal class is mostly composed of a certain people, you shouldn't be thinking, "well gee i guess we better get rid of benders", you should be asking, "why are so many benders in the triads? what has made them resort to a life of crime?". now i cannot speak for every triad member, buuut mako and bolin were both in the gang and they're dirt poor. i really don't think that's a coincidence, i think it's bryke trying to send a message.

the imbalance in rc, imo, was actually between the classes and not the benders and non-benders. the satos were rich as fuck and they couldn't bend. mako and bolin have had a shitty life since their parents died and they're benders. there was a group of homeless benders and non-benders in the last episodes, people like to think that was bryke's way of glazing over the imbalance but it was more like their way of saying no, here is your real inequality. here is your real problem. the equalists were people angry with the economy and wanted answers, amon who had his own personal agenda took advantage of that anger and twisted it into something ugly. i'm not saying that every single equalist was just some angry loser who had no reason to distrust benders, i would have actually loved a sympathetic equalist who becomes disgusted with the movement and leaves it, but the closest we got to that was asami. point is, no matter what the reason was it doesn't justify wiping out benders.

i agree lok had a LOT of flaws and i really wish some things had played out differently, and yeah the equalists could have had a more solid ending (did they all just give up and go home? what was it like in rc those couple of days after amon was revealed to be a sham? were the united forces able to bounce back and take the city if morale was at an all time low? since hiroshi is in season 2, is it possible that there's still a movement that's retreated underground?) but when it came down to it the equalists' in the end were more akin to a terrorist cell than a group of revolutionary heroes.

this is a really good post, very well thought out, and you raise a lot of good points i hadn't considered

thank you, anon!

yw!

like i said lok had a lot of flaws! it's by no means a perfect show and i would have loved a more in depth look at the equalist movement/the economic situation in rc. bryke are amazing idea guys but i really do wish someone had been there to tell them maybe they need to cut back/rethink on some things.

Excellent point about the class imbalance being the underlying problem. It would fit, too, considering the time period the show takes place in, and the shift towards industry we see.

is that for season 2 or 3 that the changes are happening? because if so i may get back into it

maybe

depending on how fucking annoying mako is. i have never done such a 180 on a character before Mako. I didn't even think it was possible (for me) to go from loving to hating.

the changes are official as of book 2, anon! like i said they brought back two old writers who worked on atla. mike is still a writer (but he did write episodes of atla) and bryan is now solely focused on the artwork.

concerning mako we don't know much about him except he's a cop + hunting members of the triad. also there is another romance subplot, but it's about mako and korra learning to handle them being apart from each other due to their jobs so... maybe he won't be around a lot?

When I rage quit I don't even check out the news so thanks! This is new info to me . I shall now be cautiously curious about book2 :)

[ FS Anon Meme ]

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