Korra forgot something warmer to wear, Asami to the rescue.

<disclaimer: if you like the picture and want to reblog it but don’t like the rant feel free to just reblog the drawing and delete the rant :-)>

We rarely share our personal thoughts and we hope that people will not get too upset with it. This is us venting some frustration. So now follows a rant that sort of got out of hand real fast.

The thing is that we have seen the Bryan Konietzko statement reblogged many times and other posts on the subject praising the relationship between Korra and Asami. These posts talk about representation and exposure and such things. Which in general is great, but we are getting more and more annoyed with this praise, because the show as a whole was a let-down to us. Like throwing in some diversity redeems the show somehow. We are annoyed not because we don’t want queer couples in our entertainment, or other pairings which are not standard white heteronormative. Actually we want as many different pairings and stories as possible, we get annoyed with the generic stuff very easily and quickly.

The thing is that the LoK ending is a scrap thrown at the audience, or so we both felt when we saw it. We know, some will argue that better a scrap than a kick on the butt, which is the more common scenario. See, but this isn’t even a tasty juicy scrap straight from the table, it is some dried-up thing that has sat in the fridge for a few days and is rather unappetizing so, if anyone, the dog should have it. Why do we see it as such? The explanation is longish and addresses the series as a whole.

LoK had huge shoes to fill, because its predecessor has made a huge impact and did a lot of things flawlessly. AtLA was a very well written show. It had a somewhat generic main plot point – kids saving the world, great odds against them, the great evil guy and so on – but the whole idea was packed in a neat fresh world, and had great characters. The core cast and the secondary characters were all very well thought through, they all had these humanizing dimensions, everyone was balanced, they had their great features, their annoying features, their funny features, their touching features, strengths, quirks, weaknesses etc. Take anyone and you’ll see all these things there. And their individual arcs were spread out over the whole series, their changing attitudes, bonding or growing animosities seemed realistic, we could see where they come from.

In LoK there is nothing like that. The characters are very badly written, their arcs are chaotic and chopped up. One of the obvious culprits of this situation is Nickelodeon, because the company just didn’t know what it wanted, it didn’t commit to long seasons or to any particular number of seasons up front. Then there were budget shenanigans and the such. So we get it, planning anything under such circumstances is hard. So it will puzzle us to no end why did Bryke decide to stuff into the show as many characters as they did. When in doubt mitigate the fuck-up potential, less characters means more time to give justice to all of them. And the one villain per season thing only made things worse, with the second season having the most redundant villain of all – the same plot point (opening the spirit world) could have been done without a bad guy at all. Each season tries to be a standalone thing and this makes the whole thing even more haphazard. So when Konietzko talks about planning things than happened in the final season while working on book one we are both baffled – for realz?!? this mess was planned?!?

Because the main plot (we could even argue that there is no proper main plot for the whole thing) issues aside the biggest and most crushing disappointment was the complete lack of character development. Throughout all four books the development is erratic, forced or deus ex machina, if it happens at all. And characters show up and disappear to reappear again sometimes for no reason at all. And two of the main characters are completely unlikable and have no redeeming features in our oppinion.

First of all Korra herself. She is so horrible. She has the psyche of a five-year-old with an inclination towards frequent temper tantrums. Not even a spoilt rebellious teen, because she literally has no idea how to deal with people around her. Everything has to be spelt out to her with the crowning example in season two when uncle Iroh tells her that other creatures will be nice to her if she is nice to them… that shit is taught to kids in kindergarten. The girl doesn’t show even a glimpse of introspection and she doesn’t figure out anything on her own. Everything she learns is because shit just happens magically to her (how she learns airbending) or someone explains things to her, here again comes another moment with uncle Iroh when he tells her to talk to Zuko… because Zuko is there but how should she ever guess that talking to him could be useful (not that he says anything useful btw – the insertion of Zuko into the series was the worst fanservice in LoK and all the fanservice bits were rather bad). And people say she was sheltered by the White Lotus and blah blah. We call bullshit on that. She wasn’t locked away from people and fed through a hole in the wall. None of these wise masters thought it necessary to socialise her? To teach her some humility, which is a feature of many martial arts? And what about her parents, didn’t they find it embarrassing that their daughter has zero social skills? That she is selfish, narcissistic, thoughtless and hotheaded? And they are not some simple people living in hut on the outskirts of civilisation who have no understanding of the world or of the grand tasks the avatar has to deal with. They are of ruling class and they should understand the politics of the avatar’s position. Why have they not prepared Korra for that? Why has nobody thought of teaching Korra anything about the world?

Then Mako… the bishonen Mako with his sentimental scarf. The crowning proof to the theory that the brooding moody silent type is truly a colossal douche bag on the inside. Mako is despicable. He is self-righteous, boring, judgemental and condescending. He has no sense of fun, he thinks he is always right and he looks down on others. Which is best illustrated by how he treats Bolin. How he expects Bolin’s gratitude, because he stayed with Bolin and took care of him. This attitude of “I have sacrificed myself for you” (which is btw also a form of narcissism) only causes Mako’s orphan sob story to make him even more unlikable. The problem here is also how Bolin is written. In AtLA Katara and Sokka were semi orphans, both of their parents were absent, but they had their grandma and their tribe to fall back on. Still they had hangups because of their situation and they were younger than Bolin and Mako. And they both stepped up, in different ways and Katara more than Sokka – she sort of became his replacement mother, but he also was trying to be responsible. In LoK we are expected to believe that only Mako steps up when they are both stranded in a big unfriendly city and Bolin becomes his constant problem, even though Bolin is only two years younger than Mako. So it was all up to poor Mako, who had to be serious and now he deserves a medal and has the lifelong privilege to be a condescending fuck to his brother and anyone who has had a better life. And then there is the flippant shit he pulls with the Korra and Asami triangle, which is just … he is just a disgusting guy, the type all your friends tell you to avoid. But he is hot so for many people that means he is entitled to being choosy and a heart breaker… well that is a load of crap. And he gets worse when he becomes a policeman, when they write him as the only cop who has a clue… that is just so old and tedious, no words for that. You can even see it with how Prince Wu was written in book four – he was made into a complete caricature, because a better balanced character would only highlight what a jackass Mako is.

When they did the stupid twilightesque triangle in book one and Korra ended up with Mako it wasn’t so bad, they deserved each other being annoying narcissists and better people, like Asami or Bolin (who tried to date Korra) would have been wasted on them. When the relationship sunk in book 2 it was sort of to be expected two divas in one ship is just too much.

So Bolin, one problem with him was mentioned above. The fact that we are lead to believe that he has grown so irresponsible even though he was stuck on the streets with just his brother. This not a “Hotaru no haka” situation, when one kid is significantly older and more aware of the circumstances than the other. There is just no way he wouldn’t grow up at least a little from such an experience. It would have been impossible for Mako or any other child sibling to able to totally shelter him. They must have protected each other to survive, but well the story apparently needs Mako to be on a very high horse and his brother to be this cute idiot. Bolin is just badly written and not well thought through. Secondly he is the butt of all jokes. He doesn’t get any wiser with time. And he is pushed into all these horrible romances to make him the constant comic relief of the series. And this makes him annoying even though, unlike Mako, he has some potential to be a decent human being

Asami is a very underdeveloped character and her behaviour is actually seriously erratic and unrealistic. The fact that she keeps in touch with Korra, Mako and Bolin after what Mako pulls in book two borders on pathological. Does she have no other friends or family? At that point in the story her relationship with Korra is very weak and not particularly friendly and Mako treats her like rebound in the worst possible way, she also has no real relationship with Bolin. And she doesn’t ditch them? Why? Story demands it apparently. She is also a character that appears and disappears when needed. Her arc is very chopped up, but that happens to many other secondary characters, especially Lin, Tenzin’s family and all those people who are stuffed in for pure fanservice. Asami has plenty of great features but her motivations are a unclear at various points in the story and a lot of interesting parts of her life are just brushed over. The sudden decision of Korra’s that now they will spend time together is seriously awkward, comes out of nowhere and the fact that Asami goes for it suggests that she must be extremely lonely and depressed. Another strange behaviour of Asami’s is how she steps up to take care of Korra after the book 3 ending. Is she already so deeply infatuated? Because why else would she decide it is her duty to take care of Korra, who has her own family, the White Lotus and Tenzin so plenty of people who should feel obliged to take care of her in the first place.

This is why the Korrasami is a scrap. It happens but it makes little sense. It is very forced, the build up is non-existent, certain facts are just communicated to the audience. Now they are suddenly, friends, now they are suddenly close, now they are apparently a couple. Nothing is really shown that would help map out this development. Writers will it so, then it is so. It is really insulting, especially if we compare how well the relationships in AtLA were built up. Konietzko writes how the romantic relationships were not important to them in LoK, so why were we force fed: the triangle in book one and two, two horribly written Bolin romances in book two, another Bolin romance in book three and four, a Jinnorah romance in book three (and four?), the Zhu Li/Warrick purely pathological romance and the bad-guy romances in books three and four? None of these are well written, some are completely redundant to the plots of these seasons.

The Korrasami is also a scrap because it was so ambiguous, it wasn’t shown directly. The excuse is it is a kids show… Are they serious? The body count on this show is impressive and the violence is very imaginatively cruel – two characters commit suicide and one also kills another person in the process, one character’s head gets exploded on purpose, another is suffocated to death, another electrocuted, Korra is poisoned with a very brutal toxin. We have all this, but we get no real build-up to the queer romance? Wow. There are no words, but we are not American, so maybe we lack the cultural understanding. The thing is that this is cop-out representation, not much better than JK Rowling saying that one of her characters was queer. Sure in both cases there are hints, but hints will be seen by some, especially those who are queer or already acknowledge queer people, but those who are wilfully or not oblivious to queer people will not notice it or misinterpret it on purpose. Konietzko now says it’s canon, that he planned for that, he says it now when he has already got a cookie for it. The Internets and media have praised him for it so he owns it. Had there been an outcry, a backlash … well we will never know.

We are not total haters as Joolita’s fanart shows. We are happy a relationship like this was incorporated into the show, we only wish it wasn’t done so poorly. But well, we were disappointed with this show as a whole, so at least this one good thing came out of it.