Poorly Written, Poorly Executed

Oh, really? Then why did she like it so much?

Katara: feelin’ fine after wasting all of Pakku’s other students at waterbending.

Katara in a fight with Zuko, and loving it.

Katara enjoying washing some mean girls downstream.

Katara seeing Hama slice a boulder like a loaf of bread: “That was incredible!”

Katara saying NO THANKS to being a bloodbending victim.

Poor Katara, so reluctant to fight, only joining the war effort as a necessity.

You know who had to fight as a necessity? Aang and Zuko. Aang only wanted to use airbending for games and playing around. He hated the thought of taking another life, and said that he thought violence was never the answer. Zuko grew up being forced to compete against his sister, conditioned into thinking that his nation was fighting a righteous war, and made to think he was a failure if his fighting was anything less than perfect.

I never see these arguments used against them, though.

I

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Topic of the Week 174

I was asked about ship baiting in both ATLA and LoK. Obviously there’s more to talk about this topic in LoK.

1. They’re not bisexual. We know exactly how Korra and Asami show interest in someone. They have only ever dated Mako, and then suddenly in the last 2 minutes of the last episode all of a sudden they’re bisexual. Those women are straight and the show supports that unless you’re wearing yuri goggles and think that two women standing next to each other means they’re gay for each other. Bryke threw the “They’re bisexual” thing out last second to gain the support of idiots like you. And it worked. You’re defending this instead of talking about how awful the show is because you’re so obsessed about forcibly shoving “representation” into everything.

2. Have you paid any attention to the freaking show? Korra in her relationship with Mako was awful. She was controlling, demanding, and violent. Korra has not changed since season 2 and she hasn’t changed at all since the very first episode of Book 1. She’s literally the most static character in the show. And please tell me what nice things Korra as done for Asami. Asami has been constantly nice and supportive of Korra the entire show for no reason at all, even after Korra basically ruined her life multiple times and Korra has NEVER apologized to Asami for this. Just for kissing Mako WHICH ASAMI WAS MADE TO APOLOGIZE TO MAKE KORRA SOUND LESS AWFUL. Korra doesn’t respect Asami. Asami was devolved into a loyal handmaiden for Korra and existed to serve Korra. It’s got a massive power imbalance where Korra is always in charge because the show can’t handle Korra not being amazing and perfect.

Guess what? Life isn’t fair. Just because people want pop culture to cater to them and their interests does not mean anyone is obligated to do so, or be forced into it. This sense of entitlement that special snowflakes feel towards their interests is ridiculous. The LGBT community is already overrepresented as it is in the film industry, so the argument of “fairness” isn’t even that applicable. If you’re so concerned about representation, write you own damn story. Draw your own art. Make your own movie. Stop trying to co-opt someone else’s work because it’s not giving you what you think you’re owed.

Korra/Asami’s romantic relationship was shoe-horned into the show at the last minute. Had they found a way to establish those characters as bisexual prior to their actual “getting together,” I could have at least forgiven them for the sloppy handling of it because it was at least put out there as a possibility from the get-go. But no, they didn’t, and they chose to take a friendship (which was already a complete disaster, as was most of Korra’s relationships) and turn it into a fanfiction pairing and call it canon because why not? So many other people have already pandered to the idiots who think everything needs to be “fair” and “equal.” Why shouldn’t they?

Bryke have, as a general rule, sucked at romantic relationships. Kora/Asami wasn’t handled any better, in some ways worse, and claiming that it’s good simply because it’s not a straight relationship makes no sense.

Yusuke started out as a self righteous punk who thought everyone was out to get him. He had a chip on his shoulder and acted like a brat. He wasn’t a complete monster since he did sacrifice himself to save a kid, but he had a severe attitude problem and was bull headed. But over the course of the series he grew and matured. He got called out when he was acting like a jerk and had to change. He had hard mentors like Genkai who didn’t cut him any slack.

Korra also started off as a selfish prick who had everything handed to her and was always shown to be right even when she was wrong. Instead of her being called out for her bad behavior it was everyone else who was wrong. She never grew or changed and would always end up being the exact same person she was at the beginning of the first episode. 

Topic of the Week 136

I talk about Korra’s extraneous powers and why they’re superficial

@homez18 Uhm… This is getting kinda tiring. I really regret trying to explain something to a bunch of haters. Your argument is extremely flawed. No one asked to be a bender. This isn’t something one gets to chose. Aang didn’t want to be the Avatar, but he still had to do it (after a 100 years). Sure, Korra had the ability to take his bending away, but she decided against it, because that’s an Avatar’s job. To bring balance to the world, not to make everyone happy.

You’re just calling everyone haters because they have a point you can’t argue. These are real issues with the writing. There’s a difference between being born with bending and then living a life as a nonbender only to have bending forced on them. Korra has literally no right to demand others live the way she demands them. These people gained Airbending because of what she did, and it’s terrifying many of them. These people wanted to go back to their normal lives and Korra is outright lying telling them she can’t take the bending away. This isn’t about making people happy, it’s about helping people after SHE caused all of this. 

Again, I don’t see any issues with the writing there, since this is what they were going for since the end of book 2 (And here I’ll gladly admit it. Book 2 was rather messy over all, but we all know that nickelodeon wasn’t all that good with the scheduling of book 2 *cough*). Korra’s action of leaving the spirit portals open brought unexpected change to the world. While her actions influenced this change, airbenders returning wasn’t exactly her aim here. You just can’t solely blame her for that. It’s like blaming a gun seller for a murder one of his customers committed. He might have given the murderer the means to commit the crime (aka he opened the portals), but it obviously wasn’t his intention. (I know, it’s a rather weird comparison, I apologize, but it gets the point across.)

Tenzin and Korra even talked about this in the very same episode our bridge guy complained about his new abilities. Korra can’t please everyone and it’s not her duty to do so. Keeping/restoring the balance is. Airbending coming back was exactly that. She didn’t force it onto anyone. It just happened and because of her duty as the Avatar, it is not her call to take it away again. Unlike Ozai or Yakone, these new airbenders weren’t disturbing the balance, they were restoring it.

A different take on this: If I were to see it your way, I could very well fight this from another perspective: By your standing, Korra as the Avatar isn’t allowed to be selfish (to fulfill her duty), push her will onto others, but the bridge guy is? He gets to deny his new status as an airbender, because he doesn’t want to be one? Because it was influenced by the Avatar’s actions? Then Aang shouldn’t have become the Avatar in the first place, Zuko shouldn’t have become a prince/the firelord, bridge guy shouldn’t have become an airbender after all… Oh, they all did and in the end, they were rather content with it, weren’t they?

Regardless of what Korra wanted she caused it. She has to take responsibility for that. Though at the end of Book 2 she completely disavowed any right to say anything about spirits and humans, then at the start of Book 3 she’s bossing everyone around and crapping on Raiko for being mad that Spirits are destroying Republic City. Korra made the bone dead stupid decision to leave the Spirit Portals open despite knowing exactly why Wan closed them in the first place. And then she’s immediately proven wrong when crap hits the fan and she causes basically all the issues in Book 3 and 4. Korra’s actions caused people to be given Airbending and she 100% has a responsibility to help them. And if that means taking the Airbending away then yes she should do that.

Ignoring how stupid and nonsensical it is that Airbending was just randomly given to people and how that completely invalidates everything about rebuilding the Air Nomad and Airbending culture over the last 70 years, this isn’t balance. This is forcing people to change their entire lives. This also almost totally devalues the Air Acolytes who actually DID devote their life to Air Nomad culture. Why didn’t they get Airbending? The average people do not have any obligation to drop their lives and become Airbenders. It’s borderline cruel and outright manipulative of Korra to trick them into thinking she can’t simply take the bending away. Your comparison to Ozai and Yakone is faulty. These people aren’t evil, but their lives have been completely disrupted by this. This is actually a great way to show Energybending being used in a more casual setting. Korra could restore these people to how they were. Energybending is criminally underused and even though Korra had complete mastery over it when Aang just randomly gave it to her she doesn’t use it to help people.

That last part doesn’t make any sense. How can you blame the bridge guy for this? He’s not pushing his views onto anyone. He literally says he just wants to lose the powers and go back to being a nonbender. And Korra lies to him to force him to go to Tenzin. I’m baffled how you’re equating a random guy in adulthood being forced to have Airbending after living his life as a nonbender to Aang being the Avatar. That’s not even close to the same thing. That poor guy just wanted to live the life he’d lived as a nonbender and Korra lied to him.

And yes Korra shouldn’t be selfish. Even though she’s nothing but the whole show. Korra has a simple solution to help the guy who almost died because of this and refuses to tell him because she wants to trick him into becoming an Air Acolyte? That’s so awful it makes Korra look like a manipulative prick. 

You can’t use the show completely erasing these people’s issues as proof that it’s a good thing. That implies LoK has any internal consistency. This whole issue arose from Bryke either forgetting or ignoring that Korra has Energybending. This is a huge plot hole born from the inconsistent and awful writing of LoK. Zuko’s character arc is completely irrelevant to this because these people aren’t awful pricks. Zuko started off as a completely selfish jerk who ended up becoming better, and that wasn’t just because of Aang. Iroh was also a significant influence in that. Aang never manipulated Zuko into being better, that was Zuko’s own growth. Like I said before people who wanted Airbending should be allowed to keep it and train with Tenzin while those who don’t want it can have Korra debend them. It’s the best and more fair solution to the problem.

Oh my gosh Bryke forgot how energy bending works. IN THEIR OWN SHOW, WHERE WE SEE AANG DEBEND IN THE YAKONE FLASHBACK!

(bonus.) if you feel there are a darkest scene at ATLA that is more darker than LOK, mention me all that scene

No… I’m not sure if you’re trolling or you’re just that stupid, but the no kill thing was a major theme of ATLA. Zuko is 15/16 during the course of the show which isn’t much younger than 17. It has literally nothing to do with age and everything to do with the fact that it’s gosh darn moral.

I’d assume you were trolling with this but I’ve seen too many people in the LoK fandom who legitimately think like this to be sure. Your logic is so insane because you’re saying that being older justifies murder. That’s… that’s so stupid. It’s reinforced throughout the entirety of ATLA that not killing is the best and most moral way to deal with something. Even for someone as dangerous and evil as Ozai. It wasn’t because Aang was younger, it’s that he has a stronger moral compass than anyone in LoK. There is no justification for going out of their way to kill. At all. Though considering that the fandom thinks these gruesome deaths are actually funny I don’t expect them to actually comprehend that.

Ozai was far worse than anyone in LoK save for maybe the comical evilness of Unalaq (though to be fair his character was radically inconsistent through Book 2), and he wasn’t killed, just debended. So what justification is there for someone like the Red Lotus? They’re bad but no worse than Ozai? Why do they deserve an assured death? Why is it allowed for our “heroes” to go out of their way to make sure one of them blows their head up? That’s downright evil and honestly makes our heroes look almost worse than the villains we’re supposed to be rooting against. They don’t have a moral code to stick to and just do whatever the plot demands. And your LGBT content is literally just a handhold thrown in at literal last minute of the show simply to use social justice as a shield to criticism. It took Bryke ranting in a multi paragraph post to explain that they were making Korra and Asami a couple out of nowhere. It really shouldn’t be taken seriously like pretty much all of LoK shouldn’t be.

Ummm did you watch ATLA? Because the comparison to Korra is really off base.

Her being “perfect” was the point. She was the favored child who got all of Ozai’s attention and favor. He drove her to being a perfectionist and her natural talent gave her immense arrogance. She had to be flawless or else Ozai would punish her like he did Zuko. Her losing her mind at the end of the show was a build up of her entire life falling apart. She lost control of Mai and Ty Lee who she thought she had completely under her thumb. Her own father who she thought would give her the position of Fire Lord completely pulled the rug out from under her leaving her with a title he rendered meaningless immediately after giving it to her. On top of that she had deep seeded issues over the fact that she wanted validation from her mother but felt that she never got it while Zuko got all of Ursa’s attention. On top of all that she was a villain. The heroes had to go up against her intellect and powerful firebending making her a very difficult opponent who kept them on their toes. She make look perfect but she was far from it.

Korra being perfect has no role in the story aside from her being “cool”. Her “PTSD”, and I struggle to really call it that considering how little it ultimately affected her, meant nothing. That was just so people would feel sorry for her and I have no doubt it was meant to stop people from calling her a mary sue. She’s also the main protagonist who starts off the show with almost all of her Avatar powers and by the end of the first season gains every Avatar power she could. She was praised in the show with anyone who disagreed with her being framed as wrong. Characters would become mindless cheerleaders for Korra and serve her at her beck and call. Even characters like Tenzin who are supposed to be authority figures bend to Korra’s will.

They wrote the travesty of wasted potential that is LOKand tried making excuses every dang time for all their bad writing decisions and road on the coattails of ATLA for success when while they were the creators of the show they didn’t even do most of the writing FOR the show, that was other writers that is the reason ALTA was such a great show.

ALTA would of had so many of Ko.rra’s writing issues had it not been for the other writers scrapping so many of Bryke’s terrible ideas.

@coolman229 went into more detail about it on one of his posts, I remember him having a chart of exactly how much Bryke had actually written in ATLA vs LOK.

My point exactly.

Bryke may have given us the skeleton that was ATLA but the meat and blood and skin were the true genius behind the show.

It shows how poorly they are as writers when you take those writers away from Korra.

Also Bryke wanted a love triangle that got axed in ATLA that they sadly dragged out in LOK.

Bryke just aren’t that good at writing.

But yeah they also have really immature attitudes towards criticism and they’re own fans.