The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

So I decided to do a count-up of all of the (major) characters and see how many lines they got in Book 4. The results? Pretty sad, honestly.

Totals:

Korra: 312 lines

Bolin: 175 lines

Mako: 153 lines

Kuvira: 142 lines

Varrick: 129 lines

Most of it had to do with writing quality, narrative, and actual plot progression. And then some of it has to do with stuff like this. Asami being so far down on the list of characters with speaking roles. JINORA being so far down the list. Asami, Tenzin, and Lin literally reduced to c and d-list characters while Wu and Varrick were elevated to b-list. The main characters of this show being overshadowed by pure comic relief characters that had little to no relevance to the actual plot (Wu was annoying and should have exited the narrative stage left after “Reunions” and Meelo should not have had more lines than Tenzin).

Look. When Toph, who was only in the series for three episodes (plus her tiny bit at the end of Korra Alone), has more screentime and lines than Asami, who is billed as a main character and the love interest of the protagonist, can you not just admit you have a problem? I’m upset characters like Asami were shafted by the narrative and writers. I’ve already done all of my extensive meta and whatnot. This was pure statistics to back up the meta. 

Why you all are ignoring the cold hard fact that, no matter how much Bryan and Mike talk her up, they have rarely actually give Asami any meaningful addition to the narrative and overall plot since Book 2 (honestly I would even say Book 1, since her company issues were ultimately dropped in a hot minute the second Korra came back and Harmonic Convergence started happening). Honestly, the only time I would say that she actually made an important contribution to the plot since that point would be during the events of “Long Live the Queen.” Her relationship with her father was brought back for one episode only for him to be fridged in the finale for a two line conversation about how she “couldn’t imagine losing him and Korra in the same day.” Her fight with Korra against bandits in “The Earth Queen” was pointless to the actual plot except to showcase Korra and Asami actually doing something together (which I appreciated, don’t get me wrong). Her being the one to go with Korra during “The Stakeout” was because Mako told her to and because she was a non-bender up against two ridiculously skilled benders with their own specialized subskills. She didn’t really participate in either the Book 2 or Book 3 finales at all. She was practically useless (on-screen) while building the hummingbird machines (they were her design, but Varrick got all of the talking and credit in relation to them). Asami was upstaged by Varrick on multiple occasions throughout Book 4 despite them having the same skillset. She barely got any screentime actually with Korra (if I remember that video correctly, the entire amount of time she spent with Korra amounted to just over a little bit of the length of a single episode).

LOK meme [3/5 characters]: Master Jinora

I see a lot of criticism going around about how Katara was Aang’s “prize” at the end of the series, that she lost importance in Korra once she popped out an Airbender baby and just generally didn’t have agency but I don’t gel with that.

How about we look for a moment at what Katara is, who Katara is, what she’s done.

This flawless queen:

- Lost deeply at a young age in the war that was all she had ever known, and turned that loss into an abiding empathy and determination to care for those who were losing around her.

- Found and praticed her own power with a brother telling her she was strange for doing it, and no prospect of anyone to ever teach her how to do it well.

- Captured the heart of an ancient spirit who had been born and loved a thousand times and a thousand mortals with the blue of her eyes and the strength of her spirit.

- Left her own home, desecrated by the army that had dominated her life, her people, determined to chase that evil down and steal her brand-new friend back from it with nothing but a canoe and her untrained power.

- Fought The Man and earned his respect for her spirit and her potential by being that good even without formal training.

- RESURRECTED THE GOD OF HER WORLD.

- Found within herself a great and terrible power, and even though power was something she had sought all her life, put it aside not to be used because it was not a power that brought peace.

- Looked the mother’s murderer in the eye, put him at the knife’s edge of death, and judged him not worth the stain on her soul or her mothers’ memory.

- Faced the Fire Nation princess, she who would be kinslayer, the only Fire Nation soldier ever to breach the walls of Ba Sing Se, and defeated her on her own ground.

- Returned to her home, restored her home, and ensured no children of her culture would ever again find themselves with a great and beautiful power, and no hope of ever learning to wield it.

- Played one of the most essential roles in ending the war that was all she had ever known since the day she was born.

- The wandering god of her world, the nomad from a culture of detachment, pledged himself to her and gave HER strong, good children. For fuck’s sake, why do so many people try to turn motherhood into an abdication of agency? As if having a child is something a woman does for the man who fathers the child, never a want a man assists a woman in achieving? And Katara secured a mortal god for the father of her children. Girl. Girl. GEDDIT.