this is the most basic ass amateur book 4 defense im screaming
zuko was abused by his father and then spent years trying to win back said abusive father’s love, by trying to capture aang. zuko centering his life around capturing aang so ozai would take him back was EXTREMELY UNHEALTHY and the DIRECT CAUSE of his pain and turmoil. it didn’t end until halfway through book 3 when zuko finally stopped trying to get ozai’s approval, told ozai “it was cruel! and it was wrong,” that ozai was a piece of shit, and then zuko went to join aang.
your zuko quote is from the fucking book 1 finale, in which he’s desperately trying to capture aang for ozai. you are literally quoting a scene in which zuko is motivated by ozai’s evil abusive influence. and trying to portray it positively.
aang’s nation underwent genocide. aang felt like it was his fault because he ran away. this is where aang’s pain and turmoil comes from. it doesn’t stop until he understands that it wasn’t his fault, and that “the Air Nomads’ love for [him] has not left this world. It is still inside of [his] heart, and is reborn in the form of new love [Katara and friends].”
that lok book 4 line is bad. first of all, you’re conveniently leaving out korra’s line right before that: “I am trying to understand why this happened to me, but nothing makes any sense! I’m tired, Katara. I’m so tired.” the answer to her question, why it happened, is because there are fucked up evil people who do things for no good reason. the red lotus tried to kill korra because she was the avatar. it had NOTHING to do with her personality or anything, they literally just wanted to end the avatar cycle for dumb anarchist reasons. they didn’t know korra at all, they knew nothing about her, it had nothing to do with her as a person (in fact korra was an extremely good person) and everything to do with her title of the avatar. so what katara should have said was “it was cruel and it was wrong.” in fact that’s an understatement. ozai abused zuko for personal reasons. the red lotus tortured, poisoned, and tried to murder korra for political reasons REGARDLESS of what kind of person korra was. so “why this happened to [Korra]” was that sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason, and they didn’t deserve it.
“finding meaning in suffering” is a shitty fucking concept. what actually happens is that people suffer AND they learn something, it’s NOT people NEEDING to suffer TO learn something. at least not to the extent of the zuko aang and korra examples.
but particularly korra is different because she was already her best self before the suffering. she was an extremely good person, heroic and compassionate and also confident and fiery and just all around in an amazing place. not only that but she had already suffered a LOT throughout books 1, 2, and 3. and she already learned a ton from it all. what happened in book 4 is that she became sad, unsure, and passive. she did NOT learn ANYTHING, especially compassion, considering she already had utmost compassion in the book 3 finale before the book 4 suffering. SHE DID NOT LEARN ANYTHING. but most of her positive character traits WERE diminished in the process. korra’s book 4 character development was canonically negative. she went from being very happy, very strong, very proud, and very confident pre book 4, to kind of content but confused, less strong, not very proud, and quite unconfident in and post book 4. the line you quoted korra saying was extremely problematic and out of character. yes, they did “ruin korra”
if you are trying to defend negative character development through pain and suffering, guess what
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