#Korra critical

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Make Rohan a Bender but NOT an AIRBENDER

I know Pema wants Rohan to be a non-bender like her. But what would be cool is if he turned out to be a WATERBENDER.

Imagine how happy Katara would be! Kya it seems will never settle down and give Katara a grandkid. And Bumi became an airbender due to that dumb harmonic convergence crap (screw Korra btw). Rohan being a waterbender would force Tenzin to acknowledge the water tribe part of his heritage for once! Also maybe Katara could teach Rohan too :). Katara deserves to have a waterbending grandkid damnit and to be more involved in her own freaking family! Give LOK Katara some love please!

[skull-turtle]

I JUST FINISHED LEGEND OF KORRA AND I HAVE THOUGHTS PART2: THE KREW

Yeahhh, I'm going there. The Krew aren't friends, I don't buy it. Korra and Bolin genuinely seemed like friends in season 1 before it fell off and they barely had any interactions outside of action sequences. Honestly Bolin's character was really good, like genuinely a good guy I'd want to ve friends with.

However they're still friends. So are Mako and Korra, even though it was rough after they finally broke up. Korra and Assami genuinely became friends and while I have MUCH to say about Assami, at least i believe she and Korra are friends.

And there lies the issue. Korra is friends with all three of them. But I can't buy that the rest are friends with each other.

Of course, Bolin and Mako are brothers. Their relationship makes sense. But Bolin and Assami? They feel like two people that just hang out because they have people in common. I can't imagine the two of them having long interactions on their own.

Assami and Mako were...fine while they dated. After that? Do you genuinely think those two even share a cup of tea together? How many times do you think just the two of them met up during those three years?

Korra and Mako, unlikely as it is, work. Specially after they stopped dating.

This is all just my opinion, but the Krew works as team avatar but not as a group of friends. They're like a friend group where most of the people aren't all that close to each other, even though they hang out and have fun. ...a far cry from the Gaang.

I don't want to put them against each other, but as a continuation of ATLA comparisons are bound to pop up. The Krew feels like a far cry from the found family that was Gaang. I mean even the characters with the LEAST interactions, Toph and Zuko had conversations I can't imagine a lot of the Krew even come close to having.

I can clearly define the relationships between Sokka and Toph, Aang and Zuko, Zuko and Katara, and do forth. I can't when it comes to the Krew and that's a shame.

[zuko-always-lies]

Legend of Korra and the incredibly long season finales

One flaw which really strikes me about TLoK is that the season finales were all far too long. This is a point which is easier to understand if we talk about ATLA first. ATLA had two 20 and one 21 episode season finales:

Book 1: Water. The season finale was two ("The Siege of the North Part 1 and 2") or at most three (if we count "The Waterbending Master") episodes long, for 10% or at most 15% of the season's runtime. I really don't think we should we should count "The Waterbending Master," though. It builds toward the series finale, but it's mostly it's own thing with its own main plot.

Book 2: Earth. The season finale was two episodes ("The Guru" and "The Crossroads of Destiny"), for a total of 10% of the season's runtime. You could argue that "Lake Laogai" and "The Earth King" are also parts of the finale, but they're really not. The main antagonist of the finale, Azula, doesn't even show up until the end of "The Earth King."

Book 3: Fire. The season (and series) finale was "Sozin's Comet," with a total of four episodes. That amounts to 19% of the season's runtime, but this is a series finale. That being said, I do personally feel like "Sozin's Comet" is already too long and not organically connected and that some of the stuff which happens there should have happened earlier in the season.

Now, let us turn to LoK.

Book 1: Air. This is 12 episodes long, and I would argue that the season finale amounted to three episodes: "Turning the Tides," "Skeletons in the Closet," and "Endgame." That would mean the season finale was 25% of the season. Every if we cutoff "Turning the Tides" because the protagonists are more reactive than proactive in it, the finale would still amount to 17% of the season.

Book 2: Spirits: This is 14 episodes long. It's actually very hard to figure out what constitutes the finale in this. Definitely "Harmonic Convergence," "Darkness Falls," and "Light in the Dark" are included. That would make for 21% of the season. However, you could also argue for "Night of a Thousand Stars" (29%), "A New Spiritual Age," (36%), or even "The Guide" (43%), although the last one is pretty dubious. What is clear is that in the second half of this season, events take on a pace which is at once both relentless and endless.

Book 3: Change. Things are a little clearer here in this 13 episode season. The season finale amounts to three episodes: "The Ultimatum," "Enter the Void," and "The Venom of the Red Lotus." That makes for 23% of the season.

Book 4: Balance. Another 13 episode season, with a three part finale: "Kuvira's Gambit," "Day of the Colossus," and "The Last Stand," for 23% again.

ATLA was 61 episodes long. LoK was 52 episodes long. If we go with the lowest possible number, ATLA had 8 season finale episodes, which made up 13% of the series. Similarly, with the lowest possible number, LoK had 11 season finale episodes, for 21% of the series.

If we instead go with the highest reasonable number, ATLA had 9 finale episodes for 15%, while TLoK had 14, for 27%.

And if we go with the highest possible number, reasonable or not, ATLA had 11 finale episodes, for 18%, while TLoK had 15, for 29%. It's possible to argue that nearly a third of TLoK was season finale episodes!

I think one thing is clear: TLoK spent far too much time on season finales. Did we really need three straight episodes of a mecha battle between Kuvira and our protagonists? Or three straight ones of Korra fighting Unalaq and Vaatu in the spirit world?

[fancylala4]

Korra stans need to admit that she gets beaten up multiple times in the series. Yes, she’s strong and is ready for everybody. However, she has taken serious Ls from her enemies through out the series and she makes the same mistakes over and over. The only season where she actually grew and learned from her past mistakes in fighting is season 4. She finally stopped being reckless and was level headed.

I also do find it interesting how korra stans act like she never lost a fight in the series but when someone shows a clip of her getting beaten up, they bring up excuses for it. Like saying she was caught off guard, she was chained, she was poisoned, etc.

I don’t hate korra. I like her and all but I can admit that she was way too reckless and that would lead to her getting beaten up in fights.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

“catra is a complex poc” fuck that. here are some ACTUAL poc animated characters who are just as, if not more complex than catra.

grace monroe (infinity train) • black american

connie maheshwaran (steven universe) • indian-american

katara (avatar the last airbender) • inuk

wolf (kipo and the age of wonderbeasts) • black american

suhara/shadowsan (carmen sandiego) • japanese

korra (the legend of korra) • inuk

jesse cosay (infinity train) • indigenous (apache)

lars barriga (steven universe) • filipino

azula (avatar the last airbender) • japanese

ryan akagi (infinity train) • japanese-canadian

luz noceda (the owl house) • afro-dominican american

(there are a lot more, so i'll be making a part 2!)

[prying-pandora666]

I bet you that if we had gotten Book 4: Air, and there had been a time skip, we wouldn’t be seeing so much Aang hate today.

No really. If the show had been able to continue and gave us an older, edgier, more attractive Aang?

He would have fans falling all over themselves for him.

The thing is that ATLA ended when Aang was barely turning 13. A goofy, bald, pacifist, vegetarian 12 year old isn’t attractive and so too many fans discount him. How can he possibly compete with openly tormented and outwardly angry Zuko? Or quietly insecure and naturally hilarious Sokka?

Zuko and Sokka who are 16 and 15 respectively (nearing 17 and 16 by the end), and therefor at an age where romance is more relevant to most, and so are the focus of so much love and affection and especially shipping?

If Aang had been able to grow anywhere between 15 - 18, he’d be right up there with the other two. You’d see metas about his tragic backstory, suddenly more of the fandom would care about the loss of his entire people, about the survivor’s guilt, the intense loneliness, the diaspora, the yearning for common everyday things that now no one else in the world understands.

But we didn’t get that. Instead we got LOK, with an old, bearded, post-bucal fat removal Aang. An Aang who has already had children and has a controversial score on “dad ratings”.

The poor kid never stood a chance.

@book4air

[marching-weirdo]

"zukos character arc is best-

"no aangs flirting skills are-"

"You forgot sokkas hair-"

YALL FORGOT KORRA

SHE WENT FROM THIS

TO THIS

AND STILL GIRLBOSSED HER WYA THROUGH EVERYTHING WHILE ALSO FINDING LOVE AND GAINING BACK THAT MUSCLE!

she also showed a lot of people, like me, that mental health recovery isn't linear. like, girl, that show has problems BUT DAMN IT IF IT ISNT BETTER THAN MoST THINGS YOU SEE

[oblivionbladetd]

Okay, so... I wanted to give Lily the benefit of the doubt here...

But Lily, are you just straight jorkin' it whenever you see or hear a character in pain?

I mean fuckin honestly though, Korra is torture porn, Steven Universe is fetishitic, Fullmetal Alchemist has torture porn in the chimera scene somehow???, She-ra is torture porn and abuse fetishizing, Dungeon meshi has Elf torture porn...

Lily, I won't say you are projecting your kinks onto things. Though if I slapped a bright enough flashlight to the back of your head, an f-list page would appear wherever you are looking.

[longing-for-rain]

There seems to be this take that it’s somehow “devaluing” healing and by extension women’s contributions by criticizing Katara ending up as a healer rather than a warrior in legacy, but this really misses the mark. The point is that from the beginning, Katara explicitly wanted to use her bending to fight. She never refers to herself as a healer; she says that she has healing abilities. It is a skill to her, not a trait she wishes to define herself by.

But since we’re on the subject of devaluing the practice of healing, I’d like to pose a question I haven’t seen anyone ask before:

Why did Aang never learn healing?

It’s a valuable skill and one he could have really used. Other benders such as Zuko passed on their own skills like lightning redirection to Aang to aid him. Why not healing? Maybe it’s because he’s the Avatar and so narratively he doesn’t need—

Oh. Interesting…

It’s almost like the narrative of the show itself is presenting healing as a woman thing that isn’t important enough for men to value learning.

[hysteriafossil]

guess who finished tlok tonight and immediately had this come to him in a vision!!!!

[polls-showdowns]

The most Chaotic Bisexual Finals are here

Caleb Widogast (Critical Role) V.S. Korra (The legend of Korra)

They have both defeated many other chaos bis to get here but only one can be the champion

[fanfic-lover-girl]

I wish I loved Korra and Hermione

I want to pause my negativity for a bit and be a bit more open about my feelings about Korra and Hermione. I know I rag on these 2 characters but part of me genuinely does want to like them. I really do because I see myself a lot in both of them. Which is why the handling of their characters frustrates me.

Like Hermione, studying and school was my main source of self-worth. I was the brightest girl in highschool. This is why when I went to college, I found it hard to cope with being around peers so much "better" than me. For a while, I felt worthless. Like Hermione, I am not very girly. It's only recently that I have begun wearing dresses to weddings and such. I don't like makeup and I find it hard to care much about my hair. Like Hermione, I found it hard to make friends in school and usually had a small circle.

Same points with Korra. I was very sheltered growing up. I was a good student in STEM but struggled in subjects like the humanities and hated them because of it (like Korra with airbending). I was naive about the world in many ways. I never had big crushes but it is disappointing to find yourself liking a guy only to find out he has a girlfriend or sees you like a sister. I could not relate to Aang but I could relate to Korra's louder personality and tougher nature. And I am black so there's the skin factor too.

Like both, I was kind of violent towards boys growing up, especially in primary school. I remember chasing boys with sticks and even hitting a classmate over the head with a book. I was an emotional kid for real. Thank God no one ever hit me back. And this is why I am against female violence against guys being treated as a joke in media.

I find Krum's interest in Hermione very inspiring. This famous senior likes her even though she's average. While Ron can be a jerk, mostly due to teenage boy immaturity, for the most part, Ron is very caring towards her. Sometimes I feel self-conscious because the only guys who have ever had interest in me have been random guys off the street in Jamaica. The friendly newspaper guy calling me 'princess'. A grown man with yellowing teeth who insisted on walking with me. A highschool dropout guy who also insisted on walking with me. In the US, another grown, sloppy black man trying to get to know me on the bus. Ugh. I wonder if any guy in my circle would ever find me desirable and Hermione is a nice representation of hope.

I just hate how Hermione and Korra's flaws are hardly acknowledged by the narrative. I don't like how they treat their love interests. I don't like how them being jerks to the people around them makes them badasses or girlbosses.

I wish we could have gotten an arc for Hermione where she discovered that she did not need to get top grades to prove herself. Because Hermione deserved better than 'oh you're smart, Neville is dumb so you're ok for a muggleborne' from Hagrid. Hermione should not have to be smart to be worthy of her magic. All Hagrid did in that scene was justify pureblood supremacy logic. I wish we had seen more of her relationship with her parents. It's sad how she obliviated her parents and it's treated as inconsequential dialogue. I wish she had more female friends. Hermione acts like a 'pick me' type and I dislike how JKR used her and Ginny to demonize other types of girls. Maybe she could have had an arc where she learns that there is more to being smart besides being booksmart. A lot of her brightness is really due to memorization. So many possibilities with a Hermione and Luna friendship. Just imagine!

As for Korra...sigh. I wish everything was not handed to her. I wish we could have seen more of her struggling with airbending and her spirituality. I know Bryke had issues with pacing due to how LOK was produced at Nick but still. I wish she was called out for her bad decisions and she took responsibility. Now that I think about it, it would have been so cool to see Korra have to use her wits instead of her fists against a spirit foe like Koh after she left the portals open (dying from wasted potential!). I wish she went on a real Avatar journey so that through her we could learn how the cultures outside the water tribe have changed. I wish Korra did not perpetuate the stereotype of the angry/obnoxious black woman. Korra had the potential to be a way more interesting avatar than Aang and have a healthier romantic relationship but Bryke blew it. The relationship drama with Asami and Mako was disgusting and I hate Bryke's torture porn fetish with Korra. They treated Ozai with more dignity than Korra! The worst Ozai got was a drooling scene while the Gaang cracked jokes while Korra literally thanked her enemy for her trauma!!! The injustice! Bryke really hates women!

I am just rambling but I realized there are almost no female characters that I resonate with that are like me in the media I know. I wish Korra and Hermione had better writers :(

[hotcupofdragons]

THE FACT THAT THEY GOT AVATAR KORRA (JANET VARNEY) TO VOICE VILYA AND IN THIS SCENE SHE'S USING ALL FOUR ELEMENTS AND TEACHING HER DAUGHTER THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCE

[zuko-always-lies]

I'll be honest, Korra's behavior in this scene is really, really awful. She repeatedly violently manhandles an adult simply because he's not interested in joining the Air Nation, basically tries to kidnap him because he refuses, and is about to do it again, only to be stopped by Bolin and Mako in the end.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Tumblr Top Ships Bracket - Round 3

Shadowgast art by Lap Pun Cheung

This poll is a celebration of fandom and fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

honestly, i think the double standards with catra and glimmer stems from something other than pretty privilege, and it's something i've seen in a lot of media.

take, for instance, the atla fandom demonizing aang and katara but coddling azula. or the su fandom villanizing steven but making excuses for spinel and lapis.

and the reason for this is that villains or antagonists are always given more freedom to make mistakes, to do heinous shit, to be cold or rude or insensitive to others. the logic being that "they're the villain, of course they're gonna be horrible".

with heroes, on the other hand, there's this subconscious judgment whenever they make a mistake. heroes are meant to be perfect and as much as people say that they want more antiheroes, they always judge a hero based on how morally good they are.

which explains why katara is hated on for saying something insensitive out of repressed grief and trauma, but azula is coddled for committing multiple war crimes.

why glimmer is bashed for being kinda mean and making some bad choices due to grief and pressure, but catra's conscious choice to attempt genocide and willing participation in war is justified.

why steven is villanized for having a mental breakdown after years of suppressed trauma, but spinel's attempts to kill dozens of people on earth are excused.

why mabel is demonized for being kinda selfish sometimes and for being manipulated into giving away something she didn't know the importance of, but bill is loved by everyone.

why korra is blamed for trusting her uncle and losing her connection to the previous avatars, instead of unalaq being held accountable for manipulating her (unalaq isn't really coddled by the fandom but there's a huge victim blaming problem).

simply put, people want heroes to be pure. they want surface-level flaws like clumsiness and awkwardness, not REAL flaws. as much as these people say that they want more morally grey or complex heroes, the truth is that they can't even handle their hero being kinda rude to someone.

especially with characters like glimmer, mabel and katara, who have a more traditionally feminine aesthetic and is generally a good person, people expect them to be well-behaved and perfect all the time. even though both these characters were shown to be passionate and stubborn and fierce from the very beginning, people are still blindsided when they actually take a bold stance or act on their emotions.

and with steven, he was a nice, happy, easygoing kid in the beginning and he tried to remain optimistic throughout all the trauma he went through, so people just expect him to do that forever. to always repress his feelings and never give himself the space to express them, to always focus on being a therapist for literally every other character and to never prioritize himself.

and like sure, villains are meant to be evil. i'm not telling anyone to water down their villains. but there's a difference between liking a villain and excusing their actions. i like azula. i like all of the villains in tlok. i like bill cipher. i even like catra and white diamond minus their shitty redemption arcs.

but i'm not going to set double standards by justifying everything that a villain does and demonizing a hero for acting out of line once. especially if the hero actually takes responsibility for their actions and tries to be better, and the villains just get forgiven for doing the bare minimum.