#TLOK is a good show

[iamafanofcartoons]

How to properly respond to someone mockingly claiming that your favorite show sucks

1. Have Tumblr and Youtube links that support your favorite media handy.

2. If they say “I know tons of people in real life who agree with me” , ask them for screenshots or proof. They’ll say people in real life who agree with them because they may not have people online who do. 

3. If they say “I have tons of people on Twitter/FB/Reddit who agree with me”

Remind them of the toxicity of said sites, and provide a screenshot of said toxicity.

4. If they claim “This show repeats many old and conventional mistakes that should never be practiced”, ask for specific scenes or episodes , and have an article/blog/video ready as a counter-point for their “Grievance”

5. More than typically, they’ll be actually just parroting some random person’s words to sound smart. Such as “I’m studying it, its an example how not to write a show”...they’re just repeating a bad-faith critic, in an attempt to sound high and mighty.

6. More often than not, they will say “This dude writes fanfics better than the writers”. Point out to them how said fanfic writer forcibly removes all LGBT content, embraces the “reason why you suck” trope towards female main characters, and show them how their idea of a superior writing fanfic involves replacing female main characters who are typically queer-coded with a straight white male, while straightwashing queer-coded women into being the ship partner for said straight white male.

7. Given the plethora of hate videos or hate-watchers on youtube, it may not actually work to accuse them of not having watched the show. They probably have hate-watched. Instead, ask them if “are we even watching the same show”. Use certain scenes from different episodes to get their take. Look for examples of cognitive dissonance when it comes to how they look at a scene, which will be mirroring that of hate watchers.

8. Ask them about certain LGBT pairings, female main characters, or male white antagonists. Base your responses and counterpoints to them depending on how they respond.

9. They will no doubt get defensive and angry when you ask them to explain their hatred. Explain to them that you were not pleased with them telling you your show that you like sucks, and if they’re so upset about you picking holes in their bad-faith claim or defending the show, then maybe they were in the wrong to be so negative.

10. Please remember to be respectful and polite when doing so. They’ll accuse you of “toxic positivity”, “unable to take criticism” but remember they’re the ones spewing the negativity and getting defensive over somebody not hating what they hate.

11. Remember...Tumblr is where we enjoy things, and support other people enjoying things. If somebody wants to be hateful and mocking, kindly remind them that there are two sites, twitter and reddit, who embrace shitting on what other people love...and look what has happened to those two sites. Then ask them why are they here if they’re just being haters?

12. Just because they hate your favorite shows, doesn’t mean its bad. Do not give in to negativity...that’s what they want...to tear down your enjoyment of things, so they can shove their badly written fixit fanfics in your face.

This post was for fans of Legend of Korra, She-Ra and The Princesses of Power, and RWBY.

[vita-divata]

Finally got the time to fuel my new hyperfixation yippeee <3

[pumpkinrootbeer]

Aang being a shitty dad is fine, but it's the way tlok makes Aang a shitty I have a problem with. You're telling me a guy who's entire culture was whipped out and whole family was massacred wasn't overjoyed at the possibility of sharing his culture with his entire family?

Would Aang have given more attention to Tenzin? Probably, them being the only airbenders would have almost certainly fostered a complex dynamic between the two— even to the extent that it would damage the father/son relationship. I think it's also worth pointing out that Aang was raised in a culture without the nuclear family dynamic we see him participarting in with Katara and their kids, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that Aang would fall short of the expectations and responibilities being a typical father figure brings especially when he himself never experienced that dynamic. Especially, especially compounded with the task of rebuilding a struggling world and maintaining peace.

However, do I think he would neglect to show his kids his culture? Their culture? No. Certainly not the extent he did, and especially not when we see how excited he is to share it with his friends in the show. Why wouldn't he be excited to share it with his kids? With all his kids? How the writers of The Legend of Korra make him a bad dad is a complex series of failures not the least of which stem from racism, the unwillingness to even attempt an understanding of multicultural families, TLOK originally being a 12 episode miniseries that then got greenlit for another season and was suddenly taxed with building upon a world that was never intended to exist beyond its original scope, and a fundamental misunderstanding of Aang as a character.

tldr:

[lyriumsings]

tenzin is literally one of the best things to come out of korra he’s so fucking goated zaheer and his friends had to tag team him so hard to get him

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

i know im not breaking new ground for saying legend of korra is disappointing but so much of the series is genuinely off putting to me. the setting, the tone, how the narrative tortures korra it feels like

which is a shame because I love korra as a character (even if her writing isn't The best at times). but there are so many aspects of the show I don't like. fuck there's so many characters in the show I dont even like either

[harleyification]

I gotta put my frustrations somewhere, but I still cannot BELIEVE that Legend of Korra put in the fact that Kuvira made "REEDUCATION CAMPS" for water and firebender people/ethnicities, and this fucking dictator only got a smack on the hand as well as a redemption arc in the fucking comics.

They literally said she did That. And I'm supposed to sit here and think that she was worthy of being given a second chance all because she ratted out her own people.

What. The fuck.

[nexischillin]

I keep seeing ppl say "oh idk why ppl hate Korra" When truth be told most ppl don't hate Korra, the character, but Korra as a show because of how weak it is compared to its predecessor. While ppl weren't expecting it to be better than Avatar, it doesn't reach the expectations put upon it. Don't get me wrong, Korra is an okay show, but that's all it is, and that in itself is upsetting. There are genuinely people who just hate Korra the character, and I know that, but I also understand that it's mostly because of the hate for the show as a whole. Even when you treat the show Legend of Korra as its own thing, it's still only alright at best, and that is disappointing. I think Korra for one is a great character especially when you remember she's only a teenager, I just don't think the show writers really knew how to deal with that deep of a character in that big of a world and that's sad.

[creampuffqueen]

reading the patterns in time comic. holy shit they did not have to draw asami’s mom so hot. but then again tlok is kinda known for their milfs

[theghostofwilburtheworm]

the more i think about tlok the less i like if im being honest

[lifblogs]

I'm tearing up. Just imagine being a child and you know your father's in the city, and you just have to stand there completely helpless while that city gets bombed. Seeing the flashes of fire, the smoke, and wondering if you're dad is still okay after all that. Wow.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

“Katara deserves a quiet life after the war, so becoming a healer (who made no contributions to the field) is actually a good arc!”

It is already bizarre to me that in ATLA, Katara is this confident & combative & ambitious girl who LOVED to fight and wanted nothing more than to help as many people as possible…then comics!Katara and TLOK!Katara showed neither her previous personality traits nor a career commensurate with those traits…

but it’s even more bizarre to me that ATLA fans would defend her trajectory as if it were some kind of progressive story of recovering from war trauma.

I’ve seen multiple takes like this. “Katara is not a YA heroine, she’s not a bloodthirsty girlboss who loves fighting so it’s actually a good thing that she doesn’t have to fight anymore” “after everything she’s been through she deserves a quiet life and a loving family”

For Katara, fighting in the war was actually empowering. It didn’t burn her out. It didn’t disillusion her. It didn’t take more out of her than she can give. Katara is not Katniss Everdeen, who needed to step back and discover her own agency and a sense of peace after fighting in a war she never chose to start. Katara’s war trauma largely happened before she took an active part in it. After she chose to be a part of the war, she became a waterbending master, made close friends, found her father again, got closure for her mother’s murder, defeated the Fire Lord, and met the love of her life. If Katara were a real person, maybe she’d be traumatized, but nowhere in the text of ATLA does she exhibit the sign that she’s tired of fighting on behalf of the world. If anything, she just got started.

If you take her post-ATLA arc at face value (vs as bad writing), it’s a tragedy of a woman who has learned to minimize her own relevance and her own power. In The Promise, she begins deferring serious decisions to Aang. She doesn’t even express a strong opinion about the fate of the entire colony of Yu Dao, or the fate of her friend Zuko. In North and South, she accepts Northern encroachment of the South in the name of progress. In TLOK we see her not as a politician or a chief, but rather as “the best healer” — albeit one who apparently never established a hospital, or trained acolytes of her own, or done anything to help people at scale, which she has always wanted to do. It’s even more egregious when you remember that in Jang Hui, she was not satisfied to simply heal the sick as the Painted Lady. She wanted to solve the root of the problem, so she cleaned the river and committed full-on ecoterrorism. Just because the war is over doesn’t mean she wants to stop helping people. In fact, the problem she addressed in Jang Hui is exactly the type of problem that would become more prevalent after the war ends, judging by the rapid industrialization between ATLA and LOK.

In the original ATLA, I think Katara is about as close to a power fantasy as you can get for a teenage girl, because she gets to be messy and goofy and powerful, even though she also had to perform a whole lot of emotional and domestic labour. But post-ATLA, she doesn’t get power and she doesn’t get to make a change. She gets love and a family. That’s it. And her grandkids don’t even remember her. Her friends and peers, on the other hand, were shown doing all sorts of super cool things like, you know, running the world they saved.

It’s not feminist to say that a female character deserves “rest” when she’s shown zero inclination that she wants a quiet life. Women who want a quiet life deserve to get it — I think Katniss’ arc is perfect — but women who want power deserve to get it too, especially when they’re motivated by compassion and a keen sense of justice. There’s nothing feminist about defending the early 2010s writing decisions of two men. Like just admit that they fucked up! It’s fine! Maybe they’ll do better in the future!

[rightwheretheyleftme]

TLOK and the design of older women

Scrolling through the TLOK tag, I see so many posts saying “Thanks to The Legend of Korra, now I’m attracted to older women” and then they attach pictures of Lin, Suyin and Kya. Those posts always get a good chuckle out of me, but I’ve decided to be a party popper and analyze, why are the elderly women of TLOK so attractive?

And the answer is because they aren’t drawn like actual women in their 50s. They are drawn like 30 year old women and then they add the grey hair to convey that they are old. Let’s see the evidence:

Here is Tenzin, he is 51 years old in the 1st season. This is how he looks:

He has bags under his eyes, wrinkles, messy facial hair, and crow’s feet. These are all realistic signs of aging that we normally see in men above 50.

Now let’s see Lin Beifong. She is 50 years old.

Her face is completely smooth. There are no wrinkles, smile lines, or any signs of aging besides her gray hair.

And those are just the examples that I used to prove my point. This disparity applies to all of the middle aged men and women in this show. Let’s keep going:

Kya and Bumi are both in their mid-late 50s. Bumi has wrinkles, under eye bags, and forehead creases. Kya has 0 physical signs of aging besides her hair.

Here are some more examples:

Again, I’m sorry to be a complete party popper, but the reason why everyone is so attracted to the elderly women of Korra is because these are not elderly women- they are 30 year olds with grey hair. Only men are allowed to age naturally in this show.

[beifong-brainrot]

One thing I love about tlok is how it cleary shows parental figures as real, human people who struggle and make mistakes, despite loving their children. I think a lot of media, especially for younger people has a tendency to polarise parent characters, characterising them as either ubiquitously good and caring, or malicious and abusive.

This was one of my biggest, if not only gripes with atla. The parents in that show were presented as very black and white. Ozai was an horrible father, who burned his son and used his daughter. Iroh is an always loving and supportive fatherly figure. Kya the og died for her daughter and we only hear good things about her. The most nuance had are in Ursa, Hakoda and the Beifongs. But even then, Ursa and Hakoda's 'parenting fails' are presented as out of their control, due to an abusive marriage or war respectively. And the Beifongs are mainly swept off to the side, being the least relevant to the story.

I understand why this was done, and I don't think its a bad choice entirely, especially with Hakoda and Ozai being somewhat foils of each other. But it's still feels like a bit of a boring brick wall in what usually is a very finely detailed storyline.

But tlok gives us a show of characters failing as parents, not out of malice like Ozai, but because parenting is hard.

I actually adore the choice to make Aang and Toph 'flawed parents'. They both cared for their children, but had a lot ot things in their lives that made it difficult to fully act on it. Aang was busy and dealing with the weight of the world and Toph had never been subjected to healthy parenting, therefore she struggled to adjust to it.

Tonraq and Tenzin also struggle to parent properly, their struggle coming from their daughters' respective growth. This is a common struggle many parents have as their kids grow up and it's nice to see it represented in a way that isn't just a parent wiping their tear with the old 'my lil girls all grown up and destroying things'. There's often resistance, there's butting heads, but that doesn't mean there is malice, or a lack of care and love.

Suyin is probably the most controversial mother/motherly figure in the show and that's why I love her so much. I've already yammered on about how Suyin's motherhood makes her so polarising in the fandom. But the long and short of it is that she combines both previously mentioned 'flaw types' and they feed into each other. She, like Toph, struggles due to having a poor parental figure, and she tries to compensate and cope through her family and Zaofu. This leads to her being overprotective and a bit controlling with her children. She responds emotionally when threatened or upsetm

But all of them, Aang, Toph, Tenzin, Tonraq and Suyin still love their children very much. Still care for them and still try, despite their difficulties. And I think that's something I love about tlok.

[wanderh3art]

*squints* Are you me? /lh I fully agree. I’m lucky enough to be from mostly AU timelines, but our canon ending still makes me want to scream. In the end, Zuko is still the golden child heir to the throne, and I’m still the monster? because growing up with zero moral guidance or emotional support made me an unempathetic person?

I was a literal child soldier. My “““dad””” was the fascist monster. Fuck.

I don’t think it’s fair that I was treated the way I was after the Agni Kai. I was having to take responsibility for the throne. I was 14, my entire family had left me. I was on my period and hallucinating from stress! Sending me to a mental asylum was not the move! Sorry for girlbossing my way through life. And also being rich. And pretty. And the most popular girl in the entire Fire Nation.

-Azula (ATLA)

.

[azulaaaaaaah]

atla/tlok characters that i think did *it* (but i just can’t prove it)

this is the most unserious post i’ve ever made. (AND I WANT TO PREFACE BY SAYING BY *IT* I MEAN KISSING)

Sozin and Roku

and history will say that they were just great friends…

this is the only one where ill legitimately die on this hill

like i’m 90% sure roku just showed Aang their friendship in the flashbacks to prevent awkwardly explaining to a 12 year old monk that he was romantically and/or physically involved with the person who committed a g*nocide against his people

LIKE CMON WHY IN THE WORLD WAS SOZIN SO PRESSED IN THE BACKGROUND OF ROKU’S WEDDING ??? AND FOR NO REASON?? WHY WAS THEIR FRIENDSHIP SO INTENSE?

sozin i feel loved roku (to an obsessive level) and roku literally dgaf. king shit

Wan and Raava

genuinely what the fuck was going on between these two. like i don’t even have any words

canonically at the very least it was a domestic partnership

S2 korra doesn’t make sense at the best of times. imagine trying to explain the intensity of this pair’s devotion to each other, to someone who hasn’t seen the show- all the while knowing raava is a disembodied spirit practically older than time

she’s the embodiment of everything good and light in the universe and he’s just wan. (and he’s wanough <3)

‘do you think we’re soulmates in every life?’

‘bet’

‘wait that’s not what i-‘

Cabbage Merchant and his cabbages (or at least a cabbage)

yeah i’m not touching this one with a 10 foot pole

Every member of the red lotus squad

ah yes it’s my favourite evil polycule

amidst plans to kidnap children and topple monarchies what else is there to do except… kiss.

let’s be real there’s something so inherently romantic about being apart of an elite, vaguely murderous anarchist squad

they all share one exact bed. it’s canon

(p’li somehow big spoons all of them)

The S2 Nomads

these dudes are the textbook definition of anti-monogamy

like they’re obsessed with love so i fully believe that they think ‘it should be spread amongst others’ or some shit

oh to be a travelling communist nomad in a band, wandering the wilds with my wife, and our several partners

they’re somehow the opposite of the red lotus and yet the same. they all share a single bed/sleep area

The dangerous ladies (but all separately)

i don’t ship any of these particularly and yet can still admit that it’s canon

ty-lee and azula have kissed bc azula probably made up a dumb excuse like ‘oh i don’t want my first kiss with a guy to be… erm… bad’

mai and ty-lee have kissed because they both probably have genuine, vaguely deep rooted romantic feelings for each other

mai and azula have kissed to purely spite zuko (and yknow what ty-lee too)

HOWEVER A KEY ASPECT TO THIS DYNAMIC: azula is completely unaware about the ty-lee and mai thing. it’s uh… better off that way.

Hakoda and Bato

i ship this about 50% but like… it’s got to have happened once right? considering all that down time they spent together on a boat away from the repercussions of water tribe society…

also considering they were leaders i doubt the other warriors were in a position to ever call them out on it

like cmoooooooon what’s a little kiss between the homies every now and again?

hakoda is where sokka gets his rizz/flagrant bisexuality from and i can’t change that guys

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

the idea that c//a is only toxic because the show execs were homophobic is so stupid. i've heard fans say this a lot, and it makes absolutely no sense.

because guess what? the writers of tlok had the same restrictions but MORE severe, and wasn't able to make korrasami canon until the finale. but they still managed to build a healthy relationship between korra and asami. the romance aspect was very vague but at the very least, korra and asami had a good friendship going on. it's not hard to imagine that that friendship could have turned into a healthy romantic relationship.

the writers of spop had absolutely no reason to make c//a the toxic cesspit that it was. even if they wanted to make it a complex ship, they could have still made it healthy by NOT having catra abuse and torture adora at every turn. it's really not that hard.

i mean, korra and asami had a rivalry at first because they both liked the same guy. but it never reached a point where one or both of them were actively hurting each other. and once both of them broke things off with mako, they were able to put aside their differences and form a friendship.

this was in s3, so we get two whole seasons where korra and asami are friends. spop, meanwhile, had 5 entire seasons and they just had to make catra go batshit crazy for four seasons straight, only for her to suddenly be forgiven in the last season. /s