The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Another problem was that exposition infodump about homosexuality acceptance in the Avatar world. Yes, Sozin was a bastard, do you really have to make him a homophobe too? If you were going the route of "the Fire Nation turned on homosexuality", why not have it happen under Azulon as part of a "Make more babies so we get more soldiers!" initiative? Using Sozin was just cheap. And the entire segment was clunky in the extreme, a gross violation of "show don't tell".

For me, every bit of that world-building on gayness was needed.

Remember that, even after the finale of Season 4, there were STILL fuckers who went "I dunno man, maybe they are just good friends." I think a little overcompensation on the gay-ousity is reasonable. They had a justification there to be as fucking gay, and explicitly gay, as they possibly could be, because otherwise some waffling suburbanite softcore homophobe will go "what's wrong with this, just gals being pals!"

The segment isn't just relevant to their experience, it's necessary.

[Lizuka]

This is honestly the first I've even heard of Turf Wars, but looking into details, I have two main points of view on it.

1. I can't really claim to care about the in-universe politics of it but I do like that they're at least exploring the relationship, because within the show even knowing it was coming it was kind of hard to actually much read them that way until the last scene. I'm completely fine with Korra and Asami being an item and realize they were limited in what they could do, but I feel like the show made them come across as friends a lot more than it did lovers.

2. Would it kill them so long as they're doing the whole, "Being gay is okay!" thing to have, like, a single male character who's confirmed gay or bisexual? Just one? Like couldn't have had Bumi be the gay sibling or something?

[RobbyB1982]

but also in how absolutely nobody noticed this obvious bloodthirsty dictator rising to power until it was too late to stop her. Then there's the absurdity of her just having an unstoppable doomsday mech for no adequately explained reason.

That's how it works with most dictators. They're usually brought up through the rungs of power and voted to the top and supported prior to people realizing they're insane. And they do little incremental things and get their base behind them building up to bigger things.

Hitler didn't START with declaring war on the world and putting people into death camps. He built up a base and was properly elected with his promises over time. Putin has been in charge of Russia for decades and he is "fairly elected" regularly. Trump wants to be a dictator and is fully supported by the republican majority rather than being appropriately checked. Etc.


Unstoppable doomsday mech is par for the course in their universe. When they have regular world ending threats its easy to justify building a weapon to deal with potential problems... and for only a couple people to know what's really going on.

[Lizuka]

but also in how absolutely nobody noticed this obvious bloodthirsty dictator rising to power until it was too late to stop her. Then there's the absurdity of her just having an unstoppable doomsday mech for no adequately explained reason.

That's how it works with most dictators. They're usually brought up through the rungs of power and voted to the top and supported prior to people realizing they're insane. And they do little incremental things and get their base behind them building up to bigger things.

Hitler didn't START with declaring war on the world and putting people into death camps. He built up a base and was properly elected with his promises over time. Putin has been in charge of Russia for decades and he is "fairly elected" regularly. Trump wants to be a dictator and is fully supported by the republican majority rather than being appropriately checked. Etc.


Unstoppable doomsday mech is par for the course in their universe. When they have regular world ending threats its easy to justify building a weapon to deal with potential problems... and for only a couple people to know what's really going on.

Pretty good point. Really I think I tend to just expect fiction to make more sense than reality does.

[Madner Kami]

Hitler didn't START with declaring war on the world and putting people into death camps. He built up a base and was properly elected with his promises over time.

Um, no. That is grossly misrepresentative of what went on back then. After the war, Hitler was injected into the DAP (German Workers Party) as a mole by the Reichswehr, where he kinda "went native" and was instrumental in reforming the party to the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party). His opinion of jews was fundamentally formed during that time (1919-1921) and it is here already that we get hints for what is going to happen, if he ever got to a position of power as he wrote in a letter to a soldier named Adolf Gemlich, who asked for clarification of the Jewish Question: The aim of the government "must unshakably by the removal of the Jews altogether". It is also during that time, that the SA (Sturmabteilung, the brown shirts) is formed into what they would ultimately become, as they violently throw dissenters out of party gatherings, injuring the people in question gravely and using force to quench inopportune party members and audiences already by 1919 and it doesn't take long for the SA to also assault people outside of party gatherings (mostly communists) as well.

It is also in 1923, that Hitler tries to get into a position of power by use of force. The Bierhallenputsch (Beer Hall Coup) is too complex a theme to replicate here with just a few words in an adequate manner, so I'll just link to the wikipedia-article, which details the happenings. Suffice it to say, he and his followers needed to be gunned down by the police to get control of the situation which developed that fateful day in Munich. As a result Hitler was thrown into the Landsberg Prison, which ended up being a comfortable house-arrest on castle Landsberg, during which he writes "Mein Kampf". And at this point any arguement that Hitler was anything but a despotic and murderous monster, especially once he gets into a position of power, just stops, as Hitler himself clearly outlines what he is going to do in that very book.

After being released in 1924, having served just one year out of his 5 year sentence, he made his way back into the leadership of the NSDAP and he indeed tries to improve the public image of both the party and himself as a legitemate and democratic force after his experience with the failed coup, but both his rethoric and the actions of the party, SA and (later) SS speak volumes about how much of a worth this facade has, as they violently clashed with political opposition and he ultimately gets into power by a combination of legitimate politics, violent supression of opposition and exploitation of loopholes in the constitution to force repeated elections.

This is far from being "properly" elected and that his opposition faces nothing but violence and death is indisputable since "Mein Kampf" at latest.

[Winter]

So in regards to Mako, one of the things that bug me about the character is him being utterly rude when Korra first meets him. For his attitude here I've always had this one question and that is WHY?! Why is Mako being such a twat to Korra, even after he learns she's the Avatar he's still acts rude and condescending towards her. Even after she helps him he's still rude towards her and he never really apologizes for that.

The reason Zuko was so rude was A) He was the villain of the first season so him being a jerk was something to be expected. B) He has a rather messed up past and it left it's mark on him. And C) When he has a chance to think he pretty much apologizes for his actions and does what he can to make up for it.

With Mako, yes his parents died in front of him when he was young and worked for a gang to stay alive but that doesn't excuse him for him being a rude twat to someone he just met. He's not a villain, he doesn't really seem to be that effected by the death of his parents and even when he's given time to think he still avoids apologizing for his poor attitude until called out on it.

He pretty much cheats on Asami, starts paying attention to Korra after Asami has lost everything, take advantage of Korra when she has amnesia (REALLY looking forward to Chuck's rant on that BTW ) and as far as we've seen has still not apologized to Asami after 5 years. It's a testament to how good of a person Asami is that she is still friends with Mako after all that cause if I was in her position I would have never spoken to Mako ever again and slapped him for good measure.

[Lizuka]

So in regards to Mako, one of the things that bug me about the character is him being utterly rude when Korra first meets him. For his attitude here I've always had this one question and that is WHY?! Why is Mako being such a twat to Korra, even after he learns she's the Avatar he's still acts rude and condescending towards her. Even after she helps him he's still rude towards her and he never really apologizes for that.

The reason Zuko was so rude was A) He was the villain of the first season so him being a jerk was something to be expected. B) He has a rather messed up past and it left it's mark on him. And C) When he has a chance to think he pretty much apologizes for his actions and does what he can to make up for it.

With Mako, yes his parents died in front of him when he was young and worked for a gang to stay alive but that doesn't excuse him for him being a rude twat to someone he just met. He's not a villain, he doesn't really seem to be that effected by the death of his parents and even when he's given time to think he still avoids apologizing for his poor attitude until called out on it.

He pretty much cheats on Asami, starts paying attention to Korra after Asami has lost everything, take advantage of Korra when she has amnesia (REALLY looking forward to Chuck's rant on that BTW ) and as far as we've seen has still not apologized to Asami after 5 years. It's a testament to how good of a person Asami is that she is still friends with Mako after all that cause if I was in her position I would have never spoken to Mako ever again and slapped him for good measure.

I feel like they never realized who exactly they wanted Mako to be or what kind of character they wanted out of him. He just jumps back and forth between this smug, distant jerk to this mopey put-upon guy to a boring everyman to easily riled up to super easy-going and there's just no rhyme or reason to any of it. It feels like they came up with one thing for him, the romance with Korra, and when it didn't take off they had no clue what to do with him but didn't want to just drop him from the cast.

Really one of my complaints with the show in general is that last point. There are tons of characters who just lose all purpose to the plot - honestly Asami's a pretty good example of it herself, especially in season three (and really season two, given the Varrick plot ends up just going around in a circle to the payoff being them ending up with a boat when they already had one to start with) - but they won't just cut.

[Winter]

I feel like they never realized who exactly they wanted Mako to be or what kind of character they wanted out of him. He just jumps back and forth between this smug, distant jerk to this mopey put-upon guy to a boring everyman to easily riled up to super easy-going and there's just no rhyme or reason to any of it. It feels like they came up with one thing for him, the romance with Korra, and when it didn't take off they had no clue what to do with him but didn't want to just drop him from the cast.

Really one of my complaints with the show in general is that last point. There are tons of characters who just lose all purpose to the plot - honestly Asami's a pretty good example of it herself, especially in season three (and really season two, given the Varrick plot ends up just going around in a circle to the payoff being them ending up with a boat when they already had one to start with) - but they won't just cut.

The real problem with Korra comes more from the writers not having the time they needed to flesh out the story. It's the same thing with The Star Wars Prequels ,arguably the Disney Era films & Dragon Age 2 and all can be summed by a quote from Shigeru Miyamoto and while he was talking about games really this applies to stories in every media.

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

And so far the best overall stories of TLOK has been, in my opinion, Turf Wars as Michael Dante DiMartino had four years to figure out where everything went and where he wanted to take the story and he had the mistakes of the past to learn from.

As I said before, Turf Wars is pretty much Book 1 Air done right with it being mainly a romance, keeping the action 99% in Republic City and uses multiple plot lines all at once. Unlike Air, the romance is good, we get to see more of RC instead of staying in one or two locations and the plot lines are actually connected in a logical way so it all flows together nicely.

It even handles multiple villains a lot better then Air did. In Air the main threat was supposedly Amon and the Equalists but they didn't really do that much while Tarrlok played a much bigger role in leading RC to ruin. Here, all the villains actually play a part in making things worse but the main threat is Tokuga and the Triple Threats.

It's admittedly a lot more condense because the story has to fit into 3 issues each one lasting about 75 pages each but it does a good job at balancing all the verious plot threads. The main focus in on Korra and Asami and their relationship but it takes time out to focus on the other characters and makes good use of them.

Mako and Bolin for example have a much smaller role in TW then they did in the main series, same with Lin, Tenzin, Varric and Zhu Li, and Zhu Li's subplot is her becoming President. And the funny thing of it is, I think there are more characters in TW then there was in Air and yet everyone gets their moment in the sun without taking attention away from what we're all really here for, Korrasami.

For me TW proves that if Mike and Bryan had more time to develop TLOK we would have had a better series, one that might have been as good as The Legend of Aang. It's still not without it's flaws but said flaws are fewer and far between then they were in the TV series.

[Steve]

Another problem was that exposition infodump about homosexuality acceptance in the Avatar world. Yes, Sozin was a bastard, do you really have to make him a homophobe too? If you were going the route of "the Fire Nation turned on homosexuality", why not have it happen under Azulon as part of a "Make more babies so we get more soldiers!" initiative? Using Sozin was just cheap. And the entire segment was clunky in the extreme, a gross violation of "show don't tell".

For me, every bit of that world-building on gayness was needed.

Remember that, even after the finale of Season 4, there were STILL fuckers who went "I dunno man, maybe they are just good friends." I think a little overcompensation on the gay-ousity is reasonable. They had a justification there to be as fucking gay, and explicitly gay, as they possibly could be, because otherwise some waffling suburbanite softcore homophobe will go "what's wrong with this, just gals being pals!"

The segment isn't just relevant to their experience, it's necessary.

Oh, I remember the sheer denial, which turned into vicious attacks when it was confirmed.

Nor am I saying they needed to "Tone down" the gay element, not at all, it was the way they did it that was flawed. They violated the rule of "show don't tell" and, on top of that, it felt like they made Sozin a homophobe simply because "OMG he was evil".

[RobbyB1982]

Um, no. That is grossly misrepresentative of what went on back then. After the war, Hitler was injected into the DAP (German Workers Party) as a mole by the Reichswehr, where he kinda "went native" and was instrumental in reforming the party to the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party). His opinion of jews was fundamentally formed during that time (1919-1921) and it is here already that we get hints for what is going to happen, if he ever got to a position of power as he wrote in a letter to a soldier named Adolf Gemlich, who asked for clarification of the Jewish Question: The aim of the government "must unshakably by the removal of the Jews altogether". It is also during that time, that the SA (Sturmabteilung, the brown shirts) is formed into what they would ultimately become, as they violently throw dissenters out of party gatherings, injuring the people in question gravely and using force to quench inopportune party members and audiences already by 1919 and it doesn't take long for the SA to also assault people outside of party gatherings (mostly communists) as well.

It is also in 1923, that Hitler tries to get into a position of power by use of force. The Bierhallenputsch (Beer Hall Coup) is too complex a theme to replicate here with just a few words in an adequate manner, so I'll just link to the wikipedia-article, which details the happenings. Suffice it to say, he and his followers needed to be gunned down by the police to get control of the situation which developed that fateful day in Munich. As a result Hitler was thrown into the Landsberg Prison, which ended up being a comfortable house-arrest on castle Landsberg, during which he writes "Mein Kampf". And at this point any arguement that Hitler was anything but a despotic and murderous monster, especially once he gets into a position of power, just stops, as Hitler himself clearly outlines what he is going to do in that very book.

After being released in 1924, having served just one year out of his 5 year sentence, he made his way back into the leadership of the NSDAP and he indeed tries to improve the public image of both the party and himself as a legitemate and democratic force after his experience with the failed coup, but both his rethoric and the actions of the party, SA and (later) SS speak volumes about how much of a worth this facade has, as they violently clashed with political opposition and he ultimately gets into power by a combination of legitimate politics, violent supression of opposition and exploitation of loopholes in the constitution to force repeated elections.

This is far from being "properly" elected and that his opposition faces nothing but violence and death is indisputable since "Mein Kampf" at latest.

Uhm. Okay. I wrote one sentence saying he didn't start with the death camps. And then moved onto other dictators. I was being broad and talking about a lot of people, not just him.

Dictators rise in power before they get to do their full evil. They start small then escalate.