The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

[phantom000]

Kuvira has legit points about problems with Monarchy (Looking at you, Great fucking Britain), lack of cohesion, roaming bandits, etc. The problem is she looks at all these problems and says "The answer to this is unilateral power for ME."

She's not evil for evil's sake. She's evil because she thinks that an authoritarian strongwoman is better than another inbred idiot.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting so many viewers seem to think it's a bad idea. Everything we've seen about the Earth Kingdom is that it was a nonfunctioning failed state with plenty of breakaway provinces. Kuvira deciding to bring the prosperity of her homeland and fix the problems seems like a sensible action.

Funny, wasn't that Sozin's excuse for starting the 100 year war? That would have been an interesting angle, with Zuko hearing Kuvira's speech and lamenting how 'it's all happening again.'

[CharlesPhipps]

Funny, wasn't that Sozin's excuse for starting the 100 year war? That would have been an interesting angle, with Zuko hearing Kuvira's speech and lamenting how 'it's all happening again.'

True, though we really actually see the corruption and incompatibility of the Earth system with its peoples needs.

But I realized that when I wrote it.

[phantom000]

Funny, wasn't that Sozin's excuse for starting the 100 year war? That would have been an interesting angle, with Zuko hearing Kuvira's speech and lamenting how 'it's all happening again.'

True, though we really actually see the corruption and incompatibility of the Earth system with its peoples needs.

But I realized that when I wrote it.

One thing that annoys me is when you have different nations that are basically the same with different names. This is something Avatar avoids as each of the four nations seem to work on a different system. The Fire Nation may or may not be an absolute monarchy with the Fire Lord have total control, but it is clearly a single, unified state while the Earth Kingdom is more like a collection of smaller states. This is probably how the Fire Nation was able to slowly conquer the Earth Kingdom as they picked off the city states one by one, perhaps even playing one against the other. When Sozin first attacked it would not surprise me if some of the cities honestly did not care and a few might even have collaborated with him.

It would have been interesting to see a little more of the Water Tribe, maybe that they are more like an oligarchy with the Water Chief being chosen by a council of nobles, with Yue simply being the daughter of the last man who was chosen.

[Winter]

Switching gears, one of the things that always bugged me about Mako and Korra's relationship was Mako's sudden super worry for her when he is told that she was supposedly taken by the Equalist. Please note that back in The Revolution, when Bolin was also captured by the Equalist, Mako remained calm and eh actually had to keep Korra under control. Then, as soon as Korra is missing he flips and starts being a jerk to anyone who he thinks is even slightly hindering his efforts to save Korra.

This is another case where the writers clearly didn't have a character in mind for Mako and how he was only written to be Korra's love interest so they ignored what little they established about him before, that he is cool under fire, so he can act all protective and be the dashing prince trying to rescue his true love. End result, Mako shows more concern for someone he's only known for month or so then his brother/only known family.

Take this in contrast to when Asami is captured in Turf Wars. Throughout the series whenever someone Korra cares about is in danger or gets hurt she is always quick to anger and others have to try and calm her. So when Korra loses her temper and lashes out against Tokuga it is no different then when she lashed out against Zaheer when she believed he killed her father, or when she was losing her temper when trying to save Bolin back in the Revolution. So when Korra starts acting this way it fits her character and it's a flaw she has never really over come.

To go off series for a moment, it's the same thing with Tomb Raider, when Lara learns that someone she loves is in danger she does everything she can to save them, with the most obvious example being Sam. And during these times she gets very emotional and does what she can to save those she loves, panicking, getting angry at those who are holding/hurting her loved ones and fighting through Hell just to save them. And this has been true of everyone she knows. Yes, Sam is the person Lara loves most but she does not treat Jonah or Reyes as less important and reacts the same way when they are in danger.

My point is, Mako has no consistency with his character, he is there to act the way the script needs him to depending in the scene in question and this has been the case with him throughout the series. It's actually the same issue I have with Jonah from Tomb Raider, he has no consistent character within the games, he goes from giant teddy bear who is most willing to believe in the supernatural before anyone else does, to cynic who gets angry at the drop at of hat, and later to being even more of a cynic based on the previews for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

What's worse, for both Mako and Jonah, (and please note that I like Jonah) is that they have no reason to act the way they do. Mako suddenly losing his cool when Korra is in danger makes no real sense since he knows she can take care of herself and out of all of the surviving crew members of the Endurance, Jonah suffered the least amount of trauma.

If you're going to write a character in a series make sure you maintain a level of constancy and stick to what you have establish from the start, otherwise you risk just annoying the audience when you have them break character on an almost regular basis.

[CharlesPhipps]

Well I buy Jonah's behavior in Tomb Raider because Lara's quest to go after the Holy Grail...er Divine Source is motivated by redeeming her father's name, which is not really something which most people can relate to as a concept worth killing people over. My headcanon is that Jonah is also annoyed with Lara because as a Maori, he's less than impressed with Lara skipping over the part she intends to rob the locals of their sacred cultural artifacts.

[Winter]

Well I buy Jonah's behavior in Tomb Raider because Lara's quest to go after the Holy Grail...er Divine Source is motivated by redeeming her father's name, which is not really something which most people can relate to as a concept worth killing people over.

Yeah, that's something else that's been bothering me since Rise of the Tomb Raider, I did enjoy it and Lara's desire to redeem her father's name is well written but because Richard is nothing more then a ghost there's no real way to get us emotionally invested in Lara's journey. To show what I'm talking about let's look at the endings of both Tomb Raider: A Survivor is Born and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

In Survivor the original ending was that Lara wouldn't be able to get to Sam in time and Himiko would succeeded in possessing Sam and Lara would be forced to kill her in order to save the world. However, test players hated this ending and one of the reasons they hated it was because of how attached they had become to Sam and her relationship to Lara. So the ending was changed to Lara getting to Sam in time and kill Himiko before she could possess Sam.

Take this in contrast with Rise. In that game the ending we got was the ending that was always planned. Lara shows up and, after seeing just how much damage the Divine Source has done decides to destroy it instead even though it is the only thing that can redeem her father's name. In this case text players were fine with this ending even though it was Lara being forced to lose.

And the reason for this is simple, no matter how well written Richard was, no matter how much it all meant to Lara to redeem her father's name the players could not get attached to Richard like they did with Sam. We got to know Sam, through her journal entries we find throughout the game, the recording of her and Lara interacting and, most importantly, through her interactions with Lara in the present day. All this combined helped to make players care about Sam and want to see her survive the game along with Lara and is a key factor as to why many, myself included, want her back so much and why she has gained such a following that has remained loyal to her five years later.

But with Richard, despite having the most documents in the game and him being Lara's main motivation throughout the game he and Lara have only about 3 to 5 minutes of screen time together and that with Lara as a kid. Same thing with the resent movie, we barely spend any real time with Richard despite him being alive in this version, (and stealing all of Lara and Sam's contributions to the plot ) we are never given a real chance to connect with him like we did with Sam.

This has been made even worse thanks to the comics which really fleshed Sam's character out along with her relationship with Lara.

It's like with Asami, while we spend less time with her then we did with Mako, we got to know her better and got to see a more fleshed out and deep relationship then either girl had with Mako. And in later seasons and the Turf War comics Asami has only become stronger and a large part of that is how consistent her character was. Same thing with Sam and Jonah, while Jonah has appeared in the most games, Sam has had the more fleshed out and consistent character and has a more interesting relationship then what Lara and Jonah have.

If we got just by the games, all we have really learned about Jonah is, he's friends with Lara, he had a abusive father, his brother is dead and that's about it. And that remains the case in the comics we have known Jonah for almost 5 years now and we still know barely anything about him. Hopefully that will change in when Shadow comes out as I do like the guy but for the life of me I have no idea why the series insist on keeping him around instead of bringing Sam back and part of me is sort of hoping that he leaves after this or has a reduced role.

[phantom000]

Chuck's little rant about why he does not like Mako kind of made me realize why i did not like Yue. They are not bad, exactly there is just nothing about them to really like. Yue works as a foil for Sokka simply because she is a reminder of what he has lost and might still loose if he is not careful.

One of the problems with season 2 is that the writers realized they picked the wrong guy. Bolin is just a better character in that he is more likeable and arguably much deeper because he seems to have a lot more character moments then Mako. One of my favorite moments in LOK is when he is reflecting on the 'good old days' with Asami. He has wealth, fame, status, everything him and his brother ever wanted and yet he has lost something, something he wants back but does not know how to get it(sound familiar?).

[Winter]

I think one of the underlining issues with Mako is that he is that he's rather rude for no real reason. With characters like Zuko or Geralt while they have their poor manners they are, for the most part, rather polite when you get down to it. Zuko's poor manners comes mostly from his impatient and bad situation of him being exiled and later being made an outlaw but he does still try to show respect for those around him who show him kindness and charity. And Geralt, and this is me playing the character as a nice person for most of Witcher 3, poor manners come from being being rather blunt in what he is thinking or feeling but you do get the sense that he isn't doing any of it because he wants to be rude.

But Mako, he's disrespectful to Korra when he first meets her for no reason, cheats on Asami after she loses everything, tries to shift blame for him, Mako, kissing Korra while he was still in a relationship with Asami. Then gets back with Asami after breaking up with Korra for a day at most (and Asami seems to be more embraced by her actions then Mako does in his own). Then takes advantage of Korra's amnesia to get back with her and pretty much dumps Asami right in front of everyone just so he can have Korra back, (and never apologizes to Asami after doing so I might add). And when reunited with Korra gets angry at her for not writing him and tries to blame her for him losing Wu while she and Asami are in the middle of trying to fix his mistake.

Add to that with the fact that he almost never apologizes for his actions throughout the show and it's why so many fans started to lose their patience with him. This was mitigated somewhat in Change, Balance and Turf Wars when Karma finally caught up with Mako but that only goes so far as Mako has still refused to directly apologize to Asami for his poor treatment of her.

[aceina]

the turf war comic really shows why korrasami works

assami is patient with korra they had a small fight in issue 2 AND TALKED THROUGH IT asami under stands korras up bringing really stunted her emotional growth so asami is patient with her

and well it feels natural korra is not on guard around assami and honestly she never has been

its why in my OPINION korra is not bi she is a lesbian who was just confused about her sexuality (thoe i freely admit it makes sense for the avatar to be BI and honestly all should be)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Aceina, I'm with you right up until the final paragraph.

Why does it logically follow from this that she should be a lesbian? As far as I've seen, it just establishes that Asami is the Best Girlfriend Ever and Mako, as an individual, doesn't really meet her emotional needs (in addition to being a fickle pickle and human failure).