Korra Season 2 Part 4

[Steve]

Darmani, your writing is usually more comprehensible.

For the benefit of everyone else, Darmani is likely the SB poster of the same screenname, who participated (with many others, including myself) in the Korra/Asami discussion that took over the Spacebattles thread on TLOK back when the finale aired.

[Worffan101]

Season 2 was by FAR the weakest season of Korra, and kinda poisoned the well for a lot of people from what I've seen.

I only got into Korra relatively late, like I got into ATLA, so I binged the whole thing in one massive go. My main criticisms of the whole thing are: It's all too fast, since the seasons are too short, and there's sometimes a tone clash between Tenzin's younger kids being little kids and the serious drama.

Also Jinora is too perfect, but that's just me.

They seem to have had trouble striking a balance between "good" and "flawed" with some of the characters, and Korra's spiritual journey is way the fuck out of whack. I maintain that the culmination of season 2 should have come AFTER the development in seasons 3-4, but of course that throws the plot off the rails.

Anyway, season 2 is too short and too fast, like the rest of the show, but also manages to be interminable and poorly-written with all the characters being fucking idiots. Korra's impulsiveness is Flanderized into childish petulant dickhole behavior, Bolin's exploits range from mildly amusing but overused to straight-up creepy and fucked up shit being passed off as comedy, Unalaq's motivations are muddy and basically seem to be "whatever kind of cartoon evil the plot demands", Eska's obsession with Bolin is straight-up creepy yet again seems to be treated as comedy, Korra undergoes fuck all for character development, and the whole thing seems to be just rushed to the finish.

I know they had a writer's strike or something, but this product was fucked from the get-go.

Season 1 was flawed but at its core was solid, they had potential if they just made Mako less of a dick, but season 2 was the wrong way to go.

Season 3 was fine to good, with better character writing, cool villains, and a solid enough plot, but again too fast-paced to be as good as the original. Season 4 was even better (I maintain that Kuvira's fall is a very nicely-done fallen paladin story) but again, PACE. I get that Nickelodeon was only giving them so much time, but they could've cut down on characters or something.

Only recently read the comics (I had to slog through the Zuko's mom comic first, and questioned Zuko's sanity for letting Azula out of prison for any reason the whole time, and read The Promise despite rolling my eyes at literally everybody in it being a stubborn dickhead), and Turf Wars is...ehhh. Again, plot is weak, and this time the worldbuilding is kinda suspect. Like, they go "everybody but the Earth Kingdom was OK with gay people until that jerk Sozin fucked up everything in the Fire Nation" and I don't buy that shit for a second.

I mean, you have these four-five cultures (Water Tribes are heavily divergent and technically count as separate cultures) with very different approaches to social dynamics, they should have more nuanced takes. If I'd been writing it, I would've had something like...

--Air Nation (Tibet): this requires more worldbuilding on Air Nomad society, if we go with "most of the population are itinerants who live in big family groups and the monks are closely genetically and culturally related people who live in agricultural communities", then the monks probably turn a blind eye to a little guy-on-guy action or girl-on-girl if it happens in a closet in the monastery's non-sacred areas, the nomads proper probably have polyandrous marriages a la Tibet to keep property in matrilineal family hands and to keep the population manageable, which means male homosexuality and bisexuality is OK but not female bisexuality or homosexuality. After Sozin's genocide of the Air Nation, the new Air culture probably relies exclusively on whatever Aang and/or Tenzin decide should be the new rule.

--The Fire Nation, as a transparent analogue to Imperial Japan and with a time-honored tradition of ritual dueling to deal with the fallout of fire being the element of passion and that seeping into firebending, probably legally forbid open homosexuality but have a very active and restless LGBT community "behind the scenes", who are permitted to exist by the elite due to high-ranking LGBT nobles, but only so long as they put on the proper public face. I would not be surprised if Zuko is mistaken for gay by other Fire Nation noblemen due to his...complicated relationship with Mai. Could be seen as just putting on appearances in such a climate.

--The Water Tribes, who are basically Inuit, probably have a concept of "third gender" for trans people similar to what India has or the concept of spirits being in the wrong bodies like some Native Americans do. This coupled with their medical skill means that it's possible that some Water Tribe people may have access to primitive gender reassignment surgery as early as the original ATLA, and all but certainly by the '20s-esque Korra period (first gender reassignment OTL was in the '20s in Germany). Given the situation of the Southern Water Tribe, lesbians and gay men are probably fully accepted as they're necessary to keep the tribe alive, though the dating opportunities are limited. In the North with its arranged marriages and more rigid society (possibly an attempt to emulate the Fire Nation?), things are probably a little different and non-heterosexuality is likely treated as more of a "phase" or something. This probably changes somewhat post-ATLA season 1 as there's probably going to be cultural fallout from one of the most respected members of Northern society publicly getting a cold hard dash of reality about why arranged marriages suck, followed by the sucker-punch of the beloved princess dying to bring back the Moon, which means there's likely to be a cultural shift against arranged marriages and eventually other conservative social values.

--The Earth Kingdom is a mashup of imperial, warring-states, and warlord China but also has Legally Distinct From Korean and Vietnamese people within it. In the provinces most used to strong imperial rule from Ba Sing Se back when that was a thing, the elite can probably get away with secret homosexuality but the peasantry will probably simply go "oh that's Li, she's got a wife back home to take care of, poor dear's been sick all week" as long as times are good and turn on the LGBT population as a scapegoat in bad times. In provinces more estranged from Ba Sing Se's direct rule, it's probably more varied. I can easily see Earth Queen Hou-Ting being...willing to scapegoat LGBT people to divert popular unrest against her rule.

Anyway, that's just my personal thoughts on the matter, because I was really disappointed by Turf Wars and it just wouldn't leave me alone.

[Darmani]

What the yiff are you talking about?

I just edited it

[Darmani]

Darmani, your writing is usually more comprehensible.

For the benefit of everyone else, Darmani is likely the SB poster of the same screenname, who participated (with many others, including myself) in the Korra/Asami discussion that took over the Spacebattles thread on TLOK back when the finale aired.

Yes it is me. Who were you over there


I do not appreciate the implication I took over a thread.
Just to be clear as this was obviously the last image in the series the relationship was pretty much what everybody was talking about and practically the only thing that's praise and look forward to in terms of the series

adjust to reclassify my problem is that I don't really like Asami as a character and she seems to be primarily Redeemed by being contrary to what people expect as the other woman. But it's like she has these flavors of all these positive qualities but she doesn't actually and gave with them as an example be entire selling weapons to fund a warlock gets taken over by Varick and the loss of her company by Mako
I'm not even saying that you shouldn't like her I'm not even saying you should like Marco I barely did at this point but it was primarily because of this entire character Arc that I could stand him and ultimately honestly I liked him and her getting back together next go-around because it actually made them seem like equals and aadults as opposed to a heartthrob bad boy fantasy straight out of some young adult novel adaptation and the cool girl who the not like the other girls (Korra) is competing with. Even them being friends in the end wasn't that big of subversion

But if you want to bring up past threads that was a constant thing. everybody was expecting and then judging Asami to be Batman. expecting her to be the counterpart voice of reason on Benders or was expecting this or that from her and it was like people liked her because of all this fan art fan theories and FanFictions and that's why I think they like the relationship because all of that got validated with the fancharacterization. The sequel comic effectively canonizes a bunch of fan arguments for like the first three pages. It's genuinely why I don't like the character it's the idea of her that entices everybody. Not what she actually does on the screen.

Much like a lot of people hate Mako because of what he reminds us of.

I was totally out there with the hating until they actually stop writing him in that way and actually wrote him as Chuck said. as a cop who was trying to navigate Beyond being The Loner brooding teenage fantasy bad boy. And because of that he just totally works for me.

if I could point to another character that I feel gets a similar amount of disdain but is well written and underappreciated it would be Cho Chang from Harry Potter

Cho Chang is Harry Potter's dream girl and first major Crush that's a relationship crashes and burns because Carrie really doesn't know how to people all that well. The movie adaptation does not do her any favors and it's especially bad because by hooker by crook people either got the idea that they were being set up for a Harry Hermione relationship the one person on rpg.net take note that they just naturally saw Harry Potter as gay and Hermione as his female confidante

There was this Flash in a pan netdrama poem about how Cho Chang is a bunch of Asian stereotypes which is hilarious because she's absolutely none of them. While it's true she's a member of nerd house she was recognized by Harry because she was an athlete like him. in the book series she expresses her opinion when Harry actually dynes to talk to her and it's surprisingly pretty reasonable she even gets against him not acting submissive at all defending her friend and her choices to stand by her. And that's ignoring the fact that I think she asked harry out to romantic Rendezvous that actually makes him a nervous

but because she breaks up with him and she is suffering from sadness and frustration from losing her boyfriend last year she kind of gets reduced in fan discussion to cries a lot or Hussy
think she's just casually and regularly held up as this offencive character to women of color in Harry Potter and j k rowlings writing

Mako I think is punished more for looking like a Korean drama husbando style character obviously made to be pretty and angst (in a sexy not challenging way) and deliberately appealing to the teenage girls in the audience or in all of us. And thus a lot of people were already primed to really not like him since his role and purpose in the story was to appeal to those aspects very deliberately. The male equivalent of the stock easy romantic archetypes or moe character

Even in season 1 while he was set up that way they deliberately didn't write him that easily making him complicated (not believing Korea and wanting to end their friendship on basis of her past behavior). Another complaint he is like the fan version of zuko. Only reality ensues. S2 doubled down on that and seemed to grow him up and made him more vulnerable and less an icon. Even his falling back in with Asami felt more natural. Basically this was the second try on the character and I think they did pretty damn well with them by exercising all the drama romantic boi bullshit

But all commentary is either here is he's a heel or he's boring somehow at the same time. Admittedly I'm the guy who likes and defends metroid other m

[Winter]

Personally I don't think Cho is well written as we don't really learn anything about her as a character. We know she likes Cedric & Harry and like Quidditch and is very easily jealous if Harry even talks about another girl. And that's it, we never learn her hopes or dreams as she is, as you said, Harry's dream girl and that's about it.

Going back over to TLOK it's the same issue with Mako, despite spending most of the series with him we don't really learn anything about him as his whole character revolves around his relationship with Korra and Asami. Even in the clip show, which gives Mako the first act most of what he talks about is his relationship with the two women and one or two bits that don't cast him in a good light, (like him saying that he wasn't dating Asami when he and Korra kissed or when he lied to Korra to get back with her in Spirits).

With Asami we do learn everything there is to know about her, why her father means so much to her, why she would chooses her friends over her father, why her company means so much to her. Why her relationship with Korra is so important to her, and why losing any of these things hurts her so much. Asami allows us to see her at her most vulnerable and has to fight for everything she wants.

But with Mako, as I said before, usually just has to wait around for something he wants and he will get it usually with little to no actual effort on his part. It's the same issue I have with Rey, we learn almost nothing about her despite having the most screen time out of the entire cast, she is not required to earn anything she wants and is used mostly as a means to learn about and bridge the gap between Luke and Kylo Ren.

For me, Mako and Rey are shallow characters that pale in comparison to Asami and Mara Jade respectfully. As for Turf Wars I actually really enjoyed it and, IMHO, is Air done right. But that's just my opinion.

[CharlesPhipps]

I unironically say Bolin was a far more interesting potential love interest than Mako. When they went on the date, I was like, "I don't see why it's so ridiculous."

Mind you, I lost all sympathy for Mako as a romantic lead when he was thinking about choosing Korra or Asami and ignores his brother likes the former.

Not cool dude.

[Winter]

That's actually one of the biggest problems with Mako throughout TLOK, he always has a bad habit of doing some things that make him out to be more of a jerk and every time it happens he learns nothing. He acts almost possessive of Korra when she starts showing a interest in Bolin despite the fact that they're not dating and had, in fact, just turned her down. Kisses Korra while still dating Asami and blames everyone but himself and when confronted by Asami on this point tries to direct blame at Bolin.

Nearly gets Asami to lose her company and blames Varrick for his plan failing, lies to Korra about their breakup and has never once apologized to Asami or Bolin for his bad treatment of either of them, And then in the clip episode he claims that he wasn't dating Asami when he kissed Korra and does the same damn thing when he we get to the bit of him lying to get back together with Korra.

And before the clip show we have his role in Reunion where he blames Korra for losing Wu when it is 110% his fault and, as per usual, he never apologizes for this and instead just changes and never has to own up to his mistakes.

[phantom000]

I unironically say Bolin was a far more interesting potential love interest than Mako. When they went on the date, I was like, "I don't see why it's so ridiculous."

Mind you, I lost all sympathy for Mako as a romantic lead when he was thinking about choosing Korra or Asami and ignores his brother likes the former.

Not cool dude.

Yeah, I never understood why they didn't just go with Korra and Bolin? I think Mako and Asami weren't bad together either. I think the writers realized their mistake and tried to fix it but arguably screwed things up even worse.

Still, i love that moment in season 1 when Mako and Asami are in the kitchen and Pema just looks at them, smiles and says 'I see you two need a moment alone,' then lets her self out.

[TrueMetis]

Because the creators have no fucking idea what they're doing when it comes to romance? Their one good go at romance was Sokka and Suki, and that's because they had two compatible people and just skipped past all the build up horseshit and just had them be a couple. No will they won't they. No assholishness. No dumbass overdone misunderstandings. Every other relationship they tried to create during the series was trash.

[CharlesPhipps]

I tend to think of Bolin as one of the Ron Stoppable or Sokka type characters. Not immediately who you'd think as a romantic character but one that grows on you. Him maturing and being a friend might have been interesting than just playing the clown.

I'm fine where Korra and Asami landed but "friends who have a lot in common then start dating" is a rare enough thing in anime.

But yes, Mako just was a bad friend and not particularly good brother. He's a lot more realistically the kind of jerk who lets us down in real life than Zukko's betrayal too.

And Zukko had the maturity to say, "It was my fault. I'm sorry."

I wish we'd seen more of the Fire Prince too.