The Legend of Korra

Okay... If anyone sees Leradny and I'm not around - tell him/her I already tried to deal with the Mako hate.

I tried, but it's like difficult to defend Mako when a shitload of fans thinks that he did not even break up with Asami (or properly apologize to her).

As for me, I thought THAT was the break up but a LOT of fans think it was really unclear.

http://isaia.tumblr.com/post/25720566151/not-sure-if-implied-or-just-plot-hole

The ending to Korra was a MASSIVE disappointment to me. What could have been a rather interesting development on Amon's part turned out to just be him catching the Villain Ball . He had the contingency plan to wow the masses by exposing the Avatar when she accused him of lying and had the crowd on his side as well as the entire Equalist organization. He was well set up to hunker down and continue to build his power in wiping out all benders, regardless of what Korra could do at the time.

In his own words, "If you died now, you would be a martyr." This was spoken to Korra earlier in the series, and it applies to Amon as well. He had a good thing going and was a skilled martial artist, able to take on benders without using bending himself. Then, the cause of his vengeance streak turns out to be daddy issues/Freudian Excuse. I shrugged and thought 'well, this doesn't stop his political agenda, right?' WRONG. When he had Korra and Mako alone in a room (not really), the first thing he does is goddamn blood-bend and expose himself, even if supposedly not publicly. His elite mook probably would have had time to come in and assist him if he didn't see Amon blood bend, and they could've easily taken down both Korra and Mako. Perhaps some Avatar action could've happened THEN, and even if Amon died, then the organization would return to the underground much like Korra and crew were forced to 1-2 episodes prior.

The other thing that bugs me, which they decided not to address at length, is the oppression of benders against non-benders, which was shown as very real: the council agreed in their vote to restrain the entire non-bending populace in the interest of benders, which as the Getting Crap Past the Radar page shows, is reminiscent of Japanese internment and other horrible things, something which many TV shows in America do not address, especially not cartoons targeted at children. This dissolution of the villain's common sense and his willingness to toss wrenches into all his own plans all at once within one episode really shows how rushed they were for an ending, and I think we're worse off for it.

EDIT: Not to mention the ending was pretty much a mellow 'hey I'm Avatar-mode' ending and everything turned out to be all right, complete with Korra able to restore the bending of those that had lost it.

EDIT EDIT: Oh right, and that Mako/Korra/Asami/Bolin thing would've been more interesting IMO if Mako turned out to just be caring a lot about Korra, or even better, in love with both of them/hard pressed to make a choice because only a few episodes ago he seemed to really prefer Asami. Honestly, I think Mako's a class A jerk for tossing Asami to the side after under a week.

edited 24th Jun '12 4:51:44 AM by Wufei

No idea when or if they broke up. He sure as hell didn't apologize in any real fashion. He seems to be bad at those.

edited 24th Jun '12 4:46:29 AM by FarseerLolotea

http://chaobunny.tumblr.com/post/25751383102/avataraang-kataangcaps-you-are-me-and-i-am

I'm starting to feel worried that it actually (still) feels (just) corny to me, rather than /CRINGE.

I'll try rewatching again tomorrow. I think maybe I'm still (too) euphoric from Asami being so FUCKING AWESOME in the finale.

Hold on to your hats folks, this one is gonna be a doozy.

Now that I've had the chance to see the finale, I think I want to talk about the Equalists and how they're presented. Yes, again.

What the finale has made even more apparent, and all the more infuriating, to me is that the Equalists are essentially an amalgamation of every bullshit nonsense “criticism” of every social justice movement ever... made real.

“You don't want equality, you just want to tear everyone down!” “You're not against racism/sexism, you're racist/sexist against white people/men!” “There wouldn't be a problem with ________ if you people would stop making such a big deal out of nothing!” “You're just a Vocal Minority. All the other _______ people are just fine.”

And it becomes even worse when you remember that all those same movements, no matter how peaceful and justified, every single time were smeared as being “radical”. MLK, one of the great, well known icons of peaceful resistance, was branded as a zealot in his day.

Yes, real zealots exist in these movements. They always do. However, these zealots are always relegated to small groups who are regarded by the mainstream movement as the nutjobs that they are. The problem comes in the fact that opponents of the movement use the zealot's actions to smear the movement as a whole.

Here, the whole movement really is made up of nothing but zealots, making the label of “zealot” not a smear on a larger, more sane group, but an accurate representation of their actions.

Real social justice movements are nothing like the caricature we get from their opponents. They understand that “equality” doesn't have to mean “everyone is exactly the same.” Instead, it's about understanding privilege and how it impacts us and our society, and doing our best to counter that impact.

And Korra and pals? They've got nothing but privilege. The only one of them that wasn't born with superpowers was born obscenely wealthy.

So what have they learned about privilege? That its awesome and that you should fight tooth and nail to protect it. After all, you're just defending yourself from those whiny people who want to take it away. Because they don't want “equality”, they want to take away an integral part of who you are, leaving you a hollow, broken shell of a human being.

And hey, everything is really just fine, those guys are just a bunch of losers blaming all their problems on someone else. Sure it sucks that a bender killed someone they loved, but they're the bigots for wanting to punish us all for that! If they would stop making such a big deal out of it and realize that everyone has to deal with crime, there wouldn't be a problem between benders and non-benders in the first place!

And honestly, I don't give a damn if Mike and Bryan were trying to do this or if they wanted the Equalists to be a massive ball of social justice movement stereotypes. The very fact that we've had so many conversations on the issue belies the fact that the Equalists, by their very nature, raised questions of social justice and inequality. The association is there whether Bryke wanted it or not. Intent is not some magic thing. Not intending to make the Equalists such an intelligence insultingly evil, straw-stuffed organization doesn't change the fact that they did.

And really, it wouldn't have been very difficult to fix this. Right off the top of my head: A) Give the non-benders some real concerns (Even just on this thread we had to have come up with, what, three dozen different possibilities for what these could be?). B) Instead of being the whole movement, make it so that the Equalists are simply a small, radical offshoot of a larger, peaceful movement. C) Make that larger group clearly denounce the activities of the Equalists, and maybe even aid the police in their pursuit of them.

See Bryke? You can still have your “internal conflict”, but without resorting to such ridiculous stereotyping. And if the network mandated that your conflict can't be too morally gray (I don't think that's true, given all their pre-release talk, but that's another discussion), you still have a clear bad guy in Amon and the Equalists, they just don't represent ALL the non-benders this way.

Look at how the season ended. After Amon was defeated and showed that he was a bender all along (FFFFFUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK) the Equalist people just stand around slack-jawed... and then we don't see them again at all. No resolution to their story. Nothing. After all, who gives a damn about a bunch of weakling non-benders? They were nothing but a plot device to be disposed of as soon as their use was up.

It sickens me how poorly they've handled this, and I honestly regret having given them my money at this point. The worst part is, I know I'll be doing it again when the next season rolls around. A:TLA gave me too high of hopes for this series for me to abandon it here. Here's to hoping that they stick with a conflict they can treat with the respect it deserves next time.

Outside of that stuff, I feel like the finale was a summation of the season in full. Really exciting and interesting in the moment, but then as soon as it's over the Fridge Logic and s start setting in. Overall my assessment of this season: It's alright as mindless popcorn entertainment, but I really feel like it deserved to be more than that. One word sticks out in my mind: disappointing.

I cringed at that scene. It was pretty horrible for them to bond like that when Asami's around. That Korra didn't even try to talk to her about the kiss and everything made me irritated, even though it's pretty human of her.

Asami has been very mature about it all. She knows when to drop a boyfriend, and that's very commendable. If she had gotten clingy or jealous or entitled, it would have lost her legitimacy.

Heck, the girl is practically a saint. And so is Bolin.

And, you know, the scene in the hangar where he saved her... I was really scared for a while that they would Pair the Spares.

I hope I'm not only one who still like Mako.

Mako is still a really nice guy. He's dumb about relationships and stuff, but his heart is definitely in the right place. He just sucks at figuring out where that place is, and that hurts people.

@Expanded universe: I don't think it would be that hard to adapt ATLA to a videogame, you just need people that love the series and are expert in game design. Look at the folks at Rocksteady. No one managed to adapt Batman to a video game setting (thanks to things like his gadgets, and martial arts, and something else) but they managed to do it in two great games.

Also, I really, realy want to see novels. Many novels based on the series. MANY. MANY NOVELS.

You mean like the generally awful (on average) Expanded Universe for Dr. Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, and so on?

That's true, but the problem here is how you're going to represent four different kinds of supernatural martial arts playing off of each other. How do you represent the changes in playstyle? How do you make sure that the benders who need their natural element around (water, earth) aren't horribly neutered in, say, a level taking place in a fort, how do you make sure that all the different attacks have counters that are represented the way it is in the show, how do you make non-bending enemies threatening when you could at any time kite them around like there's no tomorrow?

edited 24th Jun '12 5:02:30 AM by math792d

I wonder how many of Amon's CMOA's will need to be removed because of the reveal that he's a bloodbender?

Like the part where he resisted Tarrlok's bloodbending

Just repeating something I saw on Tumblr.

Teen!Amon is genderbent Korra.

After some thinking: Amon appear to me as smallest hypocrite off all Equealist.

Because of fact that he is bender.

First he bending powers, things what he oppose, unlike rest who have big agility, chi blocking, technology, gadgets, thing what are still outside of reach of normal people what can be used (and is used)to oppress others.

Second (and most important) he can relate to his victims because he can know how losing bending can feel (I'm assume he want his bending gone). With his bending he can be crippled like others benders. His minions just something what make them better than (former) benders. Any nonbender is always in better situation than any debended person, especially Equelist.

None, he still deserve those, you just want them gone.

edited 24th Jun '12 5:14:57 AM by DeathCloud

None of them? Seriously Ginger, calm down.

If it helps you, look at it from this perspective: He couldn't use his Bloodbending in full use, because it would have been to obvious. He enhanced his non-bending skills with them and did not fake them with it.

edited 24th Jun '12 5:14:58 AM by 3of4

Hmmmm, WOULD Amon have debenderized himself if he could? Eventually

Um, I think Amon is awesome. I don't want any of them gone. I just get a little said when spoilers pop up next to all his tropes mitigating a lot of the awesome things he does is all

edited 24th Jun '12 5:17:01 AM by gingerninja666

Also, some people seem to disappointed with Amon's reveal, but honestly I think it served two nice purposes, one of which people were complaining about earlier:

I remember people saying that they were disappointed with Korra's vision of Tarrlok because it only served to warn Korra about Tarrlok, and not Amon. Well, here it turns out that it was, to some extent, a warning about Amon as well (it's easy to infer that Amon must have learned the movements he used for his fake energybending from his father's memories of how Aang took his bending.) The reveal of Amon as Noatok solved that nicely.

Secondly, it served as a capstone of one of the series' themes, the idea of the continued legacy. There's a reason why a lot of the characters who were children of the season 1 characters mention their elders as much as they do. All of them are trying to continue the legacy of their parents in a world that has changed dramatically.

On top of that, it served to nicely contrast Korra and Amon. Both are bending prodigies, but one was brought up by a man who desperately wanted revenge, and was taught the ultimate form of bloodbending, whereas Korra was trained by the greatest healer in the world, and someone who'd learned the hard way just how little revenge actually means. Add to the fact that they were from two separate water tribes, and you can start to see the contrast. There's a bit of truth to the whole "genderbent" Korra in that both of them had similar conditions, but different upbringings.

Also, I'm hoping that they'll dedicate at least a few minutes of season 2 to how some of the more sane non-benders found a way to get onto the Council. That'd alleviate the few problems I had with the finale nicely.

You are a wise and noble whatever animal that is.

edited 24th Jun '12 5:22:08 AM by math792d

Probably yes. I'm actually only calling it hypocritical about the whole "see how bender's bully non-benders!" while doing the same with bloodbending.

If he'd debend everyone on the planet and keep his bending to rule over them i'd call him a big hypocrite. But if he debend himself in the end to "end" bending, i'd rather call him a slightly hypocritical Well-Intentioned Extremist with Pay Evil unto Evil.

The logical fallacy in the latter is however that as debended Bender can have bending Children he'd HAVE to keep his bending to further debend the newborn Benders (aside from a Final Solution) and in the end (as he would ultimately get old and die) train a successor, so perpetuate bending himself...

Nobody ever said that to be an Equalist you cannot be a bender, right? Even a Bender can believe in equality.

edited 24th Jun '12 5:23:55 AM by 3of4

I'm not disappointed. I love that, part because of thing you just said, or stuff what I mentioning in my last post.

Fix'd. I meant to say "some people."

Really, I'm just disappointed that we didn't get to see more of Bumi. I can imagine him being a sorta-Sokka 2.0, mixed with Aang's more childish sensibilities.

I guess Amon wasn't cheating to gain his intelligence... so there's that for me

@ probably: Yeah, I responded about the same way as that guy did. Except when Korra tried to back off again, my response was more like "oh, good, you showed a glimmer of willpower in Mako's presence!"

He used Bloodbending to keep the bloodflow in his Brain high and therefore the oxygen levels, making him smarter!

He used Bloodbending to get the bloodflow of his followers higher, making them more excitable!*

(just messing with you )

edited 24th Jun '12 5:28:58 AM by 3of4

He didn't cheat to gain his rhetorical talents, either.

edited 24th Jun '12 5:25:39 AM by math792d

I'm still disappointed that Amon didn't tried to explain himself to Lieutenant. Maybe less people would complain about his hypocrisy.