The Legend of Korra

The Dark Avatar and Spirit Powers thing are cool ideas. I hope they use them.

The Spirits weren't really that bad in season 3 and 4, they act more like animals than anything. It just makes the internet treating Korra opening the Spirit portals as a knock against her even dumber.

The later comics do explore the issues caused by the mass arrival of Spirits.

I need to read them. I saw a story summary once but I need to read it for myself.

They really hate Korra on general so I would not trust them.

The spirits are mostly assholes in Season 2, so I understand the complaint at least a little.

Edited by Weirdguy149 on May 6th 2022 at 10:32:21 AM

They were also assholes in the original series for the most part.

The Kyoshi novels reveal that this is in large part Avatar Yangchen’s fault. She consistently prioritized mortals over spirits whenever she had to negotiate between them. It got so bad that some spirits became Dark Spirits even without Vaatu’s involvement. Avatar Kuruk more or less ruined himself cleaning up that mess.

Edited by M84 on May 7th 2022 at 12:23:11 AM

I havent read the novels so im probably missing some nuances, but it honestly sounds like Yangchen (who afaik is regarded as one of the greatest Avatars in-universe) is the Avatar that fucked up the worst of all known Avatars. I mean Roku also fucked up bad, but his fuck up at least was one moment where he let his old friendship get in the way of his duties (and he still prevented the war while he was alive), while Yangchens sounds like consistent behavior over the tenure of her being the Avatar.

Yangchen like all Avatars was a mixed bag. She had a good reputation for handling the mortal side of Avatar duties very well. But that came at the expense of the spiritual side of things — ironic given she was an Air Nomad.

It should be noted that Yangchen herself admitted that she messed up and that Kuruk paid the price for it.

Edited by M84 on May 7th 2022 at 4:51:08 PM

And the reason no one knows about Yangchen's mistakes (while blaming Kuruk for being a drunk idiot who died early) was because Kuruk absolutely refused to tell the world what she had done and what he had to do to fix it.

The first Yangchen novel is coming out July 19th, so we'll get more information then.

Yangchen even said that Kuruk put himself through too much pain protecting her reputation.

What are some fair criticisms of the Korra series? I have heard a lot of hate and praise towards the franchise but what are some fair criticisms towards the series?

I think there's a couple of criticisms I have, which I believe are fair.

1) Everything is way too compressed, due to the short seasons and uncertainty on renewals.

2) Season 2 especially suffers from a bunch of fairly odd writing choices (the whole police arc in Republic City is painfully weak and close to character assassination for Lin).

3) Vaatu as an 'evil spirit which has to be vanquished' rather than really going into the Yin-Yang dynamic of both spirits being needed was a massive missed opportunity.

4) I deeply dislike 'literally every political system and ideology is terrible and actively corrupt, only a small group of heroes can do anything,' as a narrative take-away, which is basically where Korra landed, at least for me.

5) Several characters were clearly loved by the writing team and so got way more focus than I felt was warranted. Varrick and Suyin stand out to me in this regard.

6) The early seasons love triangle was possibly realistic, but also a massive time and focus suck in a series which was already way too short.

7) They constantly set up interesting problems (Equalists have a point but how can you have equality when people are just unequal, Southern Water Tribe is legitimately being oppressed by the same people who are probably needed to defend it) and then undercut it (nope, they're led by a crazed bloodbender!, nope, they're led by a crazed waterbender!). They'd spend half a season spreading grey everywhere, then another half turning it black and white. And I found the 'we solved the problem the Equalist movement was trying to solve entirely offscreen and in such a way that no one ever even raises the issue (unless I've forgotten something?) again' a pretty painful copout.

Edited by ECD on May 11th 2022 at 4:27:20 AM

Yeah, while I love Korra, I really feel the uncertainty of Network commitment led to a lot of it's story issues.

Agree as to the political system thing. In the first-season DVD commentary, Brian even says their making the Council a rubber-stamp for Tarrlok was unrealistic, but they couldn't think of a better way to handle it in the time they had.

I agree with some of you points but a couple I don't agree with completely:

I will give you Varrick but I don't think Suyin was loved by the writers. She actually feels more like a tool for their story more then a character they loved. That is actually my problem with her, she is not a character but a plot device for Lin and Kuvira's plot lines. Does that mean she didn't get away with to much? No she did just not because she was loved by the writers but because she was not really her own character so they didn't see a reason to punish her.

I mean the fact that he was a water bender does not mean the show stop treating it as grey. Namely when Toph says Amon had a point and characters such as his brother make it clear that Amon truely bleieves what he is saying. It being easily solved I will give you but I don't think it was a copout. I mean ATLA literally tried to say that defeating the Fire Lord would end the war and in fact it did end everything as far the show was concerned. (No the comics still having tension between the nations does not meant the show did not have Aang beat the big bad and then right afterward have them celebrating the fact that the day was saved) This is no different. It is just compressed story telling. Beet the bad guy and move on to the next plot. Does that mean its good? No.

Edited by Bullman on May 13th 2022 at 6:31:41 AM

The show doesn't stop treating it as grey, it just (1) undercuts the narrative, no, nonbenders weren't actually a real threat to benders, not without being led by a bender and (2) lets them end it ala Last Airbender with beating up one guy and maybe a line in the intro of the next season.

But, more generally in Korra, Last Airbender and Dragon Prince, the writing crew has demonstrated a firm grasp of character (generally) and humor (mostly) and plot, but they really don't know how to handle politics at all. Whenever they start to touch on it, the writing suffers badly.

The worst of these in my view was actually in Last Airbender when the Dai Li just decide to follow Azula because she's impressed them that much over the course of...how long exactly? Time's a bit fluid, but it can't be that long that she convinced them to betray their oaths, their heritage and literally tear down the walls defending the city they're sworn to defend and allow in a literally genocidal force that they've been at war with for a century. That's...ridiculous. I could see a few traitors, but this is a large, organized force with its own leadership that it trusts and is loyal to.

But it's a broader weakness with their writing, from my perspective. Now, they aren't trying to write thrillers, but oh boy, when they do touch on it...wow does it grate.

For a different example, anyone remember Hahn? Yue's fiance who she was engaged to for political reasons, but who is killed off a few days before Yue, the chief's only child? This is a major political problem for one of the two organized states resisting the Fire Nation, except, no, it's a joke about Hahn's incompetence.

On Suyin...I mean, it's a matter of interpretation, so I don't see any useful discussion to have, but I appreciate the alternate perspective.

Edited by ECD on May 13th 2022 at 5:29:29 AM

Think you might be overstating the Dai Li's loyalty to the Earth Kingdom there. They're most certainly don't give a shit about the safety of the Earth Kingdom whenever they're just staying inside the walls and feeding the Earth King fake news. Once Long Feng was captured it was most likely they would be too once an investigation takes place, they didn't interfere in Azula betraying Long Feng but didn't assist Azula either, because they wanted to see if Long Feng was competent enough to keep them in power. They're just opportunistic cowards.

Wow they’re even shittier than The Praetorian Guard

And they were so bad at their job that they were one of the most common causes of death for Roman emperors, which is wild considering they were his bodyguards

And that's the problem, that they don't care at all and are opportunistic cowards.

This is a group of people who have committed themselves to a paramilitary organization with its own purposes and goals and they are loyal to neither its ideals, nor its leadership.

None of them. There was a big group that was standing there and not a single one of them was loyal? Seriously? Not a single one of them just wanted to kill the outsider princess? None of them wanted revenge for Fire Nation atrocities? None of them were sincerely outraged by what the Fire Nation does to Earthbenders like them?

Nor do any of them even have the sense of preservation to go 'we know the war is going on, we know what the Fire Nation is doing and has done, we know they view us as lesser and imprison or murder Earthbenders, tearing down these walls is potentially suicidal, I'm not going to do that.'

You can have power-hungry people in an organization (though any organization will also have true believers, which is ignored) but no organization survives constructed entirely on power-hungry suicidal-risk-embracing people.

An organization made up entirely of opportunistic cowards, who simultaneously are happily willing to embrace potentially suicidal orders for a cultural enemy of their people who they have been raised to hate and fear (despite volunteering to join a group dedicated to defending Earth Kingdom traditions) is...schizophrenic.

You'll also note you get the reverse problem in the Fire Nation who are essentially all suicidally loyal, to the extent that a single character is famously titled "THE deserter".

Edited by ECD on May 13th 2022 at 6:24:02 AM

The Manchus of the Qing dynasty treated the Chinese as secondary civilians and there were still traitors in the Ming army and plenty of the Ming generals stayed in power.

And do you have an example of a Ming general assisting a Qing royal in capturing an impregnable fortress, then showing up, with his handpicked troops to defeat the massively outnumbered royal and instead surrendering to her because she said 'I'm born to rule and you're not'? You'll notice, her argument is pitched to appeal to traditionalists, which they cannot be, because they're about to betray those traditions. This story is fighting itself because it needs the Dai Li to behave in a wildly foolish fashion.

The point isn't no one is ever a traitor, it's that the way this was set up does not work.

We may want to shift to the Last Airbender thread if we want to continue this diversion (which I admittedly started). My only point for this thread is that Legend of Korra handles politics badly, which is a pattern throughout the series as a whole.

Edited by ECD on May 13th 2022 at 7:31:48 AM

The Dai Li didn't help Long Feng capture Azula, but they didn't help Azula capture Long Feng either, what they were doing is seeing who comes out on top between them. Azula, by pointing out her royal status, has actual authority within the Fire Nation, and can thus ensure the Dai Li a position, and is more than aware it isn't values that keeping the royal family in power. Long Feng, on the other hand, has zero power beyond the Dai Li(lacking in royal blood means zero claim to the throne if he attempts a coup), and thus no right to rule, unless he provided a plan to keep the Dai Li in power.

The Dai Li are in power. They have captured all the general and the king. They hold the city. All they have to do is literally not open the gates and they're good to go (as far as they know, we know about the comet and the war balloons, but they don't).

Again, the Dai Li in the room are not all of them. Long Feng chooses who to bring and they still abandon and betray him for an enemy they've known for a tiny amount of time. Despite the fact that when given the opportunity to retain their position and suffer no risk at all, they previously chose to be loyal to him over the Earth King, who actually (for a version of actually that accepts the Dai Li belief system) does have the 'divine right to rule' Azula claims to possess.

But, to be clear, there is zero basis for the notion that a fire nation royal has any superior right to rule the earth kingdom over literally any earth kingdom resident. Indeed, that segregation is the tradition which the fire nation has violated!

This isn't China where you have a long history of dynastic turn-over to external forces and a means of legitimizing that. There is no suggestion that any of the four nations ever ruled over any of the others!

Again, my objection is not that some Dai Li might turn-coat to save their lives, it's that when they have all the power, Long Feng and his hand-picked troops choose to surrender to their blood-enemy, betray literally everything they hold dear (note, all these men presumably have family in the city which is about to be occupied and whose residents, assuming they survive, will know who betrayed them) under no threat and with no promises made.

Your claim seems to be that by not acting they remained neutral. This is false. By not acting, they betrayed the superior they claimed loyalty to, their nation and their ideals in exchange for which they were promised what exactly? And why would they believe anything that came out of Azula's mouth?

Again, if we wish to continue this, we should switch threads, as this is thoroughly irrelevant to the Legend of Korra.

I'm not interested in continuing, but one question, you're seriously suggesting the comet that has been coming periodically every hundred years isn't known by the Dai Li?

I'm suggesting that no one outside the fire nation seems to be tracking it or taking it into consideration (certainly, the knowledge that it's coming is provided by Avatar Roku and no other party, as best I recall, mentions it except Zuko, who learns of it from his father). If everyone does know, then no one's tactics/strategy make any sense.

Frankly, if it's widely known by the Fire Nation, then the massive and wasteful assaults on the Northern Water Tribe and Ba Sing Se (remember the giant drill?) and preparing massive forces to assault Omashu (as they couldn't have predicted a surrender, and an assualt on a fortified city defended by earthbenders would have significant casualties, even if victory was certain) are all deeply stupid and wasteful actions, when he could just wait a matter of months and crush the handful of remaining strongholds.

If it's known by the other nations, then the plan appears to be to...do nothing and hope the fire nation doesn't use their massive power boost for anything? I mean, this just goes back to 'they don't really know how politics or organizations larger than a band of heroes function and handle those groups badly.'

The fire nation higher ups at least definitely did know it was coming considering Ozai planned his massacre around the comet coming on schedule and nobody batted an eye.