They keep doing this
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If you still watched past "I'm the (brown woman) Avatar and you gotta deal with it" from the beginning of the first episode then your standards are so low that anything you consider "good" is invalid.
Korra was literally screaming its wokeness in your face from moment one, its entire conception was built that way.
ATLA is one of my favorite series of all time, and i remember watching Korra about a decade ago, after first episode all i could think of was "this isn't Avatar", proceeding to drop it not even half-way through second episode
if only i knew back then what agenda it was trying to push
It also opened the door for "we can make clear and open gay characters in primetime kid's shows" to be acceptable.
So its not just a terrible show, but an actual major stepping stone in why things have gotten as bad as they are.
I disagree on two levels.
Firstly, the next avatar in the cycle was supposed to be a waterbender, who are all Eskimo save for the swamp tribe. Her being born in the southern water tribe and not being brown would have stood out as inconsistent.
Secondly, "you gotta deal with it" was a great introductory line and immediately sets up her character arc. She starts off bold, brash, uncaring of others, and downright destructive. Her first escapade into the city literally leaves a wake of destruction worse than the damage the bad guys caused, and she gets called out on it by the adults in the room. While blue-haired whales were obsessed over this line for stronk womyn reasons, anyone who actually watched the show knows that Korra's rash behavior was not being glorified. over four seasons she learns respect, restraint, and dignity, and is a shadow of her former "you gotta deal with it" bratty self.
except the part where Aang was considered a prodigy knowing just airbending at age 12, while Korra could bend all 4 elements at age 4 despite living in a place where only water and air exist
and another part which was highlighted at the end of first book, in which she conveniently gets her avatar powers back and gets forgiven by all previous avatars because reasons
and let's not forget that she learns airbending, the bending style that requires user to stay calm, cool and collected, through getting angry at Amon and punching him really hard
just go and watch E;R's review videos on the series, it's pretty entertaining even if you like the show
The villains were always the best part about Korra
agreed
Whatever the show's flaws, I do think her having most of the elements down at 4 was part of a genuine attempt at characterizing Korra as entitled and immature, showing her the same at 17 as she was at 4. Not the only purpose, but part of it. It may have been undermined by the writers' own beliefs, but it wasn't actually a grrl powah moment. The egregious strong women schtick was more ATLA's thing.
The issue in Korra's characterization is that, no matter how wrong she is, somebody else is always more wrong, either because they're suddenly written as nutcases, or just because they made Korra feel bad. The consequences she faces are only shown for brief moments, being reversed very quickly, while the focus is more on how her feelings, no matter how quickly they change, or how much of them are self-inflected, are valid. None of this is for propaganda reasons, but because the writers themselves are woke. I think they actually wanted to write Korra as troubled, but simply weren't capable of it. This is actually how progs interpreted troubled women in the early 2010s.
Where Korra does most of its propagandizing is in its proto-liberal patriotism. You can smell the Obama voters on the script. It's all about how cosmopolitan liberalism is so plainly the sole intelligent and moral belief system that you'd have to be evil or retarded to choose otherwise. Even if you recognize and attempt to fix flaws in the system yourself, you, as a pleb, will inevitably fuck it up. Only a true priest(ess) of liberalism can integrate your beliefs, and only insofar that they can be interpreted as an extension of liberalism, rather than a criticism of it.
There's definitely a connection between Korra's characterization and liberal patriotism, because one is the product of unchecked female narcissism and the other is fueled by it, but that's a whole separate wall of text.
agreed. the power level of the main character was definitely overblown, my thesis is just that her character arc was compelling.
Right, and The Last of Us 2 showed the exact response that is expected and logical from Joel's actions! The story works and is consistent chud and any response you have to it is clearly your fault not how we wrote it! It totally wasn't written with its woke intentions first and then bent to justify them from there.
Making "sense" and saying it was "setting up something" doesn't suddenly make something good, nor does it suddenly make their clear goals less duplicitous.
A PoC girl as a literal toddler walking in, acting like she is the hottest shit who ever existed because she, again as a literal toddler, was better than the previous MC who spent an entire show doing what she had already done mastering all the elements, is them outright insulting you and saying "you'll eat this slop anyway."
Saying the story is about her needing to get humbled doesn't get rid of that nonsense.
I would rewatch the scene. She is a far cry from being a master as her bending is extremely sloppy. she looks like one of those toddler ""blackbelts"" that McDojos hand out.
TLOU2 was shit.
Generally when you gotta focus on a specific word and say "she wasn't that good", it means the rest of it is still completely accurate and my point stands.
TLOU2 was shit, and its defenders use the same arguments you are to say it wasn't.
And remained that way throughout.
End of season 1: fucks up and loses her powers
End of season 2: fucks up and destroys the Avatar cycle along with the connection to every single previous Avatar from the past thousand years
End of season 3: fucks up and almost destroys the Avatar cycle again, gets poisoned with mercury, chained up with platinum, and forced into the Avatar state so that when killed in such a way the whole cycle dies forever
End of season 4: fucks up and destroys the united city then fucks off to the spirit world avoiding the consequences of her actions yet again
Korra is one of the worst protagonists ever. She accomplishes next to nothing. She wipes out decades of heritage. She never listens to Tenzin. She was horrible to both Mako and Bolin - both of whom deserved far better. She constantly falls in with the wrong people despite being warned otherwise. She almost ends the world at least twice. And she is constantly needing bailed out of her fuckups.
More like:
Season 1: learns to respect the teachings of old as well as respect the delicate new world. She pays a heavy price to learn this lesson, but it is fixed through deus ex machina.
Season 2: learns to be weary of authority, even when the goals of said authority sound just. Pays a heavy price to learn this lesson.
Season 3: she is literally beaten down to her lowest, and has to rely on her friends to save her.
Season 4: recovers from the harsh reality of season 3 after heavy counseling, learning to empathize with the villains such that she can deescalate a crisis. (granted, the de-escalation comes pretty late).
Seasons 1-4: is a shitty romantic interest and toys with the love lives of her friends.