I can't.
Once again overlithe and kith_koby sum up my thoughts about Korra better than I can.
Yeah, I feel angry that these messages are in a show aimed at children. But mostly I feel let down. A year of active participation in the fandom only to have this beautifully drawn and fairly well-acted steaming pile of shit handed to me. It might look nice, but now everything is tainted with the smell of crap.
The show danced around the topic of the non-benders having genuine grievances, unable to make up its mind for seven episodes if they should be taken seriously or not. So it decided to focus on sports and romance and just paint the Equalists as flat, one-dimensional bad guys. Amon being a secretly powerful bender is the biggest cop out of all cop outs. Then Aang ex machina pulled a Lion turtle act and helped Korra restore the status quo at the end, because we can't have our hero actually have character growth. Can't have the most powerful being in the constructed universe of the show learn what it's like to not have power.
This is not the kind of show I want to spend my time on. Speculative fiction (fantasy, sci fi, etc.) is supposed to provide a safe space for dealing with real, human issues because the setting isn't real. The magic is a tool, it is not the point.
There are ways to explore the issue of energybending and deconstruct it. Having a bender with a mimic power take advantage of an oppressed group was not one of them.
I'm in the middle of a longer essay on this. But yeah, I'm going to bow out, folks. No more Korra for me.
I plan on writing the rest of Only Truth, just to show that I have the discipline to finish what I start. But then...I dunno. I just need to walk away from this fandom for a while.
EDIT: I've seen some predictions that Korra will have to confront the non-bender/bender issue again in season 2. I actually predict the opposite, that it will never come up again. Book 1: Air was designed as a complete story. Further seasons of Korra will be their own story, just with the same characters.
I could be wrong, of course. But the thing is...
Korra is not the person to be dealing with these issues. Stories of the oppressed should be told from the POV of the oppressed. That's why I won't see "The Help" until I can stream it for free (and even then I probably won't bother).
People in power/with privilege can be allies, but they cannot be the main character in this kind of story. It can't be about them. Korra belongs in a story about facing big dark evil where her power is the only thing standing between it and total destruction of the world -- in other words, typical fantasy fare, where the story doesn't ask the audience to deal with issue plaguing real people in this real world. That kind of escapist fare is fine because it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
This was not fine. This was an insult.
EDIT THAT SHOULD BE FILED UNDER TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: I was careless and did not put spoilers behind a cut. It's probably too late to apologize, but I am sorry.
Yeah, I feel angry that these messages are in a show aimed at children. But mostly I feel let down. A year of active participation in the fandom only to have this beautifully drawn and fairly well-acted steaming pile of shit handed to me. It might look nice, but now everything is tainted with the smell of crap.
The show danced around the topic of the non-benders having genuine grievances, unable to make up its mind for seven episodes if they should be taken seriously or not. So it decided to focus on sports and romance and just paint the Equalists as flat, one-dimensional bad guys. Amon being a secretly powerful bender is the biggest cop out of all cop outs. Then Aang ex machina pulled a Lion turtle act and helped Korra restore the status quo at the end, because we can't have our hero actually have character growth. Can't have the most powerful being in the constructed universe of the show learn what it's like to not have power.
This is not the kind of show I want to spend my time on. Speculative fiction (fantasy, sci fi, etc.) is supposed to provide a safe space for dealing with real, human issues because the setting isn't real. The magic is a tool, it is not the point.
There are ways to explore the issue of energybending and deconstruct it. Having a bender with a mimic power take advantage of an oppressed group was not one of them.
I'm in the middle of a longer essay on this. But yeah, I'm going to bow out, folks. No more Korra for me.
I plan on writing the rest of Only Truth, just to show that I have the discipline to finish what I start. But then...I dunno. I just need to walk away from this fandom for a while.
EDIT: I've seen some predictions that Korra will have to confront the non-bender/bender issue again in season 2. I actually predict the opposite, that it will never come up again. Book 1: Air was designed as a complete story. Further seasons of Korra will be their own story, just with the same characters.
I could be wrong, of course. But the thing is...
Korra is not the person to be dealing with these issues. Stories of the oppressed should be told from the POV of the oppressed. That's why I won't see "The Help" until I can stream it for free (and even then I probably won't bother).
People in power/with privilege can be allies, but they cannot be the main character in this kind of story. It can't be about them. Korra belongs in a story about facing big dark evil where her power is the only thing standing between it and total destruction of the world -- in other words, typical fantasy fare, where the story doesn't ask the audience to deal with issue plaguing real people in this real world. That kind of escapist fare is fine because it doesn't pretend to be anything else.
This was not fine. This was an insult.
EDIT THAT SHOULD BE FILED UNDER TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: I was careless and did not put spoilers behind a cut. It's probably too late to apologize, but I am sorry.