do you mind going further on the "bryke is trash" point? i may have liked a:tla and thought a:tlok had issues, but i feel like i'm missing info or haven't thought about certain things critically enough.
i will definitely do my best -- full disclosure it’s been years since i’ve come into Close Contact™ w/ k*rra, so feel free to take with a grain of salt. it’s just my opinion, and it’s a heightened opinion because i was B I G into the fandom & show when it was dropping. i had a friend group formed through atla / k*rra before it launched, it was a real cornerstone of my online life so of course i took its bad writing way more personally than a more casual fan. i also can’t watch a show as a show? i’ve done too much work (undergrad & graduate) in writing & narrative studies, so i can Only See Story -- when it falls apart, i can’t get past it.
behind the scenes, atla likely triumphed because it was a team effort, and a bit of a first effort. not that these people hadn’t written before -- but part of what k*rra suffers from is the “how do we level up” problem that is typically answered (esp by white male writers) with make it darker. atla shone because it didn’t need to darken its tone in order to convey a more serious story -- it had room to breathe and a gentler humor that never really felt malicious in the way lok would feel malicious at times. atla was content to be what it was -- lok was always trying to be grittier than it had to be, given how well atla conveyed its difficult themes with a lighter hand.
anyway! two parts: shitty writing, & racism.
abandoning its premise
my biggest pet peeve is when a show sets up something -- and doesn’t deliver. it’s why i noped out literally s1. (and, of course, kept up quietly from the sidelines bc once i start something i’m physically incapable of letting it go. but emotionally i was gone.) in its first two episodes, lok had incredible worldbuilding. it was beautiful! well drawn! interesting! organic to the world atla built! there were problems introduced that were new and different from atla. atla read a lot like a sprawling, classic hero’s quest. falter, then triumph. lok was more intricate. in its first two episodes, it posed a question: how do you navigate heroism in a world where heroism has been redefined? how do you balance staying true to yourself and allowing yourself to grow, under the scrutiny of the “celebrity” of avatardom? and how do you perform as an avatar, the person meant to keep the balance of the spirit world, when the mortal world is out of balance? this could have been four series’ worth of content. there was enough rich, complex worldbuilding in the first episode to sustain four seasons of a show.
and then they just -- forgot about it. it was set dressing, and every half a season they artificially upped the stakes. nothing was organic to the world or the story. it was all some -- contrived plot. the conflict between benders and nonbenders could have been really interesting and then it was just -- black and white. here and gone. k*rra’s too brash and bratty to understand! and nonbenders don’t matter anyway! let’s forget about this plot and skip to some !! uh !! political upheaval! and then like! assassins and genocide or smth!! haha yeah big fights!
it was so shallow, and that’s not how the show started. in the first seven episodes, i thought i’d called the overarching. i thought the show would spend however much time it had (initially, bryke said they were only doing two seasons to “focus on a tight story” and, like a fool, i believed that this wasn’t just a cash grab :/) setting up this story: k*rra will unlock her full potential when she realizes that it’s not just the spirit world that needs an avatar, but the mortal world as well.
that’s it! that’s all you need! it’s a similar premise to atla but it expands atla. i distinctly remember the quote from one of those s1 episodes, where a nonbender says, “but you’re our avatar too.” that’s it. that’s the show. you have a show!! you have equalists, you have a bender-centric world, you have progress at the expense of those that can’t fit this new world’s design -- and then the equalists are all fake and we’re going to just brute force a solution and move onto the next crisis.
... what ?? what put the nail in the coffin for me was when the gang or crew whatever the fuck they were (spoiler alert: they were nothing, none of them liked or cared about each other) were being aided by a homeless community or w/e and b*lin jokes about a “wise and noble hobo.” this orphan. who grew up homeless. and has built himself up from nothing with his only family left. is not utilized by the writers to comment on the epidemic of poverty, homelessness, and very thinly veiled racism / ableism (another spoiler alert: don’t expect white dudes to write a coherent metaphor for a real world issue). this was the opportunity for actual depth and even darkness -- below the glittering world of republic city is a serious problem that “”””defeating the fire lord”””” won’t solve. this is a mature and complex story, and it was never ever explored. in fact, in s2 that rich dude asks b*lin if he’s “ever seen the arena at night.” and b*lin says no. the, uh, the arena he lived in bc he was homeless and crushed under the wheel of this new society.
what ,, the fuck ,, bryke.
it’s the problem where a writer is constantly trying to outdo themselves -- and they sacrifice the story they could have had. the actually mature one. it’s a problem of thinking fight scenes and a villain Bigger and Badder than the last constitutes grittiness or maturity or w/e. (spoiler alert again: it doesn’t.)
torturing k*rra
atla was a story about raising a*ng up. lok was a story abt breaking k*rra down.
shitty writing is one thing. racist writing is another. from the fucking moment she’s on screen, k*rra is told that she’s too much -- she’s too confident, she’s too loud, she’s too stubborn. and maybe she’s confident, loud, and stubborn, but the narrative does nothing but punish her for this.
a*ng is a flawed character. a*ng runs away from his responsibility and, subsequently, the fire nation takes over the entirety of the known world. do i blame a*ng for this? absolutely not. and neither does the narrative -- not in a way that counts. people in the story do, but does the narrative beat him bloody? no. the narrative gives him friends. the narrative gives him room to make mistakes and then apologize for them. the narrative lets him learn without making his failures into something that he is literally tortured over. he struggles, but in his worst and most dire situations -- his friends are there. when he dies, it’s not shown in all of its gory details, and in a beautiful, quiet scene, k*tara heals him with spirit water. they stay by his side, and a*ng is given love, care, and support.
k*rra is constantly, viscerally tortured on screen. k*rra is blamed, threatened, abandoned, poisoned, and temporarily disabled. k*rra is treated like a punching bag in direct response to her supposed “flaws.” we know this to be true because she “learns” from these moments of being violated, abused, and tortured -- the narrative tells us that she had to go through hell, on her own, in order to “learn humility.”
why did k*rra, a brown girl, need to learn humility? when did she ever come across as someone who couldn’t learn, given the kind of time and space that a*ng had? why were her lessons literally beaten into her, while a*ng’s were simply a process of trial and error, with his friends at his side every single step of the way?
people will always argue that it’s not so bad, that it’s not necessary to be as gentle with k*rra. but tell that to young brown girls watching this incredible, smart, kind, strong brown heroine get physically and mentally assaulted and broken down in order to properly “serve and save the world.” that shit? that shit’s traumatizing. k*rra is treated like garbage by m*ka, by as*mi, and by the entire world -- she is killed and tortured and isolated, and she is still expected to be grateful for what little she’s given by the end of the series.
i hate that k*rrasami is praised so highly. because it uses the lesbian card (which i carry as a member) to reinforce some really disgusting colorism and, quite frankly, shitty ass writing. bryke can’t write without a team. end of story.
I've recently caught wind about an interview or a podcast of some sort where Bryke (the creators of Avatar the Last Airbender, and the Legend of Korra) state that they don't even know how Amon, in Legend of Korra, was able to take away a persons bending.
I want to talk about this in terms of World-Making, Simulacrum, and Transmedia storytelling. I've always wanted to talk about Avatar in regards to this ever since reading Henry Jenkin's Article Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling. Originally I was just going to discuss how these topics are used within Avatar the Last Airbender, but now I feel compelled to discuss it with how Bryke did it right in Avatar the Last Airbender, and how they did it wrong in Legend of Korra (which may be a little odd seeing as their both part of the same world but I digress).
World-Making is probably the simplest concept, being that it is exactly what you think it is, it is about making worlds for your narrative. It is creating a vast encyclopaedic world where the narrative may not be exhausted in just one individual story. And I applaud Bryke for making such a vast and wonderful world that is the "Avatarverse". Starting off by telling the story of the ending of a 100 year war with an Avatar that has been reincarnated countless amounts of times, it opens up to be able to tell stories about the past Avatars, like the ones we've already been introduced to such as Roku (though they've already elaborated on his life story within the show) and Kyoshi (which we know a little about, but we have been shown her personality and some of her actions to bring interest and allow the audience to theorize on what Kyoshi's life and what her actions were). It also creates the ability to explore the stories of the 100 year war before the introduction of Aang's story. We are given some details of what happened during these years, especially what happened in the Southern Water Tribe. And it also makes way for folklore, such as the origin of bending or the establishment of cities, both of which were elaborated on in The Cave of Two Lovers.
From this World-Making comes Simulacrum, which, I'm going to be honest I only know the basics about. But in my understanding it is a sort of building upon of references from both the established world of the narrative and outside sources that are meant to give meaning, understanding and depth to this world (like the oragami unicorn we are shown at the end of Blade Runner, or the referencing of Alice and Wonderland in The Matrix). Depth is created very well within Avatar the last airbender, with references to the worlds folklore, references to the established spirit world, events that happened during the 100 year war that happened prior to or introduction of the world. It gives us understanding of the created world and gives us hints and references that give us the ability to make theories (or head canons as some like to call it) about the world we are given. We may not know everything about the universe, but it gives us hints and gives us a starting point at which we can understand and theorize what is going on, or what may have happened/is going to happen. For Example, Zuko's Mother. The show deliberately does not let us know where Zuko's mother is, but it also has given us enough information, which is that she did "treacherous things" to save Zuko's life and then was banished for this. The Legend of Korra does not do this successfully, but I'll get to that later, but first I'd like to talk to transmedia storytelling.
Transmedia storytelling, is mainly just the telling of a story across multiple mediums (such as, television, movies, video games, comic books). And it is a great way for franchises to make money. Bryke has created a world which is/can be very profitable and vast within Transmedia storytelling because of the elaborate world and the Simulacrum of Atla. They've created a narrative in which we want to learn more, we want to know what happened to zuko's mom, we want to know more about the spirit world, we want to know the after math of the war, we want to know about the past Avatars lives. And so when they make comic books or video games about this we are ready and willing to read these comic books and play these games, and explore any medium this world is part of to get more stories and have a better understanding of the Avatarverse. But the only reason they were able to do this is because they already established within the original show some hints or depth to stories that go beyond the narrative of the show.
But Legend of Korra, though part of the same Universe falls flat on this and is rather lazy. They decided to modernize the world, but we are only showed one city, and we are never shown or told how the modernization has affected other parts of the world, the show never alludes to any place in any regard in the show other than republic city, and the compound in which Korra was trained. This greatly reduces the world, to only two places. A brand new story to this world is suppose to make a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole, as well as being able to stand alone, and well it's not really doing any of the latter, or much of the prior for that matter. I'm not going to discuss the treatment of the equalists in this post because it is too problematic, it would take a whole other essay to discuss it. But my main complaint about my show in regards to this essay is with the Bloodbending as well as taking away someone's bending.
It's fine to add more aspects to your world and make it more elaborate, leaving some things unanswered for your audience to try and theorize what/why something is, but in order to do that you need to give your audience some basis to be able to theorize on an unanswered question, or even be interested in the answer to a certain question. But instead you take an already established rule of your universe, that bloodbending can only be done on a full moon, and saying that it's because these things can just happen, is extremely lazy and insulting to your audience. Not only that you establish a new aspect to you world, taking away a person's bending, through blood bending I might add, and never answering how this is done, or why someone who also knows how to bloodbend cannot reverse this, and never giving your audience a basis to come up with an answer on your own, because you yourself have not thought of a way that could be. That is unbelievable. Honestly, the lie Amon told about a Spirit giving him the power to take bending away makes more sense and adds more to the simulacrum and the established world, than what is canonically true.
It might be a little extreme to say this but Bryke singlehandedly took a vast, deep and interesting world they created in Avatar the last airbender, and in the Legend of Korra reduced this world to a single city, with very weak simulacrum, and thus giving the audience very little questions to be interested in answering in other forms of media, because of the laziness they've shown.
