So... I'm glad I don't pay for this space on the internet. A year and half goes by with barely a thought spared for the poor Falsification. Part of it may just be that I've not really seen anything that inspired any passion in me, positive or negative. I mean, I loved Frozen but I didn't feel the need to write about it or anything. I mostly stayed the hell away from GamerGate because I couldn't understand anything with everyone yelling about it. I watched Gravity Falls for the first time a couple of months ago and I like it a lot. Regular Show's most recent episode upset me but still, yeah, didn't feel like writing about it much.
S-S-S-S-S-SPOILERS!!!!!!!
From the title of this post you can then guess what has gotten me out of my year-and-a-half silence: The Legend of Korra ended the series with a lesbian couple. Guys, gals, I can't even deal.
I don't know if I've ever mentioned The Legend of Korra or its prequel series Avatar: The Last Airbender, but they are my favorite shows of all time. Korra mostly benefits from the connection to the previous series, otherwise I think Regular Show or Adventure Time would have topped it, or even something older like Justice League or Nicktoons I grew up with. Still, I think it's one of the best shows to have ever come out, even while I acknowledge that there are plenty of flaws to be found within it.
I'm inclined to blame whatever problems Korra has on Nick. As fans of the show know, in the middle of its third season that aired this summer, Korra was taken off the air and made an online-only show. That was the biggest strike against Korra, others being no advertising for the third season until a week before its premiere and then season four being trotted out around a month after the third season ended. Suffice to say, the show has been screwed by the network. This isn't even the first time it's happened, but it certainly was the biggest middle finger presented.
The series ends with Korra and Asami walking into the spirit world, holding hands and looking into each others eyes. There's subtext, and then there's this middle finger to the censors. It boggles my mind that they actually got away with such an overt LGBT message, and it saddens me as well that this is something to celebrate but I'll take it. Since season 3 began I actually had started to enjoy the possibility of Korra and Asami getting together. They are the best characters out of the four main characters, though with Asami that status is debatable, and Korra finally seemed to have good chemistry with someone other than her airbending master and Zuko's grandson.
I'm not much of a shipper, I generally like canon relationships just fine as long as they're written decently and don't create a romantic plot tumor. I never thought Korra and Asami would end up as an official couple though, and I mostly just enjoyed the possibility and hoped that their friendship would get adequate time in the somewhat rushed narrative the show deals with. I haven't much talked about what aside from shipping I like about Korra, pretty much because it doesn't have much to do with shipping and that's kinda what I've been on about.
Honestly in hindsight Korra seems to be a show constrained by its running time. The creators clearly have ambitious stories to tell but, unlike Avatar: The Last Airbender they didn't have the benefit of years to work on the story and the necesarry amount of episodes to properly tell it. Avatar was penned out years in advance and was given 61 episodes early on to achieve it. Three seasons were adequate to fully explore the story, the characters and rarely felt rushed or constrained. Korra began life as a 12 episode mini-series, and the first season already felt utterly constrained by the episode limit. Nickelodeon, toward the end of the first season's development and way too late to make any changes, ordered an additional 40-something episodes, and not all at once either. The result is that individual seasons are more individual than Avatar's long-flowing narrative. Each one has had to tell a new story in the space of 12-14 episodes, and that is hard to achieve when you have big ambitions and big shoes to fill.
So I don't blame the co-creators of Avatar and Korra for the pacing issues and rushed feeling that Korra sometimes has. They were cramming arcs that probably should have been closer to 20 episodes into a little more than half that amount of time. So Asami got shafted a fair bit in representation and character development throughout the series. Bolin and Mako suffered this to some degree but not nearly as bad, and this is the biggest shame. Avatar was so great in large part because it had fleshed out characters who were so compelling. It was obvious so much work had gone into writing them and delving into what made them tick, and they felt real.
Korra's characters, on the other hand, lost the time to get focus. Avatar could dedicate part of an episode to Iroh celebrating/mourning his dead son's birthday (and his voice actor's death) because the plot was in no rush to finish itself. Korra's plots always felt like they had no room to breathe. The moments we aren't dealing with the plot moving forward can be great moments (Asami reconciling with her father, Korra talking down a new airbender before he tries to kill himself by jumping off a bridge) but they're fewer and farther between than they should be.
All of this is basically leading up to me saying that although I love that Korra and Asami got together, I really wish they had more development as a couple. Not even romantically, just more to show how they grew together, more interactions, scenes that show us how they work together. The few we got were great, but consider Avatar again. All three seasons were littered with the development of Aang and Katara's relationship. Sure Aang was crushing on her pretty hard throughout, but they were also friends. They had tons of time to work off each other and show how they worked together as individuals, not just love interests. Korra and Asami by comparison really lacked that.
This isn't a problem with just the one relationship though, few relationships really got much to work with. Korra and Tenzin probably came out the best, the student and teacher scenes were plentiful. Lin and Su Yin's sister bond was done well, despite a short time together on screen you could really tell they had a history and worked well. Varrick got two decent relationships with Zhu Li and Bolin, but there are precious few others I would say really worked well. This is opposed to the numerous strong relationships that Avatar had: the main four kids all worked insanely well off of each other and accomodated Zuko wonderfully late in the series; Zuko and almost anyone he interacted with actually were super; Azula and her gang were pretty developed together, and the list can go on.
So yes, Korra has flaws, which I blame on Nick pretty solidly. That said, I loved the show and I'm super sad to see it's ended. I really hope the co-creators find something new to work on if they can't return to the world of Avatar, they obviously have a lot of talent and passion for telling stories and they need to continue on in some capacity. I just absolutely love that Korra ended by breaking a bunch of stereotypes and giving a giant middle finger to the people who try to keep this kind of relationship down in children's media. The final shot is wonderful and I really hope that we begin to see more shows take these kinds of risks. A dark-skinned bi/lesbian woman is the lead character in a wonderful animated show that kids can also watch, and that really does make me happy.
-Subtle
Friday, December 19, 2014
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