Airbenders get tattoos when they master airbending, so why don't we see them on non-air avatars? I think it'd be pretty cool, esp when they start glowing

It doesn't feel like her to let her friends and family worry about her.

This seems to be the hot button topic recently, and I've been thinking about it a lot. Before I start, I'm well aware that Korra is a main character woman of color and gets a lot of hate from that alone. I'd like to examine the reason more reasonable people like Toph and not Korra though.

When people discuss Korra and Toph, I often hear very vague reasons that don't hold up under scrutiny: "Toph was patient in her fighting style", "Toph actually has a character", "Toph is funny", etc. These arguments rarely have any actual backing and I don't think they get to the core of the issue. So why do so many people like one brash, stubborn, confident female character and not the other?

I think it's because Korra loses a lot, and Toph does not. I also think Korra had to lose a lot, and Toph did not. I've seen lots of reasons for this on both sides of the fandom: "Korra had stronger enemies", "Korra was a worse Avatar", etc. But I don't think it has to do with power levels. Avatar as a franchise has never really been consistent with power levels anyways. Instead, it all has to do with narrative structure.

The narrative structure of ATLA and Korra are obviously different. One is an overarching story over 3 seasons, and one is four individual season stories following the main character. That said, ATLA is also far more episodic, given that they have so much time in the story. This often leads to the gaang encountering a one off villain or problem, getting tripped up for half an episode, and then overcoming the issue by the end. Sometimes these story arcs could stretch across 2-3 episodes, but many of the plots are entirely self contained.

This makes it so the 3 act arc takes place over 20-40 minutes, and the heroes' low points aren't very low. Any setbacks or troubles team Avatar faces have to be resolved quickly so they can move on to the next plot point. They do sometimes experience some very big defeats; the capture of Omashu, the capture of Ba Sing Se, the failure of the Black Sun invasion. But these big defeats are spread out among many minor victories, so it lessens the blow. Toph especially has this air of undefeatability about her, and her weaknesses are mostly shown to be due to her blindness. She beats up a lot of bad guys in the series' run, and so her confidence seems justified.

Korra, on the other hand, while having shorter overarching plots, has very little wiggle room within those 13 episode seasons, and so the show ends up more serialized. Korra can't just punch the villain in the face in early episodes because Amon, Unalaq, Zaheer, and Kuvira need to remain credible threats for the climax to hold any weight.

So throughout the story, the only solution is for Korra to lose more. She has to struggle and fail or the villains won't be impactful. Wee can actually see a parallel here with the Gaang vs Azula. For the most part, the Gaang is either running away from Azula or straight up losing to her. They defeat her cleanly at the drill and during Sozin's comet, but other than that she always seems to be one step ahead, or their victory is merely that they survived an encounter. Korra has similar problems with her major antagonists, but she doesn't have the luxury of a bunch of smaller episodic victories inbetween.

The result is that it seems to a lot of people like Toph can back up her confidence because she is allowed to win more, where as Korra appears weak despite her confidence to them, so they think it's unfounded, even if thats a completely unfair assessment. Korra, of course, eventually manages to defeat every one of her antagonists but had to lose a lot along the way to make the arc satisfying. Korra can back up her confidence and is powerful, but people refuse to see that because the narrative demands that she has to hit a low point before the can overcome.

There are other reasons Korra is disliked, of course, but I think this is one of the major reasons. An unfortunate effect of the narrative structure and people being used to the loud, tough, confident character winning most of the time.

If the new series follows suit, I definitely think we will see some LoK characters in the next series

For me, I really want Kuvira to appear, maybe they can work in her teaching the new Avatar metal bending? Some redemption from when Toph said she gave medal bending a bad name could be cool, especially since I feel like they were trying to redeem her in the end

I feel like this is more likely, but also Jinora - I can definitely see her teaching the new Avatar air bending

People hate Korra because she “always”loses, gets beat up too much, fails all too often; but this exact same thing happens with Mark yet people love and praise him for it. I truly don’t understand this phenomenon. In some ways Mark and Korra are very similar in that they fail ALOT but keep pushing forward. But one is hated and the other is loved. Can anyone explain this?

As we all know, Kya is a lesbian, but we also know that you can put that engagement bracelet around your neck, although I'm sure how WT looks with such relationships, but I guess she didn't care about what people would say anyway. So who was her fiancée? Do you have any theories?

This is a corrected version of the previous post, because I made a typo and google translate interpreted it specifically. I just write with my voice and sometimes the program writes the words Not the way I would like. I said jest (is) and it wrote bez (without). Sorry for the mistake.

Fr, please tell me they didn't, im so jelaous of him 😭 He's such a bad boy stereotype...

It’s been confirmed that a blood bender can subtly affect other people’s bending, like how Amon would use it to affect people to dodge attacks, but do you think he could use it to see how blood flows in people and “feel” if they’re lying like how Toph and some other earth benders could?

I know it’s because it was originally planned as a short series, but honestly it kinda works perfectly as a prologue to the real story.

It’s kinda just answering the question, how did Korra get airbending and the avatar state and introducing the main cast. The stuff with the Equalists is almost entirely pointless by book 2, but it’s a good way to show how the villains ideals are more intricate than before.

Honestly book 1 is the perfect way to show Korra acclimatizing to a new world and introducing characters while not hitting on the key points of the main story just yet. Like Korra’s identity and her just thinking herself as the Avatar. They do touch on this a bit, but to be honest I feel they handle it better in all of Book 2.

Perfect little starter season.

Books 2-4 just propose more interesting questions and challenges for Korra to face. Korra’s biggest fear in book 1 is how when she gets her bending taken away, her identity as the avatar will be gone and she’ll be nothing. However if this was one season alone as originally planned, they never really deal with this. Book 2 actually does a MUCH better job at making Korra realize she’s so much more than the avatar, and her own inner spirit is what usually saves the day.

That’s why I think Book 1 is just a prologue. It brings up interesting points, but kinda just doesn’t acknowledge them or answer them in a meaningful way. Book 2 is when they get intro the real meat of Korra’s character, even if people don’t like to see it that way.

(And by association his relationship with Opal)

Sad day.

When the first few bits of info on the new show were leaked, I already saw how negative the general reaction from the community was becoming. Not everyone disliked the scenario for the same exact reasons, but it seems like most people at least had some trepidations. I tried to take a stance I saw as more neutral, which ends up being positive relative to the otherwise negative reception, but when I saw more explanations for why people felt this way I concluded that it would be pointless to talk about the upcoming show until it was released and we actually got to see it.

But, that has changed. I'm a massive TLOK fan, one of those who likes it better than ATLA and will spend their precious time defending TLOK from unwarranted, unfair or ignorant criticism when I see it. And it seems like the "TLOK fan"-strawman now includes being extremely wary about the leaks of the upcoming show which some find "hypocritical" because it's similar to how ATLA fans reacted to TLOK (It's not, really, there are significant differences that cannot be ignored when you equate the responses, but that doesn't change that some people believe it is hypocritical, mistaken as they might be).

So I want to say this: I'm extremely excited for the show from what we have seen in leaks so far. Of course, a lot of the leaks are not set in stone; they can be completely or largely inaccurate for many reasons. But if I'm to assume that what's leaked will all be true, I'm excited for all of it.

Yes, that includes the twin Avatars. That includes the post-apocalyptic setting. That includes Korra having some role in the apocalyptic event, whether it turns out to be "her fault" or not. That includes the new Avatars being 9 years old, even if that's true for the entire show.

I know this is an unpopular opinion. And it makes me look like someone who will just eat up whatever they put out, or something. And maybe that's true. But I'm just done pretending that I have to feel negative about things I can very easily see as interesting plot elements, mostly because it's all things they didn't do before.

And if there is one thing that I really commend TLOK for, it's being different from ATLA in terms of texture & focus. So I'm going in with a similar mindset here.

Feel free to call me stupid btw. I will probably feel really stupid when the show does turn out to confirm the worst and it's not good. But I just don't want to be pessimistic.

I feel like people often bring into question the power scale of these things but not the applications into everyday life.

For example, I feel like lava bending would be very scary to come across however unless you’re a whole villain irl, you wouldn’t really have much use of it.

My personal thoughts are, metal bending bc you could create insaneeee engineering feats. Plus on a much smaller, mundane level, water bending so I’d never have to dry my hair again 😅 (also the healing abilities would be world changing, I should’ve put that first)

I know it's dumb . But come to think of it every Avatar is the same as Avatar Wan. Since Raava knows the techniques of each bending. Why do they have to Master it or am I missing something .

Loved seeing her get her karma after this scene, but I always liked her nails and the accessories. She may be a tyrant but she knows how to dress 💅

Something i never understood was the pure hate TLOK gets. I remember back when the creators let it out that they originally pitched to nick an Avatar: The Last Airbender follow-up animated film based on what then became the three-part comics The Promise, The Search and The Rift but Nick chose to opt to continue with korra making it 26 episodes instead of 12 giving us the second korra book people seem to hate on so much. I know back when it came out people went feral because they wanted to see aang and the gang so bad it was crazy .

I know part of the reason i see people hating on korra is what happens in book 2 but they dont take into consideration the creators never intended to continue with her story, it was always intended to be a mini series to tide fans over while they created what became the comics and that the 3 comics were what they wanted to continue on . So it makes me wonder is them cutting ties to the avatar cycle something they came up with because they were tasked with continuing a story they neve intended to continue?

regardless the show is amazing imo. I was wondering why others fans of TLOK think people hate on the show so much?