#korra wank

[allgremlinart]

also while I'm in a poking-the-beehive mood, I will at some point have to write a little meta blurb about the take that the creators of atla/tlok had a "fetishistic obsession" with "brutalizing" Korra. look. this is actually some very old 2010s discourse and while its a concern that I take seriously when people bring it up, I just dont think it holds much water. As someone for whom Korra is, like, THE character I'm protective about, I promise I'm super sensitive to any hint of mistreatment of her and... I think there really is a fundamental difference between how Korra and her struggles are treated in this show and how people like say COUGH Joss Whedon COUGH HACK treat female characters and their suffering... I dont have time to get into it tonight cus I need to go to bed so instead I'm just gonna let this fester here unaddressed like so many of my other possibly divisive posts LOL...

but like when I saw that discourse cropping up again in *2024* and VERBATIM to how it was said in 2013... . lol no... I'm not 11 anymore I can actually voice my opinions on this coherently now sdhshs (hopefully)

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Maybe instead of attacking Legend of Korra for not showing Korra and Asami scissoring in the back of a Suburu with a rainbow bumpersticker while blasting Melissa Etheridge or whatever would have been enough for you... Go attack Friends for literally existing?

[supercupcakecollector-love]

fandom troubles

have you ever been in a fandom that your not super negative on but your also not super positive on either so you've got a bunch of conflicting opinions that don't really seem to match up with anyone so you don't know what tags or people to follow and feeling like you should just leave but cant because its your hyper fixation  

[hayleysayshay]

ppl are so boring korra says this unhinged shit. love that for her. love the unearned self confidence here. she says this after kissing mako whilst knowing he has a gf. but owo korra was just a little baby manipulated by mako who started it alll pleaseeee you make korra so much more boring with your stupid wank about the love triangle and mako.

[lifblogs]

Hello, new followers! My blog is a crazy place, so time to talk about some tags to make it easier for everyone. Though I feel as if I must begin with a disclaimer.

I love Supernatural, and tag that as #spn. If you are here for another reason, you can block that tag.

I love Star Wars, and tag that as #star wars. Again, block if you are not here for that, so you don't get annoyed. (My current obsession within Star Wars is The Bad Batch. You can block #the bad batch, and/or #tbb.)

I love cats. A lot. Feel free to block the #cats tag. I also will tag #my cat, or #my cats; and #loey (my kitties’ ship name), #alley cat, and #loki the cat.

Other tags I use frequently are #personal, #lol, #nature, #birds, #fanfiction, #fanart, #writing, and #whump.

Be warned, I am a huge fan of whump. If you don't like whump and don't block the tag you will see some things that might make you uncomfortable. Please, feel free to block the tag if you need to.

I seem to have picked up the habit of talking about what I'm reading, so for that I use #reading, and if it's a book (it usually is), I use #books.

If you are as annoyed with my mother as I am, block the tag #my mom. I'm in a tough situation here at home, so I do vent about it. Speaking of difficult, I sometimes use the tag #actually disabled.

If you want fun content, there’s the #my dad tag. He’s an interesting man.

I tag adult content as #nsft, and sometimes #mdni.

I try my best to tag #salt, and #wank.

I am participating in Whale Weekly. All Whale Weekly posts are tagged as #whale weekly, and #moby-dick.

When I'm reading Dracula all posts will be tagged as #dracula, and #dracula daily.

Other tags are #music, #The Lord of the Rings, #lotr newsletter, #The Hobbit, #httyd, #rtte, #doctor who, #mcu, #good omens, #grishaverse, #tdp (The Dragon Prince), #atla (Avatar: The Last Airbender), #tlok (The Legend of Korra), and #toa (Tales of Arcadia). May occasionally talk about #sjm (Sarah J. Maas) and #tog (Throne of Glass) while doing rereads.

And apparently I blog about #pjo now!

If you're looking for my writing (if the tumblr search function ever actually works again), that can be found under #my writing.

And below the cut I have a masterlist of my writing!

My AO3

Fics by Fandom:

Supernatural

Star Wars

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

The 100

Lucifer

Tales of Arcadia

'Teen Wolf

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Good Omens

Multi-Chapter Fics (Completed):

Don't Call Me Sammy

How to Get Rid of Nightmares

Bleeding Reality

Deathless

Lockdown

The Sins of Heaven

In the Dark

Day & Night

Book One: Spirit

It's Time We Had the Talk

Don't Call Me Sammy (Rewrite)

Multi-Chapter Fics (WIP)

The Wail of Dying Stars

Blackout

Livin In You

Three Birds, One Stone

Imperium

Brother, Hold Me Up

Series

The Ascendancy Trials

SPN Hiatus Creations 2018

Take Me to Church

Where

SPN Hiatus Creations 2019

Whumptober 2019

#SpnStayAtHome

SPN Hiatus Creations 2020

Whumptober 2020

Banned Together Bingo 2020

#SPNAdventCalendar2020

Angstpril 2021

Whumpay 2021

Whumptober 2021

Angstpril 2022

Sam Week 2022

Whumptober 2022 As It Should've Been

AI-less Whumptober 2023

Post-Plan 99

Lipstick

TechPhee Smut

Tech Tuesday

[rwdestuffs]

So some WB animation & CN staffers are trying to unionize now. No clue whether this means anything for Chicken Dentures, but at this point I'm waaay more hopeful about that & other Texan 'pay us already' animation developments than this hashtagnewvolumelaborwhatlabor? sewage. Lately fndm/rwde wank seems to get very lost in the weeds of in-show character crit, but the former clique's nonresponse to so many disclosures remains fucking awful.

I'm hoping it means that the animators, writers, voice actors, and everyone involved in the show gets decent pay. I get why fans want to see the show continue. For a lot of people, this is how they met online friends, made connections with other artists or writers, and found a community where they belong. But I think that that community can survive even if the show gets delayed like hell.

If fans can keep shouting at Sony to delay Beyond the Spider-Verse so that the animators, writers, VAs, etc. can be paid properly and have the time they need to make a good movie, then so can the fans of RWBY. The main issue is that greenlighting the show is very much out of their hands, so while Spider-Verse is pretty much greenlit, RWBY isn't, so fans need to show enough support to prove that there is enough demand for the show in order for it to continue.

Fans can wait a few years for RWBY so that the animation is good, the writing is good, and so that the people working on it aren't worked to death. And while I'm somewhat curious as to what the show will bring us (good and bad), there needs to be an understanding that a good story is one that takes time.

Legend of Korra once had a filler episode just so they could keep their animators and other such personal on the show, I don't see why RT can't have some delays to make sure their show would be of both quality, and of humane production.

I admittedly, haven't been around the rwde/crtq tag as much lately, so I don't know what's going on. And that's mainly because I've come to the conclusion that any flaw in RWBY is also a flaw in other shows. Say what you want about Emerald, at least they didn't take a doll off the corpse of a girl and send it as a halfhearted idea of a gift to a family member while giving another family member something that was actually had thought put into it, like Iroh. Say what you want about Ilia, at least she didn't hire an assassin to go after the main heroes because she was unsure of her place in the place that rejected her, like Zuko. Say what you want about Ruby, at least she didn't claim to be a non-killing pacifist while also burying people in an avalanche, like Aang did.- Basically, any flaw within RWBY is also a flaw within other shows that are also critically acclaimed, like AtLA.

The main point I'm trying to make here is that the story does deserve to be told. It does deserve to have its ending. But that shouldn't come at the expense of animators, writers, voice actors, or anyone really. If RT can't make the show in a humane way, then they should hand it off to a company that will. If that means they go down, well… They brought that on themselves. And maybe if these guys can get unionized, the show can be made without the expense of people around them. And I'd like to think that the show itself would improve if it were made humanely.

So while I have no idea what the future will hold, I'm hoping that it'll be at least somewhat better than what we have right now. If we fail to make the world better for the next generation, then we've failed as a generation. And the same can be said about previous generations. And future generations too.

[southsidestory]

.

[allgremlinart]

I open the korra tag I see the worst takes known to man I go on with my day

did you WATCH. the show

[anghraine]

I’m emotionally attached to nearly everything I’ve ever written, but every time I get a like or kudos (much less a comment) on my old LOK fic, it’s just like ... wow. Wow! Someone read that in 2021! And liked it! Amazing!

[eternalgirlscout]

ok listen. avatar: the last airbender spent three seasons telling a story about war and imperialism without once using the word “s*vage” against the people whose designs & lifeways are based on Indigenous/First Nations cultures so forgive me for not exactly being delighted when fanwriters (and the fucking comics lmao) act like they can’t go three seconds without putting real world anti-Native racism into characters’ mouths for no goddamn reason

[sorikaied]

im looking forward to korra being put on netflix so i can rewatch it for the first time since it aired. not looking forward to whatever hell a “revived” korra fandom will bring

[tempestaurora]

sadgfhj why is it every time i watch a children’s show and then follow a few cute blogs that make nice art or gifs about it i end up only seeing drama on my dash like,,,,,,, does it entertain people to be negative???? is it really the best and most positive way you can interact with a show and fandom??? like i sat through korra, steven universe, voltron, and now miraculous ladybug and no matter who i follow there’s drama and fan wank on shipping and ideologies and!!!! its a children’s show!!!! for children!!!!! it just wants to be fun!!!! and tell a fun story!!!!!!!!!! it literally DOES NOT MATTER who ends up with who!!!!!!! just enjoy the aliens and magical space adventures and reblog cute art!!!!!!! you do not need this kind of stress in your life!!!!

[alliecatstrophe]

korrasami isn’t heternormative but the whole feudal lord/handmaiden thing was very real and perpetuated by their own fandom so like lol.......

[werewolf-cuddles]

Just once, I’d like to have a bisexual character who doesn’t have their sexuality erased by their respective fandom. Is that really so much to ask?

[meggannn]

(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now. 

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

[avatar-dacia]

Oh, joy; Asami hate at AvatarWiki.