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beyond-far-horizons · 4 years

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Katara’s potential in LOK and importance of older female role-models in life and fiction

This was not meant to turn into a meta and yet has done! Just a disclaimer I’m still working my way through The Legend of Korra but have mostly been spoiled by reading some great analysis on here. So this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive take and also isn’t meant to disrespect the people who like Legend of Korra or this particular aspect of it. It’s just a subject very close to my heart and my work as a creative practitioner, student of psychology and media analyst, so I really wanted to discuss it.

Contains some spoilers esp for Season 1.

So I’m biting the bullet and getting into LoK despite reservations. I overall really loved Avatar the Last Airbender and Katara is one of my favourite characters. I admit one of my biggest issues with starting LoK was hearing how her character and agency were drastically reduced compared to the original series.

Now I know LoK gets a lot of flak for a variety of reasons and it was always going to be hard following such a beloved series as A:TLA and trying to do something different. However I’m actually enjoying certain aspects including Korra herself, despite the fact she can be bratty and immature at times (which squares with her age and upbringing). I also find the premise of the Equalists and especially their mysterious, terrifying leader Amon really interesting and I just wish the creators had done more with that plot line. (I forever seem to be going on about missed potential in the stories I consume!)

However the more I continue the more I’m annoyed because I realised we were robbed of Badass Grandma!Katara and also more matrilineal mentoring/bonding between her and Korra.

Spoilers but I wanted to see Katara go toe to toe with the villains esp give her being intimately connected to their history. I wanted to see her deal with the shadows of the past, the history of trauma associated with bloodbending and the Fire Nation and also the very intriguing points Season 1 was trying to make about the role of bender vs non-bender and the Avatar themselves. All things Katara was deeply involved with as someone who experienced inequality firsthand, fought relentlessly to abolish it and was the previous Avatar’s finder, teacher and later his wife.

Katara being Aang’s first mentor and implied to be Korra’s waterbendering tutor adds yet another dimension and potential to explore. That whole relationship must be strange for everyone involved but I’m always a sucker for female bonds, found family and intergenerational friendships.

I know LoK is about the new cast taking over - Tenzin fills the role of Korra’s mentor figure onscreen and is loved by many. There are lots of ways to tell a story and the creators focused on Korra’s issues with airbending to contrast her personality and development with Aang’s, as well as to flesh out Aang’s family and the rebuilding of the Air Nomads.

Yet I miss the potential of seeing wise fierce mentor!Katara on screen. We fans love callbacks, so seeing Katara in action as she used to be would be a joy, and older more powerful characters need not overshadow younger ones. For example Uncle Iroh was beloved and integral in A:TLA despite the fact we saw very little of his backstory. He didn’t take over Zuko’s journey, he aided and complemented it. Plus Toph gets her chance to shine.

There was so much to play with, especially in Season 1 (and would have been a nice reference to Aang meeting Katara first and then Zuko and Toph later). So much contrast between Katara’s experience with Hama, her thoughts about her mother, Gran Gran and the reintroduction of South Water Style. The trauma of bad parental/mentor relationships vs the good examples one can use to alchemise negative patterns that A:TLA was known for (see Iroh, Zuko and Ozai for reference). I don’t want to get too far into spoiler territory but all of this links back to Katara, Hama and Water Tribe and I would have loved to see a further exploration of that and a contrast between her loving bond and fear for Korra vs the villains’ and their education. This would have created more depth between Korra and Amon and co (and wow do I wish that dynamic was explored further - does she even know what happens to him??), and between Katara and Korra and their respective journeys to shoulder their burdens and mature as people and women.

Just think about all those juicy, angsty callbacks we could have done to Hama’s haunting episode! How Katara could have decided to be a better mentor than Hama was to her. (Katara was always a good mentor but if there was any issues in her relationship with Korra re Aang etc this could have been a good place for dramatic tension and resolution.) Of course for all we know this did happen but we don’t see it because we don’t get to see Katara’s training with Korra or much of Katara at all in LoK apart from her failing to heal Korra.

Plus I adore badass ladies and badass grandmas, I have loads in my original fiction. I love people defying stereotypes and sadly there is still a lack of stories not only depicting a range of female role-models but female mentoring and matrilineal bonding.

Read the incredible bestseller Women Who Run with the Wolves by Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés if you want to learn more about the power of storytelling, myth and female hero journeys and initiation. A key part of that book is how women have been historically and psychologically undervalued and harmed by the prevailing culture for centuries. Also how it has broken matrilineal lines of wisdom and support and distorted cultural values of how girls and women (not to mention boys and men) view the Feminine. This leaks down into our modern day stories via inherited psychological conditioning and unexamined tropes.

For example - how many ‘wise old men’ figures can you think of in pop culture, myth, fairytale, religion? Quite a few I’d imagine. Now contrast that with the ‘wise old woman’ archetype...I guessing not as many. I’m sure you’ll find a few but I bet more often the words that come to mind are ‘witch’, ‘sorceress’, ‘crone’ etc.

The Fairy Godmother (I gave you that one for free;) ) is an exception but she is a watered down version of the powerful, ambivalent figures of folklore such as Baba Yaga. Trust me if the Yaga was your mentor, as she was to Vasalisa in the fairytale Vasalisa the Wise/the Beautiful, you ain’t coming out of that encounter with a crystal slipper, you’re coming out it with a burning skull that incinerates your enemies and I’d like to see that tale popularised!

As mentioned Katara did feature in Korra’s life as a support, a vague mentor figure and a healer - in fact she is the one that initiates Korra’s heroine journey by supporting her decision to leave the stifling confines of her compound, go to Republic City alone and learn airbending. She also offers emotional and medical support during Korra’s traumatic recovery later on in the series. But mostly Katara’s involvement is at the peripheries of The Legend of Korra except when she was failing to heal her.

This isn’t to say that comfort and softness in female relationships are lesser than battle prowess or mental fortitude. Or that failure always bad, it is human and can be a powerful narrative tool for character development. I’m not interested in the infallible ‘Strong Female Character’ stereotype and neither is Estés. Her book illustrates that the Feminine encapsulates all of these qualities and many more and looking at the original Katara she was a perfect example of that. She was empathetic, intelligent, powerful, fierce, devoted, flawed, playful, angry.

I guess what I’m saying is that I miss that Katara and I miss the opportunity of seeing Korra interact with and learn from that Katara, especially as they have so much in common in terms of shared history, powers, culture and even looks. I’m also missing the opportunity of seeing that Katara battle Amon and all the drama and backstory that could have ensued from those encounters! After all Katara took on her mother’s killer, Hama and the Fire Nation (including one angsty honour-obsessed Fire Prince and his powerful sister), you’re telling me she would have just let Korra, her family and friends be in grave danger in the name of ‘leaving it to the kids’ ESPECIALLY since her own history turned out to be so deeply connected to all of this? Nah...

It’s important for girls* to see a range of wholesome female characters and dynamics play out in their media from an early age, especially to rework and combat the historic negative tropes that our culture is still steeped in. It’s also important to address the devaluing of the elderly, in particular elderly women. The Legend of Korra does in fact build on this from Avatar the Last Airbender by having an even greater range of capable women and girls across ages and morality spectrum. Korra herself (who I’m liking a lot more than I thought I would), is a real stereotype breaker. Toph I’ve heard fulfils the ‘wise old (crotchy) woman’ archetype later in the series. I just wish, given how much I adore A:TLA’s Katara, that we could have seen her shine in an elder role too.

(*I use terms like ‘girls’, ‘woman/women’ and ‘feminine’. I mean these to also include a broad interpretation of the Feminine than just the hetero/cis-normative one, but sometimes it helps when critiquing something to narrow things down esp something so already psychologically complex in a simple meta.)

#katara #legend of korra #lok #atla #pro katara #my meta #meta #my writing #jungian psychology #korra #amon #feminism #storytelling #avatar the last airbender #I just wanna see Katara fight Amon damn it I don't care who wins as long as it's a MASSIVE fight #also want to see either Katara save Korra or Korra save Katara #and some proper bonding and badass tuition #and then dunno waterbenders both hero and villain learn and grow and rebuild the Tribe

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piduai · 3 years

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what do you think of western/american fandom in general (esp in comparison with asian/japanese fandom)?

fandom culture is different in japan compared to the west, and there are also differences between japan and the rest of eastern fandom, and the west and russian fandom. i think both japanese and western fandoms can be very cancerous at times, and at times pleasant experiences.

the most striking difference is i guess the attitude towards consumerism. japanese audience pays for everything without batting an eye and is the one to whom the industry is catered. westerners are used to everything being served on a platter for free. i’m not excluding myself from that btw, i love piracy and opt for it whenever i can, and only pay for stuff that i really like as a gesture of supporting the creator (for example i do buy the golden kamuy volumes as they come out since i started reading it, but i won’t go out of my way to buy the previous 22 ones even in a second-hand shop for cheap because they’re available online). western audience doesn’t like spending money on stuff but tends to have the same, or even higher level of entitlement towards the media they consume. they think of it all as art and free expression, not an industry that has its rules and regulations. for example i keep seeing people in gk fandom complaining about the anime, about how it didn’t animate this or that frame and about how the creators “don’t understand the characters”, and this level of entitlement and disrespect is just baffling to me.

western audience can also be extremely culturally insensitive and forget that things don’t exist in a vacuum and everything is both culturally charged AND mandated. it’s not a secret that am*ricans think they’re the center of the world and project their values, history and culture on everyone else, but it would be nice if they learnt to shut the fuck up once in a while. whenever i see discussions about feminism or lgbtqwerty+ in anime and how sailor moon is actually subversive and yuri on ice is actually gay representativity and japan is actually #woke for having BL as a genre my hairs stand on end. these are the most obvious examples but there’s a lot of more subtle things. making fun of weird “engrish”. saying there should be more poc in anime and acting as though more tanned skintones depict other races. being completely oblivious of traditional tropes and how they work. excusing bigoted behavior by saying “oh it’s the culture” when convenient. also western weebs tend to either weirdly idolize or weirdly alienate japanese as a people; countless times i’ve met people who think that the japanese are a supernation incapable of wrongdoings and everything they do is inherently superior, as well as people who think the japanese came from another planet and aren’t fully human and don’t function as literally any other society on earth. both are dehumanizing and frankly, kind of racist.

however while i do like taking jabs at woques because it’s funny and they’re annoying, sometimes they DO have a point. japanese people think that just because they pay for shit they’re allowed to exhibit insane behavior in public without repercussion. my go-to example is this one artist who draws a lot, and i mean A LOT of l*li p*rn as “artistic expression” or whatever while simultaneously having a small child, whose photos they post on twitter regularly. as in they’ll make a tweet advertising their p*rn doujinshi where a 11 years old fictional girl is getting hammered in all holes and 2 hours later they’ll post a picture of their 3 years old, very real human daughter on the same account, to the same audience. call me a prude but i don’t think this kind of shit is normal, and i don’t think these people should be allowed to have children. anime industry in general has a huge problem with pedophilia that nobody likes to address because again they sweep it under either the “it’s their culture” or “they’re all weirdos anyway” excuses. like don’t get me wrong, most people are normal and against depictions of child rape. but sh*ta/l*li/rape artists have way too much freedom because the industry DOES cater to them, and consumers DO bring money. as long as stuff as comic LO is legal there will be no solution to this issue.

also this is something pertaining to gk fandom only but i wish westerners knew better and stopped being comfortable in depicting the rising sun flag in their artwork. personal opinion but this is just not okay. a couple of years ago i went to kamakura with a friend and just by the daibutsu, in an extremely touristy zone, they had it displayed in several gift shops and i’m still shocked at the audacity. history is taught different in different parts of the world depending on national bias and all, being ignorant is not a sin, but it would be nice if westerners used their brains and avoided doing that just because the japanese don’t.

#also stop asking for lgbtquerty representashun in out of genre works it's never gonna happen #the amount of times westerners threw a fit when a character turned out to be str8 like with tsurumi is simply annoying at this point #anon

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littlehollyleaf · 4 years

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I'm curious what made you become disinterested in supernatural? I on the contrary became invested again last year after already stopping watching for a while lol

That's a great question and one I am constantly puzzling over myself honestly.

There's been a lot of niggles all show ofc. Side characters being killed off constantly, issues with female character portrayal, Cas' character/plot being (or at least feeling) sidelined etc. All the usual stuff fans have been critical of for years.

But overall I was always pretty good at accepting the faults/flaws in the writing and focusing on the good and the stuff I did like. Consuming the media critically while still enjoying it and all that.

There were two key things that pushed me away though. And to tell the truth, even I was surprised they did. On their own they are really no different to stuff I'd been handling just fine, so I am myself kinda unsure why these two things hit me so hard. But they did and here we are so...

Firstly - Charlie's death. Absolutely knocked me for six. I was... floored by that decision. When it happened I... I was so unprepared and disbelieving it simply threw me right out of the story. I literally threw my laptop away from me in disgust (just a few inches across the sofa, I didn't break it or anything :p). For some, naive, reason I'd just been SO SURE that that wasn't the direction the writers were gonna take. And it wasn't even that I loved Charlie. She wasn't one of my big faves (not then anyway, retrospectively she became one after that). It was more... that it felt like the show/story was taking a step backwards, repeating old plots, using old tropes in old ways, not allowing the story/characters to develop. And I'd been so incredibly positive about S10 up until that point, everything felt like we were... idk GETTING SOMEWHERE. Then suddenly that, imo, grinded everything to a halt and stuck the story in a rut. It was a real slap in the face.

So that was the first Big Thing.

But EVEN SO. I was willing to push through my disappointment and work with S11. And while I was never really taken with the whole Darkness/Amara plot (I always much preferred the reading where the MoC was simply amplifying Dean's own darkness and not that it was an outside force putting darkness inside him that wasn't his), I did start to get into it okay. I am also 100000% behind the 'God is a villain / deadbeat dad' thing, that's always been my personal reading of god in the show anyway.

BUT. Then the second Big Thing happened that finally kicked me out for real. And it's something the rest of fandom has absolutely zero issue with and is just a personal hang up I can't let go of, even though I've tried and tried and TRIED. And that was THE WAY THEY MADE CHUCK GOD.

It's not that I'm opposed to Chuck BEING god. It's just that....... him being a CONSCIOUS god in S04 and S05 just... it just doesn't fit the canon/performance/writing of the character in his episodes those seasons good enough for me. I would have accepted various versions of Chuck as god - eg. god possessing the body of Chuck post S05 (and in the finale) or Chuck being an amnesiac!god for whatever reason. But the 'method acting' explanation they went with just... does not cut it for me! It... it just totally DESTROYS a bunch of stuff in S04 and S05 episodes for me, like when Zachariah confronts Chuck after Chuck has obviously just had a vision of the S05 finale and stops him warning Sam and Dean - Chuck's fear in that moment makes for a powerful sense of dread about the future and emphasises how evil Heaven is being, but that only holds if CHUCK IS CHUCK. Now Chuck was apparently god in that moment it... it just LESSENS IT for me. Cos his fear must therefore be understood as fake. His VISION must be understood as fake? (ergo even seeing him HAVE a vision doesn't make sense... in fact NONE of the times he had visions make sense, because he was obviously NEVER HAVING VISIONS IF HE WASN'T A PROPHET, so all those scenes where we see him have them, including times when he is ALONE and therefore not acting for anyone, DON'T REALLY MAKE SENSE AAAARGH!). So yeah, recontextualised that moment is just 'lol Chuck/god is trolling Zach/Heaven and pretending they can threaten him' which is OBVIOUSLY NOT what the original script/performance/direction/everything was going for and there's a BUNCH of stuff like that and... it just... it REALLY BUGS ME.

It's... imo an UNTIDY/UNSATISFYING retcon. And that feels extra sucky for me when spn has pulled some FANTASTIC retcons in the past eg. The Trickster being Gabriel - SEAMLESS! INSPIRED! Takes away NOTHING from previous episodes/performances, only gives them greater depth.

Uuuugh I'm getting all tense just THINKING about this whole Chuck as God thing again!! The other part that makes it EXTRA ANNOYING being how there were literally SO MANY other explanations they could have used that WEREN'T 'method acting,' so it's like the show went and picked my personal Worst Case Scenario unnecessarily, gah!

So... that's what did it for me.

I think... I think MAYBE if Charlie hadn't happened (or they'd at least actually undone her death for real and not given us a not!charlie replacement and acted like that was good enough) I might have been able to work with how they made Chuck god (esp since everything I've seen/heard of god these last two seasons sounds EXACTLY MY JAM). Or, if they'd made Chuck god a different way I'd probably have been able to handle how they killed Charlie. But... the combination was apparently just too much. Those two things together, combined with all the other ongoing niggles, made the explanation for Chuck as god the Final Straw.

Alas.

(then to add - I did start almost getting back into the show last season, because I liked what was happening with Mary and the idea of Jack's story... except then I hear they went and fridged Mary AGAIN (OFFSCREEN?) as part of a Jack going darkside plot that simultaneously included driving another rift between Dean and Cas and... well that immediately killed a lot of the emotional investment that had been rebuilding, so...)

Sorry for the ramble. Kinda a lame explanation really but, that's the truth of it.

(Bet you now wish you hadn't asked :p)

#about me #a true but boring story

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authoratmidnight · 5 years

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by following fiction tropes, windy's partner is dead. "Accident" is always synonym for killing the person, especially since it's in something overused like a car accident. I mean, it would be nice if I was wrong, but I'm not getting my hopes up with this

I disagree. That only ever really applies 100% when the show also follows the rule of ‘can’t say die’. The same can be applied to “missing”.

The YGO dub does this a lot cause, for some reason, they can’t or won’t say that someone is dead (which is frankly dumb b/c the target audience knows what death is and has probably consumed plenty of media that involves such a topic so idk why they be this way).

The subbed version of VRAINS tho doesn’t beat around the bush. If a character is dead, they come out-right and say it.

Also, I feel like if one of the Ignis had outright KILLED someone, esp their Origin, Revolver would have said that. He wants to demonize them, to prove that they’re dangerous. One having free will enough to commit murder would definitely be something he would say. But he didn’t, he just said that the kid was involved in an accident. Not a fatal accident, just an accident.

#vrains #Anonymous

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ledamemangociana · 7 years

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wait...are people REALLY ACTUALLY HAVING ISSUES with kaylie’s reaction to scanlan in the last episode??? W H A T ?????

before i take you to the stuff under the cut, there’s an original thread here from this past weekend of my thoughts on people blaming kaylie for scanlan’s death (there is AN ACTUAL POST of someone ACTUALLY STRAIGHT UP SAYING THAT) and ppl looking at the situation and saying it’s another reason why they don’t want kids. like. gAIZE. whyyyyy. are we blaming fuck-up parents on their children. that’S. THAT’S FUCKED UP, GUYS.

look. i understand the want, the desire for happy endings and good parent-sibling relationships, especially in a story told in a game in which one of the enduring jokes is that the most dangerous occupation in the universe is “parent.” BUT think of what you’re actually doing by forcing either a happier or more dramatic reaction from kaylie in this situation. you are forcing her to care about someone who she grew up thinking could give two shits about her. you are forcing a debt on her which scanlan never asked for, and which she doesn’t actually owe. she doesn’t owe him ANYTHING, even with all his efforts to be present NOW. remember when matt said not ALL narrative is bright and positive? that goes for this situation too. sometimes someone dying doesn’t change how someone will feel about them. kaylie is what now, 18? maybe 19? and scanlan has only known of her for, what, 5 or 6 months? there’s SO SO SO much time there in which scanlan was pretty much dead to kaylie. and when she was looking for him, it wasn’t because she wanted a father in her life. so why should his actual death change that now, esp when there’s been so little actual father-ing from him since he found out? it would’ve been nice to see her care that much, sure, but it also would not make a lot of sense for her character narrative.

honestly, we need to stop telling people that family is the end-all and be-all of relationships. it’s brainwashing, and that kind of thinking has led to some grave results in real life, we all know this. this is a thing that i am personally trying to wean myself off - i love my family, i would die for them, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t hurt me, and that doesn’t mean i can’t be angry with them and want some space from them, and that doesn’t mean i can’t change my mind about them and wonder if maybe they don’t love me the same way anymore either. some people have bad and/or broken families. scanlan and kaylie sure are one. love heals a LOT of things, sure, but most of the time that shit takes time. forcing it to be instant or dramatic just pigeonholes character narratives into tropes. let things be complicated. even in the media we choose to consume. some stories don’t have happy journeys or happy endings, and some take forever to get to a happy ending. that’s what makes the stories mean something; if all characters and narratives were just happy or dramatic all the time, we’d tire of them quicker.

(that being said, i love that kaylie was told, and i love that they thought to try and get kaylie, but not for kaylie’s sake, because like i said, as much as kaylie is probably glad that scanlan actually cares about her and isn’t the selfish horndog prick she had [somewhat correctly] thought him to be before actually interacting with him. i like that they went to get kaylie for scanlan. in as much as kaylie is on the fence about scanlan, and rightly so, she became such a turning point for him that it makes complete sense for scanlan’s found family to try and at least notify his actual family, because - despite having said little about her to everyone else except pike - they knew she meant much to him, and in their attempt to bring him back, they went looking for his treasure. it’s a testament of the character development that he went thru, and an acknowledgement of the fact that he had gone from chasing romantic love which he knew he would never get from pike to relishing a different kind of love which was obviously enough to make him go from surviving day-to-day to thinking past tomorrow. and for the few things that matt has misstepped on, one of the things that i have strong faith in him is character narrative, so i have faith that should kaylie decide to try and help bring scanlan back, it won’t be a flower-y speech of “i never realized what i had until i lost it” because that’s not what kaylie is about with scanlan, it’ll just be about kaylie’s truth, and that’s what scanlan would want to hear, probably something more along the lines of “thank you for being a bit more than i thought you were” at most, maybe, although i would LOVE one tearful “you promised me you’d live but you didn’t and i guess that’s just ONE more disappointment you’ve given me” stinger.)

let kaylie not be able to take it all in. let kaylie not know how to feel about things. let kaylie not (yet?) know how much she’d be able to help in bringing scanlan back. let kaylie see only her side of the fence, the side she has lived on for most of her life anyway. let kaylie be kaylie. let kaylie be.

#critical role #scanlan shorthalt #kaylie shorthalt #critrole fandom critical #i juST???????#I USED TO LOVE YOU ALMOST UNCONDITIONALLY CR FANDOM WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU

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