So... is she supposed to be stupid, in-universe?
Mike and Bryan went on about how she was stubborn, hard-headed, action-first, that sort of thing, but more than anything she just comes off as slow. Was it a conscious decision to write her as dumb as a stump?
Yes.
If she were a Dungeons and Dragons character, her stat spread would be thus:
Str: 18
Con: 14
Dex: 16
Int: 8
Wis: 10
Cha: 13
Stupid pyromancy.
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Didn't she assault and threaten a judge while he was driving his car?
Regardless of wether she faced the repercussions of her actions or not, that was a pretty bonehead move.
Why isn't there a tabletop game set in the Avatar universe, anyway?
Well is Korra, of course is a meme.
...
it wouldn't be PC to come out and say explicitly that she's stupid since she's a woman, a sexual minority, and a person of color. If you want to create a minority character who isn't a complete Mary-Sue, you need to be very careful about it.
I like Korra as a character, and think it was correct to make her dumb. It fits in with her athletic/bending background. She wasn't exactly getting an art/math/science/tech based education the way Asami would have.
Korra is the first master of stupid-bending. Just by being around her, characters make poorer decisions and begin to represent themselves and their motives badly.
I understand that they were going for a character that was the antithesis to Aang, but Korra really did come off like a fucking idiot most of the time. And the worst part is, she was never really aware of it, nor was it never really played for laughs. She would just move the plot forward making the most short-sighted, selfish decisions possible and wait for the writers to bail her out later.
Yes, she did assault and threaten a judge who was paid off by and put in office by Unalaq who, himself, got to his position by schemes that hurt and threatened everyone.
Yes, she should have had some repercussions for this.
Yes, it was a boneheaded move.
They probably should have not done that plot line at all. Or at the least framed it like how Aang and the others handled Long Feng in Ba Sing Se.
>She wasn't exactly getting an art/math/science/tech based education the way Asami would have.
Doesn't explain how Mako and Jinora can do what they do since their education was curtailed for the former yet he's the smartest guy in the room whenever Bataar Jr. and Varrick aren't around, and isolated much like Korra's for the latter though without the baggage of having your life labelled on you.
It always struck me as weird that Korra was as big of an idiotic hothead as she is
Maybe this is getting a little too basic, but Aang's big problem was very emblematic of his nature as an airbender. He was light hearted and breezy and afraid of long-term consequences or really committing to anything.
But Korra was angry and stupid, which are not really things I associate with water
The show always seemed like the plot was being written around the mistakes Korra made. The ends always seemed to justify the means, making her this odd mix of always wrong and always right. She does stupid things and the world around her changes to make what she did the right thing to do either morally or practically (usually morally).
That all being said, I certainly don't HATE Korra or the way her character is written. What I don't like is the sense of convenience for her that everything seems to adopt.
Bad writing.
Go with the flow.
She fought against change and ended up nearly drowning instead of calming herself and letting the water guide her into something more.
When those close to her hurt her, she felt it with that whole Water Tribe community thing that they don't really play up at all in LoK.
Bad writing. It's been said before.
But another thing is how they really didn't think their ideas through. AtLA showed us Azula even though she didn't debut until season 2 despite Bryke only getting 12 episodes initially for AtLA. They had an idea they hashed out with others and didn't cram everything in the first season even with the episode boost they got.
Korra's upbringing is one such idea. And the judge thing from 2 would probably be better served if we saw Unalaq in season 1 or even saw the judge with him prior to the trial.
Bryke would say stuff about creation and destruction and how whatever philosophy speaks of it. But they forgot that the Avatar needs that human connection to reel in that always right (creation) and always wrong (destruction) mentality.
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Mako was "street smart". He had to grow up very fast, and live as an adult. He took care of his brother, who is slightly less savvy as a result. Korra was very sheltered comparatively. Her life experience was lacking, mostly focused on bending training.
Jinora had a (short) lifetime of tutelage under Tenzin, who wasn't just an air bender. Tenzin was a politician, a spiritualists, and a bender. Her education would have been intense, especially as an only child (before her siblings were born, and before they demonstrated an aptitude for bending). For that time, in Tenzin's mind, she might have been the only living air bender able to replace Tenzin.
You shouldn't make fun of the mentally challenged.
...
She's a hard headed impulsive and overly emotional teenager. They did a fine job getting that across, and it just so happens to be a boring main character archetype. They also did a good job getting across that almost everyone had an agenda to take advantage of her. They just forgot to put enough emphasis on those characters as opposed to teenage girl romance. It reminds me a lot of Dragon Age 2: they kept getting so very close to having a really good story and they kept fucking it up by diverting focus to something stupid.
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she's southern water tribe
they're all a bunch of inbred yokels
Explain what further?
But user,
Those inbred yokels
ARE BEAUTIFUL.
Hence the inbreeding
They pulled the same Azula thing with Kuvira
To be fair her Cha should be a bit more - she got no social skills but she is stupid hot, she turned a girl into a lesbian and make Sup Forums obsessed over her design
which is odd because they decided to ignore all the build up they had with the red lotus and push kuvira to the main villain role for s4.
Remember when we thought the Red Lotus was going to be the ultimate boss of the entire series? When we thought they were responsible for both Amon and Unalaq, and that they were going to come back with a vengeance in Book 4?
God, I miss those days. All our ideas turned out to be better than what we actually got.
A game set in an Asian influenced fantasy world with magic Kung-Fu, wired animals, spirits and steam-punk? I would ever want that?
>So... is she supposed to be stupid, in-universe?
She's naive. I don't really think the Avatar changes all that much when they reincarnate, they just learn differently. Aang was raised to be respectful and polite, Korra had the White Lotus telling her how great Aang was and how great she'll be, and nobody really lets her experience the world.
She doesn't understand that people aren't going to respect her authority as the Avatar, she was just told they will. The whole show is about her growing into the role and learning how to be a better Avatar. Republic City is a metaphor for her and the viewers: it's a different world and we're in for surprises.
Yet despite not being the main antagonist, Azula turned out to be more interesting than the big bad Fire lord and Kuvira combined.
Now that /co is actually talking about LoK's writing in general and not just the ending, anyone remember who else beside Bryke is involved in AtLA's story and what other works they did? I wonder how they turned out without Bryke's input, god knows how horrible their AtLA spin off comics are......
I for one is support about the original concept for Korra being naive. The problem is they seem to make her naive repeatedly so they can build her up again. It's done to the point where it seems she's too stupid to remember her past mistakes and make you question whether the writers are capable of writing a slightly more decent, but still flawed character instead of starting from zero again for this so called development. So we get a character going from 0 to 4 in this season, is it too much to ask for a 4 to 8? Why are we starting from 0 again in the second season?
>The whole show is about her growing into the role and learning how to be a better Avatar
>Learning
Korra learned? I felt no progression from her at all, just that she would do something stupid, get shit on for it and cry about it, get a free pass/deus ex and pretty much repeat the process. Shit just never sticks and falls right out of her head.
I feel like they flip-flopped on the matter.
If her being kind of an idiot had been a conscious decision, they could have used that to make her more sympathetic.
Instead it seemed more like a writing convenience than anything else. She was always exactly dumb enough to fall for obvious ploys and traps when she needed to.
If they had at least shown her being a moron in some casual situations I might be more willing to forgive her for the more retarded shit she pulled
Aang was raised like a normal air-bender kid until he found out he was the Avatar.
He then proceeded to learn being the Avatar on the job with help from Roku.
Korra was raised from a very young age to be THE AVATAR surrounded by hover parent types.
She did not have Aang to guide her.
Stuck in the South Pole most of her life.
Thus clearly lacking social skills.
Not justifying it, but raising a kid like that could potentially fuck them up.
>Str: 18
14 you mean
Ozai never really had his backstory explained like the villains in Lok. Maybe that's why they made the villains in LoK more sympathetic, because Ozai was just some bad dude that nobody wanted to see survive except for Aang. It was easier to feel sympathy for Azula than for Ozai, because you learned about Azula but didn't know shit about Ozai outsidde of him being evil.
If Ozai had a sympathetic backstory that was explained, it would have made Aang sparing his life a bit more acceptable
Yeah, CHA was probably the one skill that also visibly increased over the course of the show.
Book 2 - She's betrayed by her family.
Book 3 - She's outsmarted by a genius terrorist.
Book 4 - She's tried to learn from her mistakes and gets trounced by Kuvira for it.
I take issue with Korrasami just because I think she should've gone off into the spirit world alone. The comics should be about her growing as a person and not her relationship.
Swap Int with Wis.
Wasn't that true for every season of LoK?
More like both should be a 6.
>The comics should be about her growing as a person
The show should have been about this. Instead they focused on other people who didn't matter, all things considered.
Korra really needed the female authority figures to play bigger roles in her life.
Tenzin couldn't call her a slackjawed moron, without tumblr exploding. but Lin could and should have slapped her across the back of the head every couple of episodes.
You see I have no problem with Korra being a bumbling idiot, as long as someone actually reacts accordingly to it.
>Tenzin couldn't call her a slackjawed moron, without tumblr exploding.
And because he would be even more of a hypocrite than he already was in the show.
And Lin couldn't because she was upset that she couldn't cut loose because of the law. She's got that Toph desire in her somewhere deep and buried underneath the law.
>outsmarted by a genius terrorist
>genius
"hey, let's put the avatar inside a mountain with a river below and force her into the avatar state. What could possibly go wrong?"
>tried to learn from her mistakes
- Kuvira, stop or i'll punch you down
>>tried to learn from her mistakes
>- Kuvira, stop or i'll punch you down
They couldn't have Korra have her own ideas. She was always doing what others asked of her to an extent. Suyin, despite being a bitch and forgetting some poison in Korra, asked her for help and she obliged.
Zaheer was winning because Korra's allies were as retarded as Korra and because the other nations want to not involve themselves with others unless the plot has them do so.
Only hot.
I'd be generous and bump that INT up to a 7 or an 8. I mean she can get basic bending training.
However she is in no way wise. Book 4 be damned. 6 Wis it is.
she's hot tho amirite guys
2/10, wouldn't bang
Asami is much hotter.
actually in D&D if you have an Int stat of 8 or lower shouldn't you be talking like a caveman? thats retard territory
Atleast Korras hotness is somewhat unique.
Yeah, she looks like Scarlet Witch, and Talia.
But it's a GOAT design.
Meh, it's a bit bland at this point. Much prefer Korra.
LoK uses backstories as a way to dismiss villains' motivation. If they give a reason why they might believe what they do, they don't need to entertain a thought that they might also believe so because they are right.
They didn't need it with Ozai.
No. Retard territory is down around 3. 8 is forgetful or struggles to follow a train of thought. Speech doesn't really begin to be impacted until 7 or below and not severely until around 5.
I'd swap Int and Wis. 8 Wisdom is described as "Forgets or opts not to consider options before taking action"
That's kind of Korra's MO. I mean, you could drop her Wis down to like 5 based on the kind of sense she exhibits in the show. That's "Seemingly incapable of forethought and often fails to exert common sense"
She's a teenager. She makes irrational decisions. Her only mentor is a milktoast idiot.
End of controversy.
I tried so hard to get with it... and I couldn't.