THE AVATAR F**K YEAH! COMING AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERF**KING DAY YEAH!

PREFACE:
I wasn't sure how to deal with the transfer of these old posts, but I figure a lil blurb as context might help in the transition.  This was my first honest-to-blog rant made just as Korra was about to air.  It's in three parts that were responses to...uh...responses, so I'll plow 'em all in one post for ease of use, but it's a bit of a read.  While I turned to be sort of off-base, it turns out there were still plenty of issues to be had from the series that came to be.  More on that later...

Original Post: March '12

So let’s talk about Korra.






Namely: F*** YEAH KORRA!

First, I’m an animator.  This is to say, I can animate and once upon a time, I was able to sustain a career in this field.  But saddly, t’was a short lived dream, leaving me a bitter and angry husk.
Just kidding!  I’ve always been an bitter and angry husk!

So it was that after finding out the entirety of the new Legend of Korra series (at the time only a 12 or so ep miniseries) was going to be written entirely by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the two creators of the original series.  This would be a significant departure from the original, who utilized a large group of writers headed by Aaron Ehasz.  But they’re the two creators of the original, which was irrefutably fantastic in every way imaginable.  (EVERY.  WAY.  IMAGINABLE.)  So…what’s the problem?

Well I was concerned because the main character…was a WOMAN!

Oh yeah folks.  I totally just went there.  Wash your eyes, clean out ears and do your double takes, because yes: we are actually doing this.  Now I’ll be the first to let you know I rock the dong and I’m not going to pretend to speak with authority on any of…I dunno…gender politics I think it’s called?  All I have is personal opinion and in my personal opinion…I don’t like female protagonists.  For that matter I don’t like black protagonists, or homosexual protagonists.  I don’t like male  protagonists, white protagonists, or straight protagonists.  I don’t like [CHARACTER DEFINED HERE] protagonists and of all the kinds that exist, the [I HAS VAGINA] protagonists are most common in animated children’s shows.  They really do come off for me as women written specifically to be a ‘not-man’ first and an actual female second (I’m looking at you Kim Possible) and it’s excused because y’know…cartoons, who cares?  I care.  I care a lot.  Well okay, not really.  Honestly, I’m just bored to death of the cliche.

But Avatar is a different breed.  Hell, people can’t shut up about how well it dealt with sexism and what a big step it was for female empowerment in modern children’s programming.  But angry old me…I’m not so sure.  I can look past the accolades Avatar has been given regarding its portrayal of women and see it has a few problems of its own and unfortunately, they’re not that hard to spot.  Let me put it to you this way, here’s the main female cast - good and bad - and their defining characteristics:

~GOOD~
Katara: Highly emotional to the point where it often leads her to poor judgement.
Toph: A tomboy…that’s it.
Suki: …Sokka’s girlfriend.

~BAD~
Azula: Manipulative, deceitful and eventually confirmed to be emotionally unstable.
Ty Lee: Uses her looks and demeanor to manipulate those around her.
Mai: Aloof and dispassionate about everything.

Just like women to be completely unable to control their emotions or be absolute ice queens AMIRITE fellas?  I mean, seriously am I the only one who sees this and thinks it’s a little…bad?  Or at least not good.  I dunno, like I said before I am a penis-wielder, so who am I to say right?  It just seems that the more I think about it, the more I realize just how rare it is that an animated show has successfully featured a protagonist that’s female rather than a female protagonist.

2nd Post

Note to self: DO NOT read the reblog responses of rabid fans anymore.  But DO create controversial posts for easy hits!   9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB AND OSAMA BIN LADEN IS ALIVE ARGLEBARGLLE!!@!!111  Also: dude, if you don’t know where the liver is: just google it!  Srsly…

Soooooo anyway, at first I was figuring addressing the uh…passionate responses regarding my previous post was going to be a bad idea, but I’ve yet to be able to resist the call of The Internet Fight!

From what I saw, the big beef with the rant was that I was giving a disservice to the female characters with an overly simplified or outright incorrect summary of their characters, most pointing out specific character moments and back storys to counter my claims.  Thing of it is, my example wasn’t about who they were in the story, but how they were defined as characters outside of any narrative context.  Yes Toph had deep seated issues with her parents, but that never translated to her character except in the episodes where it was specifically called for.  Tales of Ba Sing Se showed she liked the idea of being pretty…aaaand it never came up again…ever.  See what I mean?

Or try this instead: use The Plinkett Method to describe the characters.

The point I was making was that I felt - at their core - the defining characteristics of the major female players were based around stereotypes.  Some good, some bad and wrapped around a delicious tortilla of excellent writing making it easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention…but stereotypes nonetheless.  Feel free to disagree, but it’s just one dude’s opinion.

Now, I get how that can be hard to get away from seeing as how trying to actively avoid tropes can leave you with a character just as false and shallow as the one you were trying to avoid…if not moreso.  That’s what I was trying to say all along, is that this thing - this writing and developing of characters - is hard to do and requires the deftest of hands simply to function, nevermind excel.  It’s never a sure thing no matter how much you or I want it to be and I just felt the need to unnecessarily elaborate on what is really that very simple truth.  Consider it my defense mechanism against the rabid optimism these sweet clips are afflicting me with.

3rd Post

~For the following rant I’m going to say ‘women’, but really it applies to the whole gamut of my opinion regarding race/gender/sexual orientation/etc.~
I’ll lie once more and do a quick summation of the good I see in ATLA’s gender politics.  Namely, that it does the most for female empowerment when it’s not pointing it out, i. e. the ‘oh hai random background female fighting alongside everyone’ comments you’ll note in the Shakesville article I linked earlier.  I love the concept of women being equal as being so normal, its not worth pointing out.  I feel it’s a far more empowering.  It’s saying women don’t need to win…they already have.  Better yet, it says that women as equals was never a battle they had to win to begin with.
Girls shouldn’t have to see a woman kicking ass on tv and have it treated as special, because by definition that means it’s rare and unusual and that’s pretty bullshit in my eyes.  It says to me that this is a fight for them and it shouldn’t be.  It says that women exist in a world where they have to work for more and they shouldn’t.  Women shouldn’t have to feel that there’s a struggle for them at all!  Women shouldn’t feel they have to be asked to be treated equally or even demand it.  They should assume it is their right by default…because it fucking is!
Except it isn’t…is it?  We do not live in that world and I’m not blind to that…I’m just…it pisses me off that I am living in such a world that flies against common goddamned sense and when I see someone talking about how they created a story with a ‘strong female protagonist’, it’s just another reminder to me that’s not normal.  Accomplishing that should not impress people.
To be fair - and maybe I didn’t clarify this enough in posts prior - from what I’ve seen of the clips of Korra, that’s going to be a show that does it right and will continue the trend of saying, “Women as equals is the standard, not the deviation!”.
In fact that reminds me…

Now that’s a show that does what I’m talking about right!