Korra and Asami from The Legend of Korra
When I first began this little project, I established some rules for myself – namely that I would pick only one female character per book/show/film to focus on each month.
Well, rules are made to be broken, because there's no way I can choose between Korra and Asami at this stage. And the best thing about The Legend of Korra is there were plenty of other candidates to choose from: Lin or Suyin Beifong, Jinora or Ikki, Kya or Kuvira, Opal or Pema, even Katara or Toph. Any one of these ladies could have easily filled this slot.
But I'm going with Korra and Asami, for reasons that should be quite obvious by now. This is a long one, so it's going under the cut...
Unlike Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was just as much about Zuko as it was about Aang, with a strong ensemble cast who all had characters arcs of their own, The Legend of Korra is very much centred on Korra herself. Most of the other characters are important only in regards to their relationship with her.
It was tough going at first, with Korra's development stymied by the constraints of a twelve-episode first season, resulting in a finale that left too many issues unresolved while others were fixed by a series of deus ex machinas. Korra herself didn't seem to learn anything or grow in any meaningful way, and though there's plenty to be said about giving a female character personality flaws, it's best not to let these flaws get rewarded by the narrative.
Yet at the same time, I was irritated by the flack Korra got from fandom. Everywhere I looked people seemed to be complaining about her: that she was arrogant, bratty, stupid, ungrateful - you know the drill. The reaction tapped into my ever-frequent frustration that despite the demand for female characters that are flawed and make mistakes and who generally act like imperfect human beings, any attempt to actually produce this character ends up with her being raked across hot coals.
Korra is flawed. Korra makes mistakes. Despite being the super-powered Avatar, Korra is human, and that’s what I like about her. For the first two seasons she constantly struggled between her impulsiveness and the need for patience. Her isolated and privileged upbringing resulted in a lack of social skills that often manifested as self-absorption, compounded by the fact that she knew she was the Avatar from about the age of three. Other children only think that they’re the centre of the universe; Korra knows she is.
And despite this, she took her responsibilities to the world seriously. She learnt the hard way how to negotiate delicate situation and put her power to good use. She struggled through a crucible of family betrayals, relationship breakups, mercury poisoning, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the regular loss of bits and pieces of her identity: her bending, her memories, her adulthood (in the spirit world), her connection to her past lives, her self-esteem and physical health - but each time she managed to reclaim and rebuild herself.
I can't say I'm fully on board with the idea that she needed to suffer so much just to gain empathy for others, but that's for another debate. Right now, I'm fine with the fact that Korra retrospectively found meaning in her pain by linking it with her newfound ability to reach out to the likes of Kuvira to find peaceful resolutions to her problems.
And of course, suffering is behind her now. Though I don't think that any other human being ever "deserves" love as though it's something to be chased after and won, I do think that by the end of the show, Korra was worthy of Asami in a way that the Korra of Book One simply wasn't.
Asami Sato deserves her place here because she defies all initial expectations of her. Beautiful, wealthy and dressed in dark colours? She had "villain" written all over her, and many had her pegged as an Equalist spy. In fact, this was the original plan for her, only for the creators to realize they liked her too much to go in that direction. And so despite Asami becoming embroiled in a love triangle with Mako and Korra, she doesn't take the well-trod path of blaming the other woman for her involvement, but instead takes her boyfriend to task for not being honest with her. A female character who refuses to get territorial over a boy when he expresses interest in another girl? She had my instant devotion.
There have been some complaints that Asami wasn't fully developed, or that she only existed as a love interest to someone or other. This excuse not only ignores the entire subplot she had with her father, as well as her skills as a driver and businesswoman, but also forgets the idea that sometimes a character doesn't need development to be interesting. Asami was a mature and complete individual all on her own. In a way, the basis of Korra/Asami is all about Korra catching up to Asami.
The best thing about this show is that it was willing to go with the flow in terms of character dynamics and focus on what worked best. Too many writers of long-running books/shows pick their endgame for couples and fiercely stick with it, even when it no longer feels organic or healthy for the characters in question (How I Met Your Mother and Gossip Girl to name but two).
To me, Korrasami was a subtle, beautiful depiction of two people moving from friends to something more; from the tempestuousness of first love, to the maturity and peace of second love. Even in the first season, when endgame for them hadn't even been conceived yet, their shared excitement at the speed of race-car driving demonstrates that they're birds of a feather. They each had their suffering and sadness – and in the end, they found happiness with each other.
So as a reflection of the original Avatar: The Last Airbender, this managed to craft the perfect parallel: Aang got a happy ending, and Korra got a happy beginning.
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