Korra's Introduction and Why Many Couldn't Deal With It

4 year old Korra: “I’m the avatar! You gotta deal with it!” The writers would then spend the next 31/2 seasons destroying Korra’s self confidence and self worth. Nickelodeon decided to help too.

"A good story can save bad art, but good art can't save a bad story." - Mr. Enter

Seeing Korra at age four, bending three of the four elements, would be like seeing a four year old understanding the basics of three different martial arts.

Korra: "I am the Avatar! You gotta deal with it!" Me: turns off the TV done.

Ive said this before, if we saw a teenage Korra bending 3 elements instead of..idk 4 year old Korra, id be fine with it.

You know a water tribe avatar who can't waterbend because of the mentality is actually a much more interesting story than what we got.

As a Korra fan, I agree. That fan comic of Korra's parents watching Korra, and she starts fire bending instead of water bending, and her dad looks at her mom with suspicion is a way better showing of Korra in the series than her actual introduction.

The part that I struggle with the most is that the bending in Atla was introduced as specific marshal arts movements. Toph starts teaching Aang with "move a rock", where he spends an entire episode learning stances and mentality to be stubborn enough to move a rock from a proficient earthbender. I have a hard time believing a 4 year old can figure out the correct stances without a single teacher. Even the first benders learned by watching masters at work (the moon, the sky bison, the dragons, and the badger moles). But Korra is supposed to have figured it all out without teachers or live demonstrations of masters at work. Someone can be a genius at the piano, but if they've never seen someone else play it or heard piano music played, they're very unlikely to be able to play a proper tune on the piano at age 4. Let alone be able to do the same for the violin and the trumpet at the same time.

I’m a former assistant preschool teacher who specifically worked with 4 year olds; 4 year olds barely have the focus to eat their own lunches, let alone to “master” 3 different skills at the same time 😑

I think one of the biggest things I don’t hear people talk about is that Korra has no history. Aang, Katara and Sokka have pretty fleshed out backgrounds by the 2nd episode. Korra doesn’t have that period, her life has nothing interesting about it until the show starts. Makes it extremely hard to even connect to her compared to side characters in ATLA

You make a good point that just because Korra is a water bender doesn’t mean she has to be initially good at it. It actually would have been really interesting to see her be good at every element except her natural one and see her struggle with that.

That scene still doesn't stop the fact that, for me and for a lot of others, it was incredibly disrespectful towards the source material. I just watched a full series of a young man trying to learn how to master 3 additional martial arts forms with the accompanying philosophy behind each form and element. We had MULTIPLE EPISODES explaining that understanding the element and being in a proper headspace, moving energy and being in touch with what the elements represented is what caused "Bending" to happen, not just the physical movement of your bodies. Avatar Aang literally had an entire episode, "Bitter Work," that outlined that the juxtaposition of the Earthbending mindset of "stand your ground, there is no other way" for an airbender whose predominant mindset of problem solving was "be detached, find another way - find another angle" was incredibly difficult to grasp. We had Avatar Roku outline that Waterbending for him was "especially hard" because it has a different mindset of "Don't over control energy, redirect energy, feel the push and pull" versus the predominant Firebender philosophy derived from a core principle of, "Control [of the fire] is everything, breathe and create energy." It was an amazing system that touched people who watched the show and, like Iroh described, it helped young people growing up understand that their way of thinking, if you only drew on one source (your parents/caretakers, your friends, your school) could become rigid and stale, and understanding others and seeing other points of view made you a more well-rounded person. Bending wasn't about moving rocks, squirting your friends, or shooting fire -- it was about who you were as a person, expanding your mindset and world view, and mastering discipline in all forms. I don't think the irony is lost on anyone that, in Avatar canon, young Avatar's are told they are the Avatar and must make this life altering, world view expanding journey, when they turn sixteen-years-old, an age often associated in Western Media with "coming-of-age" where children put off childish things to prepare to become an adult in two years. The Legend of Korra walks in, takes just the biggest shit on all of that, only to make the point of, "Oh, look guys, this is my OC Korra! She is SOOOO much stronger than Aang, mastering all but one element at the age of FOUR!" Like... This person clearly has never met a four-year-old. Real children like this actively struggle to eat animal crackers without making a mess, let alone being capable of making deep philosophical connections to the world around them. So, little Korra (as cute as she is, can't deny that) just kinda gets this ass pull for bending without having to master any of the philosophy associated with it, literally telling the audience that we need to "deal with it" and just be okay they have just fundamentally disregarded everything that made bending unique and cool with "watch this water, fire, and rock fly around" which is why THIS scene is synonymous with the entire reason why people hate LoK...

Korra being much better at firebending when she is young due to her personality and her, by contrast, very lacking natural waterbending skills being a sore spot for her that she needs to overcome as she gets older sounds like a much more interesting character path than what they ended up giving us.

That airbending spirituality route starts to fall apart when you consider what made her airbend was hardly spiritual

I think it's kind of a big problem (especially nowadays) when creators try to capitalize on a shows popularity while also trying to change it into their own thing to the point where it loses most of what people liked about it to begin with. Most, if not all of the things Disney has made in the past 5+ years for instance.

This scene alone informs how the rest of the series was going to be and it shows.

I always thought that having Korra be a water bender who could only bend Fire would have been far more interesting.

The idea that the avatar would have access to trainers for all elements, would make sense. But not at fucking 4 years old.

The worst thing about it was how pointless it was. After that she went to training long enough to have just learned it then making her more human.

one of my biggest thing i hated about korra was Suyin. she scars Lins face and made toph quit being the Chief of Police, and got no punishment. when Lin confronted her about it, she acted like (i was just a kid back then) and made Lin look like the bad guy for being angry. Then the writers made Lin act nicer and was like its your fault for not letting go of the anger, but she has a big scar on her face to remind her every day.