Yeah, so I decided I’m not done talking about this.

Bryan and Mike’s sexism in Legend of Korra really jumps out a lot at you in hindsight, and their radically dissonant treatment of Zuko’s trauma and Korra’s trauma is one of those glaringly obvious examples.

Zuko was allowed to recognize and indicate that his suffering was not deserved nor was it necessary for him to grow (even as the narrative COULD have gone in that direction by pointing out that his trauma and banishment are what set him on his path of growth). 

He didn’t need to be abused, get half his face burnt off by his father, and get banished for three years to become a good person. His trauma was not necessary for him to “become more compassionate/understanding.” It was incidentally part of the reason WHY he became a better person (because said trauma caused him to interact with people outside of the Fire Nation and realize the realities of the war), but it was still cruel and wrong, and ATLA makes no effort to justify Ozai’s abuse and awfulness. In fact, Zuko explicitly calls out Ozai on this point, saying “How could you possibly justify a duel with a child?“ 

“It was to teach you respect!” Ozai says, to which Zuko responds “It was cruel! And it was wrong!” And it was, because there is nothing that can be said that will justify or excuse what Ozai did to Zuko.

Meanwhile, Korra (who had already gone through three seasons worth of growth and was already incredibly compassionate) was supposed to find “meaning” in her suffering and had the narrative justify putting her through incredibly debilitating, long-lasting physical and mental trauma by implying that she “deserved” what happened to her. That it needed to happen. That she was required to undergo suffering to learn a lesson. 

And I’ve talked about this before (both here and here), back five years ago when it was a lot fresher in my mind, but the compassion line infuriates me because it completely invalidates and trivializes the entire reason she ended up poisoned, suffering, and traumatized in the first place. Her compassion and selflessness were the reason she was in that wheelchair, because she gave up herself to the Red Lotus to save Tenzin, his family, and the airbenders. “Help me save the airbenders, and then you can worry about saving me,” she says one episode before being chained up, tortured, and nearly murdered in three separate ways (the poison, the fight, and Zaheer’s attempted asphyxiation). She was already selfless. She was already compassionate. And she certainly didn’t need to be nearly tortured and murdered to learn how to empathize with other people.

Up until the Book 4 finale, Korra’s recovery arc had been actually fairly well-handled, all things considered. None of the characters blamed her for taking the time she needed to physically and mentally recover, no one blamed her for not being ‘ready’ to come back to Republic City, and no one blamed her for not being the same person she was before Zaheer. There was some resentment at being absent from her friends’ lives (re: Asami in “Reunion”), but her friends and family were generally understanding. 

Meanwhile, Korra’s frustration and anger at not being able to “go back to normal” was also well-handled (again, all things considered). “Korra Alone,” “The Calling,” and “Beyond the Wilds” do a generally excellent job of portraying how convoluted the path of recovery is, and “Beyond the Wilds” even re-tread the lessons taught back in ATLA’s “The Southern Raiders” with regard to how Korra settled her past with Zaheer:

Mako: So … how are you doing?
Korra: I feel … whole again. I feel good.
Mako: Do you think you’re finally able to forget about what Zaheer did to you?
Korra: No. But I am finally able to accept what happened and I think that’s gonna make me stronger.

She doesn’t forgive Zaheer for what he did or forget that it happened, but she was able to accept that it did happen to her and that she has risen above it. And if the recovery arc commentary had stopped there, it would have been great! She felt healed, and there was no justification or rationalization for what she went through. Sometimes life sucks, people hate you, and shit happens; it doesn’t mean that you deserve what happens to you. And as far as “Beyond the Wilds” was concerned, that was the narrative! We were ALMOST at “It was cruel, and it was wrong!” levels.

……….and then the finale happened. 

……….and then the “compassion line” happened.

……….and then Bryke decided to invalidate not only how Korra’s recovery arc had been portrayed up to that point, but also her growth throughout the show AND the lessons imparted to viewers in Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

They decided that showing Korra internalizing her trauma and growing from it only through the perspective of “well I deserved it, because I needed to be taught a lesson” (something women IRL often do, by the way) was preferable to “sometimes bad things happen to you because of the cruelty of others. You don’t deserve it and you are more than what happened to you.” And they just…put that message out there in the last five minutes of the entire show, uncritiqued and un-remarked upon. It’s sickening.

It was cruel, and it was wrong, and it shows a baffling lack of basic compassion and empathy on Bryke’s part for their own protagonist that they felt the need to justify putting her through a season and a half of absolute hell with the Korra equivalent of “it was to teach you respect.” It wasn’t to “teach her compassion,” it was just an excuse to break Korra down and do a one-season speedrun of the growth she’d already been through in Books 1-3. 

Because Korra was too “arrogant” and “confident in her own abilities,” she needed to be “humbled” through trauma. And it was something they NEVER would have done to Zuko even if they’d been given the content rating bump that Korra received, despite the fact that Zuko was far more arrogant than Korra ever was (and yet was allowed to grow out of that arrogance organically through personal interaction with the people he and his nation had harmed without further trauma being done to his person). 

…anyway Bryke is Ozai, “I needed to understand what true suffering was so I could become more compassionate to others” is the new “You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher,” and I will NEVER be over it no matter how long I live.