How did the Legend of Korra relationships go so damn wrong?

[Karthak]

MASSIVE season 2 spoilers ahoy!

I loved Avatar The Last Airbender. Though that show had some eye-brow raising moments, on the whole it was awesome. So I was really looking forward to the Legend of Korra. Well, the first season didn't blow me away like Avatar did, but on the whole I liked it. Now I've just finished watching the second season and again, on the whole I liked it. BUT, there's one Lion Turtle-sized exception.

The relationships.
The toxic/and or abusive relationships. How the bleep did this happen? Avatar the last airbender had at least three romances I can think of off-hand (Katara/Aang, Sokka/Suki, Zuko/Mai), and they were all well done. Here, however...
At first I wondered if it was just me, that I was overreaction, but as it turns out there's plenty of people who reacted the same way as me. I strongly recommend reading at least a few of the articles. They are edifying and thought-provoking:

http://www.princessvsperil.com/2013/10/16/lok-exgirlfriend/
http://www.princessvsperil.com/2013/11/18/lok-girlfriend-worse/
https://culturallydisoriented.wordp...ps-and-victim-blaming-in-the-legend-of-korra/
http://thoughtsonliberty.com/nickel...kes-light-of-abusive-women-and-thats-not-okay

Some of the best parts of the articles, written far more eloquently than I could hope to:

"This manipulation seems to come to a head when Korra discovers that Mako let someone know about her plans to get an army to go south to defend her home. She kicks in the door to his office and approaches him aggressively, hits his desk, and eventually kicks it across the room in her temper. Thankfully, she does not escalate this violence and leaves when he ends the relationship, but what we have witnessed here is disturbing. There is a very short step between hitting objects and hitting people, and Korra has been known to get physical with defenseless people before.
Nickelodeon makes this worse when the whole thing is turned into, yet again, a joke. Chief Bei Fong, Mako?s boss, comes into the room, sees the disheveled desk, and demands to know what happened. Mako tells her, and she smirks. ?You got off easy. You should have seen Air Temple Island when Tenzin broke up with me.?
Okay, so you are also a psychotic *****. Thanks for the help, Lin.
This is not okay, Nickelodeon. You cannot portray partner abuse with this kind of levity. If Mako or Bolin had acted this way to the women here, it would be a serious matter. It should be equally serious when women abuse men. End of story."

"To recap: Eska (non-consensually) humiliates Bolin and enjoys watching him in pain. She controls his actions and his emotions. He?s not even allowed to talk without asking for Eska?s permission first. And she uses fear and abuse in order to prevent him from leaving the relationship. Yup! That?s abusive! Almost any of these moments, taken in isolation, would be a red flag for abuse. Together, they?re a Massive Abuse Warning Siren that screams: ?BEWARE: HERE THERE BE REALLY GROSS ABUSE HAPPENING.? Now, I don?t actually oppose showing abusive relationships in TV shows. Hell, I don?t even oppose showing abusive relationships in children?s TV shows. What I oppose is showing abusive relationships as lighthearted and funny. Legend of Korra isn?t trying to make a point about how gross abusive relationships are. They?re trying to make a joke."

And the stuff I quoted is only the top of the dysfunctional iceberg (Mako, as one straight male to another, you are an epic douchebag. Yours, insincerely). What really bugs me is not only that the show-writers who in the Last Airbender were shown capable of writing really good romances cocked it up like this, but also that they've written about abuse previously (how Ozai treated Zuko, how Azula treated...basically everybody, but her brother and her two hench-women especially), and back then they wrote about it well, as opposed to now, when it's apparently supposed to be funny.

And as the perfect cherry on top of this animated cake, the show-writers appear to have no clue what the criticism is about: http://avatarextras.tumblr.com/post/67771182634/the-legend-of-korra-creators-writing-pretty-much
No, Konietzko, we do not get upset because of, as you said: "They get completely angry when we have fun with the teen romance stuff." We get angry because of as some of the lovely people on tumblr (http://collasuyu.tumblr.com/post/70128885785/the-legend-of-korra-creators-writing-pretty-much) put it: "God this is just such a shitty thing to say. People have been outlining exactly why each relationship as portrayed is either abusive?actually no, they?re all abusive, and it?s being dismissed like this."

 

[senordesol]

Art via executive would be my guess.

"Harumph...kids these days like 'drama' *and* 'relationships', right? Lookit them Twilights, that's what the kids want! Put that in there!"

I recently started re-watching TLA and all it really reinforced how...unnecessary Korra was. All of the characters were perfect and had their place. In Korra, almost everyone felt superfluous...in serious want of better heroes. Bo Lin's 'movie star' arc was largely pointless. Lynn Bei Fong was reduced to a cranky police Captain who couldn't smell incompetence if it was left in a flaming bag on her doorstep.

Honestly the only person with any sort of dynamism in the main cast is Asami...and she was originally slated to be an equalist spy.

 

[kurokotetsu]

Spoilers for LoK ending in this post.

Hmmm, I see it differently. Why? Well, because they are teenagers.

Spoiler

Teenage realtionships are messy. You are losing control of your body, your emotions, your reactions. Korra's reaction is not abusive. It is childish, it is to me quite close to a teenager throwing a tantrum. She has never been in a relationship before, she is highly physically conforntational and she reacts to this new emotions the same way she has reacted to everything. It is the wrong way to do it? Yes, but she is learning. By the end of the season when she breaks definetly with Mako, she is much more calm, she is seeing her mistakes and growing up. This is a show of teenagers, not adults. She is in the process of seeing what are the correct ways of dealing with life, her emotions and relationships. The growth can be seen in other things, like in the destroction of the cities between Air and Spirit Books, where she goes form not caring about collateral damage to taking down criminals without affecting the nearby houses. It is of the growth, a different growth than TLA, messier and more problematic. More teenage. And they are doing it well in my opinion. Most of the teenage relations don't end well. There is a lot of fighting, yelling and dealing with yourself and the other. And showing that in the series isn't declining quality in writing.

Also, except for that last quip, that specific scene it is not related in a comedic matter. It is a serious moment with serious consequences, the end of their relation. A little quip at the end (which may be seen as a coping mechanism) does not take away the whole tone of the scene.

About Bolin. Well, he is a comic relief. His relationship is abusive, yes, but I'm on the camp that there is nothing too sacred not to make fun of. His relationship being portrayed in a comedic manner is not bad just because the realtionship is abusive. It is just humour. It may or may not work for you, but it isn't bad jsut because of the subject matter.

 

[Pinkamena]

I don't know if it's really as bad as your sources write. Overall, I simply feel that there was too much focus on romance and relationships, and that they were all kind of strange. The Bolin/Eska thing was fun. Yeah, it was a bad thing for Bolin, but it was done in humor.