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swatkatKorra doesn't 'swoon' and Lin is not a man: 3 Fangirls and a Rant| DW (tanndell)
This was written - after a lot of feelings and asides about beer - in response to this post on Tumblr (which might be a little hard to read, given all the reblogs - but worth it, in my opinion).zorana has it up on Tumblr here, if you'd prefer to read it there. Very rarely do I respond to posts with this sort of a knee-jerk wrong on the internet feeling, but in this case? It had to be said. If showing weakness/failing makes you a useless girlie girl and throwing a punch makes you a man, then it seems there is no middle ground, no right way left to be a girl at all, and there is something seriously wrong with that assertion.
There's one element not really addressed here (it didn't fit, and we were exhausted by our feelings at that point), and that's the statement that Korra's apparent failures vs Aang's apparent successes is somehow 'racist' because Korra is 'darker' than Aang, and I don't even know, guys, just what. The OP sees a 'Western story of the pampered noble who has no real training ON TOP OF what should have been the grueling story of a youth filled with training, training, training', which makes very little sense to me, given how it is clear that Korra has had a youth filled with nothing but (combat) training. I don't think I'm over-reading when I say that the narrative of clueless privilege* parallels that of Siddhartha, and I'd be very disappointed indeed if you claimed that that too is a 'Western story'. AtLA/LoK does not exist outside the American culture industry and there are valid discussions to be had in this context**, I think, but the bid to co-opt everything into a 'Western = white = EVIL' frame - if only to criticize it - is rather unfortunate.
* Does brown skin somehow repel cluelessness and/or privilege somehow? And if that's the case, how come no one told me? Or is 'privilege = white privilege' in every discussion?
** For instance, how does jazz fit into Republic City's culture? How does AtLA-verse come up with a name like 'Republic City'? Etc.
tanndell) This was written - after a lot of feelings and asides about beer - in response to this post on Tumblr (which might be a little hard to read, given all the reblogs - but worth it, in my opinion).
zorana has it up on Tumblr here, if you'd prefer to read it there. Very rarely do I respond to posts with this sort of a knee-jerk wrong on the internet feeling, but in this case? It had to be said. If showing weakness/failing makes you a useless girlie girl and throwing a punch makes you a man, then it seems there is no middle ground, no right way left to be a girl at all, and there is something seriously wrong with that assertion. There's one element not really addressed here (it didn't fit, and we were exhausted by our feelings at that point), and that's the statement that Korra's apparent failures vs Aang's apparent successes is somehow 'racist' because Korra is 'darker' than Aang, and I don't even know, guys, just what. The OP sees a 'Western story of the pampered noble who has no real training ON TOP OF what should have been the grueling story of a youth filled with training, training, training', which makes very little sense to me, given how it is clear that Korra has had a youth filled with nothing but (combat) training. I don't think I'm over-reading when I say that the narrative of clueless privilege* parallels that of Siddhartha, and I'd be very disappointed indeed if you claimed that that too is a 'Western story'. AtLA/LoK does not exist outside the American culture industry and there are valid discussions to be had in this context**, I think, but the bid to co-opt everything into a 'Western = white = EVIL' frame - if only to criticize it - is rather unfortunate.
* Does brown skin somehow repel cluelessness and/or privilege somehow? And if that's the case, how come no one told me? Or is 'privilege = white privilege' in every discussion?
** For instance, how does jazz fit into Republic City's culture? How does AtLA-verse come up with a name like 'Republic City'? Etc.
