Blog: How Not to Write a Protagonist. Today’s Example: Korra.

Several months ago, I wrote a post about how to write your protagonists in which I went over what to do and what not to do. In continuation of that series (sorta), I’ve decided I’m going to start doing blogs on examples of good story writing and bad story writing, similar to my book/TV reviews, but its where I go more in depth on the characters. And since I’ve been reviewing Avatar: The Last Airbender and soon will be coming out with a review of the spinoff The Legend of Korra, let’s do a thorough analysis of Korra, a character that you don’t want your main protagonist to be like.

To start of this analysis, let’s start off with the good things about Korra; the likeable stuff. She has some funny scenes and cool powers.

That’s it.

Those are the only good things about her.

Even though Korra is the main character of LOK (Legend of Korra), she just isn’t likeable and much of that is due to the fact that she is a prefect representation of an early Strong-Whaman/Girl-boss character. She rarely shows any feminine emotion, is toxic towards friends and loved ones, shows no respect towards her teachers/parents, and – in classic Strong-Whaman/Girl-boss fashion – is just immediatly great at everything. In her intro scene where she’s established as being the new Avatar, she kicks open a hole in a wall in her parents’ igloo with her firebending powers and we’re later taken to a scene where she’s training with the White Lotus and it’s apparent that she’s barely needs any training. The powers that took Avatar Aang three seasons to fully master with much hardship, support from his friends, and personal growth apparently only takes Korra a few minutes of being born.

Isn’t she awesome so as a character so far?

No. She really isn’t. One of the hallmarks of a good main character – especially in stories that take place in some sort of fantasy world with a magic system, as in this case – is character development that may come in the form of finding some sort of strength they didn’t know they had. In a fantasy story that has a magic system, this hidden strength can be the character’s full mastery of their powers to defeat the villian and keep evil at bay. If you just give a character magic powers from the beginning and make them master those powers without any real struggle, you not only have a character whose story is boring, but you also have a character who is kinda flat or at best, static. In my own stories (which I know I keep referrencing without them having been published here or anywhere else; I’m still working on it), the main character has to find her powers by traveling through the world I created and ultimately dies before her powers are fully fledged. Even when she comes back to life, she still is a character who’s trying to learn her limits, gain emotional strength and resilience, and become what she needs to be as she watches close friends, family, and allies die in front of her throughout the series, unlike Korra who just gets her powers because she’s the Avatar. Korra takes her powers for granted and even when they’re stripped away from her by Amon, she regains them quickly with the bonus of being given total mastery over airbending, without even having to work hard for it.

This leads me to my next point about Korra not growing as a character at all. Element bending abilities aside, even when she goes through hard times like being stripped of her abilities by Amon (in season 1) and Zaheer (in season 3), she doesn’t really grow throughout the series. While Aang was kind and willing to learn even into the last episodes of ATLA, Korra is still overly aggressive, arrogant, and just comes off as the spoiled jock who would put your head in the toilet and give you a swirly. When she’s depressed in season 4 and would actually benefit from allowing herself to be weak so she could get help, she actively pushes everyone away, then gets angry when people do distance themselves from her, even though she asked for it. She pretty much expects everything to be given to her and thus sees no reason to change.

Once again, going back to my comments earlier about growth in terms of giving your characters powers, you also need to give your characters growth in terms of their outlook on life and how they act. While you can have good characters that are static, when they start off spoiled brats and stay spoiled brats throughout the entire series, unless you are planning for them to be the anti-hero or villian in the next installment of the series, you have failed to create a good character. If Korra was a dynamic character (which you can tell the writers were trying to go for, but failed miserably at), then this would be a different story, but she’s not.

I would also like to comment on how Korra, in her very arrogant, overly aggressive, semi-stoic, pushy, spoiled manner is exactly the type of person that critics would be hating on if she was a male character. She disregards any teaching from people who she asked guidance from and ignores the safety of other people (like when she opened the spirit portal and pretty much destroyed the city). She even kisses Mako without his consent in season 1(something that in the real world would get a guy sued for sexual harrassment/assault), which later breaks up his happy relationship with Asami, hurts Bolin, and it’s later confirmed in the spinoff books that Korra ends up with Asami, Mako’s now ex-girlfriend. This type of behavior would be demonized if the show’s protagonist was a guy, but it’s glorified since Korra is a “girl-boss”.

Characters – especially female ones – need to have an emotion other than anger; they need to have a wide array of thoughts and feelings, including a sense of empathy. They can be stoic, but only if they have a reason to do so, such as they must hide their feelings to spare others their suffering. Likewise, characters can be allowed to be pushy and arrogant, but only when there is some sort of character growth involved, something that Korra doesn’t have. Just because a character is female doesn’t mean you get to give her the go ahead to do whatever she wants. Doing so not only ruins the character, but also makes her demoralizing to the reader. If I’m female and read that, it’s demoralizing because since I have the XX chromosome, the means I don’t have to personally grow in any way, shape or form, something that is highly detrimental to women. If I’m a guy and I read that, that tells me that everything I do is wrong and thus I am expected to do nothing/everything in hopes that I can appease the opposite sex, putting me into a very confusing dilemma where nothing I do will gain me acceptance.

Does that make sense? Is that a character you would like to follow in the context of a story?

You need to strike a balance when writing characters between unlikeable and likeable. Protagonists should have flaws, but the flaws shouldn’t outweigh their virtues. In the case of Korra, though she did have some virtues, her flaws outweighed those, making her a villian in her own story and a horrible protagonist.

Until next time,

M.J.