Hah, I was thinking about this amongst many other things as I lay awake just now, terrified of sleep.

Ok well my feelings on this subject tend to be quite complicated so I hope you’re not looking for a real short answer. Mako is very poor at the whole other people’s feelings thing (also his own feelings), as is evident. I will never deny he is a disaster, human being wise, and he has a whole load of sorting out to do. There are many valid criticisms to be made about him, such as:

• he needs to work on his boyfriend skills. a lot. a lot a lot. 
• we need more time to see him develop as a character, and we especially need to know more about his relationship with his brother and their childhood, as opposed to just being there as a love interest (because you can’t be a convincing love interest if your sole function is to stand there looking handsome with an occasional line or two)
• he is not always consistent in terms of his personality (why is he sometimes playfully observing something where in another episode he might have been sullenly contemplating it?)  

The thing that irks me about much of the criticism of Mako I’ve seen is that it is more along the lines of: WHAT A TOOL, GET OUT FOREVER, YOU ARE FOREVER SHUNNED. I’ve seen so much of this black-and-white understanding of good and bad (which is worrying wrt Asami because she is put on a pedastal so much that the second she does something wrong I don’t even know what will happen, particularly since she has the AUDACITY to look like satan’s mistress apparently. Oh god, we have to like her even though she’s pretty! cried fandom. But they are ready to pounce, I’m sure of it.) If we get to the very last ep and Mako is at the exact same place that he is in now, well then, that would be a waste of fucking time and I would probably have given up by then and just started hating his existence too. But is that really likely? This is why I get annoyed with people who bring Zuko into it and talk about how they hated his behaviour because that so clearly misses the very point of him. LOK has very clear issues with pacing, like this ep Bolin had to tell Asami everything while they were urgently hurrying down a tunnel to rescue a Korra whose life was probably in danger when instead he could have told Asami to ask Mako about it face-to-face or even better, Mako could have come to her along with Korra to straighten everything out. But we aren’t given the time to even breathe so we’ll never know how that could have turned out. That certainly perplexes me.

tl;dr I just think we all need to concentrate on expressing our frustration where it is needed and in a more constructive way than all collectively hating on a character who does sucky things but could be loveable if given the chance by the show. And if he isn’t given the chance then get annoyed at that fact, fine. Let’s just not tear into every shitty thing a character does as if it isn’t necessary (because it probably is - who would bother to create a character who acts shitty if they aren’t going to address that?). Especially Zuko. Babe. Let’s not bring him into this.

even more tl;dr Mako was a terrible boyfriend this episode, but I want him around still because I think he has a lot of potential even though at this point bad pacing is preventing this from unfolding any time soon, and that’s the real let down to me. 

ailuruses replied to your post: korra

i definitely agree with this, considering how much of the show so far has been building up to her ~getting in touch with her spiritual side~ it just….happened. hm.

yeah… why? are they trying to smush it all in before the finale? I know they started out with only 12 episodes but did they not realise later on they would have more time? I feel like most of the problems this show has (especially with characterisation) could be solved if they only had better pacing. 

would’ve been better imo if it was a bottle episode where all we see is the inside of korra’s cell and the flashbacks. and she should have taken a little more time to be able to access them because time is really what this show needs and she is canonically bad at mediation - she seemed to be able to do it far too quickly? it could’ve been an episode of purely spiritual stuff that was made exciting by the flashbacks (in which katara should have come to bloodbend yakone into submission just saying just saying) with korra confronting everything that’s being going on inside of her and no outside complications to distract from her important avatar stuff. no idea what they are even trying to do with the villains anymore but we’ll see.   

birdbrainblue:

As of this morning’s episode, I think I’ve been able to piece together what happened 42 years prior to the events of The Legend of Korra.

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