Now that everything is out in the wild...These days, I generally measure my sense of aesthetic outrage against pieces of media on the Sandwich Scale, which is how close I get to literally throwing my sandwich at my television. I've done this twice in my life; the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, and the ending of Mass Effect 3.
(To be fair, I haven't always had a sandwich handy at times when it might have been appropriate.)
I did not throw my sandwich at the television during the end of Book 2 of Legend of Korra, as it wasn't nearly, nearly that bad, but one specific thing in it was sandwich-worthy enough I feel the need to talk about it:
They put Asami on a fuckin' bison to ride out the finale, and that is not cool.
She's supposedly a fully paid-up member of the Krew, and she had one goddamn line in the entire season finale, and it was actually unnecessary exposition. Would that shit have happened to Toph? To Suki, who'd been a member of the Gaang for about five episodes when it all went down with Ozai? No, it would not have.
And it's made worse by the continuing and ongoing lack of personal and narrative agency Asami displays. Her role seems to be to be pretty, pilot various vehicles (and she does that well!) and very occasionally hit someone with a shock glove. Bolin does things. Korra does things. Mako, bless his idiot heart, does things. Asami reacts, and often reacts badly, and then other people come along and fix shit for her without her having a chance to be awesome. Varrick stole her company out from underneath her! When something like that happens to a character like Asami, what's supposed to happen is she engages in some hardcore boardroom war action to get her own back, Tony Stark vs. Anyone With The Last Name of Hammer style!
She doesn't even get to break up with Mako. Assuming she and Mako are even broken up again! (And my god, don't get me going on that whole... situation. So far Mako has managed to weasel out of having to have an actual conversation with Asami over how he's treated their relationship twice. Motherfucker is the luckiest ex-boyfriend in the entire world.)
I mean, fuck me, she couldn't have led an air strike on Unavaatu at a critical juncture, at least? Showed up in a kitbashed together Mecha-Tank when the dark spirits were trying to ravage Korra's body to kick ass and take names? That would have killed them? Desna and Eska get more to do and they're bit players, not even rising to the level of Mai and Ty Lee; they're more like the Rough Rhinos.
Sorry, that's a lot more profanity than I usually like to bring to the table, but... goddamn. I can work around the other series shortcomings, usually, but writing her out was one of those "bridge too far" things.
-Merc
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