Tumblr crosspost (15 September 2020)

[anghraine]

diocletianscabbagefarm replied to this post:

LoK suffers in places from having the “seperate every season” syndrome. Books 3 and 4 were ordered at the same time, but all they decided to do with it is have Kuvira exist in book 3, rather than use that opportunity to lay connection and emotional groundwork

I replied:

Yeah—it’s not necessary to have an overarching plot, strictly speaking, but I think there are places where it would have helped to be building towards something the whole time, even if it wasn’t apparent what that thing was until we got there/in retrospect. I do love Korra’s overall character arc, but it bears a lot of weight as pretty much the only thing holding the series together as a whole.

I do think books 3 and 4 flow together a lot better than 1 and 2 or even 2 and 3 (not to argue that they’re individually better, just that B3 very clearly leads into B4 across multiple levels), but as far as Kuvira specifically goes, I agree. Her descent would be much more powerful if we actually knew her in some capacity, as would her ultimate surrender, but there’s no real connection to her until B4.