aiffe:

We had this idea that Korra could not airbend. She had a block. And any time we talked about having it earlier in the season, we felt like we weren’t satisfied. If that’s what this season is about, her learning airbending - the season is called air. It’s gotta be a pivotal thing and the moment that she breaks through - for me, it’s the moment she’s not thinking about herself. Korra’s a very self-centered character. She’s very confident. But that is actually not what she needed. She needed to be selfless. 

-Bryan Konietzko on Making of A Legend: S01E12

I really like this interpretation of it! It makes that scene make more sense.

The problem is, not only did I not get that with months of thinking on it (including rewriting that scene in an AU and trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t) I’ve also read a lot of meta that was basically like, “There was nowhere else for the bending energy to go, so that’s why it worked!” and that seemed as good a theory as anything I could come up with.

So why didn’t I see it? :/

I realized the problem is that she loves Mako. Love can be selfish. You obviously don’t want someone you really care about to be hurt. Trying to save your romantic interest isn’t a selfless act.

This scene gets better the further you remove the person she was trying to save from her affections. If it had been Bolin, then at least she isn’t saving the person she’s shown a strong interest in dating. If it had been Asami, she’d be saving her romantic rival, which takes a lot more selflessness than saving her love interest. (Honestly, I saw more selflessness in the moment she offered to let Asami stay on ATI with her and approved of her relationship with Mako than when she saved Mako’s ass.) If she’d saved Tahno, I would have died happy it would have sent an even more profound message about compassion. Ditto for Tarrlok.

And, perhaps, if she’d used airbending to save Amon’s life…then she would really have shown herself to have the spirit of an airbender.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I DON’T LIKE THIS AWKWARD TENSION!!
ONLY SEXUAL TENSION ALLOWED! D8

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I DON’T LIKE THIS AWKWARD TENSION!! 

ONLY SEXUAL TENSION ALLOWED! D8

What if the Equalists succeeded to wipe out all the benders?

spacedoutsparrow:

And we’re ALL descendants of Equalists?

image

HEADCANON ACCEPTED!