{"id":2946,"date":"2015-01-28T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T15:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2016-01-05T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T14:11:26","slug":"korra-post-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/2015\/01\/28\/korra-post-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Balance: How Legend of Korra Dealt With Post-Trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[dropcaps]I[\/dropcaps]\u2019m probably in the minority for admitting that I did like the second season of <em>The Legend of Korra<\/em>.\u00a0 While there were some big hiccups along the way (I thought we were going to leave that pesky love triangle in Book 1, but lo and behold!), I thought the season brought up some good conflict for Korra to deal with.\u00a0 After the\u2026\u00a0<em>interesting<\/em> ride that was the Book 2 finale, I and many other fellow fans were wondering where the creators were going to take the show.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, Book 3 proved to be a great season (no love triangles-yes!). They concluded the season with a really intense finale which featured a chained-up Korra receiving mercury poison from that season\u2019s big bad, Zaheer.\u00a0 Fortunately with the help of Suyin Beifong, Lin\u2019s sister, they were able to get the poison out of Korra\u2019s body.<\/p>\n<p>I think a lot of viewers thought Korra would get back on her feet after the poison removed.\u00a0 We witnessed her get her bending taken away and losing her connection with the past Avatars in the previous seasons. Although Korra still couldn\u2019t connect with the past Avatars, her bending was restored.<\/p>\n<p>However, those thoughts were gone when we saw the aftermath of Korra\u2019s battle with Zaheer.\u00a0 Near the end of the episode, Korra\u2019s wheelchair-bound with a somber expression on her face as she watches Jinora\u2019s coronation take place.<\/p>\n<p>As predicted, Book 4 continued to show us Korra\u2019s journey through recovery.\u00a0 In \u201cKorra Alone,\u201d we see Korra going through physical therapy with Katara\u2019s help.\u00a0 Even though she eventually healed physically, she still had a lot of emotional healing to do.<\/p>\n<p>There was no surprise that, throughout Book 4, Korra still had flashbacks of her fight with Zaheer.\u00a0 In a few instances, she had hallucinations of herself in the Avatar state.\u00a0 During her fight with Kuvira in Zaofu, she imagined Kuvira as herself in the Avatar state.\u00a0 Her defeat at Kuvira\u2019s hands only added to her doubts about whether or not the world still needed her as the Avatar.<\/p>\n<p>It was very difficult to see Korra go through this.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a contrast from her optimistic and rebellious personality.\u00a0 Although there were moments earlier in the series where Korra struggled with defeating enemies and personal matters, it\u2019s still jarring watching her going through such emotional pain.<\/p>\n<p>While it was hard to watch Korra struggle physically and emotionally, it was impressive to see the show portraying someone experiencing PTSD and her road to recovery.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t the first time fans of <em>Avatar<\/em> saw a character go through the aftermath of trauma. In <em>Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/em>, Aang was shown to have doubts about being the Avatar, especially due to the genocide of his people and his defeat to Azula.\u00a0 <em>Korra<\/em> takes this concept and delved into it by showing Korra\u2019s recovery is a slow process full of setbacks.<\/p>\n<p>On the flip side of the coin, it was great to see Korra slowly but surely find some inner peace.\u00a0 During her time at the swamp with Toph, Korra was able to bend the remaining liquid metal out of her body.\u00a0 In turn, her recovery showed her how Zaheer and her other previous enemies had good intentions, but unfortunately were extremely unbalanced while trying to achieve them.\u00a0 With this realization, she was able to find a connection to Kuvira as the two had a talk-to-talk in the spirit world.<\/p>\n<p>Since the latter seasons were such improvements from the first two in the series, it\u2019s such a shame that Nickelodeon only aired the episodes online after the seventh episode of Book 3.\u00a0 Despite this huge step back, Nickelodeon did briefly air all the episodes to prepare for Korra\u2019s series finale.<\/p>\n<p>Whoever does watch the show will know that the road to recovery is a long and grueling process.\u00a0 But Korra\u2019s journey shows that despite the process, recovery is still possible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Janelle Smith<\/strong> is a TV &amp; Film Writer at Girls in Capes. \u00a0She is a senior at Ohio State University majoring in film studies and minoring in studio art.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Legend of Korra was one of our Editor&#8217;s Picks for the Best of 2014 &#8212; find the others <strong><a title=\"GiC Best of 2014: Editor\u2019s Picks\" href=\"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/2014\/12\/26\/bestof2014-edpicks\/\">here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[dropcaps]I[\/dropcaps]\u2019m probably in the minority for admitting that I did like the second season of The Legend of Korra.\u00a0 While there were some big hiccups along the way (I thought we were going to leave that pesky love triangle in Book 1, but lo and behold!), I thought the season brought up some good conflict [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[473,186,714,713,715,689,273],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-animation","tag-avatar-the-last-airbender","tag-korra","tag-legend-of-korra","tag-television","tag-the-destruction-issue","tag-the-legend-of-korra-tv-series","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/korra-book-4-trauma.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3zNPp-Lw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2950,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/2950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlsincapes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}