avatar_state | Deerington Application

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Korra
Canon: The Legend of Korra
Canon Point: End of Season 4 + Canon graphic novels

In-Game Tattoo Placement: Inner left wrist
Current Health/Status: Doin’ fine! She’s ticking away at full health.
Age: 21
Species: Human

Content Warnings: Probably none – minor CW for trauma in the History link.

History: https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Korra

CRAU History and Impact: None!

Personality: Korra is, for all the best reasons, the person who is always ready for a fight. There’s an important distinction there – she doesn’t fight for the love of it (though she does enjoy the chance to show off her prowess, either with bending or physically) but because it’s necessary. She is the Avatar, and she has fully accepted the responsibilities that come along with this. One of those is being ready to stand up for what is right, regardless of the opposition that stands in the way. This is in some ways an inheritance, (canon makes it clear that there are inherent traits to the Avatar) but her own internal determination and boldness enhance it still further. (As a six year old child, her first declaration on becoming the Avatar was that the world would just have to deal with it.) One time this is demonstrated is when she is criticized by the President of Republic City for the damage caused in a battle, and her response is to quip - in the middle of a press conference: "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I put you in a difficult position by fighting the giant force of pure evil that was going to destroy the whole world? Maybe your administration could have handled that." This also, as an aside, demonstrates her willingness to take responsibility and take it to the fullest degree.

This is reflected in her personality elsewhere – it could be summarized as impulsive, but it is a larger thing besides. Korra will say what she feels, do what she wants to do, because she sees it as the most direct path from A to B. She is not one for dissembling, and her boldness is matched to an openness that fosters intense loyalty from her friends. Naturally, she also feels intense loyalty towards her friends in return – putting their needs as close to her own as she can. This is seen time and again throughout the second season of canon, in which the team reinforces each other over and over, operating as a cohesive unit to attain their goals to defeat Unalaq's forces. It is also telling that the only times in which Korra doesn't consider others is when she herself is dealing with the trauma of her fight with Zaheer at the beginning of Season 4 - where she fails to understand, in the midst of her own trauma, why her absence might be harmful or hurtful for others.

There is no reluctance to her personality – everything she does is done with either eagerness or her whole self. She has learned, through time and defeat, to layer patience on top of her impulsiveness, but it is not a universal nor a consistent trait. And, when provoked by threats to those she cares about, she can also prove to be quite wrathful and quick to anger. Even just dealing with recalcitrant people can make her confrontational – a stark contrast to many previous Avatars. Her wrath was amply demonstrated in Season 3 when she thought that Zaheer had killed her father, an act that an enraged Korra vowed vengeance for - and her subsequent fight with Zaheer was, despite her being poisoned, far more violent than usual. Her confrontational nature is also shown in the first season with Councilor Tarrlok, where despite being urged to respond diplomatically to Tarrlok's political moves, she does the exact opposite - more than once confronting him directly, some of which Tarrlok plays to his advantage.

But she grows, and more to the point is continuing on her journey – she is rapidly maturing, meaning her personality has not yet reached its final form, much of which will depend on those around her…

Lastly, to her core beliefs and fears. Korra is incorruptible – she sincerely believes in good and evil, in practical terms, though she’s not beholden to one set of laws or, for instance, specific religious beliefs. (Her rejection of her uncle's cause in season 2 is emblematic of this, to say nothing of her breezing past the issue of international laws or treaties in confronting Kuvira in season 4) Her very core belief is that you help people who need it, no matter the cost to yourself. After being badly injured and nearly killed, it was being stripped of this ability to help people that caused her deep trauma that took her three years to recover from. Though she emerged from the ordeal stronger, even though losing her connection to her past lives (a key piece of any Avatar’s heritage), being shackled from her purpose as the Avatar would be a constant, haunting fear for her.

Love is also another core belief. She believes in its power to transform and power the world, but she also practices it. Her friends are more like chosen family – she expresses her care for them consistently, and they in turn find it easy to be loyal to her. For her girlfriend, Asami, she feels a deep and constant wellspring of love – and without her presence, will feel that loss keenly. Indeed, there is a downside to things as a result. Fear of them coming to harm is a constant worry and can provoke predictable responses from her – as well as function as a deeper insecurity.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Korra possesses an innate ability to manipulate, through her chi, the elements around her: air, wind, fire, and water. While this is, in its way, an immense power, it comes with its share of weaknesses. She can, for a start, only affect what she can see – beyond her sight she can have no influence. And despite her physical prowess (and a seemingly higher-than-human durability), she is still very much a human being, subject to all the same frailties.

Thus her main ‘power set’ as it were comes with very strict limits, and while she can bend metal or raise rock barriers, these are no defense against, say, a distant enemy with a scoped rifle, or energy attacks or even someone sneaking up on her as she sleeps. While not quite a ‘glass cannon,’ a cunning foe will always find ways around her strengths – this has been the case with her main opponents in canon, each of whom found ways to neutralize or seriously threaten her.

Her Avatar State, however, may be another matter. In that state she taps into her deeper energies, and can summon vastly more power – on one occasion she even turned into a massive, energy-based version of herself to defeat the embodiment of chaos and darkness. This will be where warping comes in – to limit or shut off her ‘nuclear option,’ as it were. Though the final decision is up to the mods, I would assume either it would misfire or shut down entirely.

Perhaps it could backfire by merely popping off energy at random – perhaps altering local topography in minor ways like sprouting plant life or changing rock features.

Inventory: Bag with her tea set, various teas, her usual outfit (boots, pants, arm bands, tunic), a photograph of her and Asami, her glider, her winter coat.

Writing Samples:

TDM Thread: https://soddersays.dreamwidth.org/67321.html?thread=24495609#cmt24495609
Text-to-in-person: https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/6860363.html?thread=3021446731#cmt3021446731

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: C

Player Age: 37

Player Contact Plurk: c_for_characters:

Other Characters In Game: No

In-Game Tag If Accepted: Korra: C

Permissions for Character: https://avatar-state.dreamwidth.org/759.html

Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Sure, but might want to match up with the other LoK players’ answers in-game for the sake of continuity.

What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Struggle against evil, suspense!

Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: No

Additional Information: Let me know if you need anything else!

REVISIONS:

The key concept to understanding Korra is, appropriately enough, duality. Much as the Avatar is essentially two facets, human and spirit combined, so it is with everything regarding Korra. There is a balancing to everything, one which permeates every one of the requested categories. When looking at her flaws and struggles, it can be seen that they both create and solve the problems she faces. In her relationships with others, a balance ends up being struck – though the key word in that is ‘eventually.’ Lastly, her traumas create a strange sort of dualism as well, weighing their immediate effect against her long-term growth. These factors, taken together, craft the picture of Korra as both the Avatar and the person.

To expand on Korra’s flaws, they are first and foremost part of her most inherent nature. She is simply more fiery, bolder, and eager than her predecessor, Avatar Aang – and she is proud of her strength, for good reasons. However, in her early years as the Avatar this led to significant difficulty mastering the more delicate facets of her abilities, like airbending. And for someone to whom great strength comes naturally, she tended towards frustration when unable to achieve what, to her mind, should be a simple goal. This flaw is undoubtedly still present, but the 21-year old from the end of canon is a vastly different person from the 17-year-old Avatar who was thrust – or thrust herself – into heroic duty. Here is where that duality comes into play – Korra learns from each failure, each defeat. Her failures at the subtler aspects of bending led her to concentrate on her more spiritual side, and the penultimate result of this was unlocking a spiritual side to bending not known to her predecessors – where she could literally bend someone’s chi. It is worth noting that, again, this arrays against its opposite – the ability of the villainous Amon to remove people’s bending – Korra’s ability, appropriately, gave it back.

Korra’s reliance on her strength also leads inexorably to some deep fears. Against Amon, the fear was that he could remove her bending abilities and that she would be nothing without them. Against all foes, the fear lingers that she will be unable to stop them – not that this deters her. She is also incredibly, boldly stubborn – as seen in the fourth season when she engaged in a direct bending duel against Kuvira long before she had recovered emotionally from events in the previous season. Here, she feared others being harmed and as a result was defeated – but again, within the flaw, and its outcome, sprouted a seed. It was this defeat that finally led her to confronting fully what had happened to her and how it still held sway over her. Post-canon, these flaws are still a part of her, and are very unlikely to go away. If there is a world to save, or friends to protect, Korra will head ‘once more unto the breach’ without hesitation or, sometimes, a plan. For good and for ill, this is her flaw – and a source of her resilience, since her greatest strength is spiritual, a fact she is only just beginning to understand.

Her resilience has been tested time and again in canon, leading to repeated traumas that she has overcome in various ways. Or, rather, coped with and grown from – like real-life trauma, no matter how thorough the healing, bitter legacies are left behind. The first heavy blow to Korra came at the hands of Amon, leader of the Equalists. In brief, the Equalists were in some ways an allegory to the early days of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia (appropriate given the show’s themes and roughly analogous historical period) – revolutionaries determined to tear down privilege in their society, specifically bending. Much like the Bolsheviks, there was rank hypocrisy as well – Amon himself was a bender, and a bloodbender at that, able to painfully control the movements of opponents. Doing this to Korra, he used his chi blocking abilities to strip her connection to her bending, something she had been dreading. Ironically, this had the opposite effect – with her usual strengths out of the way, her affinity for airbending finally came to the fore and she was able to handily defeat Amon and expose him as a fraud. Though Amon’s terrible deed was never forgotten, the fact that she emerged stronger – again, that duality – powered her forward, leaving Amon a dark warning from history.

The next heavy blow came at the hands of Korra’s own uncle, Unalaq, seeking to restore the spiritual connection of the world, bonded himself to the demon of chaos and became the Dark Avatar. Ripping the Avatar’s spirit of light from Korra, Unalaq severed her connection to her past lives – a trail that led back through time through every Avatar, a source of wisdom and comfort in times of trouble for every successor to the mantle. Shorn of her abilities and her pasts, Korra once again fell back on her spiritual core – summoning up tremendous power from the Tree of Time that allowed her to defeat (and destroy) the Dark Avatar and restore the Avatar – though without the connection to the past. Once again, a strange balance – though he stripped much from her, Unalaq’s actions unleashed new abilities in Korra and led to a significant change in her personal beliefs. Stepping away from the pasts of the Avatars, she opened an entirely new path for the world and herself – no longer would the Avatar keep two worlds apart, but rather let them harmonize. Ironically, this had been Unalaq’s original goal, before he was consumed by evil.

Yet the heaviest blow would be leveled by the anarchist Zaheer. His quest was to destroy the possibility of any future Avatars, and to this end he defeated and captured Korra, poisoning her with a metallic poison meant to kill both her and prevent the rise of future Avatars. The poison forced her into the Avatar state, and in the ensuing final battle, Korra was badly injured and nearly killed. It was only her strength and her reliable friends who allowed her to survive – the poison barely (and incompletely) extracted. This left her in a weakened physical and mental state, confined to a wheelchair. This invasive and pervasive trauma left her unsure of herself, her relationships and ultimately took her three years to recover from. The physical trauma lingered – itself a heavy blow to a woman who believed that her strength was there to help people – but the mental trauma lingered still further, preventing her from extracting the last lingering shreds of the poison that compromised her. Unable to enter the Avatar state, plagued by nightmares – unlikely to ever go away, one would guess – just being able to write to Asami took her two years. Ultimately, she was taught that she was fearful of being injured in such a way again, Zaheer’s actions blending with the other enemies she had faced. But by coming to a confrontation with her past, she was able to extract the last of the poison and emerge strengthened – and wizened: to achieve her full strength, she had to overcome her fear of Zaheer and even allow him to be a spiritual guide. Thus, again, the duality – Korra’s traumas leave their mark upon her, but she emerges from each one in a resilient new state.

Her resilience is enhanced by those she cares about, and from the very beginning formed the rock upon which Korra relied. Loving parents, a best friend to grow up alongside in her polar bear-dog Naga, Korra has known the strength of loving relationships her entire life. Their importance to her is underlined by her all-consuming, unleashed rage when she thought Zaheer had killed her father. But in a larger sense her early life inculcated an easy willingness to make friends and extend trust towards others. This was first vibrantly seen in her relationship with her mentor Tenzin, who became in many ways a second father through the course of the canon show. Initially that of an older mentor and a hot-headed teenage pupil, their relationship matured as Korra matured, and a new sort of duality came into play: one changed the other. Both had to shed some inflexibility, but the result for both was also personal expansion. The result is a deep bond that is much more akin to family. Tenzin and his family are, intrinsically, an extended family for Korra as well. There may also be nobody – save Asami – who Korra admires more, and this is all the process of a long evolution and growth opposite each other.

The same process of growth occurred very differently with Mako. There was, from the start, attraction between the two – both had the same sort of boldness, the same drive and purpose. This, of course, set off a complicated romantic rhombus – the result being Korra and Mako as a romantic couple. There were, however, problems from the start – and through a series of events, they brought things to an amicable end. Once both were willing to confront how they were feeling, the one half of their relationship transformed – with awkwardness – into the other: a deep and abiding friendship. What didn’t work as a romance worked great as twinned engines: rather than competing against each other, their similarities in their personalities could work in tandem. While the awkwardness can still resurface, at least momentarily, what has emerged from the chaos of years as being parts of Team Avatar is a partnership, with the same trust that forged a relationship now powering two competent and forthright defenders of justice.

The final member of Team Avatar, however, is the one who turned Korra’s world on its ear. Asami Sato first struck Korra as a romantic rival – a fact that Korra’s close-to-the-surface emotions barely concealed. But as time passed and they got to know each other, a deepening friendship sprung up between the two women. Asami’s spirit of adventure, honesty, and boldness all caught Korra’s attention. By the time she was confined to a wheelchair, Korra felt much deeper feelings for Asami than mere friendship, but in her confused, depressed state felt unable to act on them. Having already made the wrong moves with Mako, the second, more severe occasion left her a bit reticent. The deepening feelings between the two were indicated by the fact that Asami regularly wrote to Korra, in the nearly three years she was gone – and it was only Asami who Korra ever wrote back to. When she did finally return, and once the initial disagreements caused by her lengthy absence were overcome, they grew closer and closer, pairing off with each other as often as they could whenever the team split. Following the defeat of Kuvira, they finally had time to discuss how they felt, vacationing together in the Spirit World. As both felt their way in a deepening relationship, some small conflicts arose – but in a sign of the growing maturity of Korra they were handled without the volatility that problems with Mako had created. By the end of canon, they had confessed their love for each other, with Korra ready to fight the world, figuratively, if it stood in their way – with their surrogate family backing them. Korra’s feelings for Asami are deep and felt without hesitancy, and the two form an interesting duality in and of themselves – Asami, the rational, planning, entrepreneur, inventor, and scientist, and Korra the bold and kind Avatar.

Hopefully this helps, please let me know if you need any more revisions.