Talk:Asami Sato/@comment-184.7.99.119-20120603204058/@comment-98.200.164.35-20120604025324

I don't really "resent" shippers, as they're called. They can do what they want. I mean, if you don't get attached to the characters in a story, either you're not doing it right, or the person who wrote the story isn't doing it right. Romance is an aspect of characters, and a pretty vital one. (Let's not even pretend that we're calm and collected and detached when it comes to our own love lives. And fiction is a sort of vicarious living: we need to see ourselves in the characters. Now, that vicariousness can become weirdly obsessed and parasitic--which might be what you're talking about when you talk about how shipping annoys you--but that's another story.) So of course people are going to "care" about who the characters they like end up with, if anyone. You can't fault them for that.

I appreciate what you're saying about Mako, though. At this point, he's like an angst-less hipster Zuko who thinks he's the coolest. But I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. In general, he's a good big brother, and he's a talented firebender. He's also more intelligent and crafty than you're giving him credit for. He's shown himself at being relatively adept when it comes to formulating strategies, for example. Remember the first pro-bending match we saw him in (which, incidentally, seems to be when Korra became smitten with him), or when he and Korra went to rescue Bolin (she just wanted to grab him, but he insisted they needed a diversion and decided what that diversion would be), and he and Bolin tricked the metalbending cop guarding them in "The Aftermath." He also has enough savy to have kept himself and his brother alive on the streets when he was only eight. In fact, thinking about it now, he's got more reason to think highly of himself than Sokka initially did when we first met him. (Though I must say, arrogance is one of the worst and most unattractive qualities a person can have.)

In short, I think that Mako's rather bland now, and he needs some humbling; but he's got potential as a character. I just hope it doesn't go unfulfilled.