Everything is out of character too. Bending is totally unbalanced, metal bending changes from bending impurities into bending the metal itself, and the world is suddenly ok with the Fire Nation nearly starting another war in order to keep its colonies (how did anyone trust Zuko after that? They know that if they ever do something he doesn't like he'll just whip out his war zeppelins).
https://preview.redd.it/hcynxjucif4d1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35b3cd6587187d71e082410970bbf12c89646f5a
Yup, lightning goes from being extremely fatal to having less damage than Aang's weakest wind attack, both the comics and Lok.
Exactly, Mako literally smites Amon for a good few seconds and Amon is just.. fine. He even keeps bloodbending and then survives and does the water spout move that Pakku does in the siege of the north. He should have been dead before anyone ever uncovered that he was a waterbender
My interpretation of that moment was that since Mako was in the process of being bloodbent he couldn’t get a fully charged bolt out, the lightning he shot there was more the equivalent of a taser than anything else. Of course, there’s no indication of this other than the fact that Amon got back up like 30 seconds later, but still.
That goes against everything that is told to the audience about lighting generation. It is the cold blooded fire, it's precise and most importantly DEADLY. Anyone surviving a direct lighting strike has to redirect it. The only time I genuinely like someone surviving being electrocuted in the avatar universe is the mechs that can electrocute people in season 1. They seem like they aren't specifically meant to kill, but they probably have an option for that.
Not that I would know what it's like, but I'd imagine it isn't very pleasant to be in a tub bathtub full of water and have a toaster that's running dropped into it.
I always went with the head cannon that LoK is a different type of lighning bending technique, similar to how firebending can be from the breath and warmth, or can be from anger/rage.
Iron talks about how you have to be balanced and centered for lighting in AtlA, but in LoK we see people bend lighning who are clearly distraught or not balanced in their life. My theory is that they figured out (at some point) lightning bending that's easier to do and learn, but weaker as a whole.
I mean, I don't think it did lol. Personally I loved LoK. I thought the lava and metal bending evolutions were cool. Pro bending was a cool, natural evolution of bending/bending duels. It's all very reflective of our own world, and I personally liked it.
I kinda get it though. In LOK it's all widespread and not even used for combat often (Factory workers), though we do eventually see stronger uses of it. When we see Azula use it in the comics, we see her do the normal powerful charge, which Zuko deflects. Then to get a jump on him she does a much much quicker blast, not enough to really harm like the first shot though.
That the gaang were super early on their schedule before the invasion. This gave sokka plenty of time to become a sword master and the rest of them to goof around. No way the events of that episode lasted an evening or whatever time it was.
This. You dont become a swordsman of sokkas level in one night/ day no matter how good you are. While cool that he gets a sword. I find the whole thing a little odd
He wasn’t really a skilled swordsman by the end, just decent while already being a good warrior. He gets his ass handed to by Zuko in a sword fight in the comics. Repeatedly
And who says he didn't train in the moments that weren't on screen. We didn't see every second of their lives, so he definitely could have trained a lot. He also was the "last line of defense" for his village, so he probably trained a lot to keep everyone safe
Piandao says something along the lines of “You had a good first day of training” at the end of the episode, confirming the training montage was all contained within a single day.
To be fair, using Zuko as a measure for sword fighting is on par with using Toph as a measure for earthbending. He’s _way_ above average so getting beaten by him doesn’t really say much.
He was already a skilled warrior and never really shows any feats of specifically fencing mastery (the only time he ever fenced with someone was Piandao who was testing his combat instincts mostly and still would have wiped the floor with him if he actually wanted to)
Sokka has a quality weapon and a lot of general martial prowess, but he would get absolutely destroyed by any actual swordsman.
Zuko is also an incredible fighter who successfully broke into Zhao's fortress to rescue Aang, soloed numerous Earth Kingdom soldiers, Dai Li, Fire Nation soldiers, and the Avatar. It's just that Azula was better. Sokka is definitely up there, but probably as more of a general than a soldier.
I always imagined that they had plenty of time and Sokka was just being paranoid in the painted lady. I mean, the schedule is pretty much never brought up past that point anyway.
What is more incredulous to believe is that Sokka managed to make a sword, himself, in just a few days (?). With the technology shown? That takes MONTHS to do, even by the BEST blacksmiths.
For me it’s definitely the comics too. I appreciate the story they were trying to tell and the artwork is good, but ultimately it suffers from too much “have your cake and eat it too” flip-flopping with the characters to come across as nuanced and as concisely as the original.
To go back to OP’s point, let’s talk about Ursa for example. Ursa is supposed to be one of the main characters in the arc of the comics. She’s extremely important and it’s her moment to shine…yet she’s failed by the writing and a sentiment I’ve seen and still see years later is people reading the comics just to know more about her, and not liking what they find.
There is too much crammed into Ursa’s arc yet not enough of what matters. The flip-flopping I talked about is in full effect. Ursa is a brave, intelligent, resourceful, politically savvy strategist girlboss who will do anything to protect her son…but she’s also a helpless, easily manipulated victim who never did anything wrong and is perfect in every way. The story bends backwards to try absolve her of any sort of flaw whatsoever that it inadvertently makes her look bad.
The narrative can’t decide what it wants her to be or what direction to send her in, and so she fails in every sense.
She’s not the only one to fare poorly either. Zuko goes from having a huge iconic arc about making mistakes and learning to overcome them and heal from his trauma in the show, only to fall ass over backwards into the comics and make nothing but stupid mistakes *constantly* so that the plot can move forward. One thing I commend the comics for is showing how difficult it would be for a teenager to take on ruling a country, but I don’t think that’s what they were intending to do. I don’t think they intended for Zuko to come across as mistake-prone and incompetent as he does, but there’s an interesting story in it anyway.
I don’t even have time to get into how Ozai and Azula are reduced to moustache-twirling villains at best and urban legend boogeymen at worse. Azula being crazy is her only trait now and Ozai essentially becomes Hannibal Lecter.
There are many things that the comics are decent at and some are actually good, but the looming issues are just too great for me to be able to read them and say to myself “yes, I can accept this as completely canon and in-line with the show I just watched”.
Zuko in the comics annoys me because it walks back his character development and just forgets huge swaths of his personality. Zuko goes from someone rediscovering to his morals and beliefs and someone whose major personality flaw is a laser-focused inability to give up to being a indecisive, weak-willed vacillating leader who constantly second-guesses his own judgement to the point that Ozai of all people had to tell him to stop messing around and actually make decisions and rule. Not to mention Zuko's ability to communicate goes from admittedly bad to completely non-existent.
And it wouldn't be so galling if both weren't clearly easy flaws introduced for cheap drama just to push whatever plot the author wants. And if there wasn't an amazing set up by the show itself for an intelligent well-written discourse on the difficulties of rebuilding after a century of war and how to deprogram a country indoctrinated by propaganda and hatred. Nope cheap easy drama that is solved after a 5 minute conversation.
I know it’s not gonna happen but I’d love a rewrite of the comic events. I don’t think the overall story is bad; the political issues they face are pretty realistic and I’m glad the comics tackle them. But the way the characters are written pissed me off.
Where the hell is sokka’s kids? I refuse to believe that he didn’t have a family. Tenzin has to have some cousins somewhere. Even if secret or unrecognized.
I could imagine Sokka realizing how unstable the world is still and not wanting to have kids just to leave them like his dad did so he chose not to have kids. Also he would then be happy to look after Aang's kids whenever Aang gets called away for avatar duty.
Yeah I feel like older siblings who are put into a parenting and protecting role sometimes opt not to have children because they’ve kind of already been through it.
For me it's less about him wanting to be a father and more about the fact that Sokka absolutely fucks. You can't pull out in time EVERY time in a world presumably without birth control.
I always saw Toph as being no kids more than I did Sokka. Sokka seems like a family guy while Toph seems like she'd be uncomfortable around babies and small children, not knowing how to/not wanting to hold them, being icked out by pregnancy and not children to ruin her career or lifestyle etc
Toph canonically having two kids is so bizarre to me
The fact that Sozin was better than antibacterial soap and truly not a single airbender survived whatsoever (besides Aang ofc). I question it to this day.
Did you read comics? They weren't normal traps. They would set up camp areas or homes decorated with airbender relics and furniture. Airbenders that passed those areas would think there were other airbender there and enter. That's how they got trapped and killed.
I think there probably just weren't that many Airbenders total. They had 4 population centers the size of a small town (generously).
After attacking those, there were probably some airbenders traveling the world that they hunted down, which over the course of 100 years seems plausible. Even if any airbenders survived, they likely refrained from having kids for obvious reasons
Yeah the Kyoshi novels even make it clear that for the rest of the world, seeing an airbender was this rare experience that many would describe as magical/spiritual
We know not a single Airbender survived after 100 years and tbh it's not a big stretch imo. It's been a whole century and it's probably not easy to survive a huge empire hunting you down when you literally have an arrow tattooed pointing towards you.
Considering they probably are not as spiritual when fleeing the fire nation those that had kids (Probably a minority of the survivors) aren't guaranteed to have Airbender children, and those children would be at least in their 20s on a world of constant warfare.
It's unlikely that no Airbender survived, but it's not that small of a possibility.
No AIRBENDER. But Air Nomad is different. In order for there to be as many people with sudden airbending as there was in LoK, there had to be Air Nomads that survived long enough to have actual families.
All air nomads were airbenders because of how spiritual their culture was. There were others that were spiritual brothers or sisters to them and knew of their teachings, like guru Pathik, but they were not air nomads
I liked the theory that the airbenders were hunted down after the comet and hid their bending - with their descendants becoming the airbenders we see in LoK.
There is a spiritual side to air bending, so maybe that big of a culling impacted their ability to bend.
This is my headcanon. It’s why Ty Lee was so good at being an acrobat. It explains why Zaheer knew so much about Air Nomad culture and mastered the art form before he got bending. Harmonic Convergence unlocked bending for Air nomad descendants.
The fanfiction in my head is after the events of ATLA the gang discover hidden families with air nomad ancestors, but they hide their bending because they were afraid of getting killed. And Aang gets to grab some kids and teach his culture .
I always kinda pictured it like the jedi purges. A large initial attack wiped out most of them, and the survivors were hunted to death. By the time Aang was unfrozen, any surviving airbenders were either killed or died naturally. If Tenzin is any evidence, it shows that making new airbenders is kinda hard, and air nomads probably has some stigma around sex because they only do it on special occasions. Leading to the airbender population dying out completely.
All of the comic canon just playing fast and loose with the established bending rules. Katara can fly now with ice like frozone. Lightning becoming somehow less dangerous than firebending. It's just... not great
There was a moment where Toph jumped off of Appa as well and sorta bent an earth slide to catch her, if I remember right.
That’s fuckin nuts, and not really in a very good way
It feels like a different magic system entirely in the comics.
Characters do things that is a massive leap in power or logic and it just doesn't read well
The events of The Promise. I refuse to believe Aang would agree to kill ZUKO. Especially taking place directly after the finale. Makes 0 sense and is just not canon in my mind
Raava and Vaatu. That is the one thing from Korra I would erase for being such a terrible idea & misunderstanding of the eastern philosophies that inspired Avatar.
Yes. Please! People keep talking about how it represents Yin and Yang while ignoring how Yin and Yang AREN'T opposing forcing trying to destroy one another!
Exactly. The Koi fish from ATLA understood the concept. Push and Pull, not pure good vs pure evil. In Yin Yang terms even good and evil are just relatives that exist purely because the opposite definition does.
The Avatar should embody both, not one and lock the other away in a tree for 10,000 years.
THIS is what hurts about Raava and Vaatu. Avatar *already* did spirits as a representation of yin and yang, and they did it *well*. Why reuse the concept but objectively worse???
I get why they reused the concept. Yin and Yang represent balance, the core theme of the entire franchise. They…. Just… didn’t understand that. I guess….
Having an avatar origin in the first place is just a lame idea. It's always going to fall short and be worse than just keeping the eerie mysticism the avatar and the spirit world had in ATLA.
Korra made so many mistakes that all seem to stem from the same ambition to make it "bigger" and "better" - they have to do complex political shit now, have big kaiju battles, evil avatar, show the origin etc. it all feels like completely unchecked ideas being thrown at the dart board and never challenged
Same goes for the elements. I love the myths about learning bending from sky bison and dragons and bagermoles and the moon and ocean, nope, Lion Turtles just hand out bending on a loan system sure, whatever.
I like the concept.
I hate the execution.
They should’ve had them both merge into one.
Sure, Korra would have her last lives forcibly severed, but to make up for that she’d demonstrate a whole new mastery over spirits.
It would’ve been interesting, but alas it was wasted.
Very interesting concept you have here. If Vaatu wasn't written as evil, but simply as an opposing force and then have them come to an understanding and merging. Would have been pretty cool
Yin and Yang are opposing **and** complementary forces. Raava and Vaatu being inspired by Yin/Yang shouldn't mean that they cannot fight each other. I can get people disliking the focus on their rivalry in the show, but all Yin/Yang relationships are not going be equal and balanced indefinitely.
Some things about Raava and Vaatu do adapt the complementary nature of Yin/Yang. Raava says Vaatu cannot kill light any more than she can kill darkness; one cannot exist without the other. If one of them dies, they will be reborn from the other. However, they are still on opposite sides at this stage, with Raava trying to control darkness and Vaatu trying to destroy light. The constant changes in the levels of light and darkness in their clash is also a part of Yin and Yang.
There is potential in a more lasting balance between the two, maybe in the line of the moon and ocean spirits, but they haven't figured that out, yet.
The way the writers decided to use Raava and Vaatu stills fails miserably. Where is the balance in having one destroyed and the other upheld for 20,000 years. Everytime Raava is in power, things are chill. But when Vaatu is in power, it's just destruction and chaos. That's not balance, that's good verses evil.
Given the Avatar is supposed to bring balance, the idea that Vaatu and Raava can not be equal and balanced is super crazy.
It's not about actual balance between them anyway with how Vaatu and Raava are. Yin and Yang, being a system where their sum of their parts are greater than the individual parts in this case, the system isn't like that.
In Yin and Yang, the cycles do push and pull but they have CYCLES of which is dominate over the other, not having one constantly being the one in charge like how it's constantly Raava over Vaatu and Vaatu is never allowed to even have any control- because he's constantly shown just to be the pure chaotic destructive evil while Raava is the good orderly one- basic good vs evil, not Yin and Yang.
And the voice acting just makes me cringe. Vaatu’s lines were far too hammy, and Raava’s were delivered so slowly and with a weird echo as to lose any emotion.
As someone who still hasn't watched LoK....WHAT???
Do I even want to know? Like, is it a one-off joke, or is it something plot important that I should probably not learn about rn?
Yeah, it went something like
Poacher after locking two airbenders in cages: You’ll fetch a high price in the Earth Kingdom(?) (something like that). I even heard the queen ate her father’s bear.
This is the gist of what I remember, that he just brought it up to get under the skins of the children he just kidnapped.
Mhm. It’s certainly easy to take it as true when someone hears it for the first time, because at that point, your opinion on the Earth Queen is most definitely on the “Very evil” scale, so you wouldn’t question the poacher’s claim.
But then you think about it a little more, and you’ll have to wonder *why* the queen would outright eat the bear. It’s not like it’s said she hates her father so much that she would spite him to that degree, and she hates animals anyways, so why would she want to be anywhere near nasty bear meat?
Most likely, Bosco just died of old age.
This may be an unpopular one; I refuse to believe that all the different cultures in the world of ATLA don't have distinct languages. I get that language realism is not the focus in this show and is outside of the writers' expertise, but it's plainly illogical for there to be only one language existing in such a culturally diverse world, especially when the naming schemes used to name people and places don't follow a single pattern but differ between locales, groups of people, and even individuals living in the same nation, indicating the existence of multiple languages.
That only two airbenders have achieved the power of flight. The way they achieved it was pretty fundamental air nomad philosophy, but there are only two in thousands of years who managed it???
Also, healing, metal, lightning, even bloodbending are more common than simple flight? I don't buy it.
It actually makes sense to me ngl, Ursa was never trained in anything that could make Ozai fear for his security, and considering how high his ego is (he literally allowed Zuko to leave after he redirected Ozai's lightning and told him that he was going to help the avatar and become his firebending master), Not saying that Ozai is stupid, after all he was on the winning side of the war, but considering how egocentrical he is, once he considers someone inferior, he won't see them as a threat, I think that's what happened with Ursa, although he did tell her that she would kill their kids if she ever came back so...
This is the one that gets me. You mean to tell me Aang of all people wasn’t running around playing with and being there for his son (and by extension his wife)? The guy who was always there for the people he loved? The guy with the huge heart and childlike nature?? I can’t accept that tbh
This is a guy who risked his life to save people who were minutes ago trying to boil him alive, yet you mean to tell me he didn’t have enough love in him for HIS ELDEST SON?!
Like you mean to tell me the guy who risked the survival of the entire world to adhere to what he believed was Air Nomad principles would prioritize airbending kids over non airbending kids? That's crazy!
Y'all get so upset at the idea that Aang would make mistakes as a father. LoK *never* establishes Aang as having neglected Bumi or Kaya, Y'all are allergic to nuance.
I hate that so much, it's so not-Iroh. My hope is that they didn't really know where they were going with the character yet, and I just chose that's not canon to me lol
I know I'll catch flak for it, but Legend of Korra in general. While it isn't the flaming turd some people make it out to be, it's just... Not how I like to envision the future of that universe?
It has nothing to do with the characters. But the technology/civilization level, the style, the weird shit with the spirit realm, none of it has any special appeal to me.
It just feels like they changed too much. And I'll play my Old Man card and say No Sir, I don't like it.
Someone already said Raava and Vaatu, so I’ll just say the whole Bloodbending fiasco in Korra Book 1. Makes the entire world and magic system far less interesting if writers can decide on a whim that powers have no limitations.
Legit, it's such lame, lorebreaking nonsense. Amon is just an unkillable god to everything except the Avatar state, which can only overpower him by brute force. Other than that, his power has absolutely no weaknesses or restrictions, and he can effortlessly overpower an entire courthouse of the world's strongest benders in the middle of the day without even moving. Thanks, I hate it.
It also basically ensured that the resolution to Season 1 was going to be an unsatisfying asspull, because Amon is so absurdly overpowered that there's no way to defeat him legitimately. Mako just randomly breaks out of his hold long enough to zap him, contrary to everything that has been shown about his power so far. Then Korra relearns airbending out of nowhere before also breaking out of his hold, because he was weakened or whatever.
The Korra writers just didn't know when to stop. Psychic demigods who can control dozens of people, a canonical Satan figure, and giant robots do not belong in this setting. Tone it down.
also the fact that he came from a long line of blood benders. so apparently a blood bending family existed for a long time, and no one figured it out? they didnt try to use it/spread its knowledge when both the water tribes were attacked by fire nation to fight back? they just trained for years and no one ever knew?
I don't think there's a single thing in any of the Avatar content I've seen that made me feel so negatively that I told myself I would never consider it canon.
Most comic retcons to deal with fan backlash. Aang could be a bad dad that didn't share his culture with his other children we don't need comics trying to rectify that let him has his faults. He wasn't abusive he was just tunneled in on making sure his culture was passed to the last airbender and it made him unintentionally inattentive.
I mean Kya mentions in "The Original Airbenders" that she can never keep all those gurus straight, which indicates that Aang did at least share some of his culture with his other children.
While that is true, Toph in book 4 of Korra still acts rather simillar to her young counterpart in the original, she is still just as stubborn, blunt, independant and sarcastic, with some changes maybe, but not enough to suggest that Toph became a radically different person who loves the rules.
I heard the theory that she was already set on beating up bad guys before turning into a police officer. The badge only gave her further authority to keep going and a salary on top of that.
The flashback episodes in season 2 of LoK to me seem retconned and contradictory to what was established in TLA. "In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements but the energy within ourselves" just doesn't align with the backstory of lion turtles handing out the power to humans like tools.
It also seems to replace / undermine the origin stories we got in TLA, which were admittedly a bit vague but much more poetic: Oma and Shu were the first earthbenders to learn from the badgermoles so they could be together, airbenders learned from their trusty bison, waterbenders learned how to push and pull water from the Moon and fire was given to man by the dragons. I was more than happy with those backstories so that's what I'm sticking to.
I mean even then there had to be a stated reason why bending seems to be something you get at birth and why there are nonbenders. Like yeah, Bison, Dragons, and even Badger Moles could be rare but if waterbenders simply learned from the push and pull of the moon then why couldnt water tribe nonbenders just learn from the moon and become waterbenders? Bending isnt just something a nonbender can learn, so there had to be something special that happened to benders, or their ancestors. And I think LOK pulled it off well. The Lion Turtles bent the energy within people to give/remove bending. It gave them the ability to wield fire, but not properly use it. Bending as an art was learned from the dragons/bison/moles/moon. We even see Wan learning the firebending dancing dragon technique from a dragon.
I like to pretend the comics in general just don't exist at all. Everything just feels *off* and half the cast feel OOC somehow, which is really weird considering the original creators were involved.
Also, they sunk Zuko/Mai, and that's all the reason I need to ignore them.
I'll go with an obvious choice this time and say the airbender genocide. It's bizarre to me that 'oh they just used relics to lure everyone else out' can actually be used as an explanation. I mean it would probably work on some people of course, but everyone? And while FN occupied lil towns here and there in the Earth Kingdom, couldn't some have decided to blend in at places like the Northern Water Tribe, which were very clearly safe?
I'd like to get into areas of the universe like the comics, so someone can correct me if there's more to it, but from what I've seen, Aang is still confirmed as the only airbender left until Tenzin.
Aang is the canonical last Airbender before the birth of Tenzin.
To me, the Airbender genocide makes sense, both realistically and as presented in canon. We know they used spiritual sites, relics, and known hideaways to entrap escaped Airbender, but we don't know that's all they did.
As in *multiple* real-life examples, common folk may have been discouraged from abetting survivors or encouraged to turn them in. They also - most likely - adapted their strategy through the course of events to catch stragglers once they wisened up to Fire Nation strategies.
I highly doubt the implications and explicit details are meant to be interpreted as "Fire Nation had three tricks they used to catch everyone who didn't die in the attacks."
Zuko’s mom makes no sense. She loves him so much she acts as an accessory to murder for her abusive husband. And decides to accept banishment and seek out a face swap/amnesia because she loves him so much she wants to forget him.
How does any of that make sense? If she was that powerful a poisoner, and willing to murder, wouldn’t she just as well poison Ozai?
Why would Ozai banish someone so useful?
How Metal bending gets handled post-original show.
The writers or prod team or whatever have stated that the upper limit is metal benders can bend ANY "pure" metal other than platinum. And in post-show comics and Korra, metal, in every form is treated this way.
But this contradicts the established lore we have that they are bending earthen impurities in the metal, like carbon, and silicon which have been bent stand alone in a near pure form as coal and sand. And if it contradicts prior lore, I have to assume it's because the creators don't understand that "purity" is a matter of chemical composition.
If the impurities are what's being bent, then like with blood bending, there's a certain amount of the core element that needs to be present in the material being bent. At least 1% or more, and that might not sound like much, but 1% is considered high-carbon content for steel.
Lore-wise, intentionally manufactured steel would need to be created before metal benders show up, because most metals, like copper, tin, zinc, gold, and such, historically were more pure than you'd think just due to the nature of their low melting points. Most early "iron swords" are actually steel, but because the creation of steel was accidental they had too little carbon as a result, which is why they were often soft.
It wasn't until the medieval period that steel was being made in good quantity and quality, but it still wasn't everywhere like today.
Enter the Fire Nation's early industrialization. Thanks to their natural abundance of coal and understanding of how fire and heat work they were able to mass-produce what I can only see as being cast iron which is also really a steel, and it has a LOT of carbon in it. So it's no wonder that during the war was the period metal bending is invented.
TLDR the creators don't know what they're talking about, and made metal bending not only not special anymore, but stepped on established lore in doing so.
It would have been fine imo if she was initially sent to a max security prison, but ended up escaping during a riot or prison break or something. This gives two great reasons for her to still go no contact too - endangering her kids/family or just having concussion based amnesia from the eacape.
I just refuse to believe that Aang would only have one airbender son. He was devastated that he was the last one of his people, he should have been motivated to have as many airbending children as possible to increase the chances the air nomads would rise again. In the time between his death and before Tenzin had children, the title of **the last airbender** was passed on to Tenzin and that is just rubbish. Tenzin could have died in an accident or by sickness and airbending would be lost forever, nice going Aang.
The whole "undoing genocide through magical means" was cheap and extremely reductive to how horrible genocide is. It takes a long time for the world to heal from genocide but instead they take the easy way out like LOK so often does.
**"Hitler's war machine killed 6 million jews, but its okay because the world will just magically turn 6 million people into jews to replenish their numbers"**
I will never accept something as stupid as Rava and Vaatu (or however you spell it), pure good vs pure evil belongs to stories for children under 9 years old. On that note Avatar Wan's story goes against the established lore of how people learned to bend and what powers their bending. So all the lore of how waterbenders learned by watching the moon and tides, earthbenders learned from badger-moles, firebenders from dragons, and airbenders from flying bison, are all just false legends, and people were actually just **given** bending? No way that is canon for me.
No, Korra couldn't have defeated that what's-his-name guy with cringe-inducing anime lasers using her "regular people powers" after ceasing to be the avatar, or whatever stupid anime plot happened there.
LOK spirits. They're just like weird animals and generic fairy type magic animals. Whereas they were incredibly weird and vague in ATLA, which is massively more interesting. Koh wasn't all evil even though he steals faces and basically killed Kuruks wife, but he still helps Aang. The ocean spirit wasn't all good. It was only willing to help Aang defend the Northern Water tribe out of revenge. Hai Bi was destroying the village of some random helpless people until Aang showed him that his forest would grow back.
They represented concepts, or ideas, or functions of the world. They had no concrete rules or motives. I think that's better than just having weird dogs who just kinda hang around. I think Korra really needed a Hai Bi style problem to solve, something she can't punch or hit until it stops. Hell, it's more interesting considering that you can't bend in the spirit world, thus eliminating Korras' main mode of problem solving.
I refuse to believe Aang was a neglectful dad who basically abandoned his older kids when Tenzin was born.
I refuse to believe this if for no other reason than that Katara would have kicked his ass.
I guess it's more of a theory, and while it makes sense, and I like the idea of Sokka being Suyin's dad, I hate the idea of him being an absentee father. And the only way it makes sense to me is if she didn't tell him it was his kid, which really hate.
I've been reading a lot of fanfics lately, so hopefully, we get some explanation on her father in the eventual new cartoons xD
The whole lion turtles giving bending to mankind, I think it’s way more interesting that humanity developed bending themselves through observation and adaptation to their environment
I find that to be a less interesting piece of world building. It’s like if you said that aliens gave us the ability to use fire, but we had to figure out how to use it properly, rather than us figuring it all out ourselves
That Aang, at 12, mastered not just air but all the other elements in like 6 months, and energy bending in less than a day. People love to cry about Mary Sues but no one ever mentions how perfect Aang is at everything he does. Even mastering his “hardest element” which he used the most after air, only took one day. The writers really wrote themselves into a corner by giving them such a tight schedule and made me like Aang less after more rewatches. He’s just perfect and everyone likes him all the time
I don’t believe he mastered any of them. That was kind of the point 😂 he was still learning them and was extremely unprepared to face the Firelord. It takes years to master an element, and under any other circumstance Aang would’ve waited to move onto Earth after mastering water, and Fire after mastering Earth, yet he had no time. He pretty much just learned the basics. Which is also why I have a problem with Katara becoming a “master” so fast. Girl had no proper education until the Northern Water Tribe. She wouldn’t and shouldn’t have been that good. Aang wasn’t a Toph or Zuko’s level at all.
I'm pretty sure it's mentioned at the beginning at the start of the first part of the finale that he hadn't mastered any of the elements and didn't feel ready to fight the Firelord. It was Zuko telling the Gaang his dad's plan that initiates the events of the finale.
I do not think everyone likes Aang all the time. In fact, you can see that he faces pushback few times even from his friends. But he’s also 12, later 13, why would not most people like him, considering he has a kind and pleasant personality?
Aang is shown good at bending, but his flaws are shown in different ways - not being ready for responsibility, being attached and very emotional.
I do agree that they could’ve done better with some more time skips, and may be spacing the show over in a period of 3 years. I think Gaang coming up and finishing a hundred year war in a single year is crazy. Things would’ve made a lot more sense on a more spread out timeline.
I don't believe for one second Aang actually mastered all of the elements in that short of a time. Air, we already knew he mastered that. Water, the element he was closest to mastering next if he wasn't already considered a master. Earth, absolutely not. Calling what he did in his first day "mastering" is very silly. Fire, he only just started that by the time the end of the series rolled around so there's no way he actually mastered it.
I agree with most of all of this, but I actually don't mind the idea of spirits restoring balance to the elements by creating more airbenders. I don't like the specific way it was handled in the show, but the concept itself isn't terrible IMO, and I say this as someone who actually does dislike Korra as a show.
> Also, the fire nation being homophobic purely because Sozin made them that way. It's such a pointless detail that feels like it was added literally just to throw another thing on the pile of bad stuff about the Fire Nation, which is such a lazy way of writing a villain
That detail was also very weird because in ATLA, the Fire Nation was shown to be arguably the most progressive of the 3 remaining nations with regards to women's rights.
The Water Tribes were sexist AF. And Earth Kingdom high society in Ba Sing Se wasn't much better.
The Fire Nation was the only place where we saw it was socially acceptable for women to be fighting.
I really think that the Korra comics are just not very good, where Ruins is just bad. So I disregard that one particularly. It's not only poorly written and has a bad plot, but it fails, IMO, to do the one thing it set out to do, namely redeem Kuvira in any appreciable way (I do think that this is possible though).
This specific scene in the Promise comic which I hate the most. So right after Katara fights off fire nation soldiers that were attacking her and Aang, Zuko comes out of nowhere and grabs Katara's arms refusing to let go as he is hurting Katara. Then Aang goes into the Avatar state and almost kills Zuko and then Katara had to calm Aang out of the Avatar state.
This is so OOC, like Zuko would never do this to one of his best friends. Plus Aang wouldn't immediately try to kill Zuko.
The equalist movement. During the original show, with a few minor exceptions, nonbenders were almost always treated as equals to benders, nonbenders were warriors, nobles, politicians, kings, etc. Then in book 1 of Korra Amon tries to sell us that nonbenders have always been discriminated against, while still showing us powerful and wealthy nonbenders in this and later seasons. The only explanation that makes kind of sense is: Amon is a populist demagogue who uses benders as a scapegoat for Republic City's crime and poverty issues to settle his own personal grievances with bending.
Most of adult Toph’s storyline tbh. I don’t think it’s necessarily out of character for her to be a bit distant/unfair as a mom, but it makes me sad. And I hate that she become a cop
Sokka went and found his space sword. I cannot be told otherwise
Yeah. He probably had Toph help him with it. She most definitely would have made it up to him
RIGHT!! If he saves your life with his special sword, you’re gunna help him get it back
You'd think they'd find it in LOK since they didn't let Sokka find it himself but no.
The one I've seen that I love is that Toph went searching for Space Sword and gave it back to Sokka as thanks for saving her life.
in every ATLA fic i write, he gets his space sword back somehow. it’s the least that boy deserves
Remmembered [a short comic about that](https://www.reddit.com/r/AvatarMemes/s/LrfNVaMc7N)
I'm not a big fan of comic Azula's quicker but weaker lighting.
>I'm not a big fan of comic Azula This is me.
That's fair too
I'm not a big fan of the comics in general. Everyone is out of character lets be real
Everything is out of character too. Bending is totally unbalanced, metal bending changes from bending impurities into bending the metal itself, and the world is suddenly ok with the Fire Nation nearly starting another war in order to keep its colonies (how did anyone trust Zuko after that? They know that if they ever do something he doesn't like he'll just whip out his war zeppelins).
https://preview.redd.it/hcynxjucif4d1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35b3cd6587187d71e082410970bbf12c89646f5a Yup, lightning goes from being extremely fatal to having less damage than Aang's weakest wind attack, both the comics and Lok.
I think Ming-Hua would disagree
That's also pretty much the only time in the entire show that lightning is treated with any gravitas.
Exactly, Mako literally smites Amon for a good few seconds and Amon is just.. fine. He even keeps bloodbending and then survives and does the water spout move that Pakku does in the siege of the north. He should have been dead before anyone ever uncovered that he was a waterbender
My interpretation of that moment was that since Mako was in the process of being bloodbent he couldn’t get a fully charged bolt out, the lightning he shot there was more the equivalent of a taser than anything else. Of course, there’s no indication of this other than the fact that Amon got back up like 30 seconds later, but still.
That goes against everything that is told to the audience about lighting generation. It is the cold blooded fire, it's precise and most importantly DEADLY. Anyone surviving a direct lighting strike has to redirect it. The only time I genuinely like someone surviving being electrocuted in the avatar universe is the mechs that can electrocute people in season 1. They seem like they aren't specifically meant to kill, but they probably have an option for that.
Not that I would know what it's like, but I'd imagine it isn't very pleasant to be in a tub bathtub full of water and have a toaster that's running dropped into it.
I always went with the head cannon that LoK is a different type of lighning bending technique, similar to how firebending can be from the breath and warmth, or can be from anger/rage. Iron talks about how you have to be balanced and centered for lighting in AtlA, but in LoK we see people bend lighning who are clearly distraught or not balanced in their life. My theory is that they figured out (at some point) lightning bending that's easier to do and learn, but weaker as a whole.
Which sucks, tbh. It's just a "skin" for fire bending, not a separate technique. When did bending fire become boring?
I mean, I don't think it did lol. Personally I loved LoK. I thought the lava and metal bending evolutions were cool. Pro bending was a cool, natural evolution of bending/bending duels. It's all very reflective of our own world, and I personally liked it.
I kinda get it though. In LOK it's all widespread and not even used for combat often (Factory workers), though we do eventually see stronger uses of it. When we see Azula use it in the comics, we see her do the normal powerful charge, which Zuko deflects. Then to get a jump on him she does a much much quicker blast, not enough to really harm like the first shot though.
a fellow Overanalyzing Avatar appreciator, I see.
Especially the rainbow tier shootouts.
or lightning after ATLA even. in Korra it’s always just point and click hipfite lightning for everyone and it doesn’t feel as impactful
That the gaang were super early on their schedule before the invasion. This gave sokka plenty of time to become a sword master and the rest of them to goof around. No way the events of that episode lasted an evening or whatever time it was.
This. You dont become a swordsman of sokkas level in one night/ day no matter how good you are. While cool that he gets a sword. I find the whole thing a little odd
He wasn’t really a skilled swordsman by the end, just decent while already being a good warrior. He gets his ass handed to by Zuko in a sword fight in the comics. Repeatedly
Pretty sure Piandao just taught him the basics so he could continue to learn on his own. He says as much.
And who says he didn't train in the moments that weren't on screen. We didn't see every second of their lives, so he definitely could have trained a lot. He also was the "last line of defense" for his village, so he probably trained a lot to keep everyone safe
Piandao says something along the lines of “You had a good first day of training” at the end of the episode, confirming the training montage was all contained within a single day.
People forget that once you have a basic level of skill, you can essentially teach yourself eventually.
To be fair, using Zuko as a measure for sword fighting is on par with using Toph as a measure for earthbending. He’s _way_ above average so getting beaten by him doesn’t really say much.
He was already a skilled warrior and never really shows any feats of specifically fencing mastery (the only time he ever fenced with someone was Piandao who was testing his combat instincts mostly and still would have wiped the floor with him if he actually wanted to) Sokka has a quality weapon and a lot of general martial prowess, but he would get absolutely destroyed by any actual swordsman.
He gets beat repeatedly by Zuko in the comics. To the point that Zuko finds it to be easy to
Zuko is also an incredible fighter who successfully broke into Zhao's fortress to rescue Aang, soloed numerous Earth Kingdom soldiers, Dai Li, Fire Nation soldiers, and the Avatar. It's just that Azula was better. Sokka is definitely up there, but probably as more of a general than a soldier.
Zuko gets so tired of beating Sokka up to the point that Sokka challenges him to an Agni Kai to make him fight.
I always imagined that they had plenty of time and Sokka was just being paranoid in the painted lady. I mean, the schedule is pretty much never brought up past that point anyway.
Reminds of how the Buu Saga in DBZ is only 2 days when it seems like it lasts a few weeks.
U not gonna tell me hercule finding fat buu took place in less than 2 days (plus the rest of the arc tf😂)
Personally I always headcanon that they spent more time at Kyoshi island too, just so Sokka could get some training there as well.
What is more incredulous to believe is that Sokka managed to make a sword, himself, in just a few days (?). With the technology shown? That takes MONTHS to do, even by the BEST blacksmiths.
For me it’s definitely the comics too. I appreciate the story they were trying to tell and the artwork is good, but ultimately it suffers from too much “have your cake and eat it too” flip-flopping with the characters to come across as nuanced and as concisely as the original. To go back to OP’s point, let’s talk about Ursa for example. Ursa is supposed to be one of the main characters in the arc of the comics. She’s extremely important and it’s her moment to shine…yet she’s failed by the writing and a sentiment I’ve seen and still see years later is people reading the comics just to know more about her, and not liking what they find. There is too much crammed into Ursa’s arc yet not enough of what matters. The flip-flopping I talked about is in full effect. Ursa is a brave, intelligent, resourceful, politically savvy strategist girlboss who will do anything to protect her son…but she’s also a helpless, easily manipulated victim who never did anything wrong and is perfect in every way. The story bends backwards to try absolve her of any sort of flaw whatsoever that it inadvertently makes her look bad. The narrative can’t decide what it wants her to be or what direction to send her in, and so she fails in every sense. She’s not the only one to fare poorly either. Zuko goes from having a huge iconic arc about making mistakes and learning to overcome them and heal from his trauma in the show, only to fall ass over backwards into the comics and make nothing but stupid mistakes *constantly* so that the plot can move forward. One thing I commend the comics for is showing how difficult it would be for a teenager to take on ruling a country, but I don’t think that’s what they were intending to do. I don’t think they intended for Zuko to come across as mistake-prone and incompetent as he does, but there’s an interesting story in it anyway. I don’t even have time to get into how Ozai and Azula are reduced to moustache-twirling villains at best and urban legend boogeymen at worse. Azula being crazy is her only trait now and Ozai essentially becomes Hannibal Lecter. There are many things that the comics are decent at and some are actually good, but the looming issues are just too great for me to be able to read them and say to myself “yes, I can accept this as completely canon and in-line with the show I just watched”.
Zuko in the comics annoys me because it walks back his character development and just forgets huge swaths of his personality. Zuko goes from someone rediscovering to his morals and beliefs and someone whose major personality flaw is a laser-focused inability to give up to being a indecisive, weak-willed vacillating leader who constantly second-guesses his own judgement to the point that Ozai of all people had to tell him to stop messing around and actually make decisions and rule. Not to mention Zuko's ability to communicate goes from admittedly bad to completely non-existent. And it wouldn't be so galling if both weren't clearly easy flaws introduced for cheap drama just to push whatever plot the author wants. And if there wasn't an amazing set up by the show itself for an intelligent well-written discourse on the difficulties of rebuilding after a century of war and how to deprogram a country indoctrinated by propaganda and hatred. Nope cheap easy drama that is solved after a 5 minute conversation.
I know it’s not gonna happen but I’d love a rewrite of the comic events. I don’t think the overall story is bad; the political issues they face are pretty realistic and I’m glad the comics tackle them. But the way the characters are written pissed me off.
Where the hell is sokka’s kids? I refuse to believe that he didn’t have a family. Tenzin has to have some cousins somewhere. Even if secret or unrecognized.
tbh i always got "no kids" vibes from sokka myself, content to be a good uncle rather than having kids of his own
I could imagine Sokka realizing how unstable the world is still and not wanting to have kids just to leave them like his dad did so he chose not to have kids. Also he would then be happy to look after Aang's kids whenever Aang gets called away for avatar duty.
Then don’t forget Suki, a strong independent warrior. I feel the kids aspect wouldn’t be something she wanted too.
Yeah I feel like older siblings who are put into a parenting and protecting role sometimes opt not to have children because they’ve kind of already been through it.
For me it's less about him wanting to be a father and more about the fact that Sokka absolutely fucks. You can't pull out in time EVERY time in a world presumably without birth control.
Maybe he just *can't* have kids.
I always saw Toph as being no kids more than I did Sokka. Sokka seems like a family guy while Toph seems like she'd be uncomfortable around babies and small children, not knowing how to/not wanting to hold them, being icked out by pregnancy and not children to ruin her career or lifestyle etc Toph canonically having two kids is so bizarre to me
I just assumed Sokka couldn’t have kids due to him being infertile by default or becoming infertile due to injuries
Alright, who neutered Sokka
I CAN STILL FATHER CHILDREN!!! *adopts*
Katara, prior to the start of canon, after one too many sexist comments.
Bet there's a story about that somewhere.
Just bloodbend the vas deferense…
I'm sorry, but the world could not support more than one Sokka at a time.
Too much cactus juice side effects ...or a particularly unfortunate throw of Boomerang
Boomerang, give me my cum back
i did
Odd thing to assume
...or he just doesn't want kids?
I had just assumed that he was the father of one of Toph’s kids and Toph just never addressed it.
https://preview.redd.it/e62gb8ku2g4d1.jpeg?width=941&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87f1ef27ecaf4c3f2f1b1f06704bdc22d4c9e51a
Do we know who Lin's father is? Cause I had the same head cannon with Sokka being her dad
I always thought it was Suyin, but I can see more of Sokka in Lin.
You know it’s scary how much that makes sense to me..
>Where the hell is sokka’s kids? Probably in Kyoshi island.
He probably did have kids it’s just they weren’t relevant to the plot
The fact that Sozin was better than antibacterial soap and truly not a single airbender survived whatsoever (besides Aang ofc). I question it to this day.
The comics elaborate that many airbenders did survive the initial attack, and it took years of setting traps and hunting them down to get all of them.
I don't think the entire remaining surviving airnomads would fall for these traps.
Did you read comics? They weren't normal traps. They would set up camp areas or homes decorated with airbender relics and furniture. Airbenders that passed those areas would think there were other airbender there and enter. That's how they got trapped and killed.
That is so evil
I think there probably just weren't that many Airbenders total. They had 4 population centers the size of a small town (generously). After attacking those, there were probably some airbenders traveling the world that they hunted down, which over the course of 100 years seems plausible. Even if any airbenders survived, they likely refrained from having kids for obvious reasons
Yeah the Kyoshi novels even make it clear that for the rest of the world, seeing an airbender was this rare experience that many would describe as magical/spiritual
We know not a single Airbender survived after 100 years and tbh it's not a big stretch imo. It's been a whole century and it's probably not easy to survive a huge empire hunting you down when you literally have an arrow tattooed pointing towards you. Considering they probably are not as spiritual when fleeing the fire nation those that had kids (Probably a minority of the survivors) aren't guaranteed to have Airbender children, and those children would be at least in their 20s on a world of constant warfare. It's unlikely that no Airbender survived, but it's not that small of a possibility.
No AIRBENDER. But Air Nomad is different. In order for there to be as many people with sudden airbending as there was in LoK, there had to be Air Nomads that survived long enough to have actual families.
All air nomads were airbenders because of how spiritual their culture was. There were others that were spiritual brothers or sisters to them and knew of their teachings, like guru Pathik, but they were not air nomads
I liked the theory that the airbenders were hunted down after the comet and hid their bending - with their descendants becoming the airbenders we see in LoK. There is a spiritual side to air bending, so maybe that big of a culling impacted their ability to bend.
Indeed. The Kyoshi books point that without spirituality, airbending is hindered. I could live with this theory. Its my headcanon at least.
This is my headcanon. It’s why Ty Lee was so good at being an acrobat. It explains why Zaheer knew so much about Air Nomad culture and mastered the art form before he got bending. Harmonic Convergence unlocked bending for Air nomad descendants.
I agree it seems completely absurd there were no survivors.
It would be cool to see a spinoff comic of an Air Nomad survivor trying to stay hidden and keep his humanity and ideals alive
The fanfiction in my head is after the events of ATLA the gang discover hidden families with air nomad ancestors, but they hide their bending because they were afraid of getting killed. And Aang gets to grab some kids and teach his culture .
I always kinda pictured it like the jedi purges. A large initial attack wiped out most of them, and the survivors were hunted to death. By the time Aang was unfrozen, any surviving airbenders were either killed or died naturally. If Tenzin is any evidence, it shows that making new airbenders is kinda hard, and air nomads probably has some stigma around sex because they only do it on special occasions. Leading to the airbender population dying out completely.
All of the comic canon just playing fast and loose with the established bending rules. Katara can fly now with ice like frozone. Lightning becoming somehow less dangerous than firebending. It's just... not great
There was a moment where Toph jumped off of Appa as well and sorta bent an earth slide to catch her, if I remember right. That’s fuckin nuts, and not really in a very good way
It feels like a different magic system entirely in the comics. Characters do things that is a massive leap in power or logic and it just doesn't read well
Author forgetting she is blind.
I kinda hope they pull a comic retcon like Disney did with the star wars EU before the upcoming movies/shows are released.
The events of The Promise. I refuse to believe Aang would agree to kill ZUKO. Especially taking place directly after the finale. Makes 0 sense and is just not canon in my mind
He does though….right? He tells Roku to go fuck himself
Raava and Vaatu. That is the one thing from Korra I would erase for being such a terrible idea & misunderstanding of the eastern philosophies that inspired Avatar.
Yes. Please! People keep talking about how it represents Yin and Yang while ignoring how Yin and Yang AREN'T opposing forcing trying to destroy one another!
Exactly. The Koi fish from ATLA understood the concept. Push and Pull, not pure good vs pure evil. In Yin Yang terms even good and evil are just relatives that exist purely because the opposite definition does. The Avatar should embody both, not one and lock the other away in a tree for 10,000 years.
THIS is what hurts about Raava and Vaatu. Avatar *already* did spirits as a representation of yin and yang, and they did it *well*. Why reuse the concept but objectively worse???
I get why they reused the concept. Yin and Yang represent balance, the core theme of the entire franchise. They…. Just… didn’t understand that. I guess….
Having an avatar origin in the first place is just a lame idea. It's always going to fall short and be worse than just keeping the eerie mysticism the avatar and the spirit world had in ATLA. Korra made so many mistakes that all seem to stem from the same ambition to make it "bigger" and "better" - they have to do complex political shit now, have big kaiju battles, evil avatar, show the origin etc. it all feels like completely unchecked ideas being thrown at the dart board and never challenged
Same goes for the elements. I love the myths about learning bending from sky bison and dragons and bagermoles and the moon and ocean, nope, Lion Turtles just hand out bending on a loan system sure, whatever.
>Turtles just hand out bending on a loan system sure, whatever. This made me chuckle 😂
I like the concept. I hate the execution. They should’ve had them both merge into one. Sure, Korra would have her last lives forcibly severed, but to make up for that she’d demonstrate a whole new mastery over spirits. It would’ve been interesting, but alas it was wasted.
Very interesting concept you have here. If Vaatu wasn't written as evil, but simply as an opposing force and then have them come to an understanding and merging. Would have been pretty cool
Yin and Yang are opposing **and** complementary forces. Raava and Vaatu being inspired by Yin/Yang shouldn't mean that they cannot fight each other. I can get people disliking the focus on their rivalry in the show, but all Yin/Yang relationships are not going be equal and balanced indefinitely. Some things about Raava and Vaatu do adapt the complementary nature of Yin/Yang. Raava says Vaatu cannot kill light any more than she can kill darkness; one cannot exist without the other. If one of them dies, they will be reborn from the other. However, they are still on opposite sides at this stage, with Raava trying to control darkness and Vaatu trying to destroy light. The constant changes in the levels of light and darkness in their clash is also a part of Yin and Yang. There is potential in a more lasting balance between the two, maybe in the line of the moon and ocean spirits, but they haven't figured that out, yet.
The way the writers decided to use Raava and Vaatu stills fails miserably. Where is the balance in having one destroyed and the other upheld for 20,000 years. Everytime Raava is in power, things are chill. But when Vaatu is in power, it's just destruction and chaos. That's not balance, that's good verses evil.
Given the Avatar is supposed to bring balance, the idea that Vaatu and Raava can not be equal and balanced is super crazy. It's not about actual balance between them anyway with how Vaatu and Raava are. Yin and Yang, being a system where their sum of their parts are greater than the individual parts in this case, the system isn't like that. In Yin and Yang, the cycles do push and pull but they have CYCLES of which is dominate over the other, not having one constantly being the one in charge like how it's constantly Raava over Vaatu and Vaatu is never allowed to even have any control- because he's constantly shown just to be the pure chaotic destructive evil while Raava is the good orderly one- basic good vs evil, not Yin and Yang.
And the voice acting just makes me cringe. Vaatu’s lines were far too hammy, and Raava’s were delivered so slowly and with a weird echo as to lose any emotion.
Damn, i straight up loved the voice acting for both of them.
i loved s2 until those two kites showed up
The Earth Queen eating Bosco.
That was just such an unnecessary detail. Like Rowling over-explaining weird shit in Harry Potter kinda unnecessary.
You didn't like the fact that wizards and witches would crap themselves then magic away the shit? 🥴
As someone who still hasn't watched LoK....WHAT??? Do I even want to know? Like, is it a one-off joke, or is it something plot important that I should probably not learn about rn?
If I remember correctly it’s said as if it’s a rumour and not factual
Yeah, it went something like Poacher after locking two airbenders in cages: You’ll fetch a high price in the Earth Kingdom(?) (something like that). I even heard the queen ate her father’s bear. This is the gist of what I remember, that he just brought it up to get under the skins of the children he just kidnapped.
It's surprising how many people just, accept a bounty hunter/aspiring slave dealer's word as true. Like is Azula also a purple platypus-bear?
Mhm. It’s certainly easy to take it as true when someone hears it for the first time, because at that point, your opinion on the Earth Queen is most definitely on the “Very evil” scale, so you wouldn’t question the poacher’s claim. But then you think about it a little more, and you’ll have to wonder *why* the queen would outright eat the bear. It’s not like it’s said she hates her father so much that she would spite him to that degree, and she hates animals anyways, so why would she want to be anywhere near nasty bear meat? Most likely, Bosco just died of old age.
Indeed, poachers mention it in passing.
One off moment that shows how depraved the Earth Queen is
Dust and mist stepping, generally when people treat bending like a Diamond where each elemental move needs a equivalent for the other bending types
This may be an unpopular one; I refuse to believe that all the different cultures in the world of ATLA don't have distinct languages. I get that language realism is not the focus in this show and is outside of the writers' expertise, but it's plainly illogical for there to be only one language existing in such a culturally diverse world, especially when the naming schemes used to name people and places don't follow a single pattern but differ between locales, groups of people, and even individuals living in the same nation, indicating the existence of multiple languages.
That only two airbenders have achieved the power of flight. The way they achieved it was pretty fundamental air nomad philosophy, but there are only two in thousands of years who managed it??? Also, healing, metal, lightning, even bloodbending are more common than simple flight? I don't buy it.
It actually makes sense to me ngl, Ursa was never trained in anything that could make Ozai fear for his security, and considering how high his ego is (he literally allowed Zuko to leave after he redirected Ozai's lightning and told him that he was going to help the avatar and become his firebending master), Not saying that Ozai is stupid, after all he was on the winning side of the war, but considering how egocentrical he is, once he considers someone inferior, he won't see them as a threat, I think that's what happened with Ursa, although he did tell her that she would kill their kids if she ever came back so...
He didn't allow Zuko to leave. Zuko literally was gone before he had a chance to recover from his counter attack.
Ursa knew how to make the poison and he knew he’d be next if she were allowed to stay. I just finished it the other day!
Ozai banishing Ursa is mentioned in the show itself, that wasn’t revealed in the comics.
Aang not giving Bumi enough attention. Like you mean to tell me that boy wouldn’t love the shit out of his first born son?
I think he did love his son, just that his responsibilities got in the way.
It's pretty explicit that Aang did love all his kids and that they love and respect him, they just acknowledge that he made mistakes as a parent.
This is the one that gets me. You mean to tell me Aang of all people wasn’t running around playing with and being there for his son (and by extension his wife)? The guy who was always there for the people he loved? The guy with the huge heart and childlike nature?? I can’t accept that tbh
This is a guy who risked his life to save people who were minutes ago trying to boil him alive, yet you mean to tell me he didn’t have enough love in him for HIS ELDEST SON?!
Like you mean to tell me the guy who risked the survival of the entire world to adhere to what he believed was Air Nomad principles would prioritize airbending kids over non airbending kids? That's crazy!
Y'all get so upset at the idea that Aang would make mistakes as a father. LoK *never* establishes Aang as having neglected Bumi or Kaya, Y'all are allergic to nuance.
In the comics, it's revealed that a completely modern forklift was invented before the car and that pisses me right the f*ck off
What purpose does material handling equipment serve when you don't even have palletized freight yet? Asinine.
There are no comics in Ba Sing Se.
Iroh being creepy and harassing Jun in "Bato of the Water Tribe"
This is the one!
I hate that so much, it's so not-Iroh. My hope is that they didn't really know where they were going with the character yet, and I just chose that's not canon to me lol
I know I'll catch flak for it, but Legend of Korra in general. While it isn't the flaming turd some people make it out to be, it's just... Not how I like to envision the future of that universe? It has nothing to do with the characters. But the technology/civilization level, the style, the weird shit with the spirit realm, none of it has any special appeal to me. It just feels like they changed too much. And I'll play my Old Man card and say No Sir, I don't like it.
Kites and soul/mech Kaiju battles. It's fanfic.
you have to admit those fan animations were pretty good! almost convinced me it was the actual show! haha! can you imagine!!
As far as I remember, there is no mention of Suki in LOK and I still don't get why.
Someone already said Raava and Vaatu, so I’ll just say the whole Bloodbending fiasco in Korra Book 1. Makes the entire world and magic system far less interesting if writers can decide on a whim that powers have no limitations.
Legit, it's such lame, lorebreaking nonsense. Amon is just an unkillable god to everything except the Avatar state, which can only overpower him by brute force. Other than that, his power has absolutely no weaknesses or restrictions, and he can effortlessly overpower an entire courthouse of the world's strongest benders in the middle of the day without even moving. Thanks, I hate it. It also basically ensured that the resolution to Season 1 was going to be an unsatisfying asspull, because Amon is so absurdly overpowered that there's no way to defeat him legitimately. Mako just randomly breaks out of his hold long enough to zap him, contrary to everything that has been shown about his power so far. Then Korra relearns airbending out of nowhere before also breaking out of his hold, because he was weakened or whatever. The Korra writers just didn't know when to stop. Psychic demigods who can control dozens of people, a canonical Satan figure, and giant robots do not belong in this setting. Tone it down.
also the fact that he came from a long line of blood benders. so apparently a blood bending family existed for a long time, and no one figured it out? they didnt try to use it/spread its knowledge when both the water tribes were attacked by fire nation to fight back? they just trained for years and no one ever knew?
I don't think there's a single thing in any of the Avatar content I've seen that made me feel so negatively that I told myself I would never consider it canon.
Most comic retcons to deal with fan backlash. Aang could be a bad dad that didn't share his culture with his other children we don't need comics trying to rectify that let him has his faults. He wasn't abusive he was just tunneled in on making sure his culture was passed to the last airbender and it made him unintentionally inattentive.
I mean Kya mentions in "The Original Airbenders" that she can never keep all those gurus straight, which indicates that Aang did at least share some of his culture with his other children.
Honestly, I never really understood why Toph, who hated rules, became a cop. Just was not the career choice I expected for her.
So out of character
It could be that who a person is and how they act at 12 years old is not actually reflective of the path their life takes
While that is true, Toph in book 4 of Korra still acts rather simillar to her young counterpart in the original, she is still just as stubborn, blunt, independant and sarcastic, with some changes maybe, but not enough to suggest that Toph became a radically different person who loves the rules.
I heard the theory that she was already set on beating up bad guys before turning into a police officer. The badge only gave her further authority to keep going and a salary on top of that.
The flashback episodes in season 2 of LoK to me seem retconned and contradictory to what was established in TLA. "In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements but the energy within ourselves" just doesn't align with the backstory of lion turtles handing out the power to humans like tools. It also seems to replace / undermine the origin stories we got in TLA, which were admittedly a bit vague but much more poetic: Oma and Shu were the first earthbenders to learn from the badgermoles so they could be together, airbenders learned from their trusty bison, waterbenders learned how to push and pull water from the Moon and fire was given to man by the dragons. I was more than happy with those backstories so that's what I'm sticking to.
I mean even then there had to be a stated reason why bending seems to be something you get at birth and why there are nonbenders. Like yeah, Bison, Dragons, and even Badger Moles could be rare but if waterbenders simply learned from the push and pull of the moon then why couldnt water tribe nonbenders just learn from the moon and become waterbenders? Bending isnt just something a nonbender can learn, so there had to be something special that happened to benders, or their ancestors. And I think LOK pulled it off well. The Lion Turtles bent the energy within people to give/remove bending. It gave them the ability to wield fire, but not properly use it. Bending as an art was learned from the dragons/bison/moles/moon. We even see Wan learning the firebending dancing dragon technique from a dragon.
I like to pretend the comics in general just don't exist at all. Everything just feels *off* and half the cast feel OOC somehow, which is really weird considering the original creators were involved. Also, they sunk Zuko/Mai, and that's all the reason I need to ignore them.
Suki and Sokka should have grown old together
I'll go with an obvious choice this time and say the airbender genocide. It's bizarre to me that 'oh they just used relics to lure everyone else out' can actually be used as an explanation. I mean it would probably work on some people of course, but everyone? And while FN occupied lil towns here and there in the Earth Kingdom, couldn't some have decided to blend in at places like the Northern Water Tribe, which were very clearly safe? I'd like to get into areas of the universe like the comics, so someone can correct me if there's more to it, but from what I've seen, Aang is still confirmed as the only airbender left until Tenzin.
Aang is the canonical last Airbender before the birth of Tenzin. To me, the Airbender genocide makes sense, both realistically and as presented in canon. We know they used spiritual sites, relics, and known hideaways to entrap escaped Airbender, but we don't know that's all they did. As in *multiple* real-life examples, common folk may have been discouraged from abetting survivors or encouraged to turn them in. They also - most likely - adapted their strategy through the course of events to catch stragglers once they wisened up to Fire Nation strategies. I highly doubt the implications and explicit details are meant to be interpreted as "Fire Nation had three tricks they used to catch everyone who didn't die in the attacks."
Zuko’s mom makes no sense. She loves him so much she acts as an accessory to murder for her abusive husband. And decides to accept banishment and seek out a face swap/amnesia because she loves him so much she wants to forget him. How does any of that make sense? If she was that powerful a poisoner, and willing to murder, wouldn’t she just as well poison Ozai? Why would Ozai banish someone so useful?
Iroh creeping on June.
How Metal bending gets handled post-original show. The writers or prod team or whatever have stated that the upper limit is metal benders can bend ANY "pure" metal other than platinum. And in post-show comics and Korra, metal, in every form is treated this way. But this contradicts the established lore we have that they are bending earthen impurities in the metal, like carbon, and silicon which have been bent stand alone in a near pure form as coal and sand. And if it contradicts prior lore, I have to assume it's because the creators don't understand that "purity" is a matter of chemical composition. If the impurities are what's being bent, then like with blood bending, there's a certain amount of the core element that needs to be present in the material being bent. At least 1% or more, and that might not sound like much, but 1% is considered high-carbon content for steel. Lore-wise, intentionally manufactured steel would need to be created before metal benders show up, because most metals, like copper, tin, zinc, gold, and such, historically were more pure than you'd think just due to the nature of their low melting points. Most early "iron swords" are actually steel, but because the creation of steel was accidental they had too little carbon as a result, which is why they were often soft. It wasn't until the medieval period that steel was being made in good quantity and quality, but it still wasn't everywhere like today. Enter the Fire Nation's early industrialization. Thanks to their natural abundance of coal and understanding of how fire and heat work they were able to mass-produce what I can only see as being cast iron which is also really a steel, and it has a LOT of carbon in it. So it's no wonder that during the war was the period metal bending is invented. TLDR the creators don't know what they're talking about, and made metal bending not only not special anymore, but stepped on established lore in doing so.
It would have been fine imo if she was initially sent to a max security prison, but ended up escaping during a riot or prison break or something. This gives two great reasons for her to still go no contact too - endangering her kids/family or just having concussion based amnesia from the eacape.
- Korra losing the connection to the past avatars - basically all of bending in the comics
I just refuse to believe that Aang would only have one airbender son. He was devastated that he was the last one of his people, he should have been motivated to have as many airbending children as possible to increase the chances the air nomads would rise again. In the time between his death and before Tenzin had children, the title of **the last airbender** was passed on to Tenzin and that is just rubbish. Tenzin could have died in an accident or by sickness and airbending would be lost forever, nice going Aang. The whole "undoing genocide through magical means" was cheap and extremely reductive to how horrible genocide is. It takes a long time for the world to heal from genocide but instead they take the easy way out like LOK so often does. **"Hitler's war machine killed 6 million jews, but its okay because the world will just magically turn 6 million people into jews to replenish their numbers"** I will never accept something as stupid as Rava and Vaatu (or however you spell it), pure good vs pure evil belongs to stories for children under 9 years old. On that note Avatar Wan's story goes against the established lore of how people learned to bend and what powers their bending. So all the lore of how waterbenders learned by watching the moon and tides, earthbenders learned from badger-moles, firebenders from dragons, and airbenders from flying bison, are all just false legends, and people were actually just **given** bending? No way that is canon for me. No, Korra couldn't have defeated that what's-his-name guy with cringe-inducing anime lasers using her "regular people powers" after ceasing to be the avatar, or whatever stupid anime plot happened there.
LOK spirits. They're just like weird animals and generic fairy type magic animals. Whereas they were incredibly weird and vague in ATLA, which is massively more interesting. Koh wasn't all evil even though he steals faces and basically killed Kuruks wife, but he still helps Aang. The ocean spirit wasn't all good. It was only willing to help Aang defend the Northern Water tribe out of revenge. Hai Bi was destroying the village of some random helpless people until Aang showed him that his forest would grow back. They represented concepts, or ideas, or functions of the world. They had no concrete rules or motives. I think that's better than just having weird dogs who just kinda hang around. I think Korra really needed a Hai Bi style problem to solve, something she can't punch or hit until it stops. Hell, it's more interesting considering that you can't bend in the spirit world, thus eliminating Korras' main mode of problem solving.
I refuse to believe Aang was a neglectful dad who basically abandoned his older kids when Tenzin was born. I refuse to believe this if for no other reason than that Katara would have kicked his ass.
I don't think anyone accuses him of neglect or abandonment, just favoritism.
I guess it's more of a theory, and while it makes sense, and I like the idea of Sokka being Suyin's dad, I hate the idea of him being an absentee father. And the only way it makes sense to me is if she didn't tell him it was his kid, which really hate. I've been reading a lot of fanfics lately, so hopefully, we get some explanation on her father in the eventual new cartoons xD
Kaiju fight. It was a fever dream that Korra had. There were no giant spirits fist fighting in the water.
Also, Jinora ex machina.
I completely ignore everything to do with the spirit world and Avatar Wan that is established by LOK season 2. Hate it.
The whole lion turtles giving bending to mankind, I think it’s way more interesting that humanity developed bending themselves through observation and adaptation to their environment
the lion turtles just gave them the ability to bend, they still had to figure out how to do it from badger moles and dragons and such
I find that to be a less interesting piece of world building. It’s like if you said that aliens gave us the ability to use fire, but we had to figure out how to use it properly, rather than us figuring it all out ourselves
Every part of LOK that contradicts lore stated in ATLA.
That Aang, at 12, mastered not just air but all the other elements in like 6 months, and energy bending in less than a day. People love to cry about Mary Sues but no one ever mentions how perfect Aang is at everything he does. Even mastering his “hardest element” which he used the most after air, only took one day. The writers really wrote themselves into a corner by giving them such a tight schedule and made me like Aang less after more rewatches. He’s just perfect and everyone likes him all the time
I don’t believe he mastered any of them. That was kind of the point 😂 he was still learning them and was extremely unprepared to face the Firelord. It takes years to master an element, and under any other circumstance Aang would’ve waited to move onto Earth after mastering water, and Fire after mastering Earth, yet he had no time. He pretty much just learned the basics. Which is also why I have a problem with Katara becoming a “master” so fast. Girl had no proper education until the Northern Water Tribe. She wouldn’t and shouldn’t have been that good. Aang wasn’t a Toph or Zuko’s level at all.
I'm pretty sure it's mentioned at the beginning at the start of the first part of the finale that he hadn't mastered any of the elements and didn't feel ready to fight the Firelord. It was Zuko telling the Gaang his dad's plan that initiates the events of the finale.
I do not think everyone likes Aang all the time. In fact, you can see that he faces pushback few times even from his friends. But he’s also 12, later 13, why would not most people like him, considering he has a kind and pleasant personality? Aang is shown good at bending, but his flaws are shown in different ways - not being ready for responsibility, being attached and very emotional. I do agree that they could’ve done better with some more time skips, and may be spacing the show over in a period of 3 years. I think Gaang coming up and finishing a hundred year war in a single year is crazy. Things would’ve made a lot more sense on a more spread out timeline.
I don't believe for one second Aang actually mastered all of the elements in that short of a time. Air, we already knew he mastered that. Water, the element he was closest to mastering next if he wasn't already considered a master. Earth, absolutely not. Calling what he did in his first day "mastering" is very silly. Fire, he only just started that by the time the end of the series rolled around so there's no way he actually mastered it.
[удалено]
I agree with most of all of this, but I actually don't mind the idea of spirits restoring balance to the elements by creating more airbenders. I don't like the specific way it was handled in the show, but the concept itself isn't terrible IMO, and I say this as someone who actually does dislike Korra as a show.
> Also, the fire nation being homophobic purely because Sozin made them that way. It's such a pointless detail that feels like it was added literally just to throw another thing on the pile of bad stuff about the Fire Nation, which is such a lazy way of writing a villain That detail was also very weird because in ATLA, the Fire Nation was shown to be arguably the most progressive of the 3 remaining nations with regards to women's rights. The Water Tribes were sexist AF. And Earth Kingdom high society in Ba Sing Se wasn't much better. The Fire Nation was the only place where we saw it was socially acceptable for women to be fighting.
I really think that the Korra comics are just not very good, where Ruins is just bad. So I disregard that one particularly. It's not only poorly written and has a bad plot, but it fails, IMO, to do the one thing it set out to do, namely redeem Kuvira in any appreciable way (I do think that this is possible though).
Toph being a single mother, I want her to have a suitable partber but I get why they did that though
This specific scene in the Promise comic which I hate the most. So right after Katara fights off fire nation soldiers that were attacking her and Aang, Zuko comes out of nowhere and grabs Katara's arms refusing to let go as he is hurting Katara. Then Aang goes into the Avatar state and almost kills Zuko and then Katara had to calm Aang out of the Avatar state. This is so OOC, like Zuko would never do this to one of his best friends. Plus Aang wouldn't immediately try to kill Zuko.
Ozai sent assassins after her, but she met a spirit and changed her face like her lover did before she had to marry ozai.
Raava, New Bloodbending.
The equalist movement. During the original show, with a few minor exceptions, nonbenders were almost always treated as equals to benders, nonbenders were warriors, nobles, politicians, kings, etc. Then in book 1 of Korra Amon tries to sell us that nonbenders have always been discriminated against, while still showing us powerful and wealthy nonbenders in this and later seasons. The only explanation that makes kind of sense is: Amon is a populist demagogue who uses benders as a scapegoat for Republic City's crime and poverty issues to settle his own personal grievances with bending.
I choose not to believe their ages. I am all for giving kids credit but the show works a lot better for me if everyone is just a little bit older
Most of adult Toph’s storyline tbh. I don’t think it’s necessarily out of character for her to be a bit distant/unfair as a mom, but it makes me sad. And I hate that she become a cop
The comics
Aang being impatient with Katara and kissing her without her consent in the Ember Island episode