random korra thoughts
so, we're at the halfway point of book 1 now, and...i have thoughts. mostly good ones, because i love this series. (this is not about anything i've been working out in my head, since i know parts of it are likely to be jossed and i'm waiting 'til the end of book one before i share any of it since part two of the trilogy i'm plotting out rests heavily on yakone, but stuff regarding actual canon.)
please consider this a spoiler warning for everything through the end of saturday's episode (and the winner is...)
first, to absolutely contradict what i just said about only discussing explicit canon, i'm going to get out of the way a couple of widespread theories i really, really dislike.
a: amon faking his energybending/debending/depowering/whatever you want to call it.
i just...i really, really have issues with this theory. i can't even really explain why it bothers me so much, other than i feel like it undermines the ethical issues at play here. which i've been really really excited about since the theory that amon was debending people surfaced, and since it was confirmed in episode 3 all i hear is 'oh, it's not real depowering, he's doing something else.' which bugs the hell out of me. because, to me, it sends the signal that 'good' vs 'bad' depowering rests more on method than context. i had really strong feelings about ozai's fate, too, and i was so happy it was going to be addressed, and now i just...i don't know. i'm going to be really let down if it turns out what amon's doing is not the kind of serious, permanent depowering aang did. whether or not korra works out how to restore bending, because you can work with that with the original method, in theory at least. blah. i'll see what happens with next week's episode.
b: pretty much all the fandom bullshit about asami.
i'm not going to go into detail here, just say that a lot of the people who insist she's evil are full of shit and not even bothering to make their dumb theories interesting/exciting. look, i love me a good double-agent--one of the character types i'm most drawn to pretty much anywhere--but what little setup we've gotten for asami goes nowhere near anything that could make me take such theories seriously, or even enjoy them. i don't have many strong opinions on asami--largely because we haven't seen much of her or her personality--but from what i have seen of her, i like her. she's nice, she seems like she'd be fun to be around, and she's very sweet to just about everyone. she doesn't read as evil, or a double-agent, or a triple-agent, or anything like that. she's just...a bubbly, sweet rich girl who's happy with her new relationship and excited that she's dating a famous athlete of whom she's been a fan for a long time.
this is not to say that i'd be upset if she does turn out to be a double-agent (again, i love characters like that), just that it doesn't seem to be in her setup thus far, and the reasons the people insisting she's evil are claiming for it are just...incredibly infuriating.
(also, plz to give more background for her, kthx)
moving on to the characters who have made the biggest impressions on me, and why
korra: just...badass and awesome and yes. i like how very different she is from aang, or roku, or even kyoshi (i haven't read much of the tie-in material and it's been a while since i saw the episode where aang talks to them, so i can't speak as much to her parallels or lack thereof with kuruk and yangchen, though from what i've seen/read she's got some similarities to kuruk), and the way that underlines the reincarnated-spirit-doesn't-mean-xeroxed-person aspect of the avatar cycle. i love how she defaults to fire a lot of the time, despite being a water avatar. i love that she grew up really sheltered and the writers allow her to make the kind of mistakes that would cause--which, to be honest, much as i love toph, i feel like that didn't get across as well as it could have. (*note to self: next ramble shall be about korra as compared to toph based on their upbringings and about how that might inform korra's relationship with lin)
tenzin: oh, god, i love this man. it's like...he's like...he's the perfect fictional dad/guardian, in a lot of ways. in that he's not perfect, and nor are his kids, and he has occasional arguments with his wife, and...and yet there's still so much obvious love and...oh man i love him to bits.
mako and bolin: these two. oh, man these two. bolin i just want to party with, and mako is...well, he pushes all of my physical attractiveness buttons, for sure. tall, lean, dark hair. mm. and, again like with tenzin, what makes them best for me is that they're not perfect. take episode five--which i was really kind of 'eh' about, mostly because i'm not that into the relationship drama, and i wanted moar tarrlok (more about him below)--but...the thing i really liked best about it was the interplay between these two and the way their imperfections played out and...yes.
tarrlok: ...i really love this guy. i mean...love him. because he's so slimy and so...he's such a jackass and yet every time he's on screen i'm like YES. YES. MORE PLEASE. ALL OF THE TARRLOK. KEEP DROPPING US HINTS ABOUT FABULOUS BACKSTORY AND DOING YOUR NOT-WELL-THOUGHT-OUT NOT-HELPING-AT-ALL POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING MANEUVERS AND YES. JUST YES.
sidetracking here to say i really love the way this series handles politics. this one and atla, though atla was more subtle about informing everything with political consequences. it's part of why the ba sing se arc and the royally screwed up fire family draw me in so much. i love that kind of narrative, and i love that it's back in this series and being used just as well, if a hell of a lot more blatantly.
lin: i fucking love lin. from the moment she first appeared in the second episode, and in her later appearances. especially the arena fight, with her swinging around and spider-lining and...maaaaan. <3 <3 <3
general thoughts about the equalists:
i really like the way they're given actual reasons for believing what they believe. i like that amon is utterly terrifying. i like that i have mixed feelings on whether or not i believe his origin story--mostly because of the setting i feel like i have to take everything he said at the rally with a grain of salt, but there's the parallel to mako's story, and...yeah. i think it's definitely someone's story, and either that person died and he co-opted it with a few details changed, or it's his, but still with some details changed. i absolutely do not believe he's telling The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth, either way.
i don't think they actually have a workable long-term plan, to be honest. yes, amon plans to depower every bender and equalize the entire world, but...well, katara (and possibly toph, since her parents brought in an outside earthbending master for her, rather than one of them teaching her, which i think they would have done if they could, given their desire to keep her a secret) is proof that you don't have to be a bender to have a bending child. and amon doesn't seem to be willing/able to teach anyone else his technique. and i'm sure he has one, but i would actually like to see his plan for how to keep up the basic infrastructure--off the top of my head, i can think of construction and the power plant, and probably the sewage system/other waterworks, though they haven't been shown explicitly--that rely on benders to function. if amon wins and he doesn't have an immediate plan in place to make those basic utilities function (construction and maintenance might not be as immediate a need), things could get ugly for his movement pretty fast, and his new government likely won't have much staying power.
it's interesting--apart from his very brief THIS IS YOUR VILLAIN cameo in 'welcome to republic city,' we've never seen amon when he's not Performing his role as the Savior Of The Oppressed Masses. which is why i didn't put him up with the character stuff, because pretty much everything i could say about him is speculation to a large degree, and i'm trying to keep my theories out of this as much as possible, as i said before (which is also why i'm not really talking about shipping of any generation, either, except those that are at the moment current explicitly canonical relationships)
in general, i really like the way this show takes itself and its audience so seriously. i love the complexity, i love the darkness, i love the people and ideals and goals involved.
please consider this a spoiler warning for everything through the end of saturday's episode (and the winner is...)
first, to absolutely contradict what i just said about only discussing explicit canon, i'm going to get out of the way a couple of widespread theories i really, really dislike.
a: amon faking his energybending/debending/depowering/whatever you want to call it.
i just...i really, really have issues with this theory. i can't even really explain why it bothers me so much, other than i feel like it undermines the ethical issues at play here. which i've been really really excited about since the theory that amon was debending people surfaced, and since it was confirmed in episode 3 all i hear is 'oh, it's not real depowering, he's doing something else.' which bugs the hell out of me. because, to me, it sends the signal that 'good' vs 'bad' depowering rests more on method than context. i had really strong feelings about ozai's fate, too, and i was so happy it was going to be addressed, and now i just...i don't know. i'm going to be really let down if it turns out what amon's doing is not the kind of serious, permanent depowering aang did. whether or not korra works out how to restore bending, because you can work with that with the original method, in theory at least. blah. i'll see what happens with next week's episode.
b: pretty much all the fandom bullshit about asami.
i'm not going to go into detail here, just say that a lot of the people who insist she's evil are full of shit and not even bothering to make their dumb theories interesting/exciting. look, i love me a good double-agent--one of the character types i'm most drawn to pretty much anywhere--but what little setup we've gotten for asami goes nowhere near anything that could make me take such theories seriously, or even enjoy them. i don't have many strong opinions on asami--largely because we haven't seen much of her or her personality--but from what i have seen of her, i like her. she's nice, she seems like she'd be fun to be around, and she's very sweet to just about everyone. she doesn't read as evil, or a double-agent, or a triple-agent, or anything like that. she's just...a bubbly, sweet rich girl who's happy with her new relationship and excited that she's dating a famous athlete of whom she's been a fan for a long time.
this is not to say that i'd be upset if she does turn out to be a double-agent (again, i love characters like that), just that it doesn't seem to be in her setup thus far, and the reasons the people insisting she's evil are claiming for it are just...incredibly infuriating.
(also, plz to give more background for her, kthx)
moving on to the characters who have made the biggest impressions on me, and why
korra: just...badass and awesome and yes. i like how very different she is from aang, or roku, or even kyoshi (i haven't read much of the tie-in material and it's been a while since i saw the episode where aang talks to them, so i can't speak as much to her parallels or lack thereof with kuruk and yangchen, though from what i've seen/read she's got some similarities to kuruk), and the way that underlines the reincarnated-spirit-doesn't-mean-xeroxed-person aspect of the avatar cycle. i love how she defaults to fire a lot of the time, despite being a water avatar. i love that she grew up really sheltered and the writers allow her to make the kind of mistakes that would cause--which, to be honest, much as i love toph, i feel like that didn't get across as well as it could have. (*note to self: next ramble shall be about korra as compared to toph based on their upbringings and about how that might inform korra's relationship with lin)
tenzin: oh, god, i love this man. it's like...he's like...he's the perfect fictional dad/guardian, in a lot of ways. in that he's not perfect, and nor are his kids, and he has occasional arguments with his wife, and...and yet there's still so much obvious love and...oh man i love him to bits.
mako and bolin: these two. oh, man these two. bolin i just want to party with, and mako is...well, he pushes all of my physical attractiveness buttons, for sure. tall, lean, dark hair. mm. and, again like with tenzin, what makes them best for me is that they're not perfect. take episode five--which i was really kind of 'eh' about, mostly because i'm not that into the relationship drama, and i wanted moar tarrlok (more about him below)--but...the thing i really liked best about it was the interplay between these two and the way their imperfections played out and...yes.
tarrlok: ...i really love this guy. i mean...love him. because he's so slimy and so...he's such a jackass and yet every time he's on screen i'm like YES. YES. MORE PLEASE. ALL OF THE TARRLOK. KEEP DROPPING US HINTS ABOUT FABULOUS BACKSTORY AND DOING YOUR NOT-WELL-THOUGHT-OUT NOT-HELPING-AT-ALL POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING MANEUVERS AND YES. JUST YES.
sidetracking here to say i really love the way this series handles politics. this one and atla, though atla was more subtle about informing everything with political consequences. it's part of why the ba sing se arc and the royally screwed up fire family draw me in so much. i love that kind of narrative, and i love that it's back in this series and being used just as well, if a hell of a lot more blatantly.
lin: i fucking love lin. from the moment she first appeared in the second episode, and in her later appearances. especially the arena fight, with her swinging around and spider-lining and...maaaaan. <3 <3 <3
general thoughts about the equalists:
i really like the way they're given actual reasons for believing what they believe. i like that amon is utterly terrifying. i like that i have mixed feelings on whether or not i believe his origin story--mostly because of the setting i feel like i have to take everything he said at the rally with a grain of salt, but there's the parallel to mako's story, and...yeah. i think it's definitely someone's story, and either that person died and he co-opted it with a few details changed, or it's his, but still with some details changed. i absolutely do not believe he's telling The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth, either way.
i don't think they actually have a workable long-term plan, to be honest. yes, amon plans to depower every bender and equalize the entire world, but...well, katara (and possibly toph, since her parents brought in an outside earthbending master for her, rather than one of them teaching her, which i think they would have done if they could, given their desire to keep her a secret) is proof that you don't have to be a bender to have a bending child. and amon doesn't seem to be willing/able to teach anyone else his technique. and i'm sure he has one, but i would actually like to see his plan for how to keep up the basic infrastructure--off the top of my head, i can think of construction and the power plant, and probably the sewage system/other waterworks, though they haven't been shown explicitly--that rely on benders to function. if amon wins and he doesn't have an immediate plan in place to make those basic utilities function (construction and maintenance might not be as immediate a need), things could get ugly for his movement pretty fast, and his new government likely won't have much staying power.
it's interesting--apart from his very brief THIS IS YOUR VILLAIN cameo in 'welcome to republic city,' we've never seen amon when he's not Performing his role as the Savior Of The Oppressed Masses. which is why i didn't put him up with the character stuff, because pretty much everything i could say about him is speculation to a large degree, and i'm trying to keep my theories out of this as much as possible, as i said before (which is also why i'm not really talking about shipping of any generation, either, except those that are at the moment current explicitly canonical relationships)
in general, i really like the way this show takes itself and its audience so seriously. i love the complexity, i love the darkness, i love the people and ideals and goals involved.