On cars and Korra...

[dark_puck]

So I've been seeing a lot of bitching about the cars in Legend of Korra, so I think it's time we had a little chat about history and knowing it.
FICTION

At the end of AtLA, the Fire Nation has steam-powered tanks and airships

At the start of LoK, United Republic has cars.

There is seventy years between them

REALITYIn 1903, the Wright Brothers

Comments

[danalwyn]

People are already complaining about things like that? Bah.

Here's another set of number if you need them. Richard Trevithick invented the first steam locomotive in 1804. Karl Benz finished the first modern automobile in 1885, patenting it in January of 1886. Only a bit more then 80 years lie between a clumsy locomotive that would have problems pulling its own weight and the first automobiles. You can argue demographics and economic motivations, but in a series not obsessed with self-continuity and obsessive detail, that's well within the plausible fudge factor.

(Knowing nothing about this, I object categorically to an assumption that a city-state would be more advanced then the rest of the world. By 1800 most city-states in Europe were probably less advanced then the surrounding nations, but that was possibly an accident of geography. Nevertheless, the Vatican hasn't been at the forefront of technological development in, well, forever.)

Take Three!

[dark_puck]

I object categorically to an assumption that a city-state would be more advanced then the rest of the world

I didn't mean that it's more advanced than the entire rest of the world, but rather more advanced that certain parts of it. I'm sure other big cities in the Korra-verse are just as advanced as the Republic. However, I'm just as sure that rural areas won't have the cars and electricity and stuff, just like in the real world.