#TLOK Equalists

[kason-nvidiade-art]

Equalist Chat by KasonSama

Important medical update for some injured Equalists, they got hurt doing something REALLY dumb.

Also, LMAO remember when I used to draw Legend of Korra stuff all the time???? I don't! but I felt the need, and wanted to do something a little more clean line wise, might go back and properly shade it, but for now It'd DONE.

[pedanticat]

Ah, yet another thing that could have been built up better. The equalits suddenly taking control of Republic City. Book 1 REALLY needed more episodes.

[do9bessa]

post Asami Equalist posts here

[musenilla]

“Let this be the last time Avatar.” - Equalist!Asami AU aka what we could’ve had 😔🔥

Saw somewhere that Asami was supposed to be part of the Equalists in s1?? and that her and Korra would fight before they officially meet?? oHHH THE POTENTIALL NO ONE TALK TO MEE

Anyways, have some korrasami + some lovely extras I’ve done over the past week. Gonna go headfirst into continuing commissions now byee

[puddingcorals]

Rewatching Legend of Korra once more made me wish to see the equalist story continued

[copaganda-clobberfest]

WELCOME

TO THE FIRST ROUND OF THE COPAGANDA CLOBBERFEST!

“You know that trope? That one trope *Everyone* hates? The trope in which a well meaning antagonist to our heroes, one looking out for the good of a certain community, suddenly does something horrible and drastic to make not only them, but the ideology they stand for the most villainous of all?”

NOW IS THE TIME TO BATTLE THEM OUT! Like Ken dolls, fighting for survival! Like your Polly pockets discarded in the closet, we’ll see which of these bitches jumped that slippery slope harder! Whose character did numbers on y’all, and blew up a bunch of grandmas and babies and hospitals with it!

ROUND ONE

HAMA from AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER vs AMON from THE LEGEND OF KORRA

Hama propaganda:

“A waterbender from the southern water tribe who was captured by the fire nation when they invaded her home. After being put through inhuman conditions to prevent her from waterbending, she learned to bend her captors’ blood instead to escape. She then lived undercover in the fire nation, for decades, before meeting the gaang. Then out of nowhere it’s revealed she’s behind the disappearance of a bunch of fire nation villagers and she tries to forcibly teach katara bloodbending so she can carry on her actions. And for what?? That doesn’t even make any sense!! She could’ve been at least targeting soldiers or officials but nope all of a sudden she’s actually the villain torturing innocents because she can and i guess that’s what happens after she goes through all that ???? ??”

“if iroh can get let off the hook for being a former fascist war criminal, hama can get off the hook for imprisoning people. hama was taken from her homeland, interned, and forced to watch all of her fellow waterbenders die in prison. the gaang's solution to her doing the same thing to members of the nation that wiped her people out? RE-INTERN THIS TRAUMATIZED ELDERLY SURVIVOR SO SHE'LL DIE IN PRISON LIKE THE REST OF HER PEOPLE. hama should be allowed to go home and see her few surviving friends and family again.

bloodbending wasn't just a cool evil new ability, it was a metaphor for generational trauma. that's why hama was so insistent that katara learn it: it was the final legacy of all those people who the fire nation purposefully exterminated, because it was the only thing that saved hama from that same fate. it was the only form of southern bending katara could inherit, because it was all that was left of them.”

Amon propaganda:

“his whole thing was that nonbenders are discriminated against in the avatar-verse, which isn’t all that wrong. except instead of fighting for something like more nonbender representation in government or, y’know, a n y t h i n g reasonable, he decides the way to solve this is clearly to take away people’s bending until… what?

honestly, I never was clear on if he had an actual plan

take away the bending of everyone in republic city? the world? stop at korra? who knows!

anyways. he decides it makes pErFeCt SeNsE that to solve the problem of nonbending discrimination (I honestly don’t think it was as oppressive as he claimed) by taking away peoples bending ability

which is akin to someone stealing your entire identity and for many, livelihood

but the real kicker is

the way he does it

IS BY BENDING

AND NOT EVEN REGULAR BENDING BUT A SUPER SECRET RESTRICTED ILLEGAL FORM OF BENDING

which is EXACTLY the kind of thing he fearmongers about when he says venders have too much power

so his whole platform of “I am one of you (nonbenders), chosen by the spirits to correct this inequality” is complete and utter baloney”

Always feel free to rb with more propaganda :)

[lazyveran]

I'm eating your Asami post. You can't stop me

puts this in ur mouth. bon apple meal

[i-put-the-ass-into-sass]

quick lil amon sketch at work today

[baalvsp]

my roman empire is equalist asami

[allgremlinart]

more people watching Korra after natla renaissance: 🥰

this means having to see same exact worldbuilding misunderstandings/old discourse/old takes all over again:

[korrasamibottles]

I love flopwomen who make bad decisions when they're at a crossroads so I Get It when people say they wanted Asami to side with her dad and the Equalists.....but I also think that choice was such an integral part of establishing her as a character that I'm not sure I would've wanted it any other way. The fact that she chose some people she'd known for what? like a month? at that point? over her only surviving family member matters. She did the right thing even though it tore her up inside. Spine of steel.

[theflyingopera]

she deserved that villian arc

[jennawynn]

ok so I dipped into the equalist!Asami tag and saw things and listen... I know it's real fun to reimagine and everything, but honestly, can you imagine?? Back then??

People can't even handle good but bitchy female characters who don't actually do anything wrong NOW and you think fandom would have given Asami a redemption arc? If she was an ACTUAL Equalist and doing literally anything that causes someone (in particular Korra) pain? You think korrasami would be canon? There's been tons and tons of meta about how and why Zuko's redemption arc was successful and NONE of that would apply to equalist!Asami.

So which would you have rather had? Canon equalist!Asami or Canon Korrasami? Cause you know 10 years ago it would have been one or the other... and korrasami was too damn important to let it be squandered because audiences suck.

[stupidsexpotflanders]

Amon + stealth waterbending

[justanotherthrowaway1950]

Why I Dislike Amon and Kuvira

Note: While I don’t think The Legend of Korra (TLOK) is as good as Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA), I still think it is a pretty good show, and that 99.9% of its problems can be traced to Nick not giving Bryke a full four seasons with a proper budget from the outset. However, I don’t think any piece of fiction is perfect, hence why I criticize TLOK like I do ATLA.

Amon and Kuvira are two characters who are important to TLOK’s narrative not only on an individual, character level, but also because they represent previously unaddressed social issues in ATLA’s world as well.

This is because in Amon’s case, the Equalist movement he heads deals with an important issue that the original ATLA glosses over at best: the issue of benders being innately superior to non-benders.

Or more specifically, the fact that, unless you are a highly trained and/or highly gifted non-bender like Piandao, Mai, Ty Lee, Suki, or Sokka, your bog standard bender who has the slightest amount of training has a nigh-insurmountable power advantage, and thus has every incentive to lord their unearned power over non-benders.

Meanwhile, Kuvira deals with an issue that up until her becoming the main villain of Season 4 was barely addressed in TLOK’s intro and glossed over in the ATLA comics: how would Earth Kingdomers feel about the United Republic being formed from the Fire Nation’s oldest Earth Kingdom colonies.

Or more specifically, how, after getting pressured by Fire National colonialists and those close to them, King Kuei and Avatar Aang worked with Fire Lord Zuko to give the oldest colonists the option of self-determination, which they exercised to form the United Republic.

This, even though the oldest colonies were dominated politically and economically by the Fire Nationalist colonists and their close allies, with the marginalized Earth Kingdomer masses having little to no say in regards to the above mentioned process.

(If you disagree with my characterization of how Earth Kingdomers would view the resolution of the Yu Dao crisis, please check out The Problem with Yu Dao and A Potential Solution where I go into much more detail about this topic.)

However, it is precisely because Amon and Kuvira represent previously unaddressed social issues in ATLA’s world that I dislike them.

For in Amon’s case, before his identity was revealed, I was interested to see how the Krew would defeat him, let alone defeat the Equalist Movement since it wasn’t a problem that could be punched.

However, after his identity was revealed, I quickly soured on his character since, with him being a psychic, 24/7 bloodbender, it became apparent that the only way to beat him would be having an Avatar State Korra fight him or through a deus ex machina, with the latter being the way how he was defeated.

And I started disliking him once it became clear that the Equalist movement died off just because he was exposed as a fraud and Republic City’s all-bender council got replaced by a democratically elected unitary executive, one who so far has been non-benders due to non-benders numerical dominance.

This is because the underlying issue of benders having an innate advantage over non-benders never really got resolved, and so I hate how Amon’s character was used to avoid a real discussion or give any real solutions to said problem.

Especially since in real life, even if a movement’s leader is exposed as a fraud, the movement, or at least some variation of it, will continue to persist since movements, or more specifically, underlying issues in society, create leaders, not the other way around.

Meanwhile, I dislike Kuvira because, despite growing up in a world where the horrors of the Hundred Year War and the failures of the Hundred Year War era Fire Nation were surely taught to children like her, she decided to repeat them with her concentration camps and illegal and immoral war of conquest.

(Yes, I know canonically Kuvira did not know about the concentration camps, but even if that is the case, I still hold her responsible for them.) 

(This is because commanders/generals in the real world are responsible for the actions of their subordinates when it comes to war crimes, and more generally, leaders are generally responsible for the actions of their subordinates when their subordinates are acting within the scope of their relationship. Thus, I hold her to that standard, even if the war crimes tribunal of the United Republic doesn’t.)

(Also, her attempt to retake the United Republic was an illegal and immoral war of conquest since the United Republic had been a sovereign state for over 70 years, with its sovereignty recognized by all the other nations in the world, including the Earth Empire’s predecessor, the Earth Kingdom. Moreover, even if it hasn’t been said explicitly yet in canon material, I am pretty sure in the 70-odd years between the end of ATLA and the start of TLOK the five nations signed treaties making wars of conquest illegal.)

This, even though her adopted grandma fought in the War and was friends with Fire Nationals who grew up in the Hundred Year War era Fire Nation, and more likely than not told her about her and her Fire National friends experiences.

And why does she do all that? Not because she actually believes that the way the United Republic was formed was immoral and an act of injustice against the Earth Kingdom, but because of unresolved abandonment issues.

And when she “redeems” herself, she does the bare minimum before finally admitting her fault and getting house arrest in Zafou, the closest thing to paradise on Earth.

I thought Kuvira could have been used to tell a story about the evils of revanchism, and how an inability to let go of past territorial injustices and focus on the present leads people to becoming the very monsters they claim to be fighting against.

That and what steps an authoritarian conqueror would have to take to credibly redeem themselves not only in the world’s eyes, but also in the eyes of their people, who they betrayed and misled with their lies about peace and prosperity through violence and subjugation.

Instead, we instead essentially get a sane, adult Azula who doesn’t have the excuse of indoctrination and got a really undeserved and unearned redemption that fanfics often give to a heavily woobified Azula.

This, all while never directly addressing the Earth Kingdom’s lingering resentment towards the United Republic, nor ever giving a concrete resolution to said resentment.

So to conclude, I dislike Amon and Kuvira’s characters because the resolution of their arcs were not only unsatisfying on a personal level, but also ruined the potential to meaningfully address key issues present in TLOK’s world, thus weakening TLOK as a whole.

[firelords-honour]

Some of us (including myself) have HCs that before the revolution got going Amon was a vigilante, or is a vigilante in AUs, and I just had a thought: what if the whole mask thing was originally inspired by the infamous legend of the Blue Spirit?