#nyahitha is cool

[a-crack-in-the-universe]

I finished reading Shadow of Kyoshi a few days ago and now I have thoughts about Kuruk and his Team Avatar. 

Spoilers from both The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi under the cut.

First of all - his friends.

In all honesty, his friends sucked, except for the fire sage. They were horrible people except for Kelsang. I think they were kind of shit people to begin with, just that the chaotic time after Kuruk’s death made them worse than they already were.

I mean, Jianzhu was allegedly a good person before Kuruk died and he became so influential in the Earth Kingdom. But, he massacred a shit-ton of people at some point after Kuruk’s death, even if they weren’t innocent, and shows no remorse for it at all. He becomes known as the Gravedigger and is hated and feared by the daofei. He later abuses Yun, turning him into a trained killer, and does unspeakable things in order to possess and control the Avatar. The fact that Yun or Kyoshi was his old friend’s reincarnation didn’t seem to matter to him.

Hei-Ran had the highest number of “accidental” kills in the Fire Academy. And she also played a role in the abuse Yun went through, who again, they all thought was Kuruk’s reincarnation.

Kelsang is the least worst, mostly because he showed remorse for the dirty shit he did to keep peace in the Earth Kingdom, and didn’t take part in abusing Yun (he probably didn’t even know about it). He even tried to protect Kyoshi from Jianzhu and paid for it with his life. He was mostly just a terrible friend. I mean, what kind of close friend reacts to their friend’s love confession poem by making him destroy it? It’s unbelievably cruel. And even if he didn’t mean to cause a massacre through his air-bending, he still is culpable for those deaths and Tagaka was right to hate him for what he did.

Now - their friendship with Kuruk. I don’t think any of them were that close friends with him. Maybe they were true companions to the Avatar, but not true close friends to Kuruk. Hell, the fire sage looked like he was a better friend than the three of them. They stuck with him during the good times, but when he started secretly spiralling (ie. getting drunk, partying, womanizing) they apparently just assumed that he was being lazy and selfish and purposefully not doing his duty as the Avatar. 

At the very end, they view him as a disappointment of an Avatar and think negatively about him. Jianzhu thinks about his death as “the only time he was ever early for anything”. Hei-Ran complains about Kuruk’s fire sage friend ruining him. Kelsang also doesn’t share any positive memories of Kuruk, as far as I can tell--the only memory he shares is the time he yelled at Kuruk and made him destroy the love poem he wrote.  

Contrast this with how Rangi and Kyoshi’s friends thinks about Kyoshi. “You may be the Avatar, but there is only one Kyoshi”. Rangi is focused on Kyoshi becoming the best Avatar she can be, but she clearly cares about her as an individual as well. She and Kyoshi’s other friends care about her well-being, insisting that she look after herself properly. We see the same thing with Aang and his friends, and Korra and her friends. They all love and care about their Avatar as a person first and Avatar second. 

I do not see that in Kuruk’s Team Avatar. To me, it just looks like Kuruk’s friends were mainly focused on training him to be a good Avatar and didn’t know him that well as a person, at least not enough to care unconditionally about him. So when he seemingly started shirking his Avatar duties and doing what they coined “being Kuruk”, they were disappointed and treated him like a failing Avatar first instead of someone who needed help.  

I cannot imagine the Gaang or Korra’s friends treating Aang or Korra the way Kuruk’s friends treat Kuruk.

Finally, Kuruk.

Kuruk is a total sweetheart and his friends didn’t deserve him. Is he flawed? Yes. Did he make mistakes? Hell yes. But he’s also actually a very sweet guy who tried to do his best with the situation he found himself in. 

He loved his friends so much. In his flashback passages, you can clearly see just how much he loves them and it’s so heart-breaking how they end up believing the worst of him. And he chose to keep his spirit hunting secret from them, to protect them from what the dark spirits had done to him.        

They really didn’t deserve him. I do wonder if Kuruk might have been a bit blind to their worse flaws? Or maybe he just loved them anyway. 

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about this right now. I’ll probably write up more of my thoughts later, about Kuruk’s relationship with Kyoshi and Yangchen, why I think Kelsang behaved terribly during the love poem incident, and about Hei-Ran’s reaction when Kuruk is found sleeping with that maid during the severe illness he receives after killing one of the dark spirits.         

[incorrect-kyoshinovels]

Nyahitha, after Kuruk killed the underwater spirit: You look like a corpse that was just pulled out of a river.

Kuruk: Wrong. I look like a cool rock star who just OD-ed in his own pool. Big difference.

[aeondeug]

kuruk does a keg stand and shows off a cool hunting trophy and then arm wrestles fifteen platypus bears and your mom. then he goes home and cries and is like hei-ran my bones hurt and hei-ran is like i’m going to kill nyahitha.