I'll talk about Kushiel's legacy at some point but another thing that's been running through my head is stuff related to Legend of Korra since A:TLA is on Netflix right now. Specifically one of the disappointments I had with Korra. Spoilers ahead.

So, let me start by saying I stan Korra hard, warts and imperfections to her series and all. I feel like Nick did her dirty and I think a series like that with a brown woman protagonist AND hero (Katara, by written definition the protag of A:TLA and Aang was the hero IMO)...

is a big damn deal. But when Korra was first announced I was nervous and the way the show handled some things showed me I was right to be so. When I learned that Korra's conflict was going to take place in a 1920s style Republic city, a former now independent colony well...

alarm bells started going off. This was going to be an interesting balancing act. I did get a little excited when I found out there was going to be a conflict between benders and non-benders. Because this struck me as interesting. Bender society has always stuck out to me...

the way any magic system does. Because it begs the question: how do people without magic deal with that. How do you deal with the fact that if you get in an argument with a neighbor that neighbor could just stop and drop you in a hole? What does that do to the social fabric?

The power imbalance between benders and nonbenders is HUGE when you think about it. Even more so for the Avatar and other benders. They're a functional god in human form. And Korra S1 looked like it might deal with this. The equalists seem to be a really gray antagonist force...

at least at first. They've answered the question of how the powerless deal with the powerful. We see a ruling council entirely divorced from the reality of the non-benders in the city (all benders who can't possibly really understand what it's like to live without that power)...

And you have an Avatar who LOVES her power and loves throwing it around. As well as a leader who seems to be entirely on point with the series' messages about spirituality and balance in Amon. The mini-series seems primed for an exploration of the ideas of power, privilege...

responsibility for dismantling oppressive systems, and the complicated intricacies of interlocking and overlapping privileges.

And I remember all of that making me nervous as hell because IF you were going to do that doing it with a brown woman lead in the most privileged...

position of all felt like setting yourself up for a really difficult writing challenge. I've wracked my brain since season 1 ended trying to figure out how you pull something like that off. It looks like the writers did too because there's lots of little hints that they knew...

the situation was there but realized they might not be able to pull off the difficult nuances here. For example, Mako and Asami's date early in S1. You've got the overlapping issues of class and power here. Asami is rich AF. Mako is poor as dirt but in a city where bending is...

as important as it is that mixed pairing gets real weird. I'm just gonna say it, I have a real hard time not thinking of the early Jim Crow situation when I think of the 20s and while I think slipping that in would have been difficult, this team has tackled difficult...

topics before and we know the Fire Nation wasn't opposed to doing that shit. You end up with a real complicated situation here. What if you have an eatery that mainly caters to benders but Mako could never have afforded? Hell, something as simple as a grill your own meat place...

that requires you to be able to provide your own fire on demand, something that could easily have been a systemic thing the fire benders wouldn't have even considered a problem, becomes one of those small barriers to entry that could have happened in a colony and represents...

one of those little everyday inconveniences that build up in oppressive systems in colonialist states. So you could have a moment of Mako having to deal with a situation where he and Asami have to untangle the dual difficulties that come with being a mixed couple and the power...

dynamics that come from that. Asami knows kind of second hand how not having money impacts you but maybe this is the first time Mako's had to really look at what life is like for folks who may not have bending. Nevermind the potential attitudes of other people around them.

But that's complicated, messy and would take, I think, far better writers than me to manage.

Then you have Korra who's big problem is that she likes being active and fighting in a world where that's not the challenge anymore. Aang's story was about a diplomat forced to...

be a warrior by the circumstances of the world into which he was born. Korra's is the struggle of a warrior born into a world that now needs a diplomat. If Amon WERE in fact what he claimed to be in the story: someone granted power by the spirits to equalize the power of...

benders and non-benders, Korra then has to deal with a problem she can't necessarily bend her way out of. She has to deal with a situation where the correct answer is to talk her way out of a problem and empathize with people. Something water IS good at and we see she also is...

under the right circumstances. Also gives much more room for Katara to play a strong mentor role in the story since we see in the comics this is a thing she also has to come to grips with (that she may not have always realized the gulf between benders and non-benders power)...

But then you have the elephant in the room of two white guys in Bryke writing a story where, in this idea, a physically strong brown woman is the person representative of ultimate privilege and power who has to learn to dismantle the oppressive systems of her world and I just...

really shudder at the thought of that implication. I have no idea how you get the kind of story that tackles some of the themes I kind of wanted Korra to tackle and avoid those things. I'm an artist, not a professional writer. But I think about A:TLA and LoK ALOT and this has...

been on my brain for a minute or two now. Thank you for listening to my ramble. More art coming in the near future.

TL;DR I love Korra but there was missed opportunity to examine interlocking hierarchies of power and the hard work of dismantling unjust ones that I think could have been tackled. For the tweets that inspired this check out LL McKinney who I also stan. https://twitter.com/ElleOnWords/status/1261896504983330816?s=20