Current Events > An Avatar series, but the Avatar ends up becoming a bad guy

(+) Yeah! (+)

like in Breaking Bad

WOWOW a guaranteed hit.

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mattymad posted...

Except said avatar would never unlock their potential if they were bad.

they become bad over time. did you not read the topic title?

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Star Wars prequels


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A "bad" avatar would be spirituality unaligned with the job of bringing balance and thus unable to unleash their full potential to use the elements

Kiyoshi counts I think?

JoeThe12th posted...

A "bad" avatar would be spirituality unaligned with the job of bringing balance and thus unable to unleash their full potential to use the elements

You're limiting yourself too much. The creators went from base shit in TLA to spirit wrestling in LoK.

If you're at the helm, you can do pretty much whatever you want!

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Unalaq was cringe

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Turbam posted...

Unalaq was cringe

it was major cringe. Just about made me stop watching.

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Legend of Korra is much better if you watch it with the framing that she's the villain

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averagejoel posted...

Legend of Korra is much better if you watch it with the framing that she's the villain

That doesn't make any sense though.

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averagejoel posted...

Legend of Korra is much better if you watch it with the framing that she's the villain

I mean....she revived the Airnomads from Genocide and stopped female Hitler

averagejoel posted...

Legend of Korra is much better if you watch it with the framing that she's the villain

@averagejoel do you view Amon as being a good guy?

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The Avatar, the human incarnation of the spirit of light and peace, wouldn't go bad.

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Phantom_Nook posted...

The Avatar, the human incarnation of the spirit of light and peace, wouldn't go bad.

The only way to achieve true peace is to end all life!

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That is a direction they can take it, I don't think the creators want anything to do with nickelodeon after screwing with LoK. Like yeah they wanted LoK to reach Avatar numbers, but that is almost an impossible thing to do considering they only ordered 1 season (so they wrote the show as if it only had 1) and then ordered 3 more after they saw it did decently.

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What does "bad" mean in this context?

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isn't there a dark avatar

Tyranthraxus posted...

What does "bad" mean in this context?

I guess written as the antagonist of the series.

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Prestoff posted...

I guess written as the antagonist of the series.

Okay but like what are they doing? Killing all the airbenders? Robbing banks? Running an oil company? Pouring cereal into milk?

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It could very much be the case where the avatar thinks they're doing the right thing, but instead is working for the badguys.

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averagejoel posted...

Legend of Korra is much better if you watch it with the framing that she's the villain

That's a bit reductive, but pretty close to the mark: she's clearly a Zuko-esque character who instead begins the series as a protagonist, and that no-doubt threw a lot of people who were not only expecting Avatar 2.0 but also Aang 2.0.

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Prestoff posted...

I guess written as the antagonist of the series.

Antagonist largely means they oppose the main character. Since the Avatar would largely still remain as the main character, they would still be the protagonist.

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3PiesAndAFork posted...

It could very much be the case where the avatar thinks they're doing the right thing, but instead is working for the badguys.

I was more so thinking like this, but not "working for the bad guys" (that's more like season 2 when she's on Unalaq's side). They're just presented with a large, overarching moral quandary, and their answer to it ends up being...not good!

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You know this is potentially possible, depending on what you define as a "villain". The avatar world is moving towards industrialism, & Korra wound up opening the gates to the spirit world. If the avatar had to weigh decisions between the progress of human industrial & corporatism against the traditionalism of spirituality & the environment, the side opposite of the one they pick would see them as a villain. It's a potentially interesting angle, but I doubt it'd happen after how Korra went overall.

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I mean you could probably have an Avatar that's against the popular opinion of the time. Korra sort of touched on it in Book 2 when she initially tried to stay neutral during the Water Tribe civil war, but it was more because she was extremely gullible that season than anything else.

Kyoshi also let Chin the Conqueror take over most of the Earth Kingdom, and only intervened when her own home was at stake. She also created the Dai Li, which has never been portrayed positively in either series.

Heck, the entire Earth Kingdom, which has the largest population in the world, was probably pissed at Aang for not returning the Fire Nation colonies to them after the war.

Drpooplol posted...

@averagejoel do you view Amon as being a good guy?

not according to the show, but the show has terrible and incoherent politics and constantly has to shoehorn stuff into the narrative to make the villains actually bad
like, Henry Ford funding the communists? seriously?

Zaheer's ideology was portrayed in an extremely stupid way

then in season 4 Korra starts a civil war and turns to her best friend (who just so happens to be Henry Ford's daughter) to help stop it. the villain in this season is an outright fascist, who is also portrayed much more positively by the show than Amon or Zaheer

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masterpug53 posted...

That's a bit reductive, but pretty close to the mark: she's clearly a Zuko-esque character who instead begins the series as a protagonist, and that no-doubt threw a lot of people who were not only expecting Avatar 2.0 but also Aang 2.0.

I wish she were Zuko-esque. she doesn't get nearly the same level of character development and the only major lesson she really learns is like "it's best to be somewhere in the middle"

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averagejoel posted...

not according to the show, but the show has terrible and incoherent politics and constantly has to shoehorn stuff into the narrative to make the villains actually bad
like, Henry Ford funding the communists? seriously?

Zaheer's ideology was portrayed in an extremely stupid way

then in season 4 Korra starts a civil war and turns to her best friend (who just so happens to be Henry Ford's daughter) to help stop it. the villain in this season is an outright fascist, who is also portrayed much more positively by the show than Amon or Zaheer

That's all pretty fair, tbh. I don't know a ton about season 4, since I mostly skimmed it.

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averagejoel posted...

not according to the show, but the show has terrible and incoherent politics and constantly has to shoehorn stuff into the narrative to make the villains actually bad
like, Henry Ford funding the communists? seriously?

Zaheer's ideology was portrayed in an extremely stupid way

then in season 4 Korra starts a civil war and turns to her best friend (who just so happens to be Henry Ford's daughter) to help stop it. the villain in this season is an outright fascist, who is also portrayed much more positively by the show than Amon or Zaheer

Really, S1 brought a lot of issue that were worth discussing. The biggest issue is the disparity between benders & non benders, which has one of its most powerful scenes when the non benders are pleading to Korra that as Avatar, she has a duty to protect them too. It's honestly an issue that needs to be discussed more, but the nature of how Korra was originally just a "oneshot", means they had to wrap up their loose ends relatively quickly.

Kuvira was also another divisive moment. Her overthrowing the monarchy to instate her regime might be questionable, but almost every instance of the Earth Kingdom royal family tends to embody the most negative aspects of incompetent nobles. It was kinda hard to argue they didn't deserve to be overthrown.

Avatar is a series with a lot of elements of nuance, but it's all overshadowed for the "obviously evil" big bad.

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darkbuster posted...

Really, S1 brought a lot of issue that were worth discussing. The biggest issue is the disparity between benders & non benders, which has one of its most powerful scenes when the non benders are pleading to Korra that as Avatar, she has a duty to protect them too. It's honestly an issue that needs to be discussed more, but the nature of how Korra was originally just a "oneshot", means they had to wrap up their loose ends relatively quickly.

yeah that's kinda what I was talking about. the need to "wrap up their loose ends relatively quickly" is part of what leads to the show's politics being so terrible in the first place

darkbuster posted...

Kuvira was also another divisive moment. Her overthrowing the monarchy to instate her regime might be questionable, but almost every instance of the Earth Kingdom royal family tends to embody the most negative aspects of incompetent nobles. It was kinda hard to argue they didn't deserve to be overthrown.

oh they absolutely deserved to be overthrown. but wasn't it Zaheer that did it? didn't they kill the queen and create the power vacuum that she took advantage of? or am I thinking of something else?

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darkbuster posted...

Avatar is a series with a lot of elements of nuance, but it's all overshadowed for the "obviously evil" big bad.

oh yeah, I forgot to address this -- this was dealt with much better in TLA. making the Avatar connected to the spirit that represents everything Good in the world was... a pretty big mistake on the part of the show

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averagejoel posted...

oh they absolutely deserved to be overthrown. but wasn't it Zaheer that did it? didn't they kill the queen and create the power vacuum that she took advantage of? or am I thinking of something else?

that's correct. Zaheer killing the Earth Queen threw the Earth Kingdom into chaos. Kuvira was the one who took the mantle of reuniting all the provinces. she didn't become a problem in the show until she declared that the monarchy was dead and she would rule a new empire, and tried to assimilate the independent areas like Republic City.

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Phantom_Nook posted...

that's correct. Zaheer killing the Earth Queen threw the Earth Kingdom into chaos. Kuvira was the one who took the mantle of reuniting all the provinces. she didn't become a problem in the show until she declared that the monarchy was dead and she would rule a new empire, and tried to assimilate the independent areas like Republic City.

She was also pillaging towns via a proxy to force provinces of the earth kingdom to submit to her.

CruelBuffalo posted...

She was also pillaging towns via a proxy to force provinces of the earth kingdom to submit to her.

She was basically female hitler, that's what made her so goddamn boring in comparison to Zaheer.

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I'm pretty sure there was a pretty dark leaning fire avatar a few cycles before aang, not Roku, but the fire avatar before him

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dib153 posted...

I'm pretty sure there was a pretty dark leaning fire avatar a few cycles before aang, not Roku, but the fire avatar before him

He wasn't dark leaning. He just only cared about the Fire Nation and ignored his Avatar duties to the other nations.
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CruelBuffalo posted...

She was also pillaging towns via a proxy to force provinces of the earth kingdom to submit to her.

I don't think this is true. Mostly because I was waiting for this reveal, but they never did it. I think bandits and gangs terrorizing towns were an actual, tangible threat that Kuvira just took advantage of.

Prestoff posted...

She was basically female hitler, that's what made her so goddamn boring in comparison to Zaheer.

She wasn't tho. They should have done more with it IMO, but the first few episodes of that season don't actually show the downsides of what she's doing. She's kind of a dick and people say she's bad news, but all you actually see is her going into a town, keeping it safe from local criminals, and passing out food and supplies. The show doesn't do it as much as it probably intended to, but it shows how dictators like Kuvira come into power.

To the topic at hand, I've previously thought about this being a fun idea for an earth Avatar series. Thanks to S2 of Korra, she is the only Avatar they'd be able to speak with. Without all of that guidance, I can imagine it'd be pretty easy to get pulled into the wrong crowd. It's worth noting that this was the original goal of the Red Lotus: kidnap Korra and turn her into one of their disciples.

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Trumpo posted...

Kiyoshi counts I think?

How was Kiyoshi bad?

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