#if you can understand the philosophy of the air nomads and their aims…

[loveoaths]

the fact that people can understand the position of the atla air nomads but not the jedi is wild to me and further evidence that people hate the jedi both because of a personal reaction to and misunderstanding of the word “attachment”, and 20+ years of EU novels shitting all over them for fun and profit

[lsleofthelost]

okay i can’t let go of the way lok demonizes leftist ideas, here’s what i would’ve done (without changing much of the plot):

Amon: said it before, but make him a serial killer type with a gang of nonbender chi-blockers. works in the night, finds benders and takes their power away. still has the posters that he anonymously scatters around Republic City but we don’t see thousands of people rushing to support him, instead most people are scared, there are rumours of his mask, of what hides behind it etc. therefore doesn’t set a precedent that the majority of nonbenders are unhappy with the bender population to the point of wanting to eradicate them. also this way s1 is a little more of a mystery thriller, setting it apart from ATLA and showing that this is aimed at an a bit of an older audience. Korra learns that not everything can be solved the ‘hit first, ask questions later’ way. Mako takes more control with the investigation, which will lead nicely into his future job as a policeman (:/). Bolin’s story stays pretty much the same, except he’s kidnapped not to a public rally but to some warehouse (that they find through investigative work and old gang connections). Asami’s storyline also remains the same, her father sponsors Amon and his gang.

Unalaq: idk how this man jumped from ‘i want to restore our indigenous practices that were stolen from us by capitalism and globalisation’ to ‘i will become the chaos avatar’ tbh. but here’s what i think would make a good narrative: have Eska and Desna play a bigger part than comic relief. they can still keep their apathetic attitude and we can even keep the Bolin romance, just make them the true solution in the end. so in the start, Korra introduces them as ‘ugh my weird bookish cousins’ and they follow the traditional fast that was mentioned, Bolin tries to ask Eska out but is roped into a lecture about cultural significance of a certain ceremony etc. the middle portion is largely the same. Desna and Eska help their father, feeeling uneasy about it and end up helping team Avatar towards the end. and additional scene is set up of Korra and her cousins where she says something like ‘the reason i first followed Unalaq was that there was truth to the fact that we have become separated from our culture, and i remember that you were always aware of all our traditions etc etc’ and while Southern tribe still becomes independent, they set up a restoration system in collaboration or something like that.

(also Eska mentions something about that dumb mover when she breaks up with Bolin. bc i personally asked her)

Zaheer: ah yes, anarachists’ favourite activity: genocide :| nah fr idk how to even make them not a villainization of leftism without making them not leftists, this one’s hard.

a) do just that. make them not leftists, but autocrats who think they should be the ones leading the world. they leave the Earth Kingdom after the assassination saying something like ‘let the people enjoy themselves for a while, we’ll deal with the Avatar and come back’. (in this case Kuvira is their devout believer?)

b) having them stay anarchists is a little more complicated. this one requires a complete rewrite but Zaheer stays in the temple and tries to radicalise the new airbenders. and he could totally pull it off, he’s got the charisma, he has skills that make him admirable etc. we see him corrupt the true air nomad principles with his false understanding of it, saying that it’s more important to enact revenge and that violence is the only possible answer. this leads to division in the already small airbender population, part of them joining the Red Lotus. but they start questioning when they see their brothers and sisters threatened, even though Zaheer assures that ‘it’s an empty threat, no harm will come to them, we simply need to get the Avatar’. good potential to foil the violent extremist yet ultimately empty anarchism of the Red Lotus with the community based, practical and embracing philosophy of the Air Nomads.

Kuvira: well, i mean authoritarian regimes are already perceived as bad. so. i actually do think she’s the better written villain of the series. she feels this misplaced sense of responsibility for the nation and she thinks she can only achieve it with a steel fist. it’s the anti-leftist sentiment of the previous seasons that kind of skews our perception her, because she talks big game for equality but we see proof that it’s not true, repeatedly, so i do think that if we change earlier seasons she’ll work better. though it’ll not a fan of how it villainizes taking back land, and it’s not like Republic City is something of millennia ago, no, that’s just 50 or so years, so i’d make that territory more of a vanity project (as authoritarian leaders tend to do)/tactical decision (a council is gathering there to think of ways to stop her empire, let’s hit two birds with one stone: eliminate opposition and get the biggest city in the world).