Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part 2

[tripodeca113]

"I definitely wanted to broaden the Asian diversity. Up until now, the world of ATLA and Korra have been predominantly Chinese and Japanese in culture (and Inuit, for the Water Tribes). I was given the opportunity to design a few of the new main characters, one of whom is Bangladeshi, and another who is Korean. As well, there is definitely a stronger presence of South Asians -- Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Indians, etc. And since my drawings are stylistically more figurative than the show's style, I try to define more definitive Asian facial features."
Irene Koh

23 and a third out of 71 pages

Korra and a group of Airbenders enter the Republic City spirit portal to meet with the spirits. They find the area around the portal barren and desolate.



After being attack by spirit vines they leave the Spirit World. They find the United Forces lead by General Iroh, putting up a barricade around the portal.



At Police Headquaters Lin Beifong, tells Mako and Bolin, that they'll need hard evidence to convict Wonyong Keum. So the pair go to question Two Toed Ping.





Meanwhile Korra arrives at the construction site of the new housing development where Raiko is.











No desk sex for you Asami.



Yes, it's Skoochy the street urchin who appeared in The Revelation back in 2012.
They catch him after a short chase.






Jargala, here has a more South Asian influence than any of the shows characters did.

Meanwhile at an underground gambling den, Tokuga tells his minions that the Triple Threats Triad will seize control of the city.

As he says this Lin, Mako, Bolin and a group of other officers are entering the dockside warehouse. They find it abandoned, and then a bomb goes off.Mako manages to protect the others from the blast, using his Firebending.



Mako and Bolin find out from his employees that Keum has been missing for the past few days.

Korra goes to see Asami again.









Korra calls Mako and Bolin, telling them to meet her at Asami's office. They find it wrecked and Asami missing.

Korra rushes off to confront the Creeping Crystals.



They don't find her and leave. As they drive off they hear a police report about a Triple Threat attack on the police depot.

On Air Temple Island Tenzin realizes what the Airbenders can do.

Comments

[commodus]

I love Korra as a character, but I kind of hate how the Avatar has the right to go up to world leaders and dictate to them, as if they had any actual experience of politics or any legitimate power beyond the fluke of their birth.

I'll take sleazy politicians, or even someone like Kuvira, over someone who doesn't believe themselves accountable because they were just born better than everyone else.

[locuatico]

They... don't?
Like, politicians don't just literally do whatever the avatar asks them to do? the wisest tend to just say "if the avatar says it, it might be worth looking into it", but the franchise rarely depicts it as the avatar having any real authority in terms of politics.

second, it's not just a fluke of their birth? they are the literal reincarnation of countless avatars, of whom the current one can usually summon for advise. This is not a religious or philosphical belief, this is an actual proven fact of the setting.


On top of that, when they are revealed to be the Avatar, they tend to be given extensive training and get to experience all the different cultures in the world. traditionally, when The Avatar finishes their training, they tend to have a better understanding of the world than countless other people, which gives them an unique perspective.

Now, Korra is the exception to this rule, being the Avatar who was born in the middle of a cultural and technological revolution like no other. and that's one of the reasons why she often has so many problems doing her job. The tools that historically have helped the world are not useful in this new era.

but even with that into account... no, I would still take Korra, flaws and all, over a literal fascist.

[commodus]

It doesn't matter if they can call on an army of ghosts, it's still nature setting them above everyone else as if they weren't human, and not accountable in the same way as other humans. Can you see why that might irk some people?

And no, I don't think Kuvira was a fascist. If she was, I don't think they'd have given her a sad backstory and wanted us to sympathise with her so much. She rose to her position through hard work and merit, and took control despite foreign nations wanting to impose an incompetent King on her people.

[scorntx]

Yeah, she only locked up foreigners, or people who had foreign ancestry, in prison camps, took resources from people she held hostage to make into a superweapon with every intention of using it to take other people's territory (which had been previously lawfully ceded by the governing body she was meant to be restoring) by extreme force, and threatened anyone who went "um, hold on" with death.
None of that matches the usual antics of fascists at all.

And all because her mom and dad didn't wuv her enough.

[commodus]

Any reason you're getting aggressive with me?

[scorntx]

It's more heavy sarcasm than aggression.

[t209]

Well, I disagree on that.
While the show did try to have it morally ambiguous, the show attempting to make the king sympathetic seems to be "cheating".
Heck, even this comic and the new comic seems to like the audience to back with incompetents (Wu never seems to heard about "constitutional monarchy" or "provisional monarchy" instead of trying to implement democracy to a culture with no concepts) and sleazy "astroturf" (fake grass roots) candidates (Where we are supposed to side with a business-backed candidate because the president is "incompetant" despite having rationale behind his decision or the fact that the entire election was due to naming dispute over an apartment).
Compared to "Promise" where Aang deporting and separating immigrant...I mean "evil country citizens who took other people's land and probably enslave the natives" families is portrayed as bad despite being good guys.

[hotfoot]

Fascists can have sad backstories and can be sympathetic. There's a reason people become fascists, after all. They're still people, complex and ugly and dirty. They aren't just monsters that do evil for the sake of evil. They do evil things because they are convinced they are the right thing to do.

That the Earth Kingdom did have a string of incompetent rulers is bad. Overthrowing them is not, by itself, bad, nor is establishing a new government to replace it.

The way she did it, however, is absolutely the issue. She ran re-education camps. She engaged in a war of conquest. She prevented people's movements without proper papers. She straight up killed people the disagreed with her. She enslaved people to do hard labor for her. She created a weapon of mass destruction and used it. Let's not pretend that she would be unwilling to use it on a civilian population in order to expand her empire.

Again, let's not forget she created an Empire, with her at the head of it. No "will of the people", no eventual plans to make things a democracy or anything like that. An Empire, created by a "great person", who, I will point out, had no plans to relinquish power or establish a better method of determining who takes power after she leaves.

I'm really not certain how one could look at Kuvira and not see a Fascist. She took power by force, kept it, and then proceeded to attempt to conquer the rest of the world. That she took out another government that was also bad for its people kind of doesn't matter in the realm of the government she created.

[commodus]

Here's the thing, though, when you outright say a character is a fascist, that's it for them, that's the end of any kind of sympathy the audience can have for them, or humour the audience can find in their character. It's the natural result of the tragic course the 20th Century took.

So when you connect characters like Kuvira to that, or - for example - tell people that Star Wars' Empire is analogous to Nazi Germany, whilst selling children's toys of said space Nazis, it puts those characters in a completely different light, and any attempt to show them as sympathetic or comedic is unacceptable.

You want to argue she's an authoritarian? I'd completely agree. You want to compare her to, say, Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell? I'm right with you. But that's a lot different from comparing this character to the likes of Hitler or Mussolini. Because as soon as you do that, everyone who likes the character is suddenly a fascist apologist, which other members seem to be accusing me of being. Can you see what I'm getting at?

[hotfoot]

If you deny her fascistic actions, that's a problem. Stating she is not a fascist when, you know, she really is, that's an issue.

You can like a character, even sympathize with them, and still recognize that their actions are reprehensible.

Let me put this another way. I'm going to assume that the murder, slavery, and "re-education camps" are all things you don't agree with her doing? Similarly, her war of conquest, use of a weapon of mass destruction, threats to use it on a civilian population, similarly beyond the pale.

That you can see why she felt driven to do all those things is good. If you start saying she was justified in doing those things, that's wrong.

I can't speak for other people's statements, I'm not those people, but that's the dividing line for me. Understanding someone's motivations and accepting them as sympathetic as a result is perfectly reasonable. Taking the next step and saying they were justified is not. For some, even calling them sympathetic is wrong because it might encourage other people to accept everything they did as evil.

Fascists have been built up in our society as a tremendous bogeyman. We saw what happened in WW2 and many people assume that only monsters could have done that. The truth, the far more dangerous fact, is that they were people too. They were sympathetic, their lives had problems and joys and all the rest. If you watch the tapes of Hitler flirting with Eva Braun, you won't see the same maniac shouting in front of a crowd that we remember from history class. You'll see a person, not that entirely different from the rest of the people you know.

But the truth is he was a Fascist. So is Kuvira. Liking Kuvira doesn't make YOU a fascist, at least not as far as I'm concerned. Trying to paint her actions as anything BUT fascist, however, starts to cross the line, because it takes actions that are Fascistic and tries to paint them as anything else.

People have enjoyed Star Wars for literal decades, even dressing up as the bad guys without people calling them Fascist. The existence and relative celebrity of the 501st fan group is evidence enough of that. It wasn't until people tried to seriously try to turn the narrative of "rebels = terrorists lol" into serious discussions instead of playful ribbing that people started looking askance at some of the overly Imperial-styled fans.

So, I get where you're coming from, but I think you've chosen a path of action that leads to more conflict and misunderstanding than less. People need to see fascists for what they are, other people who do horrible things for reasons they believe are good. If we only make fictional fascists inhuman monsters, we will fail to see the people embracing fascistic ideals until it is too late and we have repeated the mistakes of the past.

[arilou_skiff]

Not really? Fascism is a political ideology, and Kuvira certainly fits the bill. (and given Korra's fairly textbook "enemies of democracy" set of villains, she really does fit right in)

[commodus]

Yes, but fascism has an enormous amount of baggage associated with it. And whilst every fascist is an authoritarian, not every authoritarian is a fascist. Certainly not in fictional stories.

I mean, look at Napoleon, he was a dictator, but would it be fair to call him a fascist? To apply the baggage of 20th Century politics to a man who wasn't privy to them? Likewise, is it fair to do the same for a fictional character inhabiting a fictional world?

The Red Skull? Fascit. Hydra Cap? Fascist. But the same couldn't be said of say Dr. Doom or Namor. Both authoritarians, both prone to bouts of expansionism, both brutal men. But you wouldn't connect either with that specific ideology and all it represents, would you?

And the reason a lot of people wouldn't is because it irreversibly changes a character, it connects them with the real world horrors we endured less than a hundred years ago at the hands of such people. Creating fictional despots is not the same as creating fictional fascists, there's a clear difference.

[arilou_skiff]

Kuvira isn't just a random authoritarian, though. She is very explicitly and deliberately fascist. (and that's the difference between her and eg. her predecessors)

And I reiterate: The paralells are almost certainly deliberate, considering the other enemies in Korra's seasons (A social revolutionary, a theocrat, a nihilist anarchist)

She isn't just a conqueror or an authoritarian ruler, but one who specifically draws from a narrative of national humiliation and regeneration. IE: A fascist. (there are other issues, like framing, the social context of the period, etc.)

Dr. Doom has been written in various different ways, be he is not normally written as a fascist because he is not usually presented as a Latverian nationalist in that sense (there are exceptions, which is why it's hard to really chalk down a comic-book character as anything)

[sadoeuphemist]

Okay, dude. In the film Jojo Rabbit, the character of Captain Klenzendorf is a Nazi. A Nazi, I think, is clearly a worse thing to be called than a fascist. Now, Captain K is a sympathetic character - it becomes evident that he is actually opposed to the Nazi cause, he is subtly undermining them when possible, he only joined up to save his own skin - but still, he is a Nazi. He is a registered member of the Nazi party. He is literally a Nazi.

Likewise, to see why people are calling Kuvira a fascist, let us look at this definition by political theorist Robert Griffin:

[F]ascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence

They are calling Kuvira a fascist because she practiced a revolutionary form of nationalism, uniting the disparate people of the Earth Kingdom into a highly-militarized, expansionist empire in a 'national rebirth'. And she did so by promoting a heroic image of herself as the Great Uniter of new Earth Empire. They are calling her a fascist because she is definitionally a fascist.

On the other hand, HydraCap, though he is a bad, bad man, is arguably not technically a fascist seeing as how he never lead any sort of meaningful nationwide political movement and had no coherent ideology, and mostly just wanted history to match up with that confused version in his head.

[scorntx]

... there's just so much about spirit / human interaction that's... I dunno, troubling, I guess?


And, getting what the artist's going for, but... the way they draw the characters, they just look... "off", and it's kinda weird.

That aside, the character interaction's great. Mako and Bolin, Korra and Asami, Varrick and Zhu-Li.

[long_silence]

I really liked a lot of the additions that this story made to the overall ATLA/LOK universe, because it was all built off of existing lore, just taken to new extremes.

Jargala as an Earthbending Triad boss, who not only specializes in Crystalbending but Jennamite? That's awesome

Focusing on the actual logistical nightmare and consequence of opening a new Spirit Portal in the middle of a crowded metropolitan city? From the land developers who claim they actually owned the land, to the spirits refusing to adhere to human laws, to all of the displaced civilians who lost their homes in the chaos.

And speaking of human-spirit interactions, using the possession after effects (that were really glossed over in the series itself) to create an eel-human hybrid as a new type of villain who isn't a bender is awesome.

[tripodeca113]

Yes all that stuff is interesting.