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]

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.