crosspost: Kuvira squee! [Nov 2014]

[anghraine]

jubaah (/crocordile) asked at Tumblr:

please tell me about kuvira. who is she and why is she amazing?

Haha, I don’t even know where to start!

She’s the villain of the current season of Avatar: the Legend of Korra, a highly skilled metalbender (aka an elite earthbender who can control metal through the impurities inside it). She briefly showed up at the end of last season on the team of the heroes, whom she legitimately supported (she’s the polar opposite of the previous villain), but times are a-changin’ ;)

When the (awful) queen was murdered by last season’s villains and the kingdom was falling into chaos, Kuvira’s surrogate mother Suyin (who founded and leads a city of metalbenders and encourages everyone to reach their full potential in whatever way they see fit) was asked to step in and take control. Su refused as she believe it would simply make her another tyrant and she didn’t want to impose her city’s ideology on the kingdom, but Kuvira thought she was being foolish and close-minded.

So Kuvira absconded with Su’s eldest son, to whom she is now engaged (though they act more like brother and sister or possibly business partners), a number of the wealthiest citizens, and anyone else restless within the walls of the city, and headed to the capital of Ba Sing Se to restore order, which she did effectively. She was then asked by the international leaders to do the same to the whole kingdom and hold it together, at which point she would be rewarded and the heir to the throne could take power. Kuvira agreed, but when the time came, refused to give up power to the (incompetent) prince.

So. She’s a creepy tyrant and of course she should be overthrown, but she manages to present herself as both reasonable and invincible, and frankly seems no worse than the previous and alternate leaders. Since she does bring aid to her conquered cities she remains wildly popular in large swaths of the country; she at least pretends to play fair (mostly by setting situations up skewed in her favour, but it’s a…high-stakes game, say) and prefers to fight enemies personally rather than with her armies (she is AMAZING personally; she uses bits of her own metal armour to clap metal bands over people’s eyes, throw sharpened darts at them, whatever, as well as messing with the ground) and she’s this chilly, pragmatic, iron-willed yet charismatic politician/captain. She’s just a great villain, and since she is the first time the principal villain in the series has been a woman, I was really hoping for a great character. Yessss.

And she does have legit points, she’s just faaaaar on the extreme end - that’s pretty much the unifying theme of the series. The first main villain fought to make everyone equal (…through terrorism and stripping benders of their powers for mostly personal reasons - but the criticisms he made of the government and the power structures of the city were more or less legit), the second was a chief who sought greater respect for the spirits (and fused with the ultimate spirit of darkness which was out to destroy everything! welp; but his influence led to bringing spirits back into the world), and the third was a sort of extreme anarchist who murdered the (tyrannical and oppressive) queen and was prepared to do the same to all the others. Kuvira is more personable than the others and unavoidably reminiscent of the heroine’s early days, but yeah, her whole… everything is put together really well.

~for kids~