Tumblr crosspost (30 October 2019)
May. 20th, 2021 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI think I crossposted this one before, but just to be sure:
While I’m on the nostalgia train—
The super fun thing about Noatak and Tarrlok’s story is the note (I think back on one of the extra features in ATLA) that bloodbending opens the mind to homicidal madness.
IIRC people used to ask why there wasn’t … like, medicinal bloodbending. But that’s why Katara had it outlawed; it’s intrinsically corrosive.
Noatak and Tarrlok don’t instantly become murderous, to be sure (though they both get there in the end). But while forcing small children to hurt animals would be abusive as fuck regardless of the method, Yakone literally warped his sons’ minds when he trained them to use bloodbending. For years.
This is fine :)
(/screams into a pillow about seven-year-old cartoons)
...I've always been what I am, but I really cut my villain stanning teeth with them. But I do think it's pretty strongly suggested that Tarrlok, while he'd become a hiiiighly dubious figure already, really went off the deep end when he bloodbent Korra. I mean, Noatak's been swimming in the Marianas Trench for years, but Tarrlok genuinely hates bloodbending. And within a matter of hours, he's pretty much gloating to Equalists about his unstoppable power muahahahaha. And after his change of heart, he ends up at murder-suicide as the solution. Like ... it's not that the bloodbending aside doesn't fit what we see in LOK. It's just it fits too well :(
While I’m on the nostalgia train—
The super fun thing about Noatak and Tarrlok’s story is the note (I think back on one of the extra features in ATLA) that bloodbending opens the mind to homicidal madness.
IIRC people used to ask why there wasn’t … like, medicinal bloodbending. But that’s why Katara had it outlawed; it’s intrinsically corrosive.
Noatak and Tarrlok don’t instantly become murderous, to be sure (though they both get there in the end). But while forcing small children to hurt animals would be abusive as fuck regardless of the method, Yakone literally warped his sons’ minds when he trained them to use bloodbending. For years.
This is fine :)
(/screams into a pillow about seven-year-old cartoons)
...I've always been what I am, but I really cut my villain stanning teeth with them. But I do think it's pretty strongly suggested that Tarrlok, while he'd become a hiiiighly dubious figure already, really went off the deep end when he bloodbent Korra. I mean, Noatak's been swimming in the Marianas Trench for years, but Tarrlok genuinely hates bloodbending. And within a matter of hours, he's pretty much gloating to Equalists about his unstoppable power muahahahaha. And after his change of heart, he ends up at murder-suicide as the solution. Like ... it's not that the bloodbending aside doesn't fit what we see in LOK. It's just it fits too well :(