Anghraine

My best friend and I were talking about the ways that Legend of Korra does and doesn't work for us, and particularly about the way it feels very erratic on a craft level where ATLA is pretty consistently good to great, yet ultimately LOK engages us both more. Inevitably, we wound around to a point of firm agreement: excepting Unalaq and Vaatu in B2, we consider the main villains of LOK a lot more personally and thematically interesting than Ozai and this has a weird effect on LOK's politics.

I drafted a far longer post about this [ETA: lmao], but anyway: there are many obviously progressive elements to ATLA. Ozai as a villain is fundamentally aligned with things antithetical to progressive ideals. He is a hereditary autocrat carrying on a multi-generational campaign of imperialism that historically (in the show) has been justified by familiar bigoted, reactionary rationales about civilizing and bringing prosperity to other cultures. He's overwhelmingly authoritarian in every aspect of life—as a ruler, as a conqueror, as a father, as a husband. He's less a person than an embodiment of domination, imperialism, autocracy. And the ultimate solution that ATLA provides for the problem of Ozai is 1) a greater power defeating him in combat and 2) replacing him with a good autocrat.

That's not a charitable characterization of a beautifully executed and emotionally satisfying conclusion. And I think the underlying rationale for that resolution owes more to ATLA's mythic and fantastic structure than to any serious commitment to the "what we really need is a good dictator" form of political discourse that has unfortunately become increasingly common. But solving the problem of imperialism with a Chosen One and a kinder and softer absolute ruler over the imperialists is not ... exactly a radical solution, let's say. It's not that different from, say, Lord of the Rings.

It works for ATLA's story! I just don't feel that this resolution is particularly daring or transgressive in the way that it is sometimes represented as being. Other aspects of ATLA are much more daring and revolutionary than this, but the core politics just don't feel that way to me.

LOK, by contrast, has a lot of centrist-at-best baggage. It would take awhile to detail all of this (the fantasy copaganda is probably the most obvious), but it's especially apparent with the villains. LOK essentially has a revolving door of major villains who are each very different in personality, goals, motives, politics, and symbolic alignments, but thematically unified by one very familiar concept that is obvious even before it's explicitly spelled out in B4.

I've talked about this before in relation to LOK and had plenty of criticism of it (here and here), but the basic idea is this: What if the villain actually has the right idea, but just goes too far?

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venndaai said:

I recently got into a new fandom and found myself in the position of intense villain fan for the first time in a very long while, and I really appreciate your villain posts even more now (and see them circulating in my new fandom's villain defenders corner) <3

I replied:

Oh hey, thanks! I’m glad they’re encouraging—and that they’re circulating, lol. Enjoy your villain corner :)

Also following from the LOK villain post … now that I think some more about it, IMO there could be a really interesting AU in reducing the main antagonists’ villainy so that simply defeating them isn’t really an option.

I’m thinking of two basic ways it could go:

- They’re still pretty morally dubious, but not so much so that the heroes can just start attacking them

- They’re scaled down even further to non-villain status, so they have to be engaged with on their own terms

e.g., in scenario 1, Noatak would be a less violent, self-centered, and dominating version of Amon; in scenario 2, he wouldn’t be Amon at all, but an activist—a bender ally to the Equalists.

The idea is that this would hold for all the main villains, which would make for a … complicated AU. But it would also be cool to see it for any one of them.

Tagged: #i've thought of it for kuvira and noatak individually at times (though w/o ever associating the ideas) #but suddenly the idea hit ... what if BOTH #and then: what if ALL #i really like both scenarios actually #i wouldn't want to go like... what if the heroes were villains and the villains were heroes!!!! #just ... what if physically attacking the people questioning the status quo weren't the easy option? #which requires 'questioning the status quo' to not be ott villainy

I feel quite strongly that villain fans should not and do not have an obligation to ritually acknowledge their faves’ wrongdoings whenever they talk about them (or ever).

I also feel quite strongly that that’s a longggg way from denying that the villains’ actions were wrong and insisting that their victims are the real bad guys here.

(I do think the latter is less dominant in villain stanning circles than it’s generally represented as being, but it does happen and is all kinds of yikes.)

Tagged: #not flagellating yourself every time you talk about your fave =/= justifying your fave

It’s irritating when people are like “villains think they’re in the right, too!” as if it’s some kind of brand-new revelation.

But I do have a great and towering weakness for characters (villains or not) who genuinely think they’re in the right and just don’t know better. It can be a tragic childhood or event, or something else altogether, but the main thing is that it profoundly shaped their way of thinking to the point that they don’t—and in the moment, can’t—understand.

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I’m still very tired of the dichotomy between Good Villain Fans who accept the collective judgment on their faves, and Bad Villain Fans who defend their faves.

Bad Villain Fans are represented as fans who refuse to accept the objective truth of their faves’ villainy, and Good Villain Fans as those who understand this objective truth and consequently refrain from defending their villainous faves, from anything, ever.

There’s no possibility that reasonable people could disagree on the villainy in question, or that a villain could be falsely accused of something else, or that misrepresentation ever happens in fandom. If a character is guilty of any villainy, then it’s fair to accuse them of literally anything, and Good Villain Fans will meekly accept it.

Ugh.