[...]and make excuses for the colonists in red comprising the richest 1% of the population.
Not -just- rich, mind you. They're rich because Yu Dao is populated by the Fire Nation's war industries. They make high-quality steel, like for the axes that got thrown at Aang in Part 3. Which adds a fairly dark quality to the United Republic's founding. That prosperity of Korra's era is ultimately rooted in colonial war profiteering. At the very least that iron-mongering put a floor under the URN that it could build off of.
But gosh, reading this reminded me how terrible The Promise was and how OOC everyone acted. It's almost like the trilogy was written by those Sozin apologists that pop up on the forums now and again, decrying Roku as a fool who forced Sozin into a war when all he wanted to do was "share our prosperity." The Fire Nation comes off pretty well overall, while the Earth Kingdom doesn't get much sympathy.
The one group that's totally unrepresented are those Earth-ethnic colonists at the bottom of the social ladder, people who might cheerlead the EK coming in and kicking their landlords and creditors out. Which, with a better writer, could have been represented by Toph's students, and given them a reason for being in the story.
Although the lack of their presence doesn't surprise me. The Promise's disjointedness shines a light on how everything is a crisis for the elites alone, but AtLA has that as something of a theme throughout its three seasons. You sometimes got episodes dealing with the peasantry suffering in the war, like with "Zuko Alone" or "The Painted Lady", but even then it was typically about the heroes stepping in to solve things. And that hits the "crisis for the elites to solve" issue because the main cast of AtLA are all elites in their societies -- Zuko the prince, Katara the last waterbender of the South, Sokka the chieftain's son, Toph the poor little rich girl. "Imprisoned" is to the only real exception that comes to mind, as, while the heroes help, the peasants standing up for themselves is a much more prominent event. Your Jins and Songs got screwed, and your Harus and Teos ignored as inconsequential.
TLoK, for all its many faults, has much more of a populist sentiment to it. Even the hereditary elites that pop up (Tenzin, Lin, Iron II) spend more time royally screwing up than accomplishing anything. Which, I think, reflects each show's time period. TLoK is the 1920s, with all those mass movements and popular revolutions attacking decaying institutions, while AtLA is a 19th Century series where a small group of elites command serious power. You can see that in the two Team Avatars. The Gaang is made up of the people who (will) run the world. The Krew is a cross-section of society from the underclass on up.
Aaaaang looking back in the preview function this went rather far afield. I'll stop now.
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Not -just- rich, mind you. They're rich because Yu Dao is populated by the Fire Nation's war industries. They make high-quality steel, like for the axes that got thrown at Aang in Part 3. Which adds a fairly dark quality to the United Republic's founding. That prosperity of Korra's era is ultimately rooted in colonial war profiteering. At the very least that iron-mongering put a floor under the URN that it could build off of.
But gosh, reading this reminded me how terrible The Promise was and how OOC everyone acted. It's almost like the trilogy was written by those Sozin apologists that pop up on the forums now and again, decrying Roku as a fool who forced Sozin into a war when all he wanted to do was "share our prosperity." The Fire Nation comes off pretty well overall, while the Earth Kingdom doesn't get much sympathy.
The one group that's totally unrepresented are those Earth-ethnic colonists at the bottom of the social ladder, people who might cheerlead the EK coming in and kicking their landlords and creditors out. Which, with a better writer, could have been represented by Toph's students, and given them a reason for being in the story.
Although the lack of their presence doesn't surprise me. The Promise's disjointedness shines a light on how everything is a crisis for the elites alone, but AtLA has that as something of a theme throughout its three seasons. You sometimes got episodes dealing with the peasantry suffering in the war, like with "Zuko Alone" or "The Painted Lady", but even then it was typically about the heroes stepping in to solve things. And that hits the "crisis for the elites to solve" issue because the main cast of AtLA are all elites in their societies -- Zuko the prince, Katara the last waterbender of the South, Sokka the chieftain's son, Toph the poor little rich girl. "Imprisoned" is to the only real exception that comes to mind, as, while the heroes help, the peasants standing up for themselves is a much more prominent event. Your Jins and Songs got screwed, and your Harus and Teos ignored as inconsequential.
TLoK, for all its many faults, has much more of a populist sentiment to it. Even the hereditary elites that pop up (Tenzin, Lin, Iron II) spend more time royally screwing up than accomplishing anything. Which, I think, reflects each show's time period. TLoK is the 1920s, with all those mass movements and popular revolutions attacking decaying institutions, while AtLA is a 19th Century series where a small group of elites command serious power. You can see that in the two Team Avatars. The Gaang is made up of the people who (will) run the world. The Krew is a cross-section of society from the underclass on up.
Aaaaang looking back in the preview function this went rather far afield. I'll stop now.