Good point about Suki and Sokka, especially given the latter is explicitly called out on his lack of social rank by Katara when he fluffs himself up in front of Yue.
Given all the unfortunate implications brought up by Yu Dao, I think I'm beginning to see why the series itself only lightly touched upon the colonies during its three seasons. Even the festival town we visit in S1 is both fairly small and essentially a transplanted village from the Fire Nation proper. Getting into the older colonies like Yu Dao is far messier business, and would have complicated AtLA's narrative.
As for the problem of who counts as what, I'm beginning to wonder if some of Republic City's future troubles aren't rooted in it. Given we know the council ends up being ironclad about nationality, and that bending gets an exceptional emphasis in *their society, I suspect a very stupid compromise will be reached. Like, you bend Element X, you get sorted into Nation X. Non-benders declare themselves, but if one of your kids ends up bending a 'foreign' element, their citizenship gets swapped into that category. Or something along those lines.
*To the point that Korra, a Southerner, seems to find the concept of tension between benders and non-bender a bizarre idea. And while being sheltered covers a multitude of sins, it's a bit much that at seventeen she's never heard about the concept from a Southerner or her Northern relatives if it's also an issue in the WTs too. So I lean to the non-bender/bender conflict either being localized in the United Republic, or being an issue which doesn't get much traction in the Water Tribes. After all, the South did experience decades of life without benders, and it sucked.
consider what would happen to the full-blooded Earth Kingdomites who are now stuck in the Fire Nation
I imagine a fair number of them will move back anyway, for reasons ranging from intermarriage to simply preferring to live under the Fire Lord's crown. Given Avatar's love for historical analogies, I wonder if that turns into a sort of 'Koreans in Japan' deal, where the earthbenders and Earth-ethnics come to form a minority underclass that's discriminated against (not in a government sanctioned way, but person-to-person). After a generation or so, that minority would be culturally Fire Nation and find their former colonial homeland in the United Republic alien.
Those evil parent-killing Firebenders in Korra might not be as unconnected as they sound. Iroh II might be an order-following soldier, who earned his rank in a one-sided battle against some Earth Kingdom ships, in one of those common naval skirmishes that pop up when Fire Nation ships try to "hire" new crew and the recruits object.
Ehhh, impressment doesn't strike me as fitting the setting's 1920s vibe. And given that the Earth Kingdom is described as now being a first-rank Great Power on par with the Fire Nation, while the Water Tribes are second-rank powers, I don't see them standing for such humiliation. The United Forces seem more like a prestige peacekeeping force, so all the nations can have a hand in the United Republic's national defense. That way no one nation can monopolize the URN, and the URN itself is prevented from allying with any particular nation to the disadvantage of the others.
...Which actually sounds really bad when you say it out loud like that. As if the URN is everyone's colony, and they're exploiting it economically to a certain degree without regard to domestic wishes. But it's not as if anything like THAT happened in the real world in East Asia in the early 20th Century!
I remember when over-thinking ATLA used to be fun.
The setting has a fair amount of horror to it, like pondering the logistics and time scale of the Air Nomad genocide, or all the wonderful things Iroh was up to before his retirement. The Promise just brings up more of that, in part because all the characters act like goddamn morons.
no subject
Given all the unfortunate implications brought up by Yu Dao, I think I'm beginning to see why the series itself only lightly touched upon the colonies during its three seasons. Even the festival town we visit in S1 is both fairly small and essentially a transplanted village from the Fire Nation proper. Getting into the older colonies like Yu Dao is far messier business, and would have complicated AtLA's narrative.
As for the problem of who counts as what, I'm beginning to wonder if some of Republic City's future troubles aren't rooted in it. Given we know the council ends up being ironclad about nationality, and that bending gets an exceptional emphasis in *their society, I suspect a very stupid compromise will be reached. Like, you bend Element X, you get sorted into Nation X. Non-benders declare themselves, but if one of your kids ends up bending a 'foreign' element, their citizenship gets swapped into that category. Or something along those lines.
*To the point that Korra, a Southerner, seems to find the concept of tension between benders and non-bender a bizarre idea. And while being sheltered covers a multitude of sins, it's a bit much that at seventeen she's never heard about the concept from a Southerner or her Northern relatives if it's also an issue in the WTs too. So I lean to the non-bender/bender conflict either being localized in the United Republic, or being an issue which doesn't get much traction in the Water Tribes. After all, the South did experience decades of life without benders, and it sucked.
consider what would happen to the full-blooded Earth Kingdomites who are now stuck in the Fire Nation
I imagine a fair number of them will move back anyway, for reasons ranging from intermarriage to simply preferring to live under the Fire Lord's crown. Given Avatar's love for historical analogies, I wonder if that turns into a sort of 'Koreans in Japan' deal, where the earthbenders and Earth-ethnics come to form a minority underclass that's discriminated against (not in a government sanctioned way, but person-to-person). After a generation or so, that minority would be culturally Fire Nation and find their former colonial homeland in the United Republic alien.
Those evil parent-killing Firebenders in Korra might not be as unconnected as they sound. Iroh II might be an order-following soldier, who earned his rank in a one-sided battle against some Earth Kingdom ships, in one of those common naval skirmishes that pop up when Fire Nation ships try to "hire" new crew and the recruits object.
Ehhh, impressment doesn't strike me as fitting the setting's 1920s vibe. And given that the Earth Kingdom is described as now being a first-rank Great Power on par with the Fire Nation, while the Water Tribes are second-rank powers, I don't see them standing for such humiliation. The United Forces seem more like a prestige peacekeeping force, so all the nations can have a hand in the United Republic's national defense. That way no one nation can monopolize the URN, and the URN itself is prevented from allying with any particular nation to the disadvantage of the others.
...Which actually sounds really bad when you say it out loud like that. As if the URN is everyone's colony, and they're exploiting it economically to a certain degree without regard to domestic wishes. But it's not as if anything like THAT happened in the real world in East Asia in the early 20th Century!
I remember when over-thinking ATLA used to be fun.
The setting has a fair amount of horror to it, like pondering the logistics and time scale of the Air Nomad genocide, or all the wonderful things Iroh was up to before his retirement. The Promise just brings up more of that, in part because all the characters act like goddamn morons.