On the other hand, about the high-quality steel, steel is used in a LOT of things. Sure, originally the steel might've been for use in weapons of war, but after the war it could go to building buildings, making vehicles (though not cars yet), making ships, making all sorts of consumer goods and appliances. The fact is about our real-world technology is that almost all of it is in some way touched by war. The Internet came from the United States needing a way to have its government communicate in the wake of a nuclear attack. Food canning came from Napoleon needing a quick way to transport preserved food across his conquests and all the way to Russia. Microwaves were developed from war-time radar devices during WW2. The first electronic computers were designed to break Nazi Germany's code.
And pretty much all of our alloys from the ancient world, bronze, steel, etc., are found primarily through the armor and weapons developed from them. Fact is, is that all of our modern technology is derived from war, and if war didn't create it, then it vastly improved it.
Airplanes? Invented 1903. 15 years later, they could bomb London from occupied Belguim. Four decades later, they could leave entire cities in flames. Cars? Invented in the late 19th century, and actually vastly improved life in the cities (exhaust fumes are superior to horse dung, after all). 1916/17 comes around, and tanks are unveiled. European wars necessitate better engines; American post-war prosperity leads to better engines. Modern medicine? The Crimean War. Mass production? You can thank Eli Whitney and his rifle assembly line.
War is a terrible thing, but it drives technological progress in a way that nothing else really can, save maybe profit (just look at the phone industry, post-AT&T's 1980s breakup). And that progress was one of the best things about AtLA.
So yeah, the United Republic (which isn't really a republic, let's just ignore that) is based off of a dark past. But so is the real world. It may be terrible, but that's realism, and Aang's apparent choice of just sending all the colonists back to the Fire Nation means that Zuko would've faced a French Revolution very quickly.
Politics, especially in the wake of a nasty war, is not something that can ever be prim and proper. You can't just scream "colonial oppression" without recognizing that whether the characters like it or not, five generations of Fire Nation colonists has completely changed the world and its balance. A good political thriller would've handled this, but this is clearly not a good political thriller. And at its heart, that is the problem with this comic. Not because it wasn't making good, real-life social commentary, but because it doesn't even sync up with what should've happened if AtLA was real-life.
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Date: 2013-05-22 03:44 am (UTC)And pretty much all of our alloys from the ancient world, bronze, steel, etc., are found primarily through the armor and weapons developed from them. Fact is, is that all of our modern technology is derived from war, and if war didn't create it, then it vastly improved it.
Airplanes? Invented 1903. 15 years later, they could bomb London from occupied Belguim. Four decades later, they could leave entire cities in flames. Cars? Invented in the late 19th century, and actually vastly improved life in the cities (exhaust fumes are superior to horse dung, after all). 1916/17 comes around, and tanks are unveiled. European wars necessitate better engines; American post-war prosperity leads to better engines. Modern medicine? The Crimean War. Mass production? You can thank Eli Whitney and his rifle assembly line.
War is a terrible thing, but it drives technological progress in a way that nothing else really can, save maybe profit (just look at the phone industry, post-AT&T's 1980s breakup). And that progress was one of the best things about AtLA.
So yeah, the United Republic (which isn't really a republic, let's just ignore that) is based off of a dark past. But so is the real world. It may be terrible, but that's realism, and Aang's apparent choice of just sending all the colonists back to the Fire Nation means that Zuko would've faced a French Revolution very quickly.
Politics, especially in the wake of a nasty war, is not something that can ever be prim and proper. You can't just scream "colonial oppression" without recognizing that whether the characters like it or not, five generations of Fire Nation colonists has completely changed the world and its balance. A good political thriller would've handled this, but this is clearly not a good political thriller. And at its heart, that is the problem with this comic. Not because it wasn't making good, real-life social commentary, but because it doesn't even sync up with what should've happened if AtLA was real-life.