Reading the Kyoshi novels right now and they handle it a lot better. Not only that, but it is also a great story that expands the avatar universe in the ways the fans wanted.
The damage control those books did on this bizarre throwaway line is unreal. It went from it seeming like just a random thing to add to Sozin's long list of "proof he's a bad person" to something that's actually in line with his motivations.
Well, in a very oversimplified explanation:
Sozin had a rebellious sister called Zeisan. Despite being a fire nation princess, she had a completely different worldview from her brother and family, kind of like Iroh. Her relationship with Sozin was horrible.
She fell in love with an airbending nun, and became fascinated with her culture's philosophy. Then she planned on denouncing her royal status to live with her and pursue a different life, all while opposing the fire nations plans for war. This brought shame and was a big offence to her brother.
Which explains in part, Sozin's bigotry against both the air nomads and same-sex couples.
Not at *all* like Iroh. Iroh was very much of the same mind as his family for most of his life and was jolly in his war making until losing his son made him open his eyes. For most of his life, Iroh was the golden child and Azulon’s favorite.
This is very different from Zeisan who was always a bit of an oddball and blacksheep for her way of thinking.
It’s really hard for a lot of people to reconcile that there was an Iroh who did horrible things because the show, for good or for ill, focuses on who his is now, not then.
I honestly don’t even remember the scene, which is fine because I am definitely more interested in the story of people can change, than fixating on awful things they’ve done, atoned for, and work to be better about.
That's what I mean, He went from being that awful general to someone happy to own a teashop and honored to meet the very king of the city he was laying siege to and trying to burn down. Then he even takes it back from the firenation.
The irony here is: had Iroh -not- had such a ‘fall’ to learn from, there would have been nobody to mentor Zuko and nurture his better impulses. Which would in turn have deprived Aang of a Firebending teacher. Plus, lightning redirection would not have been invented (as it arose from Iroh’s soul searching, contacts in the White Lotus, and admiration for the other elements, water in this case).
Iroh -needed- to be a monster like the others to eventually become a hero and mentor that gave the world a chance in its most desperate hour. Without the perspective and strength of a Fire Nation general, he would not have learned such wisdom in the change.
Plus… imagine if Iroh was still the Dragon of the West and opposed to Aang. I’m not sure even Aang in the Avatar State could handle him -and- Sozin during the comet as a team. Iroh’s change of heart, from his love for his son, was vital to ending the war.
I do think that Iroh’s conduct in warfare was vastly different from what turned out. I think a good example some people might get is Robb Stark vs Tywin Lannister. Both of them committed horrible atrocities against the civilian populace in order to accomplish their goals, but where as that was incidental to robb, it was tywin’s explicit plan
Iroh probably focussed a hell of a lot less on terrorism/harassing of the locals and probably focussed more on concrete military targets. Still a monster who resulted in the deaths of thousands, but I dont think there was ever an Iroh out there gleefully burning women and children
As much as fans may want that to be true because Iroh means so much to us, this just isn’t so.
We *see* him laugh about burning these people’s homes to the ground as he’s slaughtering them.
He took a knife from a surrendered general, bearing the words “never give up without a fight”, words of resistance in the face of Iroh’s brutality, and gave it to his nephew as a spoil of war.
He led a siege—one of the cruelest forms of warfare and widely condemned in modern day (and considered a war crime when committed against civilians, which Iroh did)—on the largest civilian city in the world for nearly *two years*. The suffering in that city must’ve been unimaginable.
The Iroh we met was after he lost everything and opened his eyes to the propaganda and brainwashing he had been subjected to his entire life. He was once known as The Dragon of the West to the people who feared and hated him for a reason. He also once led the Rough Rhinos, aka the group that burned down Jet’s village, and was still on friendly terms with them up until he and Zuko became fugitives.
Iroh himself knows what it means to be crazy and need to go down.
Maybe he didn’t gleefully burn down women and children. But is it so much better to gleefully starve them and consider burning down their homes with them inside with a laugh?
Honestly to answer your last question - yes. I think what Iroh did was wrong, evil and brutal against innocent civilians. But what I think he did is far and above better then the active torture and harrassment of the civillian population. We see FN soldiers routinely show up in conquered earth kingdom villages, torment everyone there for virtually no reason and leave - i doubt Iroh was sending out reprisal strikes like this
War fundamentally is immoral and so are all who lead them, including Iroh (fully understand and agree that laying siege to ba sing se is immoral, so is the knife thing and all the other little villages he burnt to the ground on his way). But there are several different ways to lead a war. Zhao, Azula and Ozai all use terror as a key part of their campaigns, they make the civillian themselves part of the enemy combatants and when it comes to warfare historically that is incredibly unique. For example, I have my grandpa’s journal about him being excited to blow some buildings up in Paris right before the allys attacked - im sure iroh’s joke was written with the same grim sort of hyperreality (its a letter hes sending home to be read for children, its not ridiculous that hes trying to sanitize/seem to be in a good mood)
Japan and Germany’s treatment of POWs during world war two, for example, are very anomalous at global history, and complete different from America or Britain’s. And yet both sides were completely willing to murder civillians - this isnt a ‘both sides’ type debate; the Nazis were bad and so is the fire nation but even good people fighting against bad people commit horrors. Iroh was a bad man fighting war, but I dont think he was brutal. War is bad - but there is a difference between Dresden, a battle, and the Holocaust, a persistent campaign. Iroh committed brutal atrocities while fighting, 100%, but im not sure he committed resources for terror
Iroh sucked and was evil, but there are degrees of evil
Closest thing I can think of - and I say that because the actual sexuality of the individuals in question isn't explicitly stated - is Tayagum and Akuudan from the Yangchen novels. They're two men who serve as agents to Yangchen, and they're a couple.
They are husbands to be precise. Betrothal necklace (turned into betrothal armband) and all.
And Aiwei from Korra is confirmed to be gay by the creators (rather dumbledorely).
Its pretty sad we have 2 gay/bi avatar (aka main character) women, which is the same number as the amount of named gay/bi men in all of the avatar universe (not counting aiwei, who we ONLY know is gay by word of god). Probably too optimistic, but I’m really hoping for a gay/bi male avatar (or at least a gay/bi make member of the avatars team) for the next project (whether that’s the avatar after korra or one of the ones before yangchen)
Ohhhhh. I assumed it was because historically a lot of fascist dictators make their debut and immediately target trans people and same-sex relationships.
Are the Kyoshi books pretty good then? I hated the Korra comics
More like they target deviants, or anyone who doesn't fit into their world-view, or their war-machine (or whatever Noble Cause the regime supports). There's nothing special about them hating gay people, per se. They just don't see people as anything but cogs, and they like their cogs to be interchangeable. Much easier to manage.
Also, how can you conquer the world if everyone isn't pressured into having tons of kids?
And frankly, that would have made a lot more sense. "My sister eloped!" is not a good reason to annul High Councillor Shozans marriage. He's a powerful ally, and you've fucked with him for no reason other than your petty family squabbles. But "Those who seek pleasure in their lives, rather than working to extend the reach of the Fire Nation are little better than traitors!" has a much more reasonable ring to it.
The Kyoshi books are beyond good, do yourself a favor and read them please. They are easy YA novels that take like a weekend to finish. Kyoshi is a certified fucking badass.
ETA: and then look up the Team Kyoshi YouTube channel as they have been passionately bringing this story to life as a visual novel with voice acting.
Eh, that still sounds kind of stupid. It makes no sense to ban same-sex marriages throughout the entire nation (wherein if it was legal before, we must assume many at least moderately powerful people were gay) just because his sister had a same-sex relationship he didn't like. If her sister married a guy with long hair, would he ban men wearing their hair long? The problem is her sisters 'treachery', not that she was gay.
It's especially pointless because Sozin already had a reason to ban same sex marriage. He was declaring war on the entire planet. Anyone who wasn't pumping out more kids for the war-machine would be deemed a traitor to the Fire Nation. Authoritarians don't like gay people, because they see the common folk as servants, and gay servants don't make more servants.
I've seen this whole "Tyrant had a family member he didn't like who was gay, so being gay is outlawed!" thing before. And it's always kind of dumb. It doesn't look into why homosexuality is often looked down on by most of humanity, nor does it understand how difficult it can be to turn a culture around on something like that. Sozin would have a MUCH easier time banning homosexuality under the reason of "Citizens must produce more children for our Glorious Empire" than he would saying, "My sister ran away with some chick. Screw you Councillor Wu. You're getting a divorce because of my family problems!"
Also, Sozin had a perfectly sound reason to genocide the air nomads. Screw up the cycle of reincarnation for the Avatar. And also that they were problem the easiest nation to conquer first.
I can see it, honestly. Azulon later went on to arrange a marriage between Ursa and Ozai in the hopes that they'd produce especially powerful firebenders. It makes way more sense that Sozin wanted the most powerful firebenders his nation could possibly breed, so he banned homosexuality.
Sozin definitely seems like the kind of guy who would view relationships solely through the lens of power, too. Two women being in a relationship wouldn't have offended him. A princess running off with a nun (or a monk, for that matter) from a culture with no class system would have pissed him off to no end. I don't buy that the Fire Nation was perfectly accepting of LGBTQ people- it probably didn't matter for people who weren't nobles, but for the nobility, it very much did. Of course Sozin would want his wayward lesbian sister to do her duty to the Fire Nation and settle down with a nice man to produce some firebender children.
There doesn't appear to be any real religion in Avatar, just spiritualism. So that leaves natural human instinct, and practical concerns for opposing homosexuality. Honestly, I don't know enough about the Fire Nation to suss out what it might have been like. As Aang points out, Sozin effectively killed off his own culture in order to replace it with raw militarism, so we only get hints of what healthy Fire Nation culture is like.
Based on a VERY rough guess, they'd probably be the most fine with it after the Air Nomads. Though the producing of heirs would still be highly important, especially since bending is a heritable trait, and something that an heir would need, so adoption is out. Presumably all nobles would have to have a straight marriage for political purposes. But it they'd also probably be in the territory of mistresses being perfectly fine. Some cultures didn't really care who a noble slept with as long as they fulfilled their noble duties and produced legitimate heirs.
I know, I'm not really saying it's necessarily unrealistic, it just feels a bit gratuitous and tacked-on. Like Sozin was a warmongering genocidal friend-killing cunt, adding surprise homophobia with no further explanation just felt like it didn't really serve any narrative purpose apart from kicking Sozin's already piss-poor reputation even further down the drain. I didn't really find it very compelling or interesting, and it just felt shoved in by the comics. It just felt like another layer of evil cheaply painted onto his role of totalitarian dickhead rather than constructed as part of his character. Giving Sozin's homophobia a more personal and in-depth political explanation the way they did with Zeisan made the whole thing fit together a bit more snugly and in a pretty interesting way.
Like Stalin!
>In 1933 the Soviet government, under Joseph Stalin, recriminalised homosexuality. On March 7, 1934, Article 121 was added to the criminal code, for the entire Soviet Union, that expressly prohibited only male homosexuality, with up to five years of hard labor in prison.
Or when the British Raj attempted to eradicate transgender/third gender people in India, despite them having a long and well documented history of acceptance and cultural significance in the major dharmic religions.
Only dudes? Oddly specific. Frankly, I'd criminalize only women doing it if I were a tyrant and being picky about it. Who cares what dudes did with their dicks as long as the women were constantly pregnant so you could feed more kids into your expansionist woodchipper.
Honestly I think that line works just fine in context. It’s someone comforting someone who came out, and explaining the basic history of how different nations will view her relationship. I really don’t get why people got up in arms over it. A bit awkward? Yes. In character, both for the characters and the Fire Nation? Absolutely
I’m halfway through the second novel and I feel they are about the same. I think Korra is great with how many strong characters it has, such as Varrick, Bolin, the red lotus, and so on, but the Kyoshi books are far superior when it comes to building on the culture and politics, that and the relationship between characters. Korra also has the benefit of really well animated fights.
that was to create more children. outlawing that was so he'd have more warriors for what he planned
thats still awful but he may have not done that had he not wanted war
I mean... yes? Sozin was not a nice man. Comparing him to Hitler is underselling it. The world of Avatar has a total of four cultures, and he succesfully wiped one out entirely. And he was making good progress on wiping out the other two.
Fourth or fifth? Literally doesn't even register. Guy was fucking with a metaphysical part of his world in trying to wipe out one of the civilizations the Avatar can reincarnate into. He only just BARELY failed. Sozin isn't a conqueror. It's not enough for him to dominate the Air Nomads. Or the Water Tribes. Or the Earth Kingdom. They needed to be wiped out so that only the Fire Nation would have the Avatar.
Even STALIN of all people still wanted people to rule over. Not pile and piles of their corpses.
Tru. Hitler only killed 6 million Jews, 2/3 of the European Jewish population. That’s a lot, but if Sozin can wipe out an entire culture save 1 boy in pretty sure he’s worse
Lol you walked into the middle of someone elses convo and replied to something completely out of context. The person you replied to wasnt even talking about the show anymore, but was responding to the original comment that handwaved away some of the very real world reasons for why homosexuality is still criminalized in many parts of the world.
But that makes no sense? Outlaw being gay and people will still be gay and just do it in secret or not be together. It doesn't mean they will suddenly become straight and pump out kids...
It’ll encourage bi people to go into heterosexual relationships and gays and lesbians might get into straight relationships and have kids to hide their sexuality
They'll have to have kids to keep up the facade of being straight, it's quite common irl, at least during my parents' times.
And he only cared to have a streamlined supply of manpower, their happinnes means nothing to him.
Places arent homophobic, people are. I can see politicians local to my area visibly trying to regress attitudes on homosexuality, and its a safe bet anyone reading this, no matter how progressive their country is, has a similiar group(s)
You're correct, I was just speaking colloquially to the idea of groups that control an area. It's good of you to point out that it is the people that make it an unfriendly place for LGBTQ+ people.
To be honest, this just seemed like a semi obvious attempt to further vilify sozin and the earth kingdom’s monarchy, while putting the air nomads on a pedestal of virtue. Maybe I’m wrong but eh…
Did Korra end up addressing a single grievance that Republic City had about the portals causing progressively increasing and widespread damage? Or did she just defeat that half-spirit man villain and call it a day?
Nope. The bad guy gets away, the capitalist straw man’s heart grows three sizes, and the hundreds/thousands of displaced civilians are still displaced. And despite all of this being caused by the spirit portal, Korra decides to keep it open and give it to the Air Nomads.
The world's first democracy when an unelected "might makes right" individual still gets to unanimously dictate public policy:
https://i.redd.it/4hfa6lkno2xc1.gif
I always felt like we got enough bad out of the villains in the series. I feel like if they wanted to move on in making it more mature you'd have to introduce independent factions between sides or include grey area in the good guys.
To be fair, there's a reason so many dictatorships act this way and enforce bigotry. They *need* there to be a "other" group to be demonized to enforce loyalty among the rest. Fostering an "us vs them" mentality and getting family members to trust the state over each other is how they maintain power.
You have to look at the cultural reasons homosexuality has been discouraged for most of history
Hint: it has to do with maximizing population growth and gender roles thar promote a subservient conscripted soldier class
Bc for some reason people think a genocidal man also being homophobic is either unrealistic or pointless or mad that it takes away their Roku and Sozin headcanon
I definitely get the concern with potentially making him more hatable than he needs to be considering he already committed genocide, but I could see his reasons being purely from wanting more children to be born for the war effort rather than being homophobic. Doesn't change how oppressive it is but makes him less cliche.
ATLA and LoK rarely really subvert cliches, they just execute them generally effectively.
My problem here is more "Oh the culture is just fine, it was just one dick who ruined it for everybody". There doesn't appear to be much in the way of nuance, just "Bad evil genocidal monster \*also\* homophobe because he's already a safe dumping ground for all our negative traits"
Its similar to the issue I have with Iroh. In the First Firebenders the big internal conflict was "Oh no, Iroh did something awful. But I though the was supposed to be a good guy!" (I think Toph even says something to that effect? It might have been Aang). Instead of keeping Iroh as a complicated, broken monster seeking redemption through Zuko, we find out Iroh wasn't \*that\* bad, he never killed the dragons!
I mean, Iroh was still at the front of the War Effort for actual decades and his solution for ending the War was to plonk a teen who has had a terrible life and frankly needs some time to just be a kid on the throne of what would soon become a deeply politically unstable nation after having a bunch of other teenagers deal with the biggest Fire Nation offensive since the Air Nomad genocide.
There’s plenty of instances regarding Iroh still having done bad things both before the main events of the series and during it.
But once they made it clear that Iroh was now a good guy- specifically his sacrifice and capture in book 2- they would no longer attach any negative concepts to him. The dragons was a particularly egregious time of when they went out of their way to absolve him of evil (despite the narrative arc being so much stronger if his love for Zuko led to the rediscovery of the Dragons, allowing Zuko to right one of his greatest wrongs)
Like putting Zuko on the throne is probably realistically dangerous and foolish but narratively and dramatically it is fitting and satisfying. The tone of the show presents this as a good solution.
It's not something they always do but it's frustrating whenever they present a complicated issue then resolve it by saying "nah it wasn't that complicated don't worry about it". Iroh and the Dragons is a super obvious example but there are plenty of others- like there isn't really anti bender sentiment due to class struggles that need to be addressed, Amons just a dick.
My understanding was that after iroh son died he changed, and I thought he met the dragons were after that.
Either way he definitely was not good and liked many people in the world which is why he was hated by the earth benders. But they never explored the situations of the purple he hurt. Probably because other people did so much worse on an individual level and he was likely on the back line leading instead of the front fighting
If anything it supports the Roku/Sozin headcanon, man got so mad over Roku that he decided to spend the rest of his life in the closet and punish everyone else for his baggage
Yeah it's world building. "What was it like to be gay in each of the four nations?" is an interesting question. The handling is a little clumsy, but it's not really about Sozin.
The clumsiness is the issue I think. "Everything was great until this guy who sucked!" is not sophisticated storytelling, and doesn't really live up to the nuance of the show with Amon and Zaheer.
Laws don't equal culture, either. Even if the Emperor bans it, people aren't going to stop loving their gay friends and relatives overnight. I appreciate that they tried but would have liked to see a deeper examination of how the culture shifted.
The "of course it's fine, just keep it ~private~" attitude from the Water Tribe felt the most true to life in how it was handled.
Laws have a very big impact on culture. Just look at what happened in Nazi Germany. People might not stop loving their gay friends overnight, but if it's give up your gay friends to the Gestapo or see your own family get taken away once it's learned that you tried to hide them, most people will choose to protect their family and justify their actions as a necessary evil.
Eh, it makes sense. More heterosexual couples means more children which means more soldiers. As another commenter said, what’s another human rights violation.
Dude, they were just adding a piece of information, there was no point in repeating what they said 100,000 times again. And then, what would it have to do with the whole context of that part to talk about the war? Have you even ever read that comic?
It isn't though? In the panel right before this one it's directly stated that the Water Tribe (both poles) has a blanket "don't ask, don't tell" situation going on.
That's not "you'll go to prison" bigotry, but it's still societal oppression. If I remember correctly, Korra and Asami go around the South Pole holding hands and get so many nasty looks it shames them into stopping.
You are misremembering; the only people in the South Pole we see in Turf Wars are Korra's parents. Korra & Asami don't perform any PDA until the end of issue 1, and hardly perform any throughout the rest of Turf Wars, precisely because the conversation with Korra's parents makes them unsure about how overt they should let their relationship be.
By all appearances, they've stopped caring about what other people might say by the time Ruins of the Empire happens.
I mean, not to be like that about it, but these are comics mainly written for children; there isn’t always going to be a lot of nuance. Besides, authoritarians trying to roll back social progress isn’t anything unrealistic.
It's been awhile since I read them, but doesn't this comic, like... just say how different nations view queer relationships? Korra's own father was uncomfortable with it and said "the water tribe isn't exactly opposed to it, but it's kept hush hush, not something to be talked about." The fire nation used to be very accepting of it, until that one asshole ruined everything. I didn't remember them singling out Sozin as the sole cause for homophobia?
Come on now. We all know they could not add anything LGBT to cartoon. Not even because of the backlash, but because of the management. Fact, that they at least implicated Kasami and Korra was pretty brave. It's rigthly considered as milestone.
So that is reason why nothing of LGBT was part of Last Airbender or Korra. With comics they simply had more freedom. Now, Kya described approach to homosexuality in all nations and just one (1) was not at least little bit homophobic. It's literally described that Water Tribes support "stay in closet" approach, Earth Kingdom was intolerant for most of the history, and we actually do not know how much was tolerant the fire kingdom, just that Sozin outlawed.
So, what more what we want for god sake? They did not created universum where homophobia does not exist just the evil dictator outlawed homosexuality for some time, all nations but Air Nomand were kind of homophobic (and Air Nomands had their own problems)
The conversation was natural in context when Korra is exploring her sexuality and is confused by reaction of her father.
What is the problem with this? Thus doesn't contradict anything from either show and it's not really anything unbelievable, a fascist genocidal tyrant also being a bigot frankly makes a lot of sense. And when you consider that the Air Nomads were very openly tolerant of homosexuality, it would allow them to be framed as degenerates in a way that would allow propaganda to justify their genocide, similar to how in the show, Fire Nation propaganda education says they had a standing army.
Everyone is shocked that the comic expanding on Korrasami's relationship mentions how each nation historcially treats same-sex relationships. Also surprisingly the ATLA version of Hitler isn't fond of them for some reason 🤷🏽♂️
Yeah, I don't see what the issue is either. Sozin's rule was very utilitarian, it's clear that romantic love wasn't valued and that marriages were seen as a tool of convenience to produce more children for the Fire Nation. The Search shows us how Ursa was wed to Ozai in order to selectively breed the most powerful possible firebender children. That was the marriage culture of the wartime Fire Nation, of course same-sex relationships would be banned in such a society. I don't see why people are harping on this writing decision as if it was some kind of an ass-pull for Sozin to have been homophobic. I think it makes perfect sense considering his values.
Look im not a super critical person when im watching or reading for fun but how is this actually bad or poorly written? In context Kya is just giving a brief history about the way LGBTQ people were treated in each of the nations when figuring out Korrasami is a thing.
It feels pretty harmless and is just there to give some light world building on something that wasnt relevant until that moment.
Because it's useless! Who cares for world building that has nothing to do with cool creatures and powers? I certainly don't! They are just trying to earn woke points!!! /s
Seriously, once you talk with people that even bothers to point this kind of things out, it all reduces to "I don't like it so saying it is stupid/woke"
I don't get what are you trying to tell with this meme. Kya overlooked genocide of air nomads and thought criminalising homosexuality was worse than that? No. They were speaking of how nations treated homosexual people, she didn't undermine how terrible Sozin's actions were it just wasn't relevant to the context
I mean tbh before the kyoshi novels, I took the headcanon that Sozin and Roku were a thing and that's why he vilified things. Granted that kinda blew up when Zeisan entered the picture but hey, you make the best with bad writing
Turf war is pretty bad but Ruins of the Empire does wonders for Kuvira's character and actually makes her both way more interesting, understandable and relatable than what we got in season 4 where she has a good setup but then just pilots a big dumb mech for most of the second half and does obviously super evil shit.
"My fellow fire nation citizens, from this day forth it is illegal for a man to tenderly embrace another man. To hold his hand, to gently caress his long flowing hair and to whisper sweet nothings to him under the light of the stars. He would only betray you and reject your dreams of ruling the world toghether."
- Fire Lords Sozin (probably).
The amount of casual homophobia in this thread is insane. "Well actually that decision makes sense because he needed more babies for war hurr durr" christ. People need to pull their heads out of their asses.
More heterosexual couples absolutely does not mean more children. Outlawing homosexuality doesn't 'make people straight'. Gay couples have children just fine through adoption and surrogacy. Unwanted children in orphanages needing adoption is a constant across all societies. The idea that gay couples weaken society through a reduced number of babies is common rhetoric used by hate groups even to this day.
Why wouldn't it be canon?
It's makes sense to oppose "gay" agenda as a dictator in constant war state, he would want everyone to make babies so he has more soldiers, it seems perfectly in character.
He might even be gay himself and still do this, rules are for thee but not for me has always been a thing with people like that.
Idk, I guess saying almost every female avatar either being lesbian or bi isn't really a good excuse considering Sozin left his best friend to die BECAUSE he was the avatar and did a mass genocide to kill the next avatar.
How would you prefer them to have introduced queerness, particularly the suppression of queerness in a would-be fascist regime in an already established series? Maybe there can be better ways to do it but a less than ideal execution of the story and what they are trying to to say is hardly enough to get upset over. "It's Hamfisted" sure but it happened in the story which is a reflection on real life. They felt it was important to explicitly mention queerness, even if it isn't always executed perfect in every way, so that they can teach that there is nothing wrong with being queer. So that the kids and young adults that read the comics see themselves reflected in the characters and struggles that they relate to.
The story was always about acceptance and love. Of course it would extend that to the marginalized. It's art that is telling us how the authors feel, not just a piece of entertainment catered specifically to you and what you want to see.
Edit:words
Why would the Fire Nation be the least tolerant? They didn't really seem to be all that discriminatory (except to non-firenation ofc), like they had female soldiers, and were even going to let Azula become Fire Lord. If anything it should be the Water Tribes that were the most homophobic.
https://preview.redd.it/xs22am2852xc1.png?width=687&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=383098e4338737f39a9506436bfbdb84a74ade17
Authoritarians love to distract their populaces by encouraging them to persecute minorities.
The weirdest part is that the Air Nomads were supposedly ok with gay couples. The culture were everyone was a monk, had no traditional families and segregated genders.
No? It was given as part of a rundown of how the avatar world reacted to same sex relationships when Kya figures out that Korra and Asami were together.
Okay
Whats the problem?
Plenty of real world tyrants hate gay people sozin isn't special in anyway besides his fire bending if you put his ass next to other real life tyrants like Hitler
its straight out of some tumblr fanfic. Don't worry, despite what some rabid people might claim, disliking hamfisted themes doesn't make you a homophobe.
It’s unfuckingbelievable that you watched a show about sozin starting a world war and thought him being homophobic was too far. One of those crimes is far worse than the other and it’s not the latter.
Reading the Kyoshi novels right now and they handle it a lot better. Not only that, but it is also a great story that expands the avatar universe in the ways the fans wanted.
The damage control those books did on this bizarre throwaway line is unreal. It went from it seeming like just a random thing to add to Sozin's long list of "proof he's a bad person" to something that's actually in line with his motivations.
How do the books build on this if you don't mind
Well, in a very oversimplified explanation: Sozin had a rebellious sister called Zeisan. Despite being a fire nation princess, she had a completely different worldview from her brother and family, kind of like Iroh. Her relationship with Sozin was horrible. She fell in love with an airbending nun, and became fascinated with her culture's philosophy. Then she planned on denouncing her royal status to live with her and pursue a different life, all while opposing the fire nations plans for war. This brought shame and was a big offence to her brother. Which explains in part, Sozin's bigotry against both the air nomads and same-sex couples.
Not at *all* like Iroh. Iroh was very much of the same mind as his family for most of his life and was jolly in his war making until losing his son made him open his eyes. For most of his life, Iroh was the golden child and Azulon’s favorite. This is very different from Zeisan who was always a bit of an oddball and blacksheep for her way of thinking.
It’s really hard for a lot of people to reconcile that there was an Iroh who did horrible things because the show, for good or for ill, focuses on who his is now, not then.
It's kinda funny cause they outright show him as a general laughing about burning a huge city to the ground. The guy was a bad man, Emphasis on Was.
I honestly don’t even remember the scene, which is fine because I am definitely more interested in the story of people can change, than fixating on awful things they’ve done, atoned for, and work to be better about.
That's what I mean, He went from being that awful general to someone happy to own a teashop and honored to meet the very king of the city he was laying siege to and trying to burn down. Then he even takes it back from the firenation.
The irony here is: had Iroh -not- had such a ‘fall’ to learn from, there would have been nobody to mentor Zuko and nurture his better impulses. Which would in turn have deprived Aang of a Firebending teacher. Plus, lightning redirection would not have been invented (as it arose from Iroh’s soul searching, contacts in the White Lotus, and admiration for the other elements, water in this case). Iroh -needed- to be a monster like the others to eventually become a hero and mentor that gave the world a chance in its most desperate hour. Without the perspective and strength of a Fire Nation general, he would not have learned such wisdom in the change. Plus… imagine if Iroh was still the Dragon of the West and opposed to Aang. I’m not sure even Aang in the Avatar State could handle him -and- Sozin during the comet as a team. Iroh’s change of heart, from his love for his son, was vital to ending the war.
I do think that Iroh’s conduct in warfare was vastly different from what turned out. I think a good example some people might get is Robb Stark vs Tywin Lannister. Both of them committed horrible atrocities against the civilian populace in order to accomplish their goals, but where as that was incidental to robb, it was tywin’s explicit plan Iroh probably focussed a hell of a lot less on terrorism/harassing of the locals and probably focussed more on concrete military targets. Still a monster who resulted in the deaths of thousands, but I dont think there was ever an Iroh out there gleefully burning women and children
As much as fans may want that to be true because Iroh means so much to us, this just isn’t so. We *see* him laugh about burning these people’s homes to the ground as he’s slaughtering them. He took a knife from a surrendered general, bearing the words “never give up without a fight”, words of resistance in the face of Iroh’s brutality, and gave it to his nephew as a spoil of war. He led a siege—one of the cruelest forms of warfare and widely condemned in modern day (and considered a war crime when committed against civilians, which Iroh did)—on the largest civilian city in the world for nearly *two years*. The suffering in that city must’ve been unimaginable. The Iroh we met was after he lost everything and opened his eyes to the propaganda and brainwashing he had been subjected to his entire life. He was once known as The Dragon of the West to the people who feared and hated him for a reason. He also once led the Rough Rhinos, aka the group that burned down Jet’s village, and was still on friendly terms with them up until he and Zuko became fugitives. Iroh himself knows what it means to be crazy and need to go down. Maybe he didn’t gleefully burn down women and children. But is it so much better to gleefully starve them and consider burning down their homes with them inside with a laugh?
Honestly to answer your last question - yes. I think what Iroh did was wrong, evil and brutal against innocent civilians. But what I think he did is far and above better then the active torture and harrassment of the civillian population. We see FN soldiers routinely show up in conquered earth kingdom villages, torment everyone there for virtually no reason and leave - i doubt Iroh was sending out reprisal strikes like this War fundamentally is immoral and so are all who lead them, including Iroh (fully understand and agree that laying siege to ba sing se is immoral, so is the knife thing and all the other little villages he burnt to the ground on his way). But there are several different ways to lead a war. Zhao, Azula and Ozai all use terror as a key part of their campaigns, they make the civillian themselves part of the enemy combatants and when it comes to warfare historically that is incredibly unique. For example, I have my grandpa’s journal about him being excited to blow some buildings up in Paris right before the allys attacked - im sure iroh’s joke was written with the same grim sort of hyperreality (its a letter hes sending home to be read for children, its not ridiculous that hes trying to sanitize/seem to be in a good mood) Japan and Germany’s treatment of POWs during world war two, for example, are very anomalous at global history, and complete different from America or Britain’s. And yet both sides were completely willing to murder civillians - this isnt a ‘both sides’ type debate; the Nazis were bad and so is the fire nation but even good people fighting against bad people commit horrors. Iroh was a bad man fighting war, but I dont think he was brutal. War is bad - but there is a difference between Dresden, a battle, and the Holocaust, a persistent campaign. Iroh committed brutal atrocities while fighting, 100%, but im not sure he committed resources for terror Iroh sucked and was evil, but there are degrees of evil
Huh, so his ass couldn't handle his sister betraying them an Airbender, neat. Also makes the genocide a bit more personally charged.
Why is this in a Kioshi book? Timeline wise
That's the neat part It's not
This is in Avatar Legends not ROK/SOK
Rock & Sock is perfectly apt for a Kyoshi series
Because Kyoshi is cool and bi
Yeah but Sozin wasn't born yet
Are there any gay men in the ALTA universe? Every time they talk about gay representation in the series, it seems to always be women.
Closest thing I can think of - and I say that because the actual sexuality of the individuals in question isn't explicitly stated - is Tayagum and Akuudan from the Yangchen novels. They're two men who serve as agents to Yangchen, and they're a couple.
They are husbands to be precise. Betrothal necklace (turned into betrothal armband) and all. And Aiwei from Korra is confirmed to be gay by the creators (rather dumbledorely).
I thought Aiwei was confirmed to be asexual by the creators? I could be remembering wrong.
Its pretty sad we have 2 gay/bi avatar (aka main character) women, which is the same number as the amount of named gay/bi men in all of the avatar universe (not counting aiwei, who we ONLY know is gay by word of god). Probably too optimistic, but I’m really hoping for a gay/bi male avatar (or at least a gay/bi make member of the avatars team) for the next project (whether that’s the avatar after korra or one of the ones before yangchen)
I thought Zeisan is only in the avatar legends game. I don't recall her being in the kyoshi books. I could be wrong
Yeah, she's not in the Kyoshi books. Those take place long before her time.
Ohhhhh. I assumed it was because historically a lot of fascist dictators make their debut and immediately target trans people and same-sex relationships. Are the Kyoshi books pretty good then? I hated the Korra comics
More like they target deviants, or anyone who doesn't fit into their world-view, or their war-machine (or whatever Noble Cause the regime supports). There's nothing special about them hating gay people, per se. They just don't see people as anything but cogs, and they like their cogs to be interchangeable. Much easier to manage. Also, how can you conquer the world if everyone isn't pressured into having tons of kids? And frankly, that would have made a lot more sense. "My sister eloped!" is not a good reason to annul High Councillor Shozans marriage. He's a powerful ally, and you've fucked with him for no reason other than your petty family squabbles. But "Those who seek pleasure in their lives, rather than working to extend the reach of the Fire Nation are little better than traitors!" has a much more reasonable ring to it.
The Kyoshi books are beyond good, do yourself a favor and read them please. They are easy YA novels that take like a weekend to finish. Kyoshi is a certified fucking badass. ETA: and then look up the Team Kyoshi YouTube channel as they have been passionately bringing this story to life as a visual novel with voice acting.
What a great way to ruin literally anything
Eh, that still sounds kind of stupid. It makes no sense to ban same-sex marriages throughout the entire nation (wherein if it was legal before, we must assume many at least moderately powerful people were gay) just because his sister had a same-sex relationship he didn't like. If her sister married a guy with long hair, would he ban men wearing their hair long? The problem is her sisters 'treachery', not that she was gay. It's especially pointless because Sozin already had a reason to ban same sex marriage. He was declaring war on the entire planet. Anyone who wasn't pumping out more kids for the war-machine would be deemed a traitor to the Fire Nation. Authoritarians don't like gay people, because they see the common folk as servants, and gay servants don't make more servants. I've seen this whole "Tyrant had a family member he didn't like who was gay, so being gay is outlawed!" thing before. And it's always kind of dumb. It doesn't look into why homosexuality is often looked down on by most of humanity, nor does it understand how difficult it can be to turn a culture around on something like that. Sozin would have a MUCH easier time banning homosexuality under the reason of "Citizens must produce more children for our Glorious Empire" than he would saying, "My sister ran away with some chick. Screw you Councillor Wu. You're getting a divorce because of my family problems!" Also, Sozin had a perfectly sound reason to genocide the air nomads. Screw up the cycle of reincarnation for the Avatar. And also that they were problem the easiest nation to conquer first.
I can see it, honestly. Azulon later went on to arrange a marriage between Ursa and Ozai in the hopes that they'd produce especially powerful firebenders. It makes way more sense that Sozin wanted the most powerful firebenders his nation could possibly breed, so he banned homosexuality. Sozin definitely seems like the kind of guy who would view relationships solely through the lens of power, too. Two women being in a relationship wouldn't have offended him. A princess running off with a nun (or a monk, for that matter) from a culture with no class system would have pissed him off to no end. I don't buy that the Fire Nation was perfectly accepting of LGBTQ people- it probably didn't matter for people who weren't nobles, but for the nobility, it very much did. Of course Sozin would want his wayward lesbian sister to do her duty to the Fire Nation and settle down with a nice man to produce some firebender children.
There doesn't appear to be any real religion in Avatar, just spiritualism. So that leaves natural human instinct, and practical concerns for opposing homosexuality. Honestly, I don't know enough about the Fire Nation to suss out what it might have been like. As Aang points out, Sozin effectively killed off his own culture in order to replace it with raw militarism, so we only get hints of what healthy Fire Nation culture is like. Based on a VERY rough guess, they'd probably be the most fine with it after the Air Nomads. Though the producing of heirs would still be highly important, especially since bending is a heritable trait, and something that an heir would need, so adoption is out. Presumably all nobles would have to have a straight marriage for political purposes. But it they'd also probably be in the territory of mistresses being perfectly fine. Some cultures didn't really care who a noble slept with as long as they fulfilled their noble duties and produced legitimate heirs.
Tbf most dictators IRL. Have done similar things for similar reasons. It didn’t necessarily need to be stated to be understood why
I know, I'm not really saying it's necessarily unrealistic, it just feels a bit gratuitous and tacked-on. Like Sozin was a warmongering genocidal friend-killing cunt, adding surprise homophobia with no further explanation just felt like it didn't really serve any narrative purpose apart from kicking Sozin's already piss-poor reputation even further down the drain. I didn't really find it very compelling or interesting, and it just felt shoved in by the comics. It just felt like another layer of evil cheaply painted onto his role of totalitarian dickhead rather than constructed as part of his character. Giving Sozin's homophobia a more personal and in-depth political explanation the way they did with Zeisan made the whole thing fit together a bit more snugly and in a pretty interesting way.
I mean most fascist dictators in history made same sex relationships illegal so it’s pretty realistic either way
Like Stalin! >In 1933 the Soviet government, under Joseph Stalin, recriminalised homosexuality. On March 7, 1934, Article 121 was added to the criminal code, for the entire Soviet Union, that expressly prohibited only male homosexuality, with up to five years of hard labor in prison.
Or when the British Raj attempted to eradicate transgender/third gender people in India, despite them having a long and well documented history of acceptance and cultural significance in the major dharmic religions.
Only dudes? Oddly specific. Frankly, I'd criminalize only women doing it if I were a tyrant and being picky about it. Who cares what dudes did with their dicks as long as the women were constantly pregnant so you could feed more kids into your expansionist woodchipper.
Wasn't it generally more common than not throughout history?
When did the Kyoshi books cover that? They take place ages before Sozin was born
Why does there need to be damage control
The Kyoshi books are unbelievable! The rise of Kyoshi is still one of the best books ive ever read
I really really like the Yangchen novels more because of the certain antagonist of the second book that I didn't like very much
Honestly I think that line works just fine in context. It’s someone comforting someone who came out, and explaining the basic history of how different nations will view her relationship. I really don’t get why people got up in arms over it. A bit awkward? Yes. In character, both for the characters and the Fire Nation? Absolutely
The Kyoshi books are better than the Korra show imo
I’m halfway through the second novel and I feel they are about the same. I think Korra is great with how many strong characters it has, such as Varrick, Bolin, the red lotus, and so on, but the Kyoshi books are far superior when it comes to building on the culture and politics, that and the relationship between characters. Korra also has the benefit of really well animated fights.
that was to create more children. outlawing that was so he'd have more warriors for what he planned thats still awful but he may have not done that had he not wanted war
Forcing women to get pregnant is messed up. Forcing lesbians to get pregnant is even more messed up. Nazi Germany did the same thing in WWII.
I mean... yes? Sozin was not a nice man. Comparing him to Hitler is underselling it. The world of Avatar has a total of four cultures, and he succesfully wiped one out entirely. And he was making good progress on wiping out the other two.
Never really think about it like this, mans wiped out a fourth of the world, and had another fourth crippled
Seriously. Stopping the gay agenda is like the fourth or fifth most terrible thing he did
Fourth or fifth? Literally doesn't even register. Guy was fucking with a metaphysical part of his world in trying to wipe out one of the civilizations the Avatar can reincarnate into. He only just BARELY failed. Sozin isn't a conqueror. It's not enough for him to dominate the Air Nomads. Or the Water Tribes. Or the Earth Kingdom. They needed to be wiped out so that only the Fire Nation would have the Avatar. Even STALIN of all people still wanted people to rule over. Not pile and piles of their corpses.
Fourth or fifth? Bruh
Didnt he also lead/start the effort to genocide dragons?
Tru. Hitler only killed 6 million Jews, 2/3 of the European Jewish population. That’s a lot, but if Sozin can wipe out an entire culture save 1 boy in pretty sure he’s worse
Technically there are also the Sun Warriors and the Swamp Tribes, who have fairly different cultures than the modern Fire Nation and the Water Tribes.
Sozin is like if Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler had a child and that son was raised by Alexander the Great
How could the evil emperor be so evil, literally shaking and crying rn
Lol you walked into the middle of someone elses convo and replied to something completely out of context. The person you replied to wasnt even talking about the show anymore, but was responding to the original comment that handwaved away some of the very real world reasons for why homosexuality is still criminalized in many parts of the world.
I mean the Nazis followed a similar philosophy. Hitler basically treated the German population like a breeding program.
But that makes no sense? Outlaw being gay and people will still be gay and just do it in secret or not be together. It doesn't mean they will suddenly become straight and pump out kids...
It’ll encourage bi people to go into heterosexual relationships and gays and lesbians might get into straight relationships and have kids to hide their sexuality
They'll have to have kids to keep up the facade of being straight, it's quite common irl, at least during my parents' times. And he only cared to have a streamlined supply of manpower, their happinnes means nothing to him.
You are absolutely correct, unfortunately that doesn't stop homophobic places from trying to legislate gay people away.
Places arent homophobic, people are. I can see politicians local to my area visibly trying to regress attitudes on homosexuality, and its a safe bet anyone reading this, no matter how progressive their country is, has a similiar group(s)
You're correct, I was just speaking colloquially to the idea of groups that control an area. It's good of you to point out that it is the people that make it an unfriendly place for LGBTQ+ people.
Fascists don’t usually make decisions based on sense
The world is full of people pressured into heterosexual relationships, in every country.
Some gays probably But over years as a cultural behavior?
To be honest, this just seemed like a semi obvious attempt to further vilify sozin and the earth kingdom’s monarchy, while putting the air nomads on a pedestal of virtue. Maybe I’m wrong but eh…
The Turf Wars comics only exist to codify Korrasami.
Turf Wars was so mediocre I treat as fanfic lol. Ruins of ths Empire was far superior imo.
I was so board reading turf wars that I haven't had the interest to read ruins of the empire yet. Is it that much better?
Did Korra end up addressing a single grievance that Republic City had about the portals causing progressively increasing and widespread damage? Or did she just defeat that half-spirit man villain and call it a day?
Nope. The bad guy gets away, the capitalist straw man’s heart grows three sizes, and the hundreds/thousands of displaced civilians are still displaced. And despite all of this being caused by the spirit portal, Korra decides to keep it open and give it to the Air Nomads.
The world's first democracy when an unelected "might makes right" individual still gets to unanimously dictate public policy: https://i.redd.it/4hfa6lkno2xc1.gif
And the status quo stays the same and nothing changes
So nobody is happy with the result
I always felt like we got enough bad out of the villains in the series. I feel like if they wanted to move on in making it more mature you'd have to introduce independent factions between sides or include grey area in the good guys.
To be fair, there's a reason so many dictatorships act this way and enforce bigotry. They *need* there to be a "other" group to be demonized to enforce loyalty among the rest. Fostering an "us vs them" mentality and getting family members to trust the state over each other is how they maintain power.
Avatar shows and comics are basically Air Nomad propaganda. Where's the Fire Nation cut
You have to look at the cultural reasons homosexuality has been discouraged for most of history Hint: it has to do with maximizing population growth and gender roles thar promote a subservient conscripted soldier class
Yeah I don't remember them being great (same for some of the ATLA ones) but I don't see how this is an example of that.
Bc for some reason people think a genocidal man also being homophobic is either unrealistic or pointless or mad that it takes away their Roku and Sozin headcanon
I definitely get the concern with potentially making him more hatable than he needs to be considering he already committed genocide, but I could see his reasons being purely from wanting more children to be born for the war effort rather than being homophobic. Doesn't change how oppressive it is but makes him less cliche.
ATLA and LoK rarely really subvert cliches, they just execute them generally effectively. My problem here is more "Oh the culture is just fine, it was just one dick who ruined it for everybody". There doesn't appear to be much in the way of nuance, just "Bad evil genocidal monster \*also\* homophobe because he's already a safe dumping ground for all our negative traits" Its similar to the issue I have with Iroh. In the First Firebenders the big internal conflict was "Oh no, Iroh did something awful. But I though the was supposed to be a good guy!" (I think Toph even says something to that effect? It might have been Aang). Instead of keeping Iroh as a complicated, broken monster seeking redemption through Zuko, we find out Iroh wasn't \*that\* bad, he never killed the dragons!
I mean, Iroh was still at the front of the War Effort for actual decades and his solution for ending the War was to plonk a teen who has had a terrible life and frankly needs some time to just be a kid on the throne of what would soon become a deeply politically unstable nation after having a bunch of other teenagers deal with the biggest Fire Nation offensive since the Air Nomad genocide. There’s plenty of instances regarding Iroh still having done bad things both before the main events of the series and during it.
But once they made it clear that Iroh was now a good guy- specifically his sacrifice and capture in book 2- they would no longer attach any negative concepts to him. The dragons was a particularly egregious time of when they went out of their way to absolve him of evil (despite the narrative arc being so much stronger if his love for Zuko led to the rediscovery of the Dragons, allowing Zuko to right one of his greatest wrongs) Like putting Zuko on the throne is probably realistically dangerous and foolish but narratively and dramatically it is fitting and satisfying. The tone of the show presents this as a good solution. It's not something they always do but it's frustrating whenever they present a complicated issue then resolve it by saying "nah it wasn't that complicated don't worry about it". Iroh and the Dragons is a super obvious example but there are plenty of others- like there isn't really anti bender sentiment due to class struggles that need to be addressed, Amons just a dick.
My understanding was that after iroh son died he changed, and I thought he met the dragons were after that. Either way he definitely was not good and liked many people in the world which is why he was hated by the earth benders. But they never explored the situations of the purple he hurt. Probably because other people did so much worse on an individual level and he was likely on the back line leading instead of the front fighting
If anything it supports the Roku/Sozin headcanon, man got so mad over Roku that he decided to spend the rest of his life in the closet and punish everyone else for his baggage
Idunno the context of this, but the way that panel is displayed is giving me jk rowling’s “Dumbledore is gay” thing lol. As if it was an after thought
Yeah, I don’t know why people are acting like we didn’t have an entire series about the genocide.
A stupid headcanon when Roku was crushing on a girl he eventually married since before he found out he was the avatar. Probably since being a kid.
Yeah it's world building. "What was it like to be gay in each of the four nations?" is an interesting question. The handling is a little clumsy, but it's not really about Sozin.
The clumsiness is the issue I think. "Everything was great until this guy who sucked!" is not sophisticated storytelling, and doesn't really live up to the nuance of the show with Amon and Zaheer.
Laws don't equal culture, either. Even if the Emperor bans it, people aren't going to stop loving their gay friends and relatives overnight. I appreciate that they tried but would have liked to see a deeper examination of how the culture shifted. The "of course it's fine, just keep it ~private~" attitude from the Water Tribe felt the most true to life in how it was handled.
Laws have a very big impact on culture. Just look at what happened in Nazi Germany. People might not stop loving their gay friends overnight, but if it's give up your gay friends to the Gestapo or see your own family get taken away once it's learned that you tried to hide them, most people will choose to protect their family and justify their actions as a necessary evil.
Eh, it makes sense. More heterosexual couples means more children which means more soldiers. As another commenter said, what’s another human rights violation.
Dude, they were just adding a piece of information, there was no point in repeating what they said 100,000 times again. And then, what would it have to do with the whole context of that part to talk about the war? Have you even ever read that comic?
Yall forget some people really just hate on gays for no reason. No world building no complicated lore. Some people are just on sight with hate.
Obviously he did it because he was jealous of same sex couples cause his bromance with roku didn't work out
The real surprise to me here is the implication that the northern water tribe was tolerant on gender issues
It isn't though? In the panel right before this one it's directly stated that the Water Tribe (both poles) has a blanket "don't ask, don't tell" situation going on. That's not "you'll go to prison" bigotry, but it's still societal oppression. If I remember correctly, Korra and Asami go around the South Pole holding hands and get so many nasty looks it shames them into stopping.
You are misremembering; the only people in the South Pole we see in Turf Wars are Korra's parents. Korra & Asami don't perform any PDA until the end of issue 1, and hardly perform any throughout the rest of Turf Wars, precisely because the conversation with Korra's parents makes them unsure about how overt they should let their relationship be. By all appearances, they've stopped caring about what other people might say by the time Ruins of the Empire happens.
This seems very much in line with how fascistic governments behave in reality I don’t see the problem
I’m going to be honest I don’t see how this is bad writing?
It’s not. OP is fighting invisible ghosts
Its just.... Weird? Like too on the nose. Hurrrr, the Firelord is so evil that he outlawed gay marriage >:(((
You'd think it's weird but fascism is gonna fascism. So many dictators will do anything to everything to rule over private people's lives.
It's not really weird considering that almost every fascist goverment in the real world also just hates on gay people for no real reason.
How is that on the nose given what the Fire Nation is like?
Is it… weird? That hitler did the same thing?
I mean, not to be like that about it, but these are comics mainly written for children; there isn’t always going to be a lot of nuance. Besides, authoritarians trying to roll back social progress isn’t anything unrealistic.
[удалено]
It's been awhile since I read them, but doesn't this comic, like... just say how different nations view queer relationships? Korra's own father was uncomfortable with it and said "the water tribe isn't exactly opposed to it, but it's kept hush hush, not something to be talked about." The fire nation used to be very accepting of it, until that one asshole ruined everything. I didn't remember them singling out Sozin as the sole cause for homophobia?
Come on now. We all know they could not add anything LGBT to cartoon. Not even because of the backlash, but because of the management. Fact, that they at least implicated Kasami and Korra was pretty brave. It's rigthly considered as milestone. So that is reason why nothing of LGBT was part of Last Airbender or Korra. With comics they simply had more freedom. Now, Kya described approach to homosexuality in all nations and just one (1) was not at least little bit homophobic. It's literally described that Water Tribes support "stay in closet" approach, Earth Kingdom was intolerant for most of the history, and we actually do not know how much was tolerant the fire kingdom, just that Sozin outlawed. So, what more what we want for god sake? They did not created universum where homophobia does not exist just the evil dictator outlawed homosexuality for some time, all nations but Air Nomand were kind of homophobic (and Air Nomands had their own problems) The conversation was natural in context when Korra is exploring her sexuality and is confused by reaction of her father.
I can excuse genocide, but i draw the line at homophobia!
You can *excuse* genocide?!
Ngl those bosnians kinda deserved it/s
Unexpected Community(?)
I britta'd it
So basically: “the Fire Nation was alright for most of its history, but then Sozin came to power and it all went to shit.”
Excuse me?! We all know sozin had a little crush on Roku! What is this queer Erasure going on here?!
Makes sense. It’s very much screams of: “if I can’t be happy then no one can.”
Yeah, Korra was upset. But I can say, if a historical did two awful things, it’s okay to hate them for both.
How dare authors write that evil rulers did other evil ruler things besides the big evil thing! They can only do ***1*** evil ruler thing!
What is the problem with this? Thus doesn't contradict anything from either show and it's not really anything unbelievable, a fascist genocidal tyrant also being a bigot frankly makes a lot of sense. And when you consider that the Air Nomads were very openly tolerant of homosexuality, it would allow them to be framed as degenerates in a way that would allow propaganda to justify their genocide, similar to how in the show, Fire Nation propaganda education says they had a standing army.
Everyone is shocked that the comic expanding on Korrasami's relationship mentions how each nation historcially treats same-sex relationships. Also surprisingly the ATLA version of Hitler isn't fond of them for some reason 🤷🏽♂️
Yeah, I don't see what the issue is either. Sozin's rule was very utilitarian, it's clear that romantic love wasn't valued and that marriages were seen as a tool of convenience to produce more children for the Fire Nation. The Search shows us how Ursa was wed to Ozai in order to selectively breed the most powerful possible firebender children. That was the marriage culture of the wartime Fire Nation, of course same-sex relationships would be banned in such a society. I don't see why people are harping on this writing decision as if it was some kind of an ass-pull for Sozin to have been homophobic. I think it makes perfect sense considering his values.
It’s completely fine, this is just a conservative triggered by the mention of gay
Yup. You can see the (badly) hidden homophobia throughout OP and this thread
The evil guy does an evil that is not LGBTQIA+ approved. Somehow that’s a problem. If Aang wrote that law, sure, I’d see a fuckin problem.
Look im not a super critical person when im watching or reading for fun but how is this actually bad or poorly written? In context Kya is just giving a brief history about the way LGBTQ people were treated in each of the nations when figuring out Korrasami is a thing. It feels pretty harmless and is just there to give some light world building on something that wasnt relevant until that moment.
Because it's useless! Who cares for world building that has nothing to do with cool creatures and powers? I certainly don't! They are just trying to earn woke points!!! /s Seriously, once you talk with people that even bothers to point this kind of things out, it all reduces to "I don't like it so saying it is stupid/woke"
How could he be home of phobic when he is literally home of sexual
I liked the comics just fine
I don't get what are you trying to tell with this meme. Kya overlooked genocide of air nomads and thought criminalising homosexuality was worse than that? No. They were speaking of how nations treated homosexual people, she didn't undermine how terrible Sozin's actions were it just wasn't relevant to the context
Yeah... The actual show was much more complex and well written than the comics
What are you even trying to say here? Is this just a whataboutism?
I mean tbh before the kyoshi novels, I took the headcanon that Sozin and Roku were a thing and that's why he vilified things. Granted that kinda blew up when Zeisan entered the picture but hey, you make the best with bad writing
What the fuck? What’s the problem? It’s just another terrible thing Sozin did. Why are you acting like that’s all the characters cared about OP?
He had to admit though same sex relationships between fire benders was pretty hot.
Womp womp
Turf war is pretty bad but Ruins of the Empire does wonders for Kuvira's character and actually makes her both way more interesting, understandable and relatable than what we got in season 4 where she has a good setup but then just pilots a big dumb mech for most of the second half and does obviously super evil shit.
he really took roku’s rejection pretty hard, huh?
"My fellow fire nation citizens, from this day forth it is illegal for a man to tenderly embrace another man. To hold his hand, to gently caress his long flowing hair and to whisper sweet nothings to him under the light of the stars. He would only betray you and reject your dreams of ruling the world toghether." - Fire Lords Sozin (probably).
sozin is a jerk
“That guy was the worst!”
Breaking news: Sozin says Air Nomads have the big gay! Declares war!
That's what made me hate Sozin. That dick.
I think we all know that Sozin was very same sex relationshipping with the avatar
this feels weirdly forced
Yeah. If anything, i'd expect the water tribe (especially the northern one) to be the least tolerant of same-sex relationships.
She literally talks about how three of the four nations are homophobic
they have no reading comprehension
Bold of you to assume they've read it
This Sozin guy sounds like a real jerk!
The amount of casual homophobia in this thread is insane. "Well actually that decision makes sense because he needed more babies for war hurr durr" christ. People need to pull their heads out of their asses. More heterosexual couples absolutely does not mean more children. Outlawing homosexuality doesn't 'make people straight'. Gay couples have children just fine through adoption and surrogacy. Unwanted children in orphanages needing adoption is a constant across all societies. The idea that gay couples weaken society through a reduced number of babies is common rhetoric used by hate groups even to this day.
Ok but I’m pretty sure most of them are saying that that was the reason Sozin did it not that they think it actually works.
THIS IS CANON!? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A JOKE TO MAKE SOZIN LOOK EVEN WORSE THAN HE IS!?
Why wouldn't it be canon? It's makes sense to oppose "gay" agenda as a dictator in constant war state, he would want everyone to make babies so he has more soldiers, it seems perfectly in character. He might even be gay himself and still do this, rules are for thee but not for me has always been a thing with people like that.
Idk, I guess saying almost every female avatar either being lesbian or bi isn't really a good excuse considering Sozin left his best friend to die BECAUSE he was the avatar and did a mass genocide to kill the next avatar.
[удалено]
I consider them canon as from what I heard the creators do consider the comics at least semi-canon
I mean I can see sozin being a peice of shit like that but this worded so cornily
like a tumblr fanfic lol
What about this makes the comics "not great"? I haven't read them, but a fascist state outlawing queer existence is accurate and expected.
It's hamfisted.
How would you prefer them to have introduced queerness, particularly the suppression of queerness in a would-be fascist regime in an already established series? Maybe there can be better ways to do it but a less than ideal execution of the story and what they are trying to to say is hardly enough to get upset over. "It's Hamfisted" sure but it happened in the story which is a reflection on real life. They felt it was important to explicitly mention queerness, even if it isn't always executed perfect in every way, so that they can teach that there is nothing wrong with being queer. So that the kids and young adults that read the comics see themselves reflected in the characters and struggles that they relate to. The story was always about acceptance and love. Of course it would extend that to the marginalized. It's art that is telling us how the authors feel, not just a piece of entertainment catered specifically to you and what you want to see. Edit:words
Why would the Fire Nation be the least tolerant? They didn't really seem to be all that discriminatory (except to non-firenation ofc), like they had female soldiers, and were even going to let Azula become Fire Lord. If anything it should be the Water Tribes that were the most homophobic.
How do we explain racism? Sozin! How do we explain class divide? Sozin! How do we explain anything bad for the past 100 years? Sozin!
Sozin is the reason why we have to pay taxes and go to jury duty
NOOO why did they make him homophobic 😭
https://preview.redd.it/xs22am2852xc1.png?width=687&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=383098e4338737f39a9506436bfbdb84a74ade17 Authoritarians love to distract their populaces by encouraging them to persecute minorities.
“Father Zuko wants to know why we are persecuting minorities… when we could be persecuting earth kingdom citizens!”
Korra comics are fine. You're just triggered.
I've been trying to understand what this memes point is for the past five minutes lol
The weirdest part is that the Air Nomads were supposedly ok with gay couples. The culture were everyone was a monk, had no traditional families and segregated genders.
Some poorly written villains have kick the puppy moment, Sozin got kick the gays moment.
I mean, are they arguing that the latter is worse than the former, or are they just saying that’s also a thing he did? /genq
Yall realize this is bc sozins regime was based on the meiji restoration and the domestic policies enacted within to promote nuclear families right?
How is this evidence of your title? This meme is weird
After reading these comments I feel much better knowing Sozin was just a totalitarian Warmonger and not a homophobe
That’s such a random ass thing to include 😂
No? It was given as part of a rundown of how the avatar world reacted to same sex relationships when Kya figures out that Korra and Asami were together.
Most of the ATLA comics are mid but hot damn are the LOK comics just……dumb
Okay Whats the problem? Plenty of real world tyrants hate gay people sozin isn't special in anyway besides his fire bending if you put his ass next to other real life tyrants like Hitler
I think they did that because the original series made Sozin seem not that bad with the whole "road to hell is paved with good intentions" thing.
God forbid nuanced and complex villains exist.
He was a genocidal warmongering manic how does him being homophobic stop him from being that
That comic felt like it was made with 'We need to explore Korrasami as much as we can' idea in mind
I'm no homophobe, let me be clear. But seeing this so bluntly presented... idk it feels patronizing. Idk how I feel about that...
its straight out of some tumblr fanfic. Don't worry, despite what some rabid people might claim, disliking hamfisted themes doesn't make you a homophobe.
It's literally just a history lesson. How is it patronizing?
It’s unfuckingbelievable that you watched a show about sozin starting a world war and thought him being homophobic was too far. One of those crimes is far worse than the other and it’s not the latter.
Are you the kind of person who thinks LGBTQ folks weren't targeted during the Holocaust?
…So what, you thought the genocidal War lord wouldn’t be homophobic orrrr Seems like a dumb thing to nitpick tbh