Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
[Airbender] The legend of Korra: I am the solution.
Posts
My biggest question about Amon and the equalists is, who is funding these dudes? They seem to have the most advanced tech in the city.
They probably aren't being funded by benders, for obvious reasons. But who does that leave? Almost everyone wealthy/powerful in the original series was a bender. There's the Kyoshi warriors, there's the sword master Fire Nation guy, there's Azula's old friends who I'm guessing come from wealthy families.
All of those seem unlikely. Maybe there's a new economic force at work. Or maybe they are being funded by benders. One group that comes to mind would be the metalbending cops. It probably helps them to have equalists taking bender criminals off the street. Plus Toph's family was super-rich.
Or maybe Cabbage Man is behind the funding. We never saw him sell his cabbages, and he somehow had the funds to continue refilling his cart.
Except Amon's motivations. I understand they are realistic, but every time I hear the reasoning it makes me want to hit my head against a wall to make the stupid go away.
What if the weapon had been a KNIFE?
To be fair, a lot of people whose relatives are murdered by a gun become very anti-gun and support or start movements and organizations that are working to have guns banned.
I do love how some of his statements resonate with the scarier popular reactionary movements in real-world history, though. "Benders have started all wars."
There are similar issues with guns too, though less pronounced since far fewer people hunt game than chop vegetables or open boxes.
Not that any of his logic stops a few extremists popping up and trying for the absolute ban every so often. Which s what Amon is; an extremist, willing to use violence to influence public opinion, AKA a terrorist/freedom fighter.
DropBox invite link - get 250MB extra free.
Edit: the flipside to this argument is that maybe equality of opportunity isn't worth it if MAGIC IS REAL and you have to destroy it to get that ideal.
You.....don't really pay attention to the world, do you?
Cognitive dissonance. It is a thing.
Particularly when you get to zealots, which is what Amon is.
I just haven't seen anything in the world specifically repressing non-benders. Sure, the rich and powerful tend to be benders. But nothing is preventing a non-bender merchant king. Most of the reason the rich are benders is not specifically because they themselves were benders, but because they were nobility (bending just being a part of it).
Like that gang leader. A gang leader doesn't need to be a bender, and in fact his bending probably was only tangentially related (gave him a leg up at the start, not so useful later on unless his people require constant fear whipping).
Edit: it is established that bending is hereditary, right? It's not like Harry Potter magic where the kid of non-wizard parents can become a wizard?
there, I said it.
Like CCGs? Check my CCG's Thread in CF and help me playtest it!
Also, I'm not sure if Toph's parents were benders or not, so who knows.
*One notable exception, but you know. Everyone makes mistakes. Plus dude shouldn't have been hanging around the triads!
The Equalist rep in the park was specifically attacked by benders once and threatened by one of them before. A gang leader could be a bender, but it's far more likely when they have the powerful advantage of what's essentially a built in, unseeable, always accessible bazooka. Which will most definitely stretch to the rest of society. People would understandably be intimidated by any bender and fearful of upsetting them.
Actually, not even an exception so far. Bolin was working for the Triad. I doubt very much whatever it was he was doing was in support of a legal and fair enterprise.
Essentially what we have at this point is a man rounding up criminal benders who abuse their power and removing it from them. His ultimate goal is extremely suspect but up to this point he's literally done nothing I would consider evil and from another POV would even support.
Outreach News Your constantly expanding resource for all Mechwarrior news and updates.
Still, there has to be something to this if so many people show up to a anti-bending rally. Maybe all the uber wealthy folks in the city are all benders and Amon is just perpetuating the stereotype.
Think about it. The city council? Benders. The elite and top brass of the police force? Benders. Gangsters? All benders, so far.
Even if there's no actual oppression on the part of the city's elite, a perception that benders are running the show is certainly understandable.
Also, the main difference between benders and melee weapons such as swords and knives is that it's far more difficult to defend yourself against a firebender or an earthbender than a man with a knife in a streetfight.
All the non-benders we've seen take on benders and survive have had years and years of training and were, in all likelihood, at the pinnacle of martial skill.
It's simply not possible for normal citizens in the Korra setting to reliably defend themselves against benders without extreme proficiency in hand-to-hand combat, a skill which most citizens have neither the time nor the resources to acquire.
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
I don't have the least shred of sympathy for Amon, and don't think he has a point at all. He's using eliminationist rhetoric and fueling populist discontent for his own ends.
If criminality is the problem, you deal with the criminals. You don't ban the weapons they're using. Heck, the vast majority of benders are law abiding citizens. You don't take away their bending because others cant do it, especially not out of some warped idea of equality.
I am predicting that Amon will not be the final villain. He probably doesn't even really de-bend people.
I bet someone is using the equalists. Maybe someone who wants to destabilize Republic City.
Edit: @spool32, I disagree. First of all, we haven't actually seen much about the non-benders in Republic City. Mako and Bolin may not be sitting easy, but that's largely because of extortion by *other benders*. They also have a roof over their heads, jobs, etc. I don't think you'll find any benders living as bums in Central Park. In the first show, non-benders were largely farmers and peasants; in Ba Sing-Se they had a whole walled off section of poor-nonbenders. Only the Kyoshi had nonbending political power, and they lived on a godforsaken eel-haunted island. And as others have pointed out, in Republic City—and in every city in the previous show—benders appear to occupy all positions of power. I mean you can say that a sufficiently awesome nonbender could gain a similar amount of power but I think Marx's ideas about class warfare would obviously apply here, at least as a diagnosis of the problem.
I agree about Amon's demogoguery though. Seems to be a recurrent problem in real history too: oppressed underclass identifies a structural problem in society and then go too far off the deep end of zealotry in their attempt to solve it. And I love that the show has succeeded in being so morally ambiguous that we are even having this discussion in the first place
Actually, Republic City is the capital of an independent nation formed out of the Fire Nation colonies, so the Earth Nation and Fire Nation don't have much reason to get involved.
Even benders who were down on their luck at one point still have it better than your average urban poor. They can go into probending, they're sought-after by gangs, and as evidenced by the latest episode, it's quite easy for them to get industrial work if they so choose.
Like this guy:
Water is most likely Russian, although there is some chance that the two tribes represent the two sides of the Bering Strait. There's one ethnic group that has very similar traditional dress.
The Earth=China theory is nicely backed up by the resemblance of the Sandbender region to the Taklamakan Desert.
I'd say that the fact that he went directly to lightning bending seems to indicate that it is rare enough to demand a premium.
I had this exact same thought when Mako let loose with his backstory. It's basically a 1:1 rip of Bruce's life.
Pokemon Black code - 3009 7390 5907 Send PM if you add me
"Boy who witnesses terrible thing happens to family grows up to resent that thing" didn't start with Batman.
Pokemon Black code - 3009 7390 5907 Send PM if you add me
Neither of Katara's parents are benders.
Uh... I think you're missing a very important part of Katara's backstory.
Why assume that though? Bolin pretty clearly felt the need to get money by whatever means he could to supplement Mako, I doubt he would have been that desperate if Mako's other job would easily provide them the money.
No, he isn't. Katara's mother was not a bender. She said she was a bender so she'd get arrested and hauled to the Fire nation prisons instead of Katara. She didn't realize that the captain wasn't interested in taking prisoners that day.