#literally “aang is so racist for not liking this one water tribe dish” “actually zuko dismissing aang’s anti-revenge philosophy is the same | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lokgifsandmusings · 7 years

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the ATLA comic gets worse and worse the longer I think about it

Look. North and South was bad. Really, really bad. Like, even if we ignore unfortunate implications, the character arcs were incoherent messes that didn’t fit those involved, and there was no resolution to the “plot”, which also served to counter canon.

I was critical in my review of Part 2, not seeing a way this could work, and really critical in Part 3, when everything came crashing down on its head.

But today was the digital release, and as I went back through it, there were two panels I missed, which relate something I need to talk about. In length. Because the worst part about North and South is that it was kind of accidentally (at least I’d assume) pro-imperialism. Pro-imperialism.

So yeah. Below the cut is going to be some yelling.

I mentioned this in my reviews, but for some reason, Gene saw fit to make the primary antagonist a guy from the South who was very, very, very against foreign intervention.

Yes, this makes little sense taking canon into consideration, since the South was already fighting the war and seeing the world, while the isolationist North was hiding behind a wall for 99.9% of it. As a bridge to the LoK Water Tribe dynamics, none of this works. But let’s just ignore that and focus instead on what this argument does.

Yes, globalization and international cooperation has a lot of benefits. And it totally makes sense that after the Gaang’s experience, they’d be more on this side. However, consider the Southern Water Tribe’s role in the war, which literally just ended: next to the Air Nation, they suffered the most. The Southern Raiders ravaged their villages, nearly everyone was dragged off to war, and Southern children grew up with a visceral fear of ash falling from the sky.

Add to this how the South is more egalitarian, and far less patriarchal and power-concerned than literally any other nation (save for the exterminated airbenders). This is the case in ATLA and in LoK; there are chieftains, plural, who operate together as a kind of Council of Elders. Unalaq disbands them and that’s a huge fucking deal. Of course after the civil war they get Chief in the South Tonraq, which was a little odd, tonally. Though in fairness, he was dicked out of his hereditary position as chief of both tribes, and it was the Southern Council of Elders that made this decision.

I digress.

The point is, Gilak (the leader of the anti-foreign-intervention Southerners) has very reasonable concerns. Everyone in the South has very reasonable concerns about what adopting foreign laws and being forced into a certain mold of development could mean.

In Part 1, we learn Hakoda was made Head Chieftain and is having a palace constructed for himself. That’s kind of a big deal, and for some reason, this never goes challenged and the comic ends with this still being the case.

Despite how the South has literally been fighting a war against colonizers for 100 years to the point of being economically devastated and needing help of their sister tribe to rebuild, and despite how we learn in part 2 that even the North views their intervention as a way to exploit them--no seriously...their plan was to STEAL THEIR OIL because the South was "too backwards to handle it”--Gene goes above and beyond to paint anyone in the South that is against this foreign involvement as backwards xenophobes throughout the entire comic.

And like, I’m not exaggerating in the slightest. These people shouting “foreigners out”...THIS is what they heard like, a couple of weeks beforehand:

Guys, this is an act of war. The Northern developers were literally owning up to a plan to steal their oil.

And then Zuko, the leader of the fucking nation they fought against for a century arrives in a giant airship that has to be just a touch bit threatening in their eyes, no?

So no, Zuko, you shouldn’t be there. And I still have no clue why Hakoda even invited him and the Earth King down to propose to them his plan for economic growth. He apparently needed resources to build...something...but a) that’s why the North is there, b) wouldn’t the Fire Nation have already definitely been paying reparations?, and c) optics, dude. People were already a wee bit sensitive to this exact thing because of the developers YOU brought in being goddamn colonists.

And like, I’m not trying to make an argument that Hakoda is a vichy tribesman or anything, because again, there is a case to be made for globalization helping to lift the South out of the economic despair they’re in. A strong case, even. But this needed to be something discussed and decided BY the South. The fact is, Hakoda being Head Chieftain is a problem, and this is certainly not an issue where you can claim one side is “right” and the other side are backwards xenophobes.

We live in the age of Trump. The age of brexit. We live at a time where there are calls for mass deportations and travel bans on the basis of race and religion. And we CERTAINLY live at a time where we hear people screaming “foreigners out,” and yeah, we can’t for a single second allow that shit to stand.

But the power dynamics in the avatar-verse are completely different. The cultural history is completely different. The Southerners, they’re people screaming just for a right to exist with their own laws and control of their own resources. This could totally be rhetoric they would realistically use, but it’s rhetoric that has a specific meaning to us, the readers. And by putting it in their mouths, we are instantly primed to demonize them. By making Gilak the antagonist who wants to murder Hakoda, we demonize them.

The intersection of murder and cultural subjugation is not simplistic, it’s really not. This would still be bad to read if Clinton had won. But to be reading it in an age where that intersection is somewhere we’re actually standing at? Or at least the intersection of violence (#puncheverynazi) and oppression? It’s irresponsible. It’s tone deaf.

Frankly, it’s dangerous.

The thing that got me the most upset today and that I had missed before was this:

Yeah, his joy at Zuko’s pain is not exactly a healing mindset. But here’s how Gene resolved it:

Again, media is not created or consumed in a cultural vacuum. We know what the word “slur” connotes. It’s bad, and this man is a racist. Boom, morality.

Except, this is not a slur. It’s fucking not. It’s maybe the equivalent of someone calling a German a “nazi” a couple of years after WWII ended, which was...ya know, an actual thing. The Fire Nation, in this case were the perpetrators of violence and GENOCIDE. “Ash-maker” is an on-the-nose label for these oppressors, considering they burned people alive, very literally (like Katara’s mother???), and also made ash fall from the sky before attacking this man’s people over and over and over.

Yes, a broad-brush mentality is not constructive. But to call out this as an impolite slur and inherently make the case that this man is driven by blind prejudice is absurd. To put that case in the mouth of Aang, the SOLE SURVIVOR OF THE GENOCIDE, is nothing short of horrifying.

And you know what the fucking best part of this is? Gilak was right in the end. The South was taken over by foreign influence. (This is even ignoring LoK canon, because Gene sure as hell did.) Hakoda remains the Head Chieftain, literally shacking up with one of the Northerners who came to colonize, and then this moment:

Comes full circle to this:

Uh wait, isn’t there one dish missing? Like idk, one from the SOUTH? Seriously, this is the celebratory feast they throw after getting rid of that asshole Gilak who was fighting to preserve his culture or something.

Yes, it’s that bad.

#atla meta #north and south #atla comics #musings

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