'I'M THE AVATAR! YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH IT!

Spoilers for the first two episodes of The Legend of Korra are to follow. If you are in the Avatar fandom but have been living under a mayonnaise jar for the past few days, and would like to remain unspoiled, please select another page to view. Thank you.

Are we good?


Really?


...Good.


I actually took up Nickelodeon's offer to download the first two episodes for free on iTunes, so I've been letting my opinions percolate for the past few days now. And overall, I think I'm very satisfied.

Korra strikes me as a good heroine thus far, reminiscent of Toph in her take-charge, no-holds barred, "I love fighting and being a bender" attitude; along with, of course, the fact that she's grown up confined to a training compound in the South Pole and has probably never had friends her own age. I think the appeal of her possible character arc will be in watching how she gradually (or quickly) comes to understand things in Republic City, and how she must carry on Aang's legacy in a world very different from the one he first saved.

Plus, she rides a giant polar bear dog. Awesome.

And while we're on the subject of Toph, I also want to give Chief Lin Bei Fong my complete and total approval. Some people have been saying that she's a frigid, ignorant pedant who is the complete opposite of her mother in every possible way, but I think that's the kind of thing that following up the Greatest Earthbender in the World might do to you. She has to be that hard and tough; Republic City was probably her mother's vision and creation just as much as it was Aang and Zuko's. Seeing it all go pear-shaped because of crime is something that is JUST. NOT. ACCEPTABLE.

Did she and Tenzin have a thing? I think she and Tenzin had a thing. I think she had an unrequited crush on him because they grew up together as kids and spent long hours practicing/meditating/what have you together whenever their parents attended a counsel. Because yes.

Who is her father, by the way? That's probably something we'll be kept in the dark about for a while, so I welcome your theories.

But what I'm most excited for, really, is seeing how these villains play out. I mentioned this in a conversation earlier, but I've always thought there was a potential social conflict behind the disparities being a bender vs. a non-bender would create: especially in an industrialized economy that runs mostly on things like steam and coals (do you spend exorbitant amounts of money making a huge boiler for your factory that can break down, or pay firebenders and waterbenders? Do you invest in blasting and mining materials, or do you get some earthbenders together?) and where the prime high-paying sport is a competition between benders.

How many non-benders have seats on the city counsel? What are their rights? Do benders require a license to practice within the city, similar to the way people require a license to carry handguns? (Which is to say that you have to go through the Department of Public Safety in order to have one, meaning things like being registered and having a background check conducted.) Bryke promised us more gray areas between our heroes and our villains this time around, so I'm looking forward to seeing this resolved.

Hmmm, what else?

Ships: Pema and Tenzin. Of course. Especially when you consider the following:

1. As the only available airbender, Tenzin must have been under quite a bit of pressure to get married from the time he was a young man
2. He was the son of the Avatar, one of the most powerful political and spiritual figures in the world, and was in no want of offers and requests
3. Despite all of this, and given the age of his eldest child (10 years old), he still waited until he was 41 to get married. That's quite a while, especially when your wife is sixteen years your junior.

My bets are on the idea that Pema came to Air Temple Island as an acolyte when she was 19 or 20 and found herself under the tutelage of the Avatar's serious, youngest son: who, having recently lost his father, was at something of a difficult place mentally and spiritually. As a generally kind, good-spirited and good-humored person, Pema might have tried to establish a purely platonic working relationship with him, because that was something small that she could do to help. Since I can't see Tenzin hurrying into a relationship, this probably developed into something more over time: just the way I like my ships.

(I also have a May-December soft spot, probably from reading so many works by Robin McKinley. Ah well.)

I'm pretty sure I already know who I ship Korra with, too, and if you can guess it I'll draw you a picture. But we'll keep that off the table for now.

Thoughts? Ideas? Theories? Anything I've left out that you want to talk about?