Do you really know?

leafandleaf:

amazing-e-ko:

leafandleaf:

frozenviolets:

mis-chingaderitas:

Really, some people doesn’t get the sense of the main idea behind this. Mysogini? what? Oi! sorry to think that move on is better than being stuck loving someone who never gonna love you back. Downplaying a woman feelings, pffft! what a narrow minded statement.

And that doesn’t mean she has to love Ishida, I’m an IshiHime fan but I’m not that desesperate. Despite this secret is not favorable to the ship I support I have to admit that I’m glad that Ishida’s love for her is not that blinding, he cares for her and his friends. He tries to see the whole picture. He is in love, yeah and you don’t need to see the character saying it out loud.

What about understanding the message and the hints? besides text in comic, pictures are there to convey the message. It’s not Kubo’s fault that some of his readers can’t get it or don’t want to do it.

If he wants to move on and love someone who can love him back, I’m gonna be OK with that. I wish Ishida to be happy, with feelings reciprocated and not trying to justify my ship by insisting in making him some sort of pitiful and always unhappy person waiting to being loved. 

Same goes for Orihime. She deserves someone that can love her back, period, whoever he is.

Misogyny, yes. Hatred towards women. Looking down on women and their choices if you don’t like them. Minimising a woman’s feelings while blowing a man’s out of proportion. Shaming a woman for what she thinks and does constantly. Calling her unworthy” for not reciprocating a man’s feelings, which implies that those who say it believe said man is entitled to her heart.

And that secret? Is full of misogyny. To the fucking core.

Assuming that because she loves someone who is currently her friend and cares for her but may have other priorities makes her stupid? Priorizing another man’s only hypothetical feelings over her own? Treating that man’s “feelings” as superior? That secret does.

THAT, you know, is misogynistic. It’s treating that woman, Orihime, as if she was bad for OMG taking her own decisions in regards to men… while magnifying the second guy, Ishida, and his supposed feelings.  

Oh, and about Kubo? PLEASE. Kubo is clear on one thing: Orihime. Loves. Ichigo. For better or worse. He could have perfectly written Orihime as falling out of love with him after the Lust Arc. Guess what, he didn’t, and he actually made her feelings even stronger. 462, the chapter that made many people scream in horror and ire because she kept loving Ichigo despite being brainwashed, is a big proof. It made her break out of Tsukishima’s mind control, you know. But no, people kep insisting that she’s stupid, that she’s blind and her feelings are untrue as well as unworthy of minimal respect, and that the only way she can grow as a character is omfg falling out of love.

Well, FUCK THAT SHIT. It’s thanks to her feelings for Ichigo, whether a crush or true love, that Orihime adquired her powers and decided to do many things for herself. Such feelings ARE strong, and ARE an important part of her. Making it look like she’s immature, childish, slutty or stupid for loving a dude? Don’t make me laugh, people. Not when Kubo has REPETEADLY shown how important these feelings are for her. Not when she has right to fall for the dude she wants to, and her love is FAR more mature and FAR deeper than you guys want to see.

Oh, and not everything she sees of Ichigo is his prince-like side; fantasies from a teenage girl aren’t horrible and bad, but she has also seen his broken and sad side (um, Lust Arc? Tsukishima fight?), and she still likes cares for him. That means she understands that Ichigo is a flawed dude despite his heart of gold, and it hasn’t done anything against her love of him. The idea that she only sees him as perfect and a Knight in Shining Armor, then, it’s FALSE, and invented by her detractors to make her look bad again for daring to love Ichigo.

Orihime’s felings, which she chose to live on, are NOT horrible and invalid.The secret keeps trying to portray her as being immature, babyish, childish and stupid for liking Ichigo. While singing praises to Ishida’s “mature love” at the same time. Tell me, people, how is that not insulting and misogynistic?

Now, on Ishida. I actually don’t mind the idea of IshiHime in itself, but I detest how the fandom uses it. Many times it’s not about Orihime and Ishida but only about Ishida himself, about how he’s supposed to OWN her because he MAY have feelings for her. About how Ishida is some poor little baby who is always second fiddle to Ichigo, but at least must have that pussy for himself so he can be whole and get a consolation prize. Don’t people realize how creepy and selfish Ishida looks in shit like that? He cares for Orihime, and understands her relatively well, but his feelings aren’t more valid than her own just because he has a cock and Orihime likes a guy that isn’t him. And who many fangirls think is ~destined to be Rukia’s Twu Wub, considering that many of the people who spew this shit are rabid IchiRuki fans who think Rukia is entitled to Ichigo’s cock as the proof that she is The Bleach Heroine And Strong Woman. (Which is insanely insulting to Rukia, too.)

Ishida’s feelings are rather ambiguous, but rabid IshiHime fans often twist them into ~True Love~ that Orihime is obligated to reciprocate… when, guess what, she ISN’T. She doesn’t owe her tits to Ishida just because he MAY (and emphasis on MAY) like her as more than a friend, fandom, and she’s not “too immature” for him. And if he DOES like Orihime like that, then Ishida likely understands it, and knows he has no right to be a creepy Nice Guy (tm) to her. Unlike his rabid fans who think Orihime isn’t worth anything unless her mouth is attached to The Quincy Cock, like whoever made this secret.

And by the way? I think that Chad is closer to Orihime than Ishida is. Who thought that keeping Orihime out of fights was a bad idea? Who was training for 17 months with her?  Who brought her to the X-Cution HQ? That was all Chad. If Orihime did fall out of love with Ichigo (which I don’t really think she would, but isn’t impossible), she would most likely fall for Chad rather than for Ishida — for the simple fact that they’re closer friends, that they understand each other, and that they’ve shared many experiences together.

—————

Wow, this is an old post and I’m too lazy to reply to all of it, but I just have to say something against this bit:

“I actually don’t mind the idea of IshiHime in itself, but I detest how the fandom uses it. Many times it’s not about Orihime and Ishida but only about Ishida himself, about how he’s supposed to OWN her because he MAY have feelings for her.”

Hahaha. The same is said for IchiOri. o_o It’s ALWAYS about Orihime and NEVER about Ichigo’s feelings. Simply because Orihime has pined for him for sooooo long, IchiOris maintain that it is only ‘proper’ for Ichigo to reciprocate. Simply because Orihime’s feelings were so expounded upon, it is only ‘right’ for her to receive Ichigo as a prize, a shining trophy of a boyfriend, of a husband. Of course, Ichigo SHOULD feel very very lucky to have Orihime, because for some inexplicable reason, her love is the ONLY LOVE that matters, NO ONE would love him as much as she does because she’s the ONLY ONE who constantly talks about it (really?) It’s ALWAYS about how Orihime SHOULD OWN Ichigo because SHE LOVES HIM. 

All due to the IchiOri fandom sense of self-entitlement, Ichigo’s feelings for Rukia are ignored, dismissed, stomped upon, belittled, demeaned into ~simply friends~ because Ichigo MUST NOT, COULD NOT love anyone else if that person is not Orihime. Because Ichigo has never professed his love as verbally and vocally as Orihime had, it is fallaciously presumed that he does not have feelings for ANYONE. This is by using Orihime as the STANDARD BENCHMARK for the ultimate incontestable PURE love, ignoring Ichigo’s nature of character, inaccurately translating his actions as HIDDEN LOVE by ignoring background, framework, CONTEXT.

So tell me, isn’t your ship only about Orihime herself?? The IshiOri fandom is not even half as vocal and pushy as you are when it comes to shipping.

UGH. It’s my policy not to get involved in shipping fights on tumblr, because really what good can come of it? Nobody is going to change their minds, nobody is going to realise anything. We all just reinforce our own opinions.

But this response misses the point in such an overwhelming way that I have to respond. So let me make one thing clear. My response is not about shipping. I’m not interested in proving one side to the other. I just want to straighten out a few points.

There’s a crucial difference between what frozenviolets says and what leafandleaf says.

It’s true that I have seen some Ichihime fans say that Orihime deserves Ichigo, and yeah, that’s problematic. Nobody deserves anybody else’s love. But it’s obvious to me, at least, that most of those posts come from a place of naiveity. The posters don’t really mean that Ichigo is obligated to return Orihime’s love, they mean that the devotion Kubo has written her as having is so impressive that they believe that the narratively she deserves it. Whether or not they’re right, I’m not interested in talking about. I’m simply clarifying.

Another crucial point is that most Ichihime fans don’t follow that thinking. When Ichihime fans claim that their ship will be canon, it’s not usually because they think Ichigo is obligated to return Orihime’s love, it’s because they think he already does. Again, not interested in talking about whether or not that’s right. I’m only pointing out what they think. For them Ichigo’s realisation of his feelings isn’t connected to some kind of understanding that his old feelings were unworthy or made him weak or whatever - they’re connected to an understanding that Orihime is amazing and beautiful and he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

Whether that’s right or wrong, the sentiment is definitely positive. That can’t be disputed.

In contrast, what Ishihime fans say about Orihime returning Ishida’s love often has a much more unpleasant subtext. Again, this obviously isn’t true of all Ishihime fans, and I know there are many who don’t agree with what I’ll call the deathberry contingent, but there is a vocal group who say the kind of things that frozenviolets mentions.

The difference is that Ishihime criticisms treat Orihime’s current attitude as bad/unhealthy/weak/stupid in a way that Ichihime fans don’t. They don’t just focus on Ishida’s feelings - they outright imply that Orihime’s current attitude is wrong.

And yes, I know damn well that the deathberry contingent thinks this attitude is supported by canon. I’m not interested in that. The relevant point is that treating a girl’s feelings as worthless is misogyny, and a particularly common and unpleasant form at that.

Say what you like, but it has been noted time and time again, across the board of manga fandoms, that when a female character is in love with the “wrong” guy, her feelings are criticised in a particularly woman-unfriendly way. What we see happening to Orihime here has also happened to Sakura and Hinata, to Relena from Gundam and even to Winry from FMA. Girls get bashed for having feelings, and Ishihime fandom reinforces those unpleasant attitudes when it talks about Orihime.

That’s the criticism frozenviolets was making, and it’s perfectly legitimate.

Peace out.

Your argument is severely flawed. It doesn’t negate the fact that FV still misrepresented the position of everyone who has criticised Orihime’s behaviour by means of the strawman fallacy.

Both of you are disregarding the possibility that If Orihime were a guy and if this guy acts the same way towards a girl, most people would not be supportive of this guy’s one-sided love either.

Gender has nothing to do with it.

Trying to justify the rightful use of misogyny? U R STILL USING IT WRONG.

Ahahaha way to miss the entire substance of my post. Round of applause everyone, leafandleaf doesn’t get it.

I only have two things to say to your post.

1) Frozenviolets, unfortunately for everyone, isn’t strawmanning. Her word choice might be slightly exaggerated, but that’s it. Everything she quotes up there, I’ve seen for myself in Bleach fandom. From Yulieana, from Debbie, from Kylara, from Annie, from Syn. It’s at this juncture that I’d like to remind you that Yulieana is a person who once said “feminism is not about treating all women equally”, and that debbiechan is still her friend (debbiechan herself has notoriously misogynistic moments, including calling another fan a skank).

2) Your implication that the situation would be the same with reversed genders might be convincing if I hadn’t pointed out that the way Bleach fandom treats Orihime is part of a much larger trend of misogyny in fandom. Fans treating Orihime the way they do echoes many other examples of girl-bashing throught manga and anime fandom. The fact that it’s done in the name of shipping doesn’t make it any better.

But even if the larger trend didn’t exist, I still find your argument highly unconvincing. The way certain Bleach fans treat Orihime is completely different to the way they treat Renji, Ishida, Hitsugaya, and even Shuuhei. You can argue all you want, but your fallacy is competely transparent.

leafandleaf:

frozenviolets:

mis-chingaderitas:

Really, some people doesn’t get the sense of the main idea behind this. Mysogini? what? Oi! sorry to think that move on is better than being stuck loving someone who never gonna love you back. Downplaying a woman feelings, pffft! what a narrow minded statement.

And that doesn’t mean she has to love Ishida, I’m an IshiHime fan but I’m not that desesperate. Despite this secret is not favorable to the ship I support I have to admit that I’m glad that Ishida’s love for her is not that blinding, he cares for her and his friends. He tries to see the whole picture. He is in love, yeah and you don’t need to see the character saying it out loud.

What about understanding the message and the hints? besides text in comic, pictures are there to convey the message. It’s not Kubo’s fault that some of his readers can’t get it or don’t want to do it.

If he wants to move on and love someone who can love him back, I’m gonna be OK with that. I wish Ishida to be happy, with feelings reciprocated and not trying to justify my ship by insisting in making him some sort of pitiful and always unhappy person waiting to being loved. 

Same goes for Orihime. She deserves someone that can love her back, period, whoever he is.

Misogyny, yes. Hatred towards women. Looking down on women and their choices if you don’t like them. Minimising a woman’s feelings while blowing a man’s out of proportion. Shaming a woman for what she thinks and does constantly. Calling her unworthy” for not reciprocating a man’s feelings, which implies that those who say it believe said man is entitled to her heart.

And that secret? Is full of misogyny. To the fucking core.

Assuming that because she loves someone who is currently her friend and cares for her but may have other priorities makes her stupid? Priorizing another man’s only hypothetical feelings over her own? Treating that man’s “feelings” as superior? That secret does.

THAT, you know, is misogynistic. It’s treating that woman, Orihime, as if she was bad for OMG taking her own decisions in regards to men… while magnifying the second guy, Ishida, and his supposed feelings.  

Oh, and about Kubo? PLEASE. Kubo is clear on one thing: Orihime. Loves. Ichigo. For better or worse. He could have perfectly written Orihime as falling out of love with him after the Lust Arc. Guess what, he didn’t, and he actually made her feelings even stronger. 462, the chapter that made many people scream in horror and ire because she kept loving Ichigo despite being brainwashed, is a big proof. It made her break out of Tsukishima’s mind control, you know. But no, people kep insisting that she’s stupid, that she’s blind and her feelings are untrue as well as unworthy of minimal respect, and that the only way she can grow as a character is omfg falling out of love.

Well, FUCK THAT SHIT. It’s thanks to her feelings for Ichigo, whether a crush or true love, that Orihime adquired her powers and decided to do many things for herself. Such feelings ARE strong, and ARE an important part of her. Making it look like she’s immature, childish, slutty or stupid for loving a dude? Don’t make me laugh, people. Not when Kubo has REPETEADLY shown how important these feelings are for her. Not when she has right to fall for the dude she wants to, and her love is FAR more mature and FAR deeper than you guys want to see.

Oh, and not everything she sees of Ichigo is his prince-like side; fantasies from a teenage girl aren’t horrible and bad, but she has also seen his broken and sad side (um, Lust Arc? Tsukishima fight?), and she still likes cares for him. That means she understands that Ichigo is a flawed dude despite his heart of gold, and it hasn’t done anything against her love of him. The idea that she only sees him as perfect and a Knight in Shining Armor, then, it’s FALSE, and invented by her detractors to make her look bad again for daring to love Ichigo.

Orihime’s felings, which she chose to live on, are NOT horrible and invalid.The secret keeps trying to portray her as being immature, babyish, childish and stupid for liking Ichigo. While singing praises to Ishida’s “mature love” at the same time. Tell me, people, how is that not insulting and misogynistic?

Now, on Ishida. I actually don’t mind the idea of IshiHime in itself, but I detest how the fandom uses it. Many times it’s not about Orihime and Ishida but only about Ishida himself, about how he’s supposed to OWN her because he MAY have feelings for her. About how Ishida is some poor little baby who is always second fiddle to Ichigo, but at least must have that pussy for himself so he can be whole and get a consolation prize. Don’t people realize how creepy and selfish Ishida looks in shit like that? He cares for Orihime, and understands her relatively well, but his feelings aren’t more valid than her own just because he has a cock and Orihime likes a guy that isn’t him. And who many fangirls think is ~destined to be Rukia’s Twu Wub, considering that many of the people who spew this shit are rabid IchiRuki fans who think Rukia is entitled to Ichigo’s cock as the proof that she is The Bleach Heroine And Strong Woman. (Which is insanely insulting to Rukia, too.)

Ishida’s feelings are rather ambiguous, but rabid IshiHime fans often twist them into ~True Love~ that Orihime is obligated to reciprocate… when, guess what, she ISN’T. She doesn’t owe her tits to Ishida just because he MAY (and emphasis on MAY) like her as more than a friend, fandom, and she’s not “too immature” for him. And if he DOES like Orihime like that, then Ishida likely understands it, and knows he has no right to be a creepy Nice Guy (tm) to her. Unlike his rabid fans who think Orihime isn’t worth anything unless her mouth is attached to The Quincy Cock, like whoever made this secret.

And by the way? I think that Chad is closer to Orihime than Ishida is. Who thought that keeping Orihime out of fights was a bad idea? Who was training for 17 months with her?  Who brought her to the X-Cution HQ? That was all Chad. If Orihime did fall out of love with Ichigo (which I don’t really think she would, but isn’t impossible), she would most likely fall for Chad rather than for Ishida — for the simple fact that they’re closer friends, that they understand each other, and that they’ve shared many experiences together.

—————

Wow, this is an old post and I’m too lazy to reply to all of it, but I just have to say something against this bit:

“I actually don’t mind the idea of IshiHime in itself, but I detest how the fandom uses it. Many times it’s not about Orihime and Ishida but only about Ishida himself, about how he’s supposed to OWN her because he MAY have feelings for her.”

Hahaha. The same is said for IchiOri. o_o It’s ALWAYS about Orihime and NEVER about Ichigo’s feelings. Simply because Orihime has pined for him for sooooo long, IchiOris maintain that it is only ‘proper’ for Ichigo to reciprocate. Simply because Orihime’s feelings were so expounded upon, it is only ‘right’ for her to receive Ichigo as a prize, a shining trophy of a boyfriend, of a husband. Of course, Ichigo SHOULD feel very very lucky to have Orihime, because for some inexplicable reason, her love is the ONLY LOVE that matters, NO ONE would love him as much as she does because she’s the ONLY ONE who constantly talks about it (really?) It’s ALWAYS about how Orihime SHOULD OWN Ichigo because SHE LOVES HIM. 

All due to the IchiOri fandom sense of self-entitlement, Ichigo’s feelings for Rukia are ignored, dismissed, stomped upon, belittled, demeaned into ~simply friends~ because Ichigo MUST NOT, COULD NOT love anyone else if that person is not Orihime. Because Ichigo has never professed his love as verbally and vocally as Orihime had, it is fallaciously presumed that he does not have feelings for ANYONE. This is by using Orihime as the STANDARD BENCHMARK for the ultimate incontestable PURE love, ignoring Ichigo’s nature of character, inaccurately translating his actions as HIDDEN LOVE by ignoring background, framework, CONTEXT.

So tell me, isn’t your ship only about Orihime herself?? The IshiOri fandom is not even half as vocal and pushy as you are when it comes to shipping.

UGH. It’s my policy not to get involved in shipping fights on tumblr, because really what good can come of it? Nobody is going to change their minds, nobody is going to realise anything. We all just reinforce our own opinions.

But this response misses the point in such an overwhelming way that I have to respond. So let me make one thing clear. My response is not about shipping. I’m not interested in proving one side to the other. I just want to straighten out a few points.

There’s a crucial difference between what frozenviolets says and what leafandleaf says.

It’s true that I have seen some Ichihime fans say that Orihime deserves Ichigo, and yeah, that’s problematic. Nobody deserves anybody else’s love. But it’s obvious to me, at least, that most of those posts come from a place of naiveity. The posters don’t really mean that Ichigo is obligated to return Orihime’s love, they mean that the devotion Kubo has written her as having is so impressive that they believe that the narratively she deserves it. Whether or not they’re right, I’m not interested in talking about. I’m simply clarifying.

Another crucial point is that most Ichihime fans don’t follow that thinking. When Ichihime fans claim that their ship will be canon, it’s not usually because they think Ichigo is obligated to return Orihime’s love, it’s because they think he already does. Again, not interested in talking about whether or not that’s right. I’m only pointing out what they think. For them Ichigo’s realisation of his feelings isn’t connected to some kind of understanding that his old feelings were unworthy or made him weak or whatever - they’re connected to an understanding that Orihime is amazing and beautiful and he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

Whether that’s right or wrong, the sentiment is definitely positive. That can’t be disputed.

In contrast, what Ishihime fans say about Orihime returning Ishida’s love often has a much more unpleasant subtext. Again, this obviously isn’t true of all Ishihime fans, and I know there are many who don’t agree with what I’ll call the deathberry contingent, but there is a vocal group who say the kind of things that frozenviolets mentions.

The difference is that Ishihime criticisms treat Orihime’s current attitude as bad/unhealthy/weak/stupid in a way that Ichihime fans don’t. They don’t just focus on Ishida’s feelings - they outright imply that Orihime’s current attitude is wrong.

And yes, I know damn well that the deathberry contingent thinks this attitude is supported by canon. I’m not interested in that. The relevant point is that treating a girl’s feelings as worthless is misogyny, and a particularly common and unpleasant form at that.

Say what you like, but it has been noted time and time again, across the board of manga fandoms, that when a female character is in love with the “wrong” guy, her feelings are criticised in a particularly woman-unfriendly way. What we see happening to Orihime here has also happened to Sakura and Hinata, to Relena from Gundam and even to Winry from FMA. Girls get bashed for having feelings, and Ishihime fandom reinforces those unpleasant attitudes when it talks about Orihime.

That’s the criticism frozenviolets was making, and it’s perfectly legitimate.

Peace out.

girlsbydaylight:

amazing-e-ko:

girlsbydaylight:

inkstone:

shadesoffantasy:

inkstone:

korraaa:

HOLD THE PHONE. Can Amon ENERGY BEND?!?!?

and is that TAHNO.

what the hell is going on?

I dunno. I kind of assumed from the get-go that Amon was some sort of bender taking advantage of the civil unrest. But I guess we’ll see how it unfolds as the series progresses.

no no it’s the ki blocking technique that aang uses on ozai at the end you don’t need to be a bender to do it. Remeber Ty Lee! 

No, that was energybending, wasn’t it? Aang learned it from the turtle-lion. Ty Lee’s ki blocking was different — she hit pressure points on a person’s body. What Aang did to Ozai was close the chakra points over the third eye and heart. That’s why this looks more like energybending than ki bending. I wonder if that’s how Amon ended up the leader? Because I do see how they look similar — people might assume he’s just some amazing ki blocker.

This brings up so many interesting possiblities!  I think it could definitely make sense that Amon is some sort of bender (but possibly not telling anyone? they just think he’s got some sort of ability to stop other benders), though, for what purpose (noble in his own mind or maybe wants to get other benders out of the way or some sort of revenge on benders or idk??) I don’t know.  And where is this all going?  Are we heading for a world where bending slowly dies out/its has passed?  Or will it be part of Korra’s journey to learn about the spiritual side of being the Avatar and learning how to unblock the benders’ chi?  AHHHH, I WANT TO KNOW NOW!!

The one thing I remain convinced of is that the series won’t end with bendig disappearing. For one, because bending is the magic of the show. No matter how complex Korra is, it’s still a children’s show, and to end with magic (with all its connotations of innocence, creation, etc) vanishing would be far too bittersweet.

Another aspect is that the four nations are the balance of the world, and bending is the heart of the four nations. Keep balance as the Avatar means maintaining bending, I think. Also given that the Air Nomads have just been revived, there’s no way Mike and Bryan are going to have them completely wiped out.

So although Amon’s ideas are not totally unreasonable, the show is not going to validate him. The question then becomes what they will do instead. Do they stress that non-benders also have power? Sokka and Suki were not lesser members of the Gaang because they couldn’t bend - without Sokka’s planning the invasion would never have come about, and without Suki’s quick thinking and strength, the Boiling Rock would have ended in disaster. The show could take the route of reinforcing the idea that bending is not the only talent someone can have.

However, this seems like a bit of a cop out. We’ve already seen in Korra that the triads are oppressing people with bending, and it can’t be denied that bending is powerful. Saying “it’s ok because you’re clever” seems a bit dismissive of the problem, even if it’s true.

Another solution would be to have Korra make everyone a bender using Energybending, but I like this even less. It seems like even more of a cop out, because it would distance the show too much from reality. Solutions like that aren’t possible in analagous real life situations, and to use them in Korra would be cheap.

So where does that leave Korra? I don’t know, but I can guess the shape of the answer. The Spirit World, in all its mysteries, was only hinted at in TLA, and it’s been emphasised that Korra lacks spirituality. Her discovery of spirit, and her training to master the more mystical side of being the Avatar, will almost certainly provide the key to solving the problem of Amon. Like I said, I don’t know how, but I’m sure it will be good.

Reblogging for awesome commentary.

I’m so fascinated by this coming issue of benders vs non-benders because I… honestly don’t know where they can go with this.  Having bending fade away, even in a positive “bending’s time has passed, it’s technology’s time now” (ala each new generation of the Avatar) seems like it would go against the whole feel of the world they’ve built here.  And you’re definitely right that balance is at the heart of the themes of the show!

But where can they go with bending?  Is it just going to be a message of, “Benders need to learn to be more responsible.”?  I briefly wondered if they would set up programs to help train young benders to be more responsible, but dismissed that pretty quickly—bending is integral to so much of the culture of this world, taking that away from them would potentially be a horrible message.

And I’m not fond of the idea of everyone becoming a bender, either.  I mean… maybe?  If they spun it right?  If they do go that route, I’ll trust them to make it good and interesting, but… I don’t know.  I’m not quite there on that idea yet.

I am very curious to see how they deal with the issue of people abusing their bending powers (not just on an epic scale like Ozai did, but with the mobsters who were extorting money out of people) and Korra’s troubles with tapping into the spiritual side of being the Avatar and how that’ll play into the overall direction of the series!

I know that annotated_a:tla has pointed out that the symbolism of the Equalists, especially in the context of China, has negative connotations. The rally in the new trailer seems to me to be strongly reminiscent of Communist imagery, as does the idea of Equality - that was what Communism strove for. And like Communism, the central aspiration of the Equalists isn’t wrong. Nobody should be opressed, and everyone should have the same chances in life. Where both movements fail is in the implementation of those ideas, so that Communism became totalitarian, and killed millions of people to achieve its goals, while the Equalists destroy bender’s abilities to rectify what they see as an imbalance.

In all likelihood, what the Equalists are doing would actually have the opposite effect to what they’re hoping, because it’s possible that removing bending abilities will destabilise the spiritual balance of the world. One fascinating outcome might be the emergence of spirits into the real world, especially since we know that not all of them are nice (and it would be a great opportunity to see Koh again).

Perhaps that might lead to a reconnection of the real world and the spiritual world. One thing about the series is that it’s not just Korra who has lost touch with spirituality compared to her past self - the whole world, benders and non-benders alike, seems much more materialist and pragmatic than Aang’s world. Perhaps Korra won’t grant anyone new abilities, but will somehow reconnect everyone to the Spirit World. If benders were more aware of the spiritual side of their powers, they might be much less quick to abuse them.

girlsbydaylight:

inkstone:

shadesoffantasy:

inkstone:

korraaa:

HOLD THE PHONE. Can Amon ENERGY BEND?!?!?

and is that TAHNO.

what the hell is going on?

I dunno. I kind of assumed from the get-go that Amon was some sort of bender taking advantage of the civil unrest. But I guess we’ll see how it unfolds as the series progresses.

no no it’s the ki blocking technique that aang uses on ozai at the end you don’t need to be a bender to do it. Remeber Ty Lee! 

No, that was energybending, wasn’t it? Aang learned it from the turtle-lion. Ty Lee’s ki blocking was different — she hit pressure points on a person’s body. What Aang did to Ozai was close the chakra points over the third eye and heart. That’s why this looks more like energybending than ki bending. I wonder if that’s how Amon ended up the leader? Because I do see how they look similar — people might assume he’s just some amazing ki blocker.

This brings up so many interesting possiblities!  I think it could definitely make sense that Amon is some sort of bender (but possibly not telling anyone? they just think he’s got some sort of ability to stop other benders), though, for what purpose (noble in his own mind or maybe wants to get other benders out of the way or some sort of revenge on benders or idk??) I don’t know.  And where is this all going?  Are we heading for a world where bending slowly dies out/its has passed?  Or will it be part of Korra’s journey to learn about the spiritual side of being the Avatar and learning how to unblock the benders’ chi?  AHHHH, I WANT TO KNOW NOW!!

The one thing I remain convinced of is that the series won’t end with bendig disappearing. For one, because bending is the magic of the show. No matter how complex Korra is, it’s still a children’s show, and to end with magic (with all its connotations of innocence, creation, etc) vanishing would be far too bittersweet.

Another aspect is that the four nations are the balance of the world, and bending is the heart of the four nations. Keep balance as the Avatar means maintaining bending, I think. Also given that the Air Nomads have just been revived, there’s no way Mike and Bryan are going to have them completely wiped out.

So although Amon’s ideas are not totally unreasonable, the show is not going to validate him. The question then becomes what they will do instead. Do they stress that non-benders also have power? Sokka and Suki were not lesser members of the Gaang because they couldn’t bend - without Sokka’s planning the invasion would never have come about, and without Suki’s quick thinking and strength, the Boiling Rock would have ended in disaster. The show could take the route of reinforcing the idea that bending is not the only talent someone can have.

However, this seems like a bit of a cop out. We’ve already seen in Korra that the triads are oppressing people with bending, and it can’t be denied that bending is powerful. Saying “it’s ok because you’re clever” seems a bit dismissive of the problem, even if it’s true.

Another solution would be to have Korra make everyone a bender using Energybending, but I like this even less. It seems like even more of a cop out, because it would distance the show too much from reality. Solutions like that aren’t possible in analagous real life situations, and to use them in Korra would be cheap.

So where does that leave Korra? I don’t know, but I can guess the shape of the answer. The Spirit World, in all its mysteries, was only hinted at in TLA, and it’s been emphasised that Korra lacks spirituality. Her discovery of spirit, and her training to master the more mystical side of being the Avatar, will almost certainly provide the key to solving the problem of Amon. Like I said, I don’t know how, but I’m sure it will be good.

viva011:

Better picture I managed to get

THIS IS IT GUYS. IT IS HAPPENING. I FEEL SO REDEEMED. 

Part of me still suspects trolling, because Bryke, but most of me thinks they’re just not subtle about ships.

I’m intruiged to know when this happens, more than anything, because I can’t imagine them showing something from late in the series.