You have always been strong, unyielding, fearless

‘I owe you my life…’

I have little to contribute to Kuvira week, but here is something that we did a few months back.

ikkinthekitsune:

slipperywhenavatar:

[snip]

I… really don’t think you understand where Korvira shippers are coming from.

So, let’s set a few things straight:

The slave labor thing is a nonsense claim from someone with every reason to exaggerate. Opal is as far from an objective party as you can get… and, more importantly, she showed no sign of believing that Kuvira was enslaving people only days earlier. Sure, she wasn’t happy about Kuvira getting her way in the first episode, but one would have thought she’d have made a point of informing Bolin and Kai about the slavery thing if she’d actually seen it happen instead of letting Bo continue thinking he was doing something good and letting Kai feel like joining Kuvira was the right thing for the governor of Yi to do. In fact, given that Opal and Kai seemed to have been working together prior to the first episode, Kai probably should have seen it himself. You don’t even need to thumb your nose at canon to deal with this particular accusation – it makes a whole lot more sense to see the truth as more nuanced than Opal would admit (say, Kuvira demands labor in place of taxes because every government needs resources and the people of the Earth Kingdom have no money to offer) than to see Opal’s assessment as being entirely correct.

Su might not have known about the terms of Korra’s truce with Kuvira, but the “I’ll give you a day to make up your mind” thing was effectively a day-long stay on military action. Assassinating Kuvira before the fighting started was kind of the point of what Su did. =P

There’s a pretty big difference between intentionally targeting children as vulnerable non-combatants and treating children who are active combatants in a war zone as active combatants in a war zone. >_>; Pre-teen or not, Meelo was as much of a threat to Kuvira as any other airbender on the field, and I don’t think it’s fair to demonize Kuvira for acting accordingly. Tenzin kind of made targets out of his kids by agreeing to let them fight in the first place, but no one really seems to question that. =/

Deterrence is a thing, and it’s a thing that’s pretty core to Kuvira’s characterization. The thing about her firing that cannon indiscriminately in Republic City is that she never expected things to get to that point in the first place – she expected that her giant terrifying deathbot would intimidate Republic City into surrender, and then she expected that taking out the battleships would prove that she meant business and bring about a surrender, and then she expected that her surgical strike to the factory would take out her remaining opposition and result in total surrender, and then Korra decided to make a stand in the not-yet-fully-evacuated city. She goes way way way too far, but her first instinct was always to reach her objective without doing unnecessary damage (which is why she came up with her underhanded plan to take Zaofu in the first place).

Trying to kill enemies who stand in one’s way is… kind of how war works. And, in the only instance where fighting to the death wasn’t implicit in the conflict itself, Korra chose to resort to lethal violence first.

Kuvira’s biggest failing, in my mind, is that she couldn’t understand that attempting to fix things could just make everything worse. She thought that if she had enough power, she could set past wrongs right and keep her people safe… and in the process, she restricted people’s freedom and embarked on a war of aggression.

Is she entirely comfortable with using violence, intimidation, and manipulation to achieve her goals? Of course, though Korra used to be, too (and still is, even if she’s got better ways to handle things most of the time now).

Did she endanger and/or kill a whole lot of people because of what she did? Certainly.

But none of that is really all that inconsistent with the “AU Korra where she successfully stole Raiko’s army and slid down the slippery slope for another three years” characterization the final scenes seemed to be going for with Kuvira, which is what most Korvira fans seem to use as a basis for the ship.

Because that’s the thing: Korvira fans generally aren’t interested in whitewashing Kuvira… but we’re not interested in whitewashing Korra, either. Kuvira offers us a great way to explore the parts of Korra that are generally ignored or defanged because she’s so far past the pale. And, of course, the cold pragmatism that makes Kuvira seem so unpalatable to you just makes her more interesting, in that sort of analysis.

Also, I’d like to take a second to let you know the original post you’re all responding to is literally tagged “anti-Korvira” and “fanwank”, with no cross tagging what-so-ever. Just figured that might be a fun tidbit.

If your post accusing me and some of the nicest people I’ve met in this fandom of hypocrisy and not really liking the character we say we like ends up on my dash, it really doesn’t matter what your initial tags were. =P Dislike the ship all you want, but when you post a direct attack against the fans themselves, you don’t really have any ground to stand on when they choose to defend themselves.

#adds in tag that we don’t find these things excusable but they can be explained by kuvira’s characterization etc etc

True, but I think it’s important not to go too far in laying all the blame at Kuvira’s feet, you know?

There are a bunch of morally-questionable actions from the heroes that the anti-Kuvira crowd seem to lay at her feet instead – Su attempts an assassination before the official start of hostilities, Tenzin lets his kids become child soldiers, and Korra decides that stopping Kuvira ASAP is top priority, regardless of the cost. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s way more interesting to consider the sort of compromises the heroes have to make than to act like Kuvira’s a baby-killing monster who doesn’t care about collateral damage. =P

#the non-EK citizen camps seem just like a pure act of malice and they don’t make sense #esp considering she worked closely with varrick bolin grew up in zaofu and used to have a fire bender working with her #and that the goals they mad clear about her were bringing the EK into the future and protecting it and making it strong #not purifying it

Exactly. The show offers us no reason why Kuvira would want to imprison foreigners and a bunch of reasons why she wouldn’t.

And, honestly, it’s not like the show couldn’t have come up with an excuse – have Kuvira respond to Varrick and Bolin’s betrayal by assuming that foreigners were in league with the URN and therefore not to be trusted. There’d still be WWII parallels, of course, but of a rather more uncomfortable sort.

#this response is beautiful on so many levels I don’t really have anything to add but thanks for the lecture #mom #but no one needs to hear it #kuvira’s interesting because of the bad shit she did too and we love all of it you know little about Kuvira stans and you’re pulling assumpt

Ironically, the only time I see people saying things that could be construed as defending or justifying her actions is when anti-Kuvira people are either bashing her character, or worse, directly attacking her fans themselves and implying we’re all Horrible People IRL or blind or stupid for daring to enjoy an antagonist character. It kind of makes me think of a kid repeatedly tormenting a sleeping dog, then when the dog finally loses patience and shows its teeth, the kid runs off yelling to mommy that the vicious dog growled at him for no reason. 

I offer you the life you once saved.

This was done really quick (and shitty I know, sorry ;;) but I read a prompt where Kuvira was a ghost who looked after Korra and… you want ghosts, cuz this is how you make ghosts