Because I encountered this criticism again, the one that claims that Raava and Vaatu represent a misunderstanding and misappliance of what Yin and Yang is meant to be and that by introducing them as these straight up pure good/God and pure evil/Satan type spirits, and having the good/God spirit merge with Wan to make him the Avatar that all later Avatars are reincarnated from, Bryke contrdicted all the previous lore and worldbuilding of Avatar: The Last Airbender and fundamentally broke the whole Avatar mythology by making the Avatar all about the conquest of evil and destruction to ensure the reign of goodness and peace rather than about keeping balance.
Ironically, this is a complete misreading of the canonical text.
Yeah, this is up there with "the Lion Turtles giving people elements to wield contradicts what was established about the original benders!" as a take that miscontrues what was canonically told and shown to us in that two-parter. It's 2025, I cannot believe I'm still seeing this.
I don't know whether or not Bryke was going for a Yin/Yang thing when they made Raava and Vaatu, but if so, they did not succeed because that's not what they come off as at all. THIS was Yin/Yang:
Raava and Vaatu are actually incarnations of "two sides of one/the same coin". It's an idiom that means two seemingly completely different things are actually closely related aspects of the same thing, emphasizing that while things might appear separate or even polar opposite to one another, they can in truth be interconnected and inseparable from each other, and this comes implicitly with the understanding that too much of either thing in great excess will lead to the exact same result. Such is the case with what Raava and Vaatu embody, where their light and darkness needs to co-exist.
They have the same design but with different coloring, looking like one could fit on top of the other and be the other side of a singular entity. They're introduced to us in their default state - literally tied together by their tails. In the age before the Avatar's existence, no spirit or human was specifically assigned the task of keeping balance within the realms or restoring the balance whenever it was lost, so Raava and Vaatu were just the natural cornerstone of balance. So long as they remained connected and not separate from each other, they upheld the balance. They were the balance. Vaatu's natural instincts always led him to seeking freedom from Raava, but every Harmonic Convergence period she was sure to beat him and keep him in his place. By severing their connection and allowing Vaatu on his own to run amuck near the time of Harmonic Convergeance, Wan disrupted that seemingly unshakable balance, and it was thrown off because Vaatu was the one attempting to conquer Raava, to extinguish his other half completely so that he could spread chaos, ruination and darkness upon the world unchecked. The reason Avatar Wan then "conquering" Vaatu did not similarly throw off the balance is because Raava had just melded with Wan's human spirit and this birthed the singular Avatar Spirit, with the human side of this spirit essentially serving as Vaatu's replacement for what reigns in and rounds out the harmonious, oderly spirit, making the Avatar the new keeper of balance in place of the Raava/Vaatu union. But as Raava and Vaatu are two halves of a singular whole that now had to exist apart from each other - or cease to exist as its original self at all in Raava's case - the world's balance was left very fragile, making it crucial that the Avatar live on and on through different lives to keep the balance and serve as the bridge between two realms.
While the two spirits themselves don't factor into much of TLoK after Book Two, the thing about them embodying two sides of the same coin and how too much of either one of them in great excess should be avoided if there's to be a proper balance is a huge running theme through Book Three and Book Four with its villains. The Red Lotus wanted to spread complete and total chaos throughout the world, which was shown to be a bad thing, and in direct response, the Earth Empire rose and wanted to establish complete and total order in the world through controlling fascist overreach, which was shown to be just as bad. One is Vaatu to the extreme and the other is Raava to the extreme, and they're both enemies of balance that the Avatar has to stop. Yes, the conflicts are Good VS Evil, but they have nuances to them that take them far beyond "light, order and harmony is Pure Good while darkness, chaos and destruction is Pure Evil."
Lastly, even the idea of these spirits as Pure Good and Pure Evil is flawed. Vaatu was disappointingly pretty damn super evil due to the whole "directly conspiring with Unalaq to become a Dark Avatar, doom humanity and reign over spirits in a darkened, desolate world" thing that was just written and handled poorly in general, but Raava? She was not "Pure Good" whatsoever. There was nothing that much differentiated her from all the other high-and-mighty human hating spirits we were shown, and her concerns about Vaatu going loose from her were all about duty, adherence to status quo, and self preservation rather than about morality or concern for who Vaatu might harm. Though she understood morals and virtues, Raava was just as amoral in her approach as Vaatu, but she actually grew beyond her inititally static nature by seeing firsthand the virtues that humans like Wan were capable of having and acting upon, and as Wan was taking care of her in a weakened state, she was humbled.
Whether or not Vaatu is capable of similar growth, we may yet see in Avatar: Seven Havens. But the overall point is that there's more to these spirits than simplistic Good VS Evil, their presence doesn't render the Avatar a being of conquest over a being of balance, and their existence doesn't contradict Avatar lore nearly as much as TLoK antis like to make out. Regardless whether or not you felt we needed to see how it all began, the narrative of "Beginnings" is very much consistent with the mythology of the Avatar as it had always been.
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ooo, tough one!! I read 57 books total in 2023, including a lot of rereads -- I'll count "favorites" by "new reads I continue to think about most enduringly". Top 5 in no particular order:
Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui -- it's so good! and the anime is coming out now and is ALSO good so far!!!!!
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories -- collection of Chinese SF/F short stories in translation, includes some essays; there are a number of these that especially stick with me
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo -- I read all 3 of the Singing Hills books, I read this one first and it's still my favorite
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch -- Urban fantasy/magic police/detective series. I listened to so many audiobooks of this series this year, thank you @zeiat for the rec & mr kobna holdbrook-smith for your beautiful voice! I don't know if I think this one is the most QUALITY of the series, but it definitely has a hell of a plot and gets credit for starting me off.
My Promised Land by Ari Shavit -- this was a hell of a year (positive, prescient) to take a class through my synagogue about I/P. This is essentially a history of the modern state of Israel, written by someone whose family background includes early Zionist settlers -- there are many things I felt the book was missing but it does a very good job of covering the basics of the political motivations and realities of modern Israel. For me it was very "can't learn more about this without saying Oh Shit This Is A Colonial Occupation Situation".
20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?
I think System Collapse (new Murderbot) is the only new release I actually read around release time? It was solid -- not my favorite MB, felt more along the lines of novellas #3/4 which I liked reading but don't think about often. I also got He Who Drowned the World but haven't started it yet -- I just reread the last chapters of She Who Became the Sun to refresh my memory!
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I see Kanade's character in three different lights depending on what side of her she's showing or what the timeframe she's existing in is.
Fake Kanade is baby. That's the whole point behind her carefully crafted facade. Knowing what she's truly like on the inside makes watching her get teased and pushed around by Hibiki among other embarrassing mishaps that could befall her while she's acting like this such a joy. On one hand, she deserves every last bit of it and worse, but on the other hand, knowing that she secretly gets off on her sister's mistreatment of her kills some of the enjoyment. On one hand, I do feel bad for her that she has to put up with all this and has such a dysfunctional relationship with her twin sister despite wanting to love her and Hibiki still loving her deep down, but on the other hand, my pity cannot be extended to sympathy because I know what she really is, what she really wants, and what she's done/would do to get it. So when I add it all up, she's equally baby girl to me along with Hibiki. I like my twin girlies for their flaws, not in spite of them.
True Kanade is evil baby girl. Yes, she's both. She is the intersection between the two usual parts of this meme. The writing leaves no room for denial or doubt that she is capital E EVIL. On top of acting like the unholy Togami-Ouma demon love child during murder cases, she is a selfish, sadistic, psychotic, narcissistic, absolutely vile and demented beast from Hell, and you really want to just punch her lights out and wish to see someone stop her before she does all the personal damage that she unfortunately ends up successfully doing. That said, though I hate her actions, it's too hard for me to ever seriously hate her character because she is just having way too much fun being an evil little shit and I'm sorry, that fun factor is infectuous. She leans into the unrealistic campy evil flavor of Danganronpa villainy rather than a truly awful, believable, hard to stomach evil, and while she can be intimidating, she goes so hard on the literally demonic schemer and murderer shtick and just commits to the bit so completely that she's honestly more funny than she is frightening, at least to me. It helps her likability that, in spite of being such a tryhard loser who murdered her own folks and abuses her sister, she is a super intelligent, highly skilled and hyper-competent tactical genius (albeit not perfect as she'd like to be and not immune to errors and screw-ups, though some of the feats she is able to pull off are pretty out there bullshit), a snarky and savage roast master, real interesting to pick apart given her backstory and the history of her and Hibiki's relationship and how that's shaped her psychology, and - the thing I think most people tend to forget - like her sister, she's still just a kid. Smarter than the average teenager she may be, but she's also far more troubled and unstable and pathetic and all around miserable than the average teenager. When I look at Kanade, I don't just see "rawwr, psycho serial killer go stabby stab!", I see a broken child, a living tragedy, a self-fulfilled prophecy - someone with lots of early childhood development issues who, pretty early into her life, decided "Fuck everything and everyone. If I'm actually the bad twin despite all I can do so perfectly, then I'm gonna embrace that, run with it, and unapologetically enjoy it.", and she let that thinking shape her into the monster she became. So I can't help but love her and even feel for her despite the pure evilness. Could just do without the beyond pointless Korekiyo ripoff stuff at the end of her case/trial.
And then there's the grown-up Kanade, who's just plain Evil. I feel like everything about Kanade's character and how she's handled and written by LINUJ that I do NOT like is all embodied in this version of Kanade. The fact that for years she's gotten away with killing supposedly around 60-something people, the fact that she can literally control her twin sister to say and do whatever she wants her to whenever said sister has entered a broken, vacant puppet-like state that she gained from trauma and Kanade had not planned on such a state existing before it started happening, the fact that she has an overly possessive to incest levels desire for her sister to be all her's, the fact that she's taken everything for herself and is OP to absurd levels even for Danganronpa while Hibiki has been left as a total nothing who has nothing going on for her, and the fact that when she actually has to demonstrate her efficiency as a killer she shows herself to be incredibly stupid and getting by only by dumb luck or the opposing characters losing their own brain cells and competency in their own skills. This is the Kanade that every nonsensical revelation in Chapter 3/Trial 3 was pointing towards; she is the apotheosis of everything in Kanade's character that did not work and she is such a bore. Much like Kokoro in the same game, Kanade's adult iteration is a far weaker character than her teenage iteration and is ultimately needless because her very existence harms the character we had before learning about her rather than enhancing it. The nail in her coffin was learning that she let Syobai live and talk her into going to her own demise because she could not resist monologuing to her prey like a bad Hollywood movie depiction of a serial killer. There are fanworks that write this Kanade well (DR Survivor comes to mind), but in canon, this is the iteration of Kanade Otonokoji, one of my favorite SDRA2 characters mind you, that I'm just not crazy about.
Updating "Evil Mega Corporate Baron Billionaire Lex Luthor" we've had since the 80's into "Evil (And Younger) Big Tech Mogul Billionaire Lex Luthor" is an A+, excellent and all too natural idea, but there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, and if your Tech Bro Lex is acting just like Mark Beaks from DuckTales, you're doing it wrong.
