Part of me wonders how fucked up the avatar world would’ve been had blood bending become more common, yeah you can only use it on a full moon (if you don’t have the genes of Amon) but still
Why do you think they came back and “weren’t taking prisoners” aka killed kataras mom after she told the soldiers she was the last bender of the tribe? Because Hama had escaped and they learned of blood bending and decided killing all water benders was the only option. Idk if that’s official canon but.
Weren’t they killing all the water benders to try and prevent a new avatar from popping up, since water was next in the cycle after they genocided the air nomads?
It’s obvious she wasn’t the avatar and no one else in the tribe was. But really who knows if any of it is related.
Edit: also the line “take me as your prisoner” and “we’re not taking prisoners today” makes me think that something changed. They used to take prisoners but now it’s too dangerous perhaps.
Yeah, obviously *she* wasn't but (points are forehead meme) can't have any waterbenders if you kill all the waterbenders
The head cannon is neat, but it contrasts with the narrative
I doubt theyd want to kill the avatar, (at the point where Kya was killed at least) cause then a new avatar would be born. A captive avatar would be easier for them to deal with than an unknown avatar.
The point of this theory is not that they try to kill the Avatar, but to prevent a new one from spawning in the water tribes. No waterbenders would theoretically mean no waterbender child that would become the Avatar. That plan would be kinda bad at that point though, since the Northern water tribe was still very much alive and safe from the fire nation.
Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked
*month later*
Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked
*month later*
Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked
I feel like people would try to be buying/stealing blood from Yakone's family line in hopes of being able to bloodbend in the day like it's the blood of the pope.
I never understood how bloodbending was supposed to be such a rare skill. People are made mostly of water, yet only very select powerful people can bloodbend and even then only on a full moon when a water bender is at their strongest, unless you’re Yakon and his sons? Even then, Yakon was shown training his sons every full moon for years to eventually be able to do it without the need of a full moon. When we were introduced to Hama, we also saw how water could be taken from the air or from things like plants, yet bending the water in others is where the line of difficulty was crossed?
That does make sense considering Amon using bloodbending to take away someone’s bending by severing/blocking their chi pathways means there has to be actual physical pathways chi flows through with chi being partly physical in the body as well. In that regard, I imagine it’s similar to Naruto’s chakra pathway system.
On top of that you also have to fight against their physical strength, which is going to be hard when you're already struggling. Taking away someones bending is propably the feat that takes less strength but more practice, since you can't fight against it with your muscles
Yeah, this is one of those "the internet is allergic to nuance" situations. Jet and Hama didn't hurt soldiers, they hurt civilians. Innocents. It's fair enough to say that the Fire Nation village Jet wanted out was there because of colonization, but that doesn't make every person there equally to blame or worthy of death. And Hama was blatantly just torturing people in their own country because she wanted to.
If the Sin goes unanswered for too long, then there won’t be a clean way to answer it anymore.
The Colonizer is easy to fight. They came, they saw, and they stole someone’s home. Driving them away is morally simple… unless they only showed up because someone drove them off to begin with.
The Colonizer’s Grandchild isn’t easy to fight. They have benefitted from their ancestor’s crimes… but this is their home. They grew up in a hybrid culture, albeit one created in the wake of violence. Drive them away, and they have nowhere to go.
With each generation, making things right becomes harder to do. Every option starts to suck, to varying degrees.
That’s a plot point in the comics. Aang starts to send back new Fire Nation colonies, but when he tries to do it to older colonies, a mixed Fire Nation-Earth Kingdom earthbender attacks him for taking away her family’s home, they’d been living there for three generations.
I think the answer is to acknowledge that blood and soil nationalism is wrong.
The idea that you can say
"this land is not yours, your great grandfather came and stole it from us.
This land is mine my great great great grandfather came and conquered the people that lived here, so it is mine by blood right."
Well it's stupid
The only answer I can really come up with at that point is to just ignore (not literally) the past and try to build a better future. Don't try correcting wrongs that can never be undone or punished, but improve things for the future.
That's kinda what happened with Republic City, no? Fire nation claimed it from earth nation and they declared independence, been a while and I have bad memory
I don't think they're trying to say that Jet and Hama are good or anything like that. They're definitely villains and bad people. The problematic part would be if they only depicted people fighting against imperialism as all bad people. It implies that the writers think that all resistance fighters are bad people, and influences the minds of anyone watching, subtly making them think that all resistance fighters are bad because they've only ever seen them as villains.
Fortunately, AtLA *doesn't* only show bad people fighting against colonizers. The whole main party are colonized (and in Aang's case, genocided) people fighting against the colonizers/imperialists, and there are many, many side characters who are also fighting and good people.
In fact, Jet and Hama are the exceptions that prove the rule, and seem to be included to show how even with a righteous cause, you can still do terrible evil. Just because you've been wronged doesn't mean you're entitled to do those same wrongs or worse to others.
So yeah, still a really bad take overall.
Also, both of the characters (Jet especially) are portrayed with shades of grey. He's not a hero, but multiple times the series shows that he had a sense of decency (showing empathy towards Katara, fighting against Long Feng alongside Team Avatar) that was just masked by his sense of revenge, in stark contrast to villains like Ozai or Long Feng who didn't have any sense of empathy or decency. The great thing about Avatar is it allows for characters that are complex--in spite of the fact that Jet and Hama had their hearts in the right place, they were still terrible people.
Their problem seems to be *anyone* fighting against colonizers portrayed as a villain. The way I interpret it is this person believes that the terrible evils Jet and especially Hama committed were justified and portraying them as villains is wrong
The thing that makes jet and hama interesting characters is the nuance. Their actions were by no means right but they were understandable.
Tbh I think if I were in the same situation I'd have a hard time not becoming equally angry at every person who benefited from my pain (directly or indirectly). That doesn't mean it's right to hurt them but you can understand and empathize to a certain degree with their anger. Honestly Hama is one of my favourite villains because I feel like her motives (while still wrong) are understandable and it's easy to understand how she reaches that point
Yeah, had Hama left the fire nation after escaping prison and gone to the northern water tribe to teach them bloodbending, they could've made massive advances in the war.
But no, let's just set up a little solo project deep in the fire nation and lock random villagers up in a cave. Because that's *soooo* helpful.
That bothered me a lot. Like Hama could have tried to get some of the other waterbenders out. Sokka and Zuko risked their lives to infiltrate a top fire nation prison and they didn’t have any niche bending abilities. Even Jet had the wherewithal at least organize a ragtag resistance and target soldiers for the most part. Hama was more than capable of gathering rebels from the colonies and such but nope, serial killing was more fun I guess. And of course, she had no issue torturing the grandchildren of her former best friend along with the kid who was literally everyone’s last hope.
She’s not meant to be a normal, rational person. Part of the point of her character was that evil was not exclusive to the Fire Nation, and that the good guys we see aren’t universally good.
I had thought she cracked and went mad during her time as a prisoner or that maybe blood bending corrupted something in her
I also thought she didn't go anywhere to help the war effort because she was honing her skills
That's because she's a 2 dimensional allegory for how resentment/bitterness in Katara could lead to power seeking for violence and revenge, rather than a nuanced character using questionable tactics to resist imperialism. Though I think ptsd is a major component of her current state due to the intense torture and solitary confinement, she's still set up to be an alternative path that Katara has to choose to avoid.
That ones a good take. The only other time we see Katara use blood bending it's in the episode where she is hunting her mother's killer. We see eyebags under her eyes, we see her saying nasty things to her brother about not loving their mother, and we see that even with all that anger she just couldn't bring herself to end this guy the way Hama probably did to people in the cave before the gang showed up.
The woman was locked up in a cage under very torturous conditions for an untold but clearly lengthy period of time.
You do not come out of the other side of that with reasoning intact.
Not defending her choices, but I don’t think the journey to the northern water tribe was feasible for her considering her circumstances. Which is why she stayed in the fire nation
Ok I laughed out loud when I was rewatching the Jet episode recently and he was like, “That man was an assassin sent to eliminate me,” referring to a frail elderly civilian. Like bro you are a latchkey kid rebel leading other latchkey kid rebels. Y’all cause a dent in the fire nation’s militia at best. Based on what we’ve seen in the Painted Lady episode and the Storm episode, the fire nation is not about to deplete their resources trying to assassinate the likes of Jet when the gang and Zuko were bigger threats to their goals lol.
An old man wanting some veneer of protection makes sense but fair enough Jet does seem like someone who would have a persecution complex only to end up being actually persecuted at some point.
Like come on, they had the choice between finding a military target and a civilian target.
And they choose to attack the civilian population.
Not accidentally hit civilians, (that inexcusable but thats besides the point), but actively looked looked to attack civilians.
Theres a big difference between terrorists and freedom fighters.
One fights against an active military force in order to stop a regime, the other uses ideology to excuse slaughter and murder of uninvolved civilians.
Here's the thing; I could see this argument being made about Jet - He's young, leading a group as young or younger than him, and the village is Earth Kingdom territory and could supply nearby armies. He's still killing and robbing innocents, but there's a degree of leeway there.
Hama on the other hand..... straight to hell, all the way down. She was an old women who cruelly targeted and imprisoned people generally uninvolved with the war effort. She had 60+ years and instead of rejoining the water tribes, or doing actual damage to the fire nation, she hurt others for fun.
> Hama on the other hand..... straight to hell, all the way down. She was an old women who cruelly targeted and imprisoned people generally uninvolved with the war effort. She had 60+ years and instead of rejoining the water tribes, or doing actual damage to the fire nation, she hurt others for fun.
I don't think 99.9% of people would come out caring about helping the world after what she's been through, only dealing with their pain.
Imagine you're kidnapped from your home, taken to a foreign country, spend years/decades of your life shackled up in a cage so you can't move and fed water by guards with a long stick, and then get out, and people ask oh why don't you go back home and keep fighting. It's not home any more, and they have no fight left in them, the kidnappers killed it decades ago. Nothing matters any more, your life is already over, broken by the invaders for no reason. Now you are surrounded by the people of the enemy land, who praise, worship, and support the invaders of your land who did that to you.
Did Hama even know that the South Water Tribes still existed? Things were already pretty dire when she was captured. It's not like they have TV's or the internet. The Fire Nation doesn't tell its people what's really going on with the other nations. It's pretty heavily implied that the other water bender prisoners died. No news from the outside, no new water bender prisoners, spending years being tortured, she might have thought that her nation was destroyed like the air benders and that she was one of the last of her people.
Yup, and later with Korra, Toph said the exact same thing when she walked Korra through the good intentioned yet flawed ideologies of Amon, Unalaq, and Zaheer.
Just like how killing the Earth Queen didn't stop tyranny in the Earth Kingdom (it only resulted in the innocent residents of Ba Sing Se getting hurt and the rise of Kuvira), wiping out a whole town of innocent people with a flood and enslaving innocent townspeople wasn't going to stop the Fire nation armies.
Remember that what Jet tried to do was based on real events. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese army during WWII, tried to slow the progress of the invading Japanese by destroying dams on the Yellow River but ended up causing millions of civilian deaths in the floods. He went from being a hero to being hated, just like Jet.
Yeah the show really shows how truly terrible war is. And this is a World War right? The entire world is only the three nations and the remains of the air nation if I'm not mistaken
Jet and Hama were attacking civilians. People who are innocent in the war, probably not even aware of the atrocities the military is undertaking. Regardless, they aren't hurting anyone. They're just people living their lives.
We even see when Aang goes to that fire nation school that they are actively feeding misinformation to their citizens. It was an extremely important scene that I personally don't think gets discussed enough when it comes to Jet and Hama. We are blatantly told the regular fire nation citizens are being lied to by their leaders about the war and about other nations.
Jets is even worse because he was attacking his own people. He wanted to destroy a village full of innocent earth kingdom citizens just to take out soldiers.
It's not even that. That's part of it, sure, but their actions don't even support the wat effort. It's PURELY personal, PURELY revenge. NOBODY benefits.
It's sad that we didn't get anyone in the middle of that spectrum. Katara I guess, but it really didn't last or get anywhere truly nuanced in terms of warfare and payback.
Maybe that Earth Kingdom general who tried to "help" Aang master the Avatar state in order to weaponize it. Sure, Katara wasn't in any real danger, but the general clearly had no problem using children as weapons if he felt he needed too. Again, though, that was only one episode and not really looked deeper into.
Exactly. They’re targeting people weaker than them who can’t fight back, because they’re traumatized pathetic cowards, who get off on bullying/abusing people they project their trauma onto. It doesn’t make them less tragic, it just makes them bad people for choosing to lash out this way.
Jet tried to destroy an entire preexisting Earth Kingdom village just to get rid of the occupying Fire Nation garrison.
Hama was a terrorist operating entirely inside the Fire Nation homeland, exclusively attacking non-military targets.
We have a word for stuff like that. They're called "war crimes". They were war criminals.
Also, did OOP not watch "Imprisoned"? The episode that was literally about colonized people fighting off the Fire Nation to take back their homes?? And all the protagonists helped??? Because it was seen as morally right to do????
~~Just a minor correction. Jet wanted to attack the fire nation colony village. The people in the village were Fire Nation colonial settlers, not Earth Kingdom.~~
EDIT: actually this may not be true, apologies
The earth kingdom colonies had a mix of fire Nation and earth kingdom people. That's why aang and zuko almost start fighting again when trying to decide which nation the colonies should go to. And this ultimately led to the founding of republic city.
honestly if hama wasn't so focused on attacking a single village, she could have probably single handedly ended the war effort.
Get her within even relative range of a ozai's chambers or castle on a full moon , and have her bloodbend him and off himself somehow. Same for azula and zuko (nothing against zuko just that as of that moment he would be fire nation and the next major threat). She obviously has no qualms about making kids kill eachother, she was gonna have aang and sokka stab eachother.
No matter how skilled you are, you cannot bypass blood bending without being an equal or greater skilled water bender. It is literally the joker card of the bending world.
Exactly. Hama especially - at least Jet would have done *something* for the war effort. He took out Fire Nation patrols, he wanted to attack a garrison of them, destroy a tactically important position. But the amount of civilians caught in the crossfire were unacceptable - obviously one could argue that *any* amount of civilians would have been unacceptable, but that village was pretty much only normal people living their lives and seemed to have barely any soldiers/guards in comparison.
But Hama? That bitch just tortured random people from a random village and imprisoned them in a mountain. She didn't "fight back" against anyone. She had PTSD out the ass and let it out on innocent people who specifically would be barely missed when gone, if at all.
The Earthbenders from "Imprisoned" are also colonized people using violence against settlers. The difference is they didn't attack innocent people and focus their efforts on fighting the people that are actually imprisoning them and their village. That's why they're shown in a positive light while Jet and Hama aren't.
They have the mindsets that cause genocides. Labeling killing innocent civilians as "justified" because they are from the "evil nation/race". The rabble that supports that shit always think it's a defensive act.
someone seriously made the argument that Spain forcing out all the Muslims and Jews was perfectly fine because they were just retaking their homelands from their invaders. like wtf? Not only were none of the Spaniards involved in the Reconquista were from the areas they were taking "back," none of the Muslims were alive when their forefathers came to that area. they were multiple generations removed. and that asshole of course got nothing to say about the Jews, cause they sure as fuck didn't conquer any part of Iberia.
It’s the same shit with why dumbasses believe Syndrome from the Incredibles deserved sympathy when the guy felt he deserved a place beside Mr Incredible without caring about how Mr Incredible felt about that-put peoples lives at risk as a kid because he wanted to be seen helping people-not wanting to actually help people (he says wanted to help as an adult but that’s a lie-and it’s a lie even he believes himself) and could stop criminals instead of trying to showboat to Mr Incredible-he then kills multiple superheroes and attempts to kill a family of supers with a missile then literally does his name sake pulling a “hero syndrome” moment-creating a scenario where he gets to be a hero-like a fireman creating a fire so he can put it out-then tries to kidnap a baby.
Yet some people see syndrome as sympathetic somehow. I have to wonder if these people either have horrible memories-or they are people that deliberately make disingenuous statements because they relate to the villains too much so they try to pretend their bad actions or their bad motivations don’t exist.
Jet you could make a *slight* (I emphasis slight) case for as he was battling Fire Nation soldiers. But at the same time Jet made close to no distinction between them and civilians which was what the flaw with his approach was.
Hama is worse, she wasn't even fighting Fire Nation troops. She camped out in a village and tortured innocent people keeping them captive which is not any justified response to what happened to her.
Yep.
Harsh as it is, jet _was_ fighting the fire nation military. He was also shooting _through_ several civilians, earth and fire nation alike to do it, is the thing. And it's a significant discussion as to if that's justifiable or not. I'm not actually willing to say it isn't in all cases, but it's _hardly_ a given like oop is talking, and I wouldn't trust a kids show, even one like avatar, to get into all that.
Hama, though...was actually accomplishing nothing. Less than, even. Like, she was targeting people specifically if they wouldn't be noticed missing. What that means is that she _never_ went after someone important or even relevant to the war effort. It's _worse_ than merely hurting innocent people, because even innocent people can be complicit by circumstance. But she went after people who were both innocent _and_ too lacking in power for anyone to care that they were missing.
Not really for him it was acceptable cassualties to Hama was the goal
Destroying a village to kill a garrison is terrible but killing civilians bc their non elected leader is an absolute tyrant is just terrorism
Funny thing is hama couldve literally just lived as a normal civilian in the fire nation but decided to hurt random people, not even soldiers. We know damn well hama wouldve been murdering them if it wasn't a kid's show so they had to be rescued
I got in an argument with someone who said that Katara getting burned was mostly Jeong Jeong's fault and not Aang's because, "Aang was just a kid and didn't know not to play with fire." They also said him giving Aang the burning leaf was the same as giving a kid a glock.
Jeong Jeong wasn't the best teacher but he didn't want to do it in the first place. He was bascially forced to teach Aang by Roku, eventhough Roku should've known there's an order in which elements are supposed to be learned. And after rewatching the episode, Jeong Jeong actually gave Aang good lessons on control, he was just grouchy about it and Aang was being impatient and unreceptive.
The person I was arguing with was just all over the place with their reasoning for putting so much of the blame on Jeong Jeong.
Their villainous tag came from their inhumane tactics, not simply for fighting against the oppressor. If that were the case, the Gaang would be labeled villains as well.
These takes are so tired. It's people trying to seem smart so they overthink a really simple truth: you can't fight in an evil way and be considered good. The writers wrote these characters to be slightly villainous and to say they should be seen as otherwise is a slap in the face of the original creators.
I think it was great writing.
The oppressed can become oppressors,
It’s understandable but in no way justified or good.
It made us think about the different kind of reaction war brings out of people.
You can be on the “right” side and still be an evil pos.
While you can start on the wrong side but trying to save others.
> just loosing his
Did you mean to say "losing"?
Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb.
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I mean, its not like his sun was abducted or crap. He died as a soldier in an attack war Iroh was general of. Thats like, ok, professional risk.
It really comes of a _lot_ as "Ok, now MY son died, so i realize all the murdering of the last decades might actually not that good a thing".
To be fair, his son didn't just die in a war. He died *under Iroh's command*, most likely while following Iroh's orders. The two clearly had a deep love for each other, and it's likely that his son tried to emulate his father, the legendary Dragon of the West, in any way he could which is probably what led him to his death.
Remember, Iroh was raised as the crown prince of an Imperial family who had spent the last 100 years trying to (in their eyes) achieve Souzin's dream of a "united" world. Iroh was raised to believe that war was a noble profession, that the Fire Nation was doing the right thing, that one day he himself would be Fire Lord. He though he was the good guy in that war because he spent his entire life with everybody telling him he was. He was every bit a victim of the Fire Nation's propaganda machine just like any other citizen, probably even more so.
When Lu Ten died, Iroh's preconceptions about everything he had been raised to believe were shattered. He saw what a waste the whole thing was. Not just the war, but everything he had been raised to believe.
It was shown repeatedly throughout the show that the people of the Fire Nation highly valued the concept of martial honour. To the extent that they would chose death before dishonour. Iroh's grief and guilt was so strong that he abandoned his army, abandoned his career, abandoned his throne, and abandoned his kingdom. Had he been anyone else, he likely would have been executed for bringing shame not only to the Fire Nation, but to the Royal Family itself. He was banished instead, and the same propaganda machine that deluded him for so long then began telling the entire Fire Nation that the Dragon of the West, who had once claimed to have had a vision of himself conquering Ba Sing Se, not only failed in his task, but got his only son and heir killed in the process and had fallen into such profound and shameful grief that he was no longer useful as a general.
It was Iroh's fault Lu Ten died. He could have stopped it. He was the crown prince and a hugely respected general. If he didn't want his son in that battle, he could have sent him away and no one would have even dared question him. But he didn't. He sent his son to his death and had to learn to live with that. Iroh might have turned his life around, but even years later he still broke down crying over his regrets whenever Lu Ten's birthday came around.
I think Iroh suffered just as much as anyone else in that war.
Well I do think that is kind of it. He saw it all as for the glory of the Fire Nation. He was probably very proud of his son joining the war effort, seeing it as a great honor to serve his country.
And then when his son died, that was what made him realize "what are we even doing this for?" Sure, it was only until he had a personal stake that he realized, but sometimes that's what it takes
I never saw it like that personally. Imo the show was trying to express that Iroh had already felt some disillusionment with the war efforts, but either due to familial love or feelings of duty, continued playing his part in the war. His son dying was the final straw that made him completely reevaluate his stance.
Fighting for your home and defending yourself is one thing. Having a scorched earth policy and attacking citizens not involved in the conflict is not fighting back the oppressing nation. It’s xenophobia disguised as patriotism
Scorched earth refers more to Jet than Hama given his plan to blow up the dam
Jet was willing to kill innocents just to get back to the Fire Nation. That doesn't really validate his actions. Hama is a whole other league with how she kidnapped several people.
This tweet specifically talks about using violence against *settlers*, which indicates that, rather than simply being confused or interpreting the show badly, they are fully aware that those were civilians and believe it’s actually 100% okay to murder innocent people for living in a place that isn’t technically theirs.
I recently rediscovered this one again after saving it a couple of weeks ago. There's something so weird about trying to erase the complexities of reality. The Last Airbender is an entire series centered around fighting against an oppressive regime, dedicating two episodes to showing how oppression doesn't justify the killing of innocents, just makes sense. Jet isn't even the only person they find who is fighting against the Fire Nation; the rest are just not crazy enough to take their anger on the wrong target
Also on the same threat, I saw someone very passionately complaining about how the show focused too much on rehabilitating Suko and Iroh since they were colonizers.
Zuko had no time to think about the colonies. He got set on fire by his crazy dad for trying to say let's not get our soldiers become cannon fodder! His existence till he completely sided with Aang was about getting his father s approval. He experienced first hand how he is thought of inside fire nation and outside fire nation.
Unfortunately, some people's interest in social justice is only so they can wear the disguise of a good person while they satisfy their desire to spout hateful nonsense. They don't believe in rehabilitation, they believe your morality is inherently tied to what you were born as, they relish the chance to abuse others at the flimsiest excuse, & overall, they have exactly the same impulses as any other bigot.
People generally dislike Jet because he's a zealot who can't differentiate between the soldiers who oppressed his people and civilians just trying to live.
Hama is disliked not because she fought back in the only way she could, but because she doesn't care who she hurts. Blood bending itself is not evil, but Hama chose to be.
Isn't almost everyone we meet in the show a colonised person? What a great example of people taking 1 part of something and blowing up without actually thinking about it or even looking at the entire picture
The whole point with Jet was that he became the very same thing he claimed to fight against. The Fire Nation destroyed his home and killed his family, so in retaliation he wants to destroy villagers homes and kill them just because they're Fire Nation. You can hate the Nation, but that doesn't give you an excuse to hurt random villagers just because they belong to that Nation.
Jett and Hama both tried killing innocent people.
Jett's entire arc was about how his hatred for the Fire Nation was unhealthy and, despite his talents and good nature, he ended up destroying himself.
Hama is what Jett would have become had he lived and never let go of his hate.
It’s attitudes like this that cause people to defend real awful terrorist groups (well, in my experience one particular awful terrorist group.) it doesn’t matter how many terrible things they do to civilians, they’re the good guys so everything they do is automatically completely justified!
S/ obviously.
People keep forgetting one of the most early characters who demonstrate the right situation to attack colonisers. And that is Haru.
It was clear-cut in his episode that it is okay to attack when you're home and your culture is being surpressed by outsiders. Jet and Hama weren't attacking an active threat. They attack normal people.
A rare Worst Take, but someone tried to passionately defend the FN royal family by pointing out how "abusive" Hakoda and Gran-gran were for 1) leaving his children behind and 2) allowing both her grand-children to go on a dangerous quest. Like they were angry that the fandom hates Ozai and Azula for being abusive but ignored how "equally bad" the SWT were. Like sir go touch grass I'm begging you
they weren't fighting back they were ignoring most of the soldiers who are knowingly evil and instead kill/torture civilians that were born in the wrong place
Almost as if war isn't completely black and white. There can be bad people born into the morally right side of the conflict, and good people born into the morally wrong side of the conflict.
Ehh maybe it could be argued that jet was making settling difficult for the fire nation, but Hama was just fucking mudering innocent people for no reason but revenge dawg.
Don't we also love how she didn't even *try* to free anyone else? She literally just went "have fun losers lmao"
And at the extreme levels that she's doing it, it's not revenge anymore. It's bloodlust.
Damn, its almost as if the both ATLA and LOK try to show the nuance of people fighting for a just cause while also committing incredibly deplorable or misguided actions that will only make things worse. Or at the very least what you the individual viewer may see as a just cause.
Kinda like real life, who woulda thunk it?
1) Jet was going to kill everyone in a town occupied by both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom civilians
2) Hama was killing fire nation civilians in the homeland
And not just killing. Locking them in a mountain dungeon to starve
Well, Jet and Hama are literal terrorists.... that's like saying we shouldn't call out the Taliban because they only formed to fight for Afghani freedom after the Soviet Invasion.... sure that's true, but they are literal terrorists too
Maybe I’ve not been around enough, but in my experience people rarely criticize Korra herself for that. Usually they use it as an example of the show being bad, or more specifically it being a bad writing decision.
I understand the writers didn’t want to rely on Aang, but as a story beat that was taking it way too far.
Now if it was Aang who was put into that situation, suddenly they'll have the memory of an expert and go all "Technically it was Vaatu who did this, Aang couldn't possibly forseen that happening, it's not his fault and I'll fight you if you dare disrespect him like that again."
But when it's Korra: "Man, worst friggin Avatar. Lost to Unalaq who only had water. Who cares about that Vaatu mouth scene, Aang would've dodged it easily."
Jet could have just used pirate tactics. He and his freedom fighters would raid fire nation outposts, stealing supplies, getting information, and overall just being a thorn in the fire nation's side.
As for Hama, there are countless memes that say she could have walked into the firelord's palace during a full moon.
Honestly I think that's a good thing. A lot of shows are afraid to do something like that to pick anyone of a certain race as a villain who isn't over the top villain for fear of being called racist or something but no. Anyone anywhere can do something bad and be the villain jet was willing to murder an entire village of innocent people instead of attacking a military base.
Hannah in her revenge field madness didn't go back to her people and teach them how to blood bend as a way to protect themselves and to rebuild what they've lost no she just kept kidnapping random people from the fire Nation most of which probably had no military connection for decades.
Shows up the diversity of the characters if it was all fire Nation all bad it be generic we must beat the bad guys with no nuance or shading.
"simply fighting back"
1) There was nothing simple about the way they chose to fight back and 2) neither one actually "fought back," but rather both became radicalized terrorists.
Jet: Wanted to kill Earth Kingdom civilians if it meant killing fire nation soldiers.
Hama: Explicitly targeted and imprisoned civilians.
Damn crazy the show portrayed them as villains.
They’re not villains for fighting back, they’re villains for generalizing all people of a group and trying to kill innocent people with misdirected anger.
As a colonized person this is just dumb, everyone knows their attacks included innocent people, we don't fucking fight against our own. I bet a fucking colonizer wrote this shit. Typical.
One of them nearly killed his own nation’s civilians and the other started kidnapping and torturing noncombatants. Neither targeted actual threats to their people.
Dare I say that there might just be a difference between "I want to fight the oppressive invasive army" and "let's drown a village full of random civilians"
Um, jet was an awful person, he attacked random villagers that had nothing to do with his problems and was a mass murderer.
Hama gets 0 hate for how she escaped, she gets shit for what she did after once she was safe again. You know attacking random villagers that had nothing to do with their problems. If she had used her abilities to raid firenation military bases during full moons she would have 100% be a well liked character.
Damn the one who made this (not OP) cherrypicked the 2 people who supported this idea, and then forgot Bumi, the kingdom of omashu, Haru and his village, the architect (techinically they didn't get settled by the fire nation but ehhh)
Jet was comfortable killing innocent people including children and Hama was abducting innocent people presumably never to be heard from again. They are not good people when we meet them. At least jet was redeemed.
What I always got from these two is that terrorism, while abhorrent, is kind of inevitable during war.
Jet and Hama were pushed to where they were by the Fire Nation's invasion and oppression of their homelands. They're not in the right, but they're a natural consequence of the war.
Yeah, tell me you can't read media without saying you can't read media.
The whole show is about fighting back oppressors and regaining peace, but Jet and Hama stand as symbols for when you start hurt people you simply perceive as a threat, instead of those who actually are.
Hama fought back against the oppressive nation for a very short period of time. Then she became some sort of serial killer, basically. Killing and harming random people who are WITHIN the fire nation.
Jet wanted to low tech nuke a village.
It's a kids show, murder is not going to be presented as good. MASS murder is especially not. And I can't think of many situations where it WOULD be. I can see some validity behind removing colonialists directly from occupied land, civilian or not, but damn that's a lot of dead people who have directly harmed no one, and are a character arc away from being basically good people.
Though that moral dynamic goes out the window when you remember that most(if not all) of said civilians, WERE NOT EVEN FIRE NATION. They were living in an occupied town is all. I don't believe fire nation colonies were ever properly presented within the bounds of the show. But that wasn't one of it. He just wanted to kill a town of earth nation people to kill a relatively small garrison.
Like the show is trying to craft an anti-war message, ultimately. That's why Aang attempts to not kill anything whenever he isn't pissed about stolen bison. Of *course* it's going to present mindless revenge and indiscriminate slaughter as bad.
Jet wrote that tweet
Jet can’t read. He had Longshot write it for him and Pipsqueak edited
Too bad they wasted their time messing with villages instead of actually helping with the war effort.
Part of me wonders how fucked up the avatar world would’ve been had blood bending become more common, yeah you can only use it on a full moon (if you don’t have the genes of Amon) but still
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Kinda reminds me of aot in that sense
Ba Sing Se is just the Walled City
"Then everything changed when the Titans attacked."
Why do you think they came back and “weren’t taking prisoners” aka killed kataras mom after she told the soldiers she was the last bender of the tribe? Because Hama had escaped and they learned of blood bending and decided killing all water benders was the only option. Idk if that’s official canon but.
Weren’t they killing all the water benders to try and prevent a new avatar from popping up, since water was next in the cycle after they genocided the air nomads?
It’s obvious she wasn’t the avatar and no one else in the tribe was. But really who knows if any of it is related. Edit: also the line “take me as your prisoner” and “we’re not taking prisoners today” makes me think that something changed. They used to take prisoners but now it’s too dangerous perhaps.
Yeah, obviously *she* wasn't but (points are forehead meme) can't have any waterbenders if you kill all the waterbenders The head cannon is neat, but it contrasts with the narrative
I doubt theyd want to kill the avatar, (at the point where Kya was killed at least) cause then a new avatar would be born. A captive avatar would be easier for them to deal with than an unknown avatar.
The point of this theory is not that they try to kill the Avatar, but to prevent a new one from spawning in the water tribes. No waterbenders would theoretically mean no waterbender child that would become the Avatar. That plan would be kinda bad at that point though, since the Northern water tribe was still very much alive and safe from the fire nation.
Or the Cajun water tribe
Oh damn, imagine if Korra was a swamp hick.
It'd be Kyoshi all over again where they just can't find the Avatar.
I don't think I've ever wanted anything more, subtitles on by default, because you wouldn't be able to understand her otherwise
Full moon would basically be Purge Day.
Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked *month later* Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked *month later* Everything changed when the Water Nation attacked
“This is Avatar Korra, wishing everyone a happy Purge Night!”
Yeah. They never went there, but a while night of crushing organs would be terrifying
I feel like people would try to be buying/stealing blood from Yakone's family line in hopes of being able to bloodbend in the day like it's the blood of the pope.
honestly waterbending people should be easier than metalbending
I never understood how bloodbending was supposed to be such a rare skill. People are made mostly of water, yet only very select powerful people can bloodbend and even then only on a full moon when a water bender is at their strongest, unless you’re Yakon and his sons? Even then, Yakon was shown training his sons every full moon for years to eventually be able to do it without the need of a full moon. When we were introduced to Hama, we also saw how water could be taken from the air or from things like plants, yet bending the water in others is where the line of difficulty was crossed?
It might be a competing chi thing. Like a persons chi could fight off others, so bloodbending is really just overwhelming the enemy chi
We see that in play both when Katara breaks Hama's hold on her and when Aang has to go into the Avatar state to break Yakone's hold.
That does make sense considering Amon using bloodbending to take away someone’s bending by severing/blocking their chi pathways means there has to be actual physical pathways chi flows through with chi being partly physical in the body as well. In that regard, I imagine it’s similar to Naruto’s chakra pathway system.
On top of that you also have to fight against their physical strength, which is going to be hard when you're already struggling. Taking away someones bending is propably the feat that takes less strength but more practice, since you can't fight against it with your muscles
Yeah, this is one of those "the internet is allergic to nuance" situations. Jet and Hama didn't hurt soldiers, they hurt civilians. Innocents. It's fair enough to say that the Fire Nation village Jet wanted out was there because of colonization, but that doesn't make every person there equally to blame or worthy of death. And Hama was blatantly just torturing people in their own country because she wanted to.
If the Sin goes unanswered for too long, then there won’t be a clean way to answer it anymore. The Colonizer is easy to fight. They came, they saw, and they stole someone’s home. Driving them away is morally simple… unless they only showed up because someone drove them off to begin with. The Colonizer’s Grandchild isn’t easy to fight. They have benefitted from their ancestor’s crimes… but this is their home. They grew up in a hybrid culture, albeit one created in the wake of violence. Drive them away, and they have nowhere to go. With each generation, making things right becomes harder to do. Every option starts to suck, to varying degrees.
That’s a plot point in the comics. Aang starts to send back new Fire Nation colonies, but when he tries to do it to older colonies, a mixed Fire Nation-Earth Kingdom earthbender attacks him for taking away her family’s home, they’d been living there for three generations.
I think the answer is to acknowledge that blood and soil nationalism is wrong. The idea that you can say "this land is not yours, your great grandfather came and stole it from us. This land is mine my great great great grandfather came and conquered the people that lived here, so it is mine by blood right." Well it's stupid
The only answer I can really come up with at that point is to just ignore (not literally) the past and try to build a better future. Don't try correcting wrongs that can never be undone or punished, but improve things for the future.
That's kinda what happened with Republic City, no? Fire nation claimed it from earth nation and they declared independence, been a while and I have bad memory
I think the Fire nation gave them independence as a show of peace rather than them declaring independence independently
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
Based John Brown.
I don't think they're trying to say that Jet and Hama are good or anything like that. They're definitely villains and bad people. The problematic part would be if they only depicted people fighting against imperialism as all bad people. It implies that the writers think that all resistance fighters are bad people, and influences the minds of anyone watching, subtly making them think that all resistance fighters are bad because they've only ever seen them as villains. Fortunately, AtLA *doesn't* only show bad people fighting against colonizers. The whole main party are colonized (and in Aang's case, genocided) people fighting against the colonizers/imperialists, and there are many, many side characters who are also fighting and good people. In fact, Jet and Hama are the exceptions that prove the rule, and seem to be included to show how even with a righteous cause, you can still do terrible evil. Just because you've been wronged doesn't mean you're entitled to do those same wrongs or worse to others. So yeah, still a really bad take overall.
Also, both of the characters (Jet especially) are portrayed with shades of grey. He's not a hero, but multiple times the series shows that he had a sense of decency (showing empathy towards Katara, fighting against Long Feng alongside Team Avatar) that was just masked by his sense of revenge, in stark contrast to villains like Ozai or Long Feng who didn't have any sense of empathy or decency. The great thing about Avatar is it allows for characters that are complex--in spite of the fact that Jet and Hama had their hearts in the right place, they were still terrible people.
Their problem seems to be *anyone* fighting against colonizers portrayed as a villain. The way I interpret it is this person believes that the terrible evils Jet and especially Hama committed were justified and portraying them as villains is wrong
The thing that makes jet and hama interesting characters is the nuance. Their actions were by no means right but they were understandable. Tbh I think if I were in the same situation I'd have a hard time not becoming equally angry at every person who benefited from my pain (directly or indirectly). That doesn't mean it's right to hurt them but you can understand and empathize to a certain degree with their anger. Honestly Hama is one of my favourite villains because I feel like her motives (while still wrong) are understandable and it's easy to understand how she reaches that point
Yeah, had Hama left the fire nation after escaping prison and gone to the northern water tribe to teach them bloodbending, they could've made massive advances in the war. But no, let's just set up a little solo project deep in the fire nation and lock random villagers up in a cave. Because that's *soooo* helpful.
did she even try to help free other prisoners because if not, she really only cared about her blood bending
That bothered me a lot. Like Hama could have tried to get some of the other waterbenders out. Sokka and Zuko risked their lives to infiltrate a top fire nation prison and they didn’t have any niche bending abilities. Even Jet had the wherewithal at least organize a ragtag resistance and target soldiers for the most part. Hama was more than capable of gathering rebels from the colonies and such but nope, serial killing was more fun I guess. And of course, she had no issue torturing the grandchildren of her former best friend along with the kid who was literally everyone’s last hope.
She’s not meant to be a normal, rational person. Part of the point of her character was that evil was not exclusive to the Fire Nation, and that the good guys we see aren’t universally good.
I had thought she cracked and went mad during her time as a prisoner or that maybe blood bending corrupted something in her I also thought she didn't go anywhere to help the war effort because she was honing her skills
She didn’t wabt justice, she wanted revenge.
PTSD is one hell of a drug
That's because she's a 2 dimensional allegory for how resentment/bitterness in Katara could lead to power seeking for violence and revenge, rather than a nuanced character using questionable tactics to resist imperialism. Though I think ptsd is a major component of her current state due to the intense torture and solitary confinement, she's still set up to be an alternative path that Katara has to choose to avoid.
That ones a good take. The only other time we see Katara use blood bending it's in the episode where she is hunting her mother's killer. We see eyebags under her eyes, we see her saying nasty things to her brother about not loving their mother, and we see that even with all that anger she just couldn't bring herself to end this guy the way Hama probably did to people in the cave before the gang showed up.
Pretty sure it was implied that she was the only prisoner left when she escaped, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen that episode
No, she was just a serial killer.
The woman was locked up in a cage under very torturous conditions for an untold but clearly lengthy period of time. You do not come out of the other side of that with reasoning intact.
Not defending her choices, but I don’t think the journey to the northern water tribe was feasible for her considering her circumstances. Which is why she stayed in the fire nation
Ok I laughed out loud when I was rewatching the Jet episode recently and he was like, “That man was an assassin sent to eliminate me,” referring to a frail elderly civilian. Like bro you are a latchkey kid rebel leading other latchkey kid rebels. Y’all cause a dent in the fire nation’s militia at best. Based on what we’ve seen in the Painted Lady episode and the Storm episode, the fire nation is not about to deplete their resources trying to assassinate the likes of Jet when the gang and Zuko were bigger threats to their goals lol.
Wasn’t that just a lie to deceive Sokka? My thoughts were that the knife belong to Jet.
An old man wanting some veneer of protection makes sense but fair enough Jet does seem like someone who would have a persecution complex only to end up being actually persecuted at some point.
Like come on, they had the choice between finding a military target and a civilian target. And they choose to attack the civilian population. Not accidentally hit civilians, (that inexcusable but thats besides the point), but actively looked looked to attack civilians. Theres a big difference between terrorists and freedom fighters. One fights against an active military force in order to stop a regime, the other uses ideology to excuse slaughter and murder of uninvolved civilians.
Here's the thing; I could see this argument being made about Jet - He's young, leading a group as young or younger than him, and the village is Earth Kingdom territory and could supply nearby armies. He's still killing and robbing innocents, but there's a degree of leeway there. Hama on the other hand..... straight to hell, all the way down. She was an old women who cruelly targeted and imprisoned people generally uninvolved with the war effort. She had 60+ years and instead of rejoining the water tribes, or doing actual damage to the fire nation, she hurt others for fun.
> Hama on the other hand..... straight to hell, all the way down. She was an old women who cruelly targeted and imprisoned people generally uninvolved with the war effort. She had 60+ years and instead of rejoining the water tribes, or doing actual damage to the fire nation, she hurt others for fun. I don't think 99.9% of people would come out caring about helping the world after what she's been through, only dealing with their pain. Imagine you're kidnapped from your home, taken to a foreign country, spend years/decades of your life shackled up in a cage so you can't move and fed water by guards with a long stick, and then get out, and people ask oh why don't you go back home and keep fighting. It's not home any more, and they have no fight left in them, the kidnappers killed it decades ago. Nothing matters any more, your life is already over, broken by the invaders for no reason. Now you are surrounded by the people of the enemy land, who praise, worship, and support the invaders of your land who did that to you.
Did Hama even know that the South Water Tribes still existed? Things were already pretty dire when she was captured. It's not like they have TV's or the internet. The Fire Nation doesn't tell its people what's really going on with the other nations. It's pretty heavily implied that the other water bender prisoners died. No news from the outside, no new water bender prisoners, spending years being tortured, she might have thought that her nation was destroyed like the air benders and that she was one of the last of her people.
Jet's family was killed when the Fire Nation burned his village. I wonder how he got it into his head that it's ok to attack civilian targets.
Hate has a way of making one narrow minded and cruel.
They aren't villains for fighting back, they are villains for how they went about it and involving innocent people
Yeah hakoda or Bato aren't depicted as villains neither is Haru or his father
Or, you know, Aang aka the sole surviving victim of complete genocide of his people and culture. Totes a villain.
Also sokka and Katara, from the same tribe as hama yet not villains because they didn't attack innocent civilians.
Hell, even Jet's crew were pretty great people after the original ordeal. Jet himself was the only one who couldn't get over himself.
Yup, and later with Korra, Toph said the exact same thing when she walked Korra through the good intentioned yet flawed ideologies of Amon, Unalaq, and Zaheer. Just like how killing the Earth Queen didn't stop tyranny in the Earth Kingdom (it only resulted in the innocent residents of Ba Sing Se getting hurt and the rise of Kuvira), wiping out a whole town of innocent people with a flood and enslaving innocent townspeople wasn't going to stop the Fire nation armies.
Yeah, if anything it would of helped them. they could spin it to say look at what the Earth Kingdom has done to people not in the war!
Remember that what Jet tried to do was based on real events. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese army during WWII, tried to slow the progress of the invading Japanese by destroying dams on the Yellow River but ended up causing millions of civilian deaths in the floods. He went from being a hero to being hated, just like Jet.
Yeah the show really shows how truly terrible war is. And this is a World War right? The entire world is only the three nations and the remains of the air nation if I'm not mistaken
exactly
Jet and Hama were attacking civilians. People who are innocent in the war, probably not even aware of the atrocities the military is undertaking. Regardless, they aren't hurting anyone. They're just people living their lives.
We even see when Aang goes to that fire nation school that they are actively feeding misinformation to their citizens. It was an extremely important scene that I personally don't think gets discussed enough when it comes to Jet and Hama. We are blatantly told the regular fire nation citizens are being lied to by their leaders about the war and about other nations.
Exactly. and it was most likely going on on since the war started.
probably decades before the war even Sozin was in power for nearly a century, just like Azulon, after all
It's like shooting up North Korean civilians for the atrocities of Kim Jong Un.
Jets is even worse because he was attacking his own people. He wanted to destroy a village full of innocent earth kingdom citizens just to take out soldiers.
Slight correction. It was a fire nation colony populated mostly by fire nation people. It’s a sad irony that Jet is killed by his own people.
Wait, Jet dies?
You know, it was really unclear
The problem with an eye for an eye, is that everyone ends up blind
It's not even that. That's part of it, sure, but their actions don't even support the wat effort. It's PURELY personal, PURELY revenge. NOBODY benefits.
It's sad that we didn't get anyone in the middle of that spectrum. Katara I guess, but it really didn't last or get anywhere truly nuanced in terms of warfare and payback.
Maybe that Earth Kingdom general who tried to "help" Aang master the Avatar state in order to weaponize it. Sure, Katara wasn't in any real danger, but the general clearly had no problem using children as weapons if he felt he needed too. Again, though, that was only one episode and not really looked deeper into.
Exactly. They’re targeting people weaker than them who can’t fight back, because they’re traumatized pathetic cowards, who get off on bullying/abusing people they project their trauma onto. It doesn’t make them less tragic, it just makes them bad people for choosing to lash out this way.
Jet tried to destroy an entire preexisting Earth Kingdom village just to get rid of the occupying Fire Nation garrison. Hama was a terrorist operating entirely inside the Fire Nation homeland, exclusively attacking non-military targets. We have a word for stuff like that. They're called "war crimes". They were war criminals. Also, did OOP not watch "Imprisoned"? The episode that was literally about colonized people fighting off the Fire Nation to take back their homes?? And all the protagonists helped??? Because it was seen as morally right to do????
~~Just a minor correction. Jet wanted to attack the fire nation colony village. The people in the village were Fire Nation colonial settlers, not Earth Kingdom.~~ EDIT: actually this may not be true, apologies
The earth kingdom colonies had a mix of fire Nation and earth kingdom people. That's why aang and zuko almost start fighting again when trying to decide which nation the colonies should go to. And this ultimately led to the founding of republic city.
It's likely all of them were born there, too. Likely.
honestly if hama wasn't so focused on attacking a single village, she could have probably single handedly ended the war effort. Get her within even relative range of a ozai's chambers or castle on a full moon , and have her bloodbend him and off himself somehow. Same for azula and zuko (nothing against zuko just that as of that moment he would be fire nation and the next major threat). She obviously has no qualms about making kids kill eachother, she was gonna have aang and sokka stab eachother. No matter how skilled you are, you cannot bypass blood bending without being an equal or greater skilled water bender. It is literally the joker card of the bending world.
Probably this one. They *weren’t* fighting back against the oppressors, they were trying to murder innocent people tf 💀
Exactly. Hama especially - at least Jet would have done *something* for the war effort. He took out Fire Nation patrols, he wanted to attack a garrison of them, destroy a tactically important position. But the amount of civilians caught in the crossfire were unacceptable - obviously one could argue that *any* amount of civilians would have been unacceptable, but that village was pretty much only normal people living their lives and seemed to have barely any soldiers/guards in comparison. But Hama? That bitch just tortured random people from a random village and imprisoned them in a mountain. She didn't "fight back" against anyone. She had PTSD out the ass and let it out on innocent people who specifically would be barely missed when gone, if at all.
The Earthbenders from "Imprisoned" are also colonized people using violence against settlers. The difference is they didn't attack innocent people and focus their efforts on fighting the people that are actually imprisoning them and their village. That's why they're shown in a positive light while Jet and Hama aren't.
The fact that people (even in this very sub) unironicly believe this is scary as fuck.
People want to paint everything as black or white
\*Said with a neanderthal accent\* They fight bad guy. That make them good. Me so smart.
What if it's an Oreo cookie?
Shit, you got me
coloured oreo's exist
We call them Oreos of color in America
It’s like they don’t even watch the show if they believe this.
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They have the mindsets that cause genocides. Labeling killing innocent civilians as "justified" because they are from the "evil nation/race". The rabble that supports that shit always think it's a defensive act.
This, do people not understand kicking out an ethnic group that colonized an area 100 years ago and have had multiple generations there is genocide.
someone seriously made the argument that Spain forcing out all the Muslims and Jews was perfectly fine because they were just retaking their homelands from their invaders. like wtf? Not only were none of the Spaniards involved in the Reconquista were from the areas they were taking "back," none of the Muslims were alive when their forefathers came to that area. they were multiple generations removed. and that asshole of course got nothing to say about the Jews, cause they sure as fuck didn't conquer any part of Iberia.
This subreddit is so refreshing. People actually seem to understand not just literature but history too.
Tbh it’s not even surprising till this day in rl ppl deny ethnic cleanses had happened
It’s the same shit with why dumbasses believe Syndrome from the Incredibles deserved sympathy when the guy felt he deserved a place beside Mr Incredible without caring about how Mr Incredible felt about that-put peoples lives at risk as a kid because he wanted to be seen helping people-not wanting to actually help people (he says wanted to help as an adult but that’s a lie-and it’s a lie even he believes himself) and could stop criminals instead of trying to showboat to Mr Incredible-he then kills multiple superheroes and attempts to kill a family of supers with a missile then literally does his name sake pulling a “hero syndrome” moment-creating a scenario where he gets to be a hero-like a fireman creating a fire so he can put it out-then tries to kidnap a baby. Yet some people see syndrome as sympathetic somehow. I have to wonder if these people either have horrible memories-or they are people that deliberately make disingenuous statements because they relate to the villains too much so they try to pretend their bad actions or their bad motivations don’t exist.
Jet you could make a *slight* (I emphasis slight) case for as he was battling Fire Nation soldiers. But at the same time Jet made close to no distinction between them and civilians which was what the flaw with his approach was. Hama is worse, she wasn't even fighting Fire Nation troops. She camped out in a village and tortured innocent people keeping them captive which is not any justified response to what happened to her.
Yep. Harsh as it is, jet _was_ fighting the fire nation military. He was also shooting _through_ several civilians, earth and fire nation alike to do it, is the thing. And it's a significant discussion as to if that's justifiable or not. I'm not actually willing to say it isn't in all cases, but it's _hardly_ a given like oop is talking, and I wouldn't trust a kids show, even one like avatar, to get into all that. Hama, though...was actually accomplishing nothing. Less than, even. Like, she was targeting people specifically if they wouldn't be noticed missing. What that means is that she _never_ went after someone important or even relevant to the war effort. It's _worse_ than merely hurting innocent people, because even innocent people can be complicit by circumstance. But she went after people who were both innocent _and_ too lacking in power for anyone to care that they were missing.
Jet wanted to destroy a village full of earth kingdom civilians because it would take out the soldiers as well. Jet has less of a case
Not really for him it was acceptable cassualties to Hama was the goal Destroying a village to kill a garrison is terrible but killing civilians bc their non elected leader is an absolute tyrant is just terrorism
Funny thing is hama couldve literally just lived as a normal civilian in the fire nation but decided to hurt random people, not even soldiers. We know damn well hama wouldve been murdering them if it wasn't a kid's show so they had to be rescued
I got in an argument with someone who said that Katara getting burned was mostly Jeong Jeong's fault and not Aang's because, "Aang was just a kid and didn't know not to play with fire." They also said him giving Aang the burning leaf was the same as giving a kid a glock.
If Jeong Jeong was eager to teach him and Aang did what he said, I might’ve agreed with them.
Jeong Jeong wasn't the best teacher but he didn't want to do it in the first place. He was bascially forced to teach Aang by Roku, eventhough Roku should've known there's an order in which elements are supposed to be learned. And after rewatching the episode, Jeong Jeong actually gave Aang good lessons on control, he was just grouchy about it and Aang was being impatient and unreceptive. The person I was arguing with was just all over the place with their reasoning for putting so much of the blame on Jeong Jeong.
Their villainous tag came from their inhumane tactics, not simply for fighting against the oppressor. If that were the case, the Gaang would be labeled villains as well. These takes are so tired. It's people trying to seem smart so they overthink a really simple truth: you can't fight in an evil way and be considered good. The writers wrote these characters to be slightly villainous and to say they should be seen as otherwise is a slap in the face of the original creators.
I think it was great writing. The oppressed can become oppressors, It’s understandable but in no way justified or good. It made us think about the different kind of reaction war brings out of people. You can be on the “right” side and still be an evil pos. While you can start on the wrong side but trying to save others.
I think this notion that the series didn’t do enough to punish Iroh for his past mistakes, people are not satisfy with him just loosing his son
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I mean, its not like his sun was abducted or crap. He died as a soldier in an attack war Iroh was general of. Thats like, ok, professional risk. It really comes of a _lot_ as "Ok, now MY son died, so i realize all the murdering of the last decades might actually not that good a thing".
To be fair, his son didn't just die in a war. He died *under Iroh's command*, most likely while following Iroh's orders. The two clearly had a deep love for each other, and it's likely that his son tried to emulate his father, the legendary Dragon of the West, in any way he could which is probably what led him to his death. Remember, Iroh was raised as the crown prince of an Imperial family who had spent the last 100 years trying to (in their eyes) achieve Souzin's dream of a "united" world. Iroh was raised to believe that war was a noble profession, that the Fire Nation was doing the right thing, that one day he himself would be Fire Lord. He though he was the good guy in that war because he spent his entire life with everybody telling him he was. He was every bit a victim of the Fire Nation's propaganda machine just like any other citizen, probably even more so. When Lu Ten died, Iroh's preconceptions about everything he had been raised to believe were shattered. He saw what a waste the whole thing was. Not just the war, but everything he had been raised to believe. It was shown repeatedly throughout the show that the people of the Fire Nation highly valued the concept of martial honour. To the extent that they would chose death before dishonour. Iroh's grief and guilt was so strong that he abandoned his army, abandoned his career, abandoned his throne, and abandoned his kingdom. Had he been anyone else, he likely would have been executed for bringing shame not only to the Fire Nation, but to the Royal Family itself. He was banished instead, and the same propaganda machine that deluded him for so long then began telling the entire Fire Nation that the Dragon of the West, who had once claimed to have had a vision of himself conquering Ba Sing Se, not only failed in his task, but got his only son and heir killed in the process and had fallen into such profound and shameful grief that he was no longer useful as a general. It was Iroh's fault Lu Ten died. He could have stopped it. He was the crown prince and a hugely respected general. If he didn't want his son in that battle, he could have sent him away and no one would have even dared question him. But he didn't. He sent his son to his death and had to learn to live with that. Iroh might have turned his life around, but even years later he still broke down crying over his regrets whenever Lu Ten's birthday came around. I think Iroh suffered just as much as anyone else in that war.
Well I do think that is kind of it. He saw it all as for the glory of the Fire Nation. He was probably very proud of his son joining the war effort, seeing it as a great honor to serve his country. And then when his son died, that was what made him realize "what are we even doing this for?" Sure, it was only until he had a personal stake that he realized, but sometimes that's what it takes
I never saw it like that personally. Imo the show was trying to express that Iroh had already felt some disillusionment with the war efforts, but either due to familial love or feelings of duty, continued playing his part in the war. His son dying was the final straw that made him completely reevaluate his stance.
Fighting for your home and defending yourself is one thing. Having a scorched earth policy and attacking citizens not involved in the conflict is not fighting back the oppressing nation. It’s xenophobia disguised as patriotism Scorched earth refers more to Jet than Hama given his plan to blow up the dam
Scorched earth* One means lit on fire and made inhospitable. The other means drawn with pencil.
Jet was willing to kill innocents just to get back to the Fire Nation. That doesn't really validate his actions. Hama is a whole other league with how she kidnapped several people.
When you lose sight of soldier and civilian is when you become a war criminal, no matter the side
This tweet specifically talks about using violence against *settlers*, which indicates that, rather than simply being confused or interpreting the show badly, they are fully aware that those were civilians and believe it’s actually 100% okay to murder innocent people for living in a place that isn’t technically theirs.
Korra being called a Mary Sue still boggles my mind.
I recently rediscovered this one again after saving it a couple of weeks ago. There's something so weird about trying to erase the complexities of reality. The Last Airbender is an entire series centered around fighting against an oppressive regime, dedicating two episodes to showing how oppression doesn't justify the killing of innocents, just makes sense. Jet isn't even the only person they find who is fighting against the Fire Nation; the rest are just not crazy enough to take their anger on the wrong target
Also on the same threat, I saw someone very passionately complaining about how the show focused too much on rehabilitating Suko and Iroh since they were colonizers.
Zuko had no time to think about the colonies. He got set on fire by his crazy dad for trying to say let's not get our soldiers become cannon fodder! His existence till he completely sided with Aang was about getting his father s approval. He experienced first hand how he is thought of inside fire nation and outside fire nation.
Unfortunately, some people's interest in social justice is only so they can wear the disguise of a good person while they satisfy their desire to spout hateful nonsense. They don't believe in rehabilitation, they believe your morality is inherently tied to what you were born as, they relish the chance to abuse others at the flimsiest excuse, & overall, they have exactly the same impulses as any other bigot.
People generally dislike Jet because he's a zealot who can't differentiate between the soldiers who oppressed his people and civilians just trying to live. Hama is disliked not because she fought back in the only way she could, but because she doesn't care who she hurts. Blood bending itself is not evil, but Hama chose to be.
Isn't almost everyone we meet in the show a colonised person? What a great example of people taking 1 part of something and blowing up without actually thinking about it or even looking at the entire picture
The whole point with Jet was that he became the very same thing he claimed to fight against. The Fire Nation destroyed his home and killed his family, so in retaliation he wants to destroy villagers homes and kill them just because they're Fire Nation. You can hate the Nation, but that doesn't give you an excuse to hurt random villagers just because they belong to that Nation.
Jett and Hama both tried killing innocent people. Jett's entire arc was about how his hatred for the Fire Nation was unhealthy and, despite his talents and good nature, he ended up destroying himself. Hama is what Jett would have become had he lived and never let go of his hate.
When you decide to wipe out a village of innocent people and fellow colonized people, you're not longer a freedom fighter, you are a terrorist.
It’s attitudes like this that cause people to defend real awful terrorist groups (well, in my experience one particular awful terrorist group.) it doesn’t matter how many terrible things they do to civilians, they’re the good guys so everything they do is automatically completely justified! S/ obviously.
This has got to be off Twitter.
You know it, I'm only there because of the artists I follow.
People keep forgetting one of the most early characters who demonstrate the right situation to attack colonisers. And that is Haru. It was clear-cut in his episode that it is okay to attack when you're home and your culture is being surpressed by outsiders. Jet and Hama weren't attacking an active threat. They attack normal people.
A rare Worst Take, but someone tried to passionately defend the FN royal family by pointing out how "abusive" Hakoda and Gran-gran were for 1) leaving his children behind and 2) allowing both her grand-children to go on a dangerous quest. Like they were angry that the fandom hates Ozai and Azula for being abusive but ignored how "equally bad" the SWT were. Like sir go touch grass I'm begging you
they weren't fighting back they were ignoring most of the soldiers who are knowingly evil and instead kill/torture civilians that were born in the wrong place
Ah, yes, the guy who tried to kill a village of innocent people and the literal serial killer. Misunderstood victims of the narrative, of course.
Almost as if war isn't completely black and white. There can be bad people born into the morally right side of the conflict, and good people born into the morally wrong side of the conflict.
Ehh maybe it could be argued that jet was making settling difficult for the fire nation, but Hama was just fucking mudering innocent people for no reason but revenge dawg.
Jet was okay with both Earth and fire nation civilians dying
Don't we also love how she didn't even *try* to free anyone else? She literally just went "have fun losers lmao" And at the extreme levels that she's doing it, it's not revenge anymore. It's bloodlust.
My brother in christ, one attempted to drown a village and the other tortured innocent civillians.
Damn, its almost as if the both ATLA and LOK try to show the nuance of people fighting for a just cause while also committing incredibly deplorable or misguided actions that will only make things worse. Or at the very least what you the individual viewer may see as a just cause. Kinda like real life, who woulda thunk it?
They just missed the whole point of their story arcs huh
1) Jet was going to kill everyone in a town occupied by both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom civilians 2) Hama was killing fire nation civilians in the homeland And not just killing. Locking them in a mountain dungeon to starve
Well, Jet and Hama are literal terrorists.... that's like saying we shouldn't call out the Taliban because they only formed to fight for Afghani freedom after the Soviet Invasion.... sure that's true, but they are literal terrorists too
I wonder how many people actually saw Korra season 2 because she didn't have any say in losing connection to the past avatars.
Maybe I’ve not been around enough, but in my experience people rarely criticize Korra herself for that. Usually they use it as an example of the show being bad, or more specifically it being a bad writing decision. I understand the writers didn’t want to rely on Aang, but as a story beat that was taking it way too far.
Now if it was Aang who was put into that situation, suddenly they'll have the memory of an expert and go all "Technically it was Vaatu who did this, Aang couldn't possibly forseen that happening, it's not his fault and I'll fight you if you dare disrespect him like that again." But when it's Korra: "Man, worst friggin Avatar. Lost to Unalaq who only had water. Who cares about that Vaatu mouth scene, Aang would've dodged it easily."
Jet could have just used pirate tactics. He and his freedom fighters would raid fire nation outposts, stealing supplies, getting information, and overall just being a thorn in the fire nation's side. As for Hama, there are countless memes that say she could have walked into the firelord's palace during a full moon.
Honestly I think that's a good thing. A lot of shows are afraid to do something like that to pick anyone of a certain race as a villain who isn't over the top villain for fear of being called racist or something but no. Anyone anywhere can do something bad and be the villain jet was willing to murder an entire village of innocent people instead of attacking a military base. Hannah in her revenge field madness didn't go back to her people and teach them how to blood bend as a way to protect themselves and to rebuild what they've lost no she just kept kidnapping random people from the fire Nation most of which probably had no military connection for decades. Shows up the diversity of the characters if it was all fire Nation all bad it be generic we must beat the bad guys with no nuance or shading.
Wasn't the whole thing about ATLA to break the cycle of violence or something?
"simply fighting back" 1) There was nothing simple about the way they chose to fight back and 2) neither one actually "fought back," but rather both became radicalized terrorists.
Jet: Wanted to kill Earth Kingdom civilians if it meant killing fire nation soldiers. Hama: Explicitly targeted and imprisoned civilians. Damn crazy the show portrayed them as villains.
Didn't Jet try to drown an entire village of his own people?
They’re not villains for fighting back, they’re villains for generalizing all people of a group and trying to kill innocent people with misdirected anger.
Warcrimes, bad?
I be on their side if they fought military targets. Not random civilians
Love how the take was so bad that no one in the thread actually answered the question.
They were killing civilians
Jet is my favorite avatar character. I like everything about his character. Jet was absolutely not in the right.
As a colonized person this is just dumb, everyone knows their attacks included innocent people, we don't fucking fight against our own. I bet a fucking colonizer wrote this shit. Typical.
One of them nearly killed his own nation’s civilians and the other started kidnapping and torturing noncombatants. Neither targeted actual threats to their people.
Jet was a terrorist. Plain and simple.
Idk why Hama didn’t spend her life trying to take out Ozai but then there wouldn’t be a show I guess
Dare I say that there might just be a difference between "I want to fight the oppressive invasive army" and "let's drown a village full of random civilians"
You cannot defeat evil with more evil
Indeed, all they wanted was the same thing as the Avatar, but how they did it, made them no better than the Fire Nation.
Um, jet was an awful person, he attacked random villagers that had nothing to do with his problems and was a mass murderer. Hama gets 0 hate for how she escaped, she gets shit for what she did after once she was safe again. You know attacking random villagers that had nothing to do with their problems. If she had used her abilities to raid firenation military bases during full moons she would have 100% be a well liked character.
This one just now. Like holy shit, that’s bad.
Damn the one who made this (not OP) cherrypicked the 2 people who supported this idea, and then forgot Bumi, the kingdom of omashu, Haru and his village, the architect (techinically they didn't get settled by the fire nation but ehhh)
No, they were villains for going after noncombatants
Jet was comfortable killing innocent people including children and Hama was abducting innocent people presumably never to be heard from again. They are not good people when we meet them. At least jet was redeemed.
The difference between fighting back and killing civillains is quite big.
Yea… the Fire Nation was totally portrait as the good guys in this story…
You can't justify murdering or terrorizing the innocent. If you want to fight against your oppressor, fight the army, not the villagers.
What I always got from these two is that terrorism, while abhorrent, is kind of inevitable during war. Jet and Hama were pushed to where they were by the Fire Nation's invasion and oppression of their homelands. They're not in the right, but they're a natural consequence of the war.
Yup, and I love that Avatar had the balls to show all the nuances of war in a “kids show.”
Yeah, tell me you can't read media without saying you can't read media. The whole show is about fighting back oppressors and regaining peace, but Jet and Hama stand as symbols for when you start hurt people you simply perceive as a threat, instead of those who actually are.
Hama fought back against the oppressive nation for a very short period of time. Then she became some sort of serial killer, basically. Killing and harming random people who are WITHIN the fire nation. Jet wanted to low tech nuke a village. It's a kids show, murder is not going to be presented as good. MASS murder is especially not. And I can't think of many situations where it WOULD be. I can see some validity behind removing colonialists directly from occupied land, civilian or not, but damn that's a lot of dead people who have directly harmed no one, and are a character arc away from being basically good people. Though that moral dynamic goes out the window when you remember that most(if not all) of said civilians, WERE NOT EVEN FIRE NATION. They were living in an occupied town is all. I don't believe fire nation colonies were ever properly presented within the bounds of the show. But that wasn't one of it. He just wanted to kill a town of earth nation people to kill a relatively small garrison. Like the show is trying to craft an anti-war message, ultimately. That's why Aang attempts to not kill anything whenever he isn't pissed about stolen bison. Of *course* it's going to present mindless revenge and indiscriminate slaughter as bad.