There's no word throughout the series of an underground organization in the Fire Nation who is actively trying to undermine their country's brutal colonialist ways.
Are we so certain of that? This is not the age of the Internet. Heck it's not even the age of radio. Do you recall what the history books of the Fire Nation say about the Hundred Year War at the time? That the Air Nomads had an army. That the Fire Nation was bringing prosperity. Zuko himself believed in that BS until he went into the Earth Kingdom firsthand as a war refugee.
To blame civilians to justify Hama's actions is honestly just as bad as justifying the Fire Nation's imperialism by blaming the Earth Kingdom's "backwater" policies regarding progress. There is no justification for Hama to commit such atrocious acts. Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.
That could easily be reframed as "let's give her to the people who'll let her off, as opposed to someone who would actually care about the harm she did" right?
A better argument would be to try to find a more neutral arbitrator, but given this is in the context of the aftermath of a war that's touched everyone in the world I can't imagine how difficult that would be. Maybe still worth trying, though.
Edited by LSBK on Feb 19th 2021 at 8:20:12 AM
Unless the comics mentioned it, this is an important part of Ozai's defeat that pretty much gets glossed over. It's basically far more ignominious an end to an Agni Kai than Zuko ever faced.
Jet... I rewatched the episode "City of Walls and Secrets". He did intend to redeem himself, and actually put in the work between his appearances to be a "legitimate" Robin Hood type. His main goal in Book 2 was just trying to out Iroh and Zuko as Firebenders, but not to directly harm them, just to report them to the police. Neither he nor Zuko were going fully offensive throughout the fight, either (arguably, Zuko potentially had the deadlier attack that Jet dodged). The most dangerous blow Jet attempted was actually to a Dai Li agent arresting him. Smellerbee and Longshot did point out that he was being obsessive. He also wasn't being forgiving, but he was still attempting to be well-meaning.
Also, I noticed Netflix doesn't list "The Drill" and "The Serpent's Pass" separately. They are instead put together as "The Secret of the Fire Nation", which I believe is how they aired.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Feb 19th 2021 at 8:19:11 AM
The sad, REAL American dichotomyNot ALL the Fire Nation civilians could have been that oblivious.
The German civilians in World War 2, whether they knew about Hitler's atrocities or not, were still forced by the Allies to realize the extent of their country's atrocities. They were still forced to help clean up the mess that they either ignored, championed, or were oblivious to.
That's honestly something that is lacking from the Fire Nation at the end of the original show and the comics that come immediately after it.
Have the Fire Nation civilians realize and admit that their country f**ked up big time.
Oh, and the thing about the Fire Nation civilians being able to justify the Air Nomad slaughter because the latter nation "supposedly" had an army?
What about the imprisonment of waterbenders and earthbenders (a lot of whom would be children — yes, adults were mainly shown as the prisoners, but war doesn't discriminate, and the only reason why more child prisoners weren't shown is because of the Y7 rating)?
Most, if not all of the earthbenders may have been sent to ocean rigs, but as for the waterbender prisoners coming into the Fire Nation lands — how can civilians watch that happen and just be fine with their country doing that?
THAT is why the Allies didn't just let the German civilians off the hook at the end of World War 2.
Yes, there are some who genuinely didn't know, but there are a lot who do and chose not to do anything about it. Heck, a lot of them cheered for it.
Delegates from other countries could be sent to check up on whether or not the Southern Water Tribe is actually giving Hama consequences for her crimes, ya know?
Get someone from the Earth Kingdom then.
It won't be as personal as a Water Tribe member adjudicating the trial, and it definitely won't be as inhumane and unfair as a Fire Nation person doing it.
The important thing here is to let Hama be free of the Fire Nation.
Edited by BrightLight on Feb 20th 2021 at 3:41:58 AM
The German civilians in World War 2, whether they knew about Hitler's atrocities or not, were still forced by the Allies to realize the extent of their country's atrocities. They were still forced to help clean up the mess that they either ignored, championed, or were oblivious to.
That's honestly something that is lacking from the Fire Nation at the end of the original show and the comics that come immediately after it.
Have the Fire Nation civilians realize and admit that their country f**ked up big time.
Oh, and the thing about the Fire Nation civilians being able to justify the Air Nomad slaughter because the latter nation "supposedly" had an army?
What about the imprisonment of waterbenders and earthbenders (a lot of whom would be children — yes, adults were mainly shown as the prisoners, but war doesn't discriminate, and the only reason why more child prisoners weren't shown is because of the Y7 rating)?
Most, if not all of the earthbenders may have been sent to ocean rigs, but as for the waterbender prisoners coming into the Fire Nation lands — how can civilians watch that happen and just be fine with their country doing that?
THAT is why the Allies didn't just let the German civilians off the hook at the end of World War 2.
Yes, there are some who genuinely didn't know, but there are a lot who do and chose not to do anything about it. Heck, a lot of them cheered for it.
Again, there is no indication that the people Hama was targeting are aware of what was going in the Hundred Year War. You just assume it to be so just because they happened to be Fire Nation people. And again, it can never justify Hama's actions.
She could have gone after the obvious targets like the factories or the military bases. But no, she went after civilians and villagers instead.
And I can see what kind of propaganda the Fire Nation would be producing with this criminal's actions at their intel.
Edited by Shadao on Feb 19th 2021 at 6:52:27 AM
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Killing the innocent civilians from a nation whose soldiers wronged you doesn't make you a hero. It makes you a petty monster who is targeting the wrong people. Ozai wouldn't care if civilians died unless he began to see some real massive losses, Hama could have used her bloodbending entirely against the soldiers and high commands, but decided to make people miserable out of spite instead of making people happy and stopping the Fire Nation
Prettiest Meta Knight Gijinka, nglWhat I'm saying is that Hama should be tried by people who are not from the country that committed a genocide on her and her people.
And there is no indication that they're against what their country was doing either. If there was, I might be more inclined to look harshly upon Hama's actions, but that's not the case.
So she was 100% justified in attacking innocents because they might just happen to support Ozai, even if they turned out to actually be against him or unaware of the true crimes?
You know, the same logic was used to put Japanese people on internment camps in the USA during WW2 even when few or none of them supported the brutality of the Japanese Empire.
You don't show you're good by mirroring the actions of those you hate. You don't end a war by attacking civilians purely out of spite, you don't stop an evil overlord by single-mindedly killing innocents.
Edited by VengefulBale on Feb 19th 2021 at 8:57:27 AM
Prettiest Meta Knight Gijinka, ngl![]()
And to whom will she be trialed at? The Earth Kingdom? Conquered by the Fire Nation. The Water Tribes? Might be accused of being too light on the sentence. Remember, Team Avatar cannot take her anywhere for a fair trial (they are preparing to invade the capital) and they are trying to keep a low profile, not alerting Ozai that the Avatar is alive. Really, Hama being arrested and being thrown back to prison by the people that she tormented is the only way the episode can end.
The real tragedy is that had Hama not do these cruel, petty, evil actions upon the civilians, Team Avatar might have an extra hand against the Fire Nation during the Day of Black Sun.
Edited by Shadao on Feb 19th 2021 at 6:59:43 AM
They were still treated far better than civilians imprisoned by the Germans or Japanese.
And that's not even getting into the comparison of living in constant dehydration, locked up in a cage 24/7.
Yeah, the individual episode can end like that, but trying to rescue/redeem Hama is a story arc that deserved its own screentime, even if it has to take place after the war has ended.
Heck, I've seen suggestions made by fans saying that at the end of the episode, the Gaang could have vowed to come back for Hama after the war was over — and that would have been enough — but no, in canon she's written off the way she was.
And as I've said, in the case of a post-war trial that is not governed by the Fire Nation, if they want to check that Hama is facing (humane) justice, delegates from the three nations could be sent to check up on that.
Maybe not.
But if I were a soldier, I'd turn a blind eye to civilians on my side who do those things out of revenge for atrocities that the enemy has committed on them.
And my personal stance on the matter is to Pay Evil unto Evil and come out on top.
I don't particularly care about being better than the enemy if they're nothing more than fascist pigs.
Edited by BrightLight on Feb 20th 2021 at 4:16:27 AM
But if I were a soldier, I'd turn a blind eye to civilians on my side who do those things out of revenge for atrocities that the enemy has committed on them.
And my personal stance on the matter is to Pay Evil unto Evil and come out on top.
I don't particularly care about being better than the enemy if they're nothing more than fascist pigs.
I wasn't the one you were talking to, but I will say this is frankly a horrific mindset, and there's probably no point to engaging with you further if this is where you're coming from.
Edited by LSBK on Feb 19th 2021 at 9:19:22 AM
And my personal stance on the matter is to Pay Evil unto Evil and come out on top.
I don't particularly care about being better than the enemy if they're nothing more than fascist pigs.
I won't even keep this argument going, it's turned really, really creepy and involving a serious callousness and disregard for life that I myself don't like.
Moving on, seems like Katara's being the older sibling in the live-action remake tv show. Thoughts?
Me too. Like I love Zutara and all, but... Showrunners please don't sacrifice everything about the narrative to canonize it.
Edited by VengefulBale on Feb 19th 2021 at 9:23:48 AM
Prettiest Meta Knight Gijinka, nglHe Who Fights Monsters... shall become the monsters themselves. A cycle of revenge without end. Why do you think the Earth Empire became the new fascist regime decades after the Hundred Years War? They were descendants of the victims of the Fire Nation for a hundred years, they remember that many of their territories taken from the Fire Nation were never given back to them and were instead converted into a new independent Nation called Republic City.
The Earth Queen wants them back and sees nothing wrong with enslaving Airbenders to build an army to launch an invasion. Kuvira wants them back because she sees it as a wrong inflicted upon the Earth Kingdom that needs to be righted... by force.
Edited by Shadao on Feb 19th 2021 at 7:20:43 AM
It think it sort of devalues both Katara and Sokka's characters because if Katara is the eldest it sort of pushes the idea that she should be taking care of Sokka into "Well that should be expected" territory and consequently pushes Sokka into Annoying Younger Sibling because it making him younger changes him from then an untested youth on the cusp of manhood who has dedicated a lot of his self worth about being the protector of his family that got left behind to "eager kid playing soldier".
Edited by lycropath on Feb 19th 2021 at 7:21:38 AM
Yeah, Sokka being the older sibling added some good complexity to both of their characters, where they both feel like they have to pick up the slack and take care of each other for different reasons. Sokka's not meant to be the immature comic relief, that's Aang's role. Sokka meant to be the more mature comic relief, with the more adult jokes like getting high on drugs or being interrupted from having sex with his girlfriend.
Somewhat related, one funny observation I heard is that Sokka can be both the Straight Man and the comic relief, he complains about everyone goofing off and not taking the situation seriously one minute and then proceeds to out-clown every single one of them the next minute.
I kind of forgot the live action show was still moving forward without Bryke. Like, I assumed a couple months after the split, the project would be dropped.
The sad, REAL American dichotomyI mean, Azula’s done some awful shit, but she’s also like fourteen, and was...not exactly raised the best, to put it mildly. Like, certainly she is not apologetic at all, but I’m willing to cut her some slack and let her have a mental hospital than, say, a Nuremberg trial.
As for the Fire Nation/Nazi Germany comparison, I do think that it’s worth remembering that the average Fire Nation citizen is a lot further removed from Fire Nation atrocities than your average German. You’ve got an entire ocean separating them from the home islands, and I don’t believe there are really any comparisons to the Holocaust insofar as undesirables being oppressed and carted off within sight of the average citizen (if this did happen - and I have no idea how many immigrants would have been living in the Fire Nation at the time - it would have probably happened around the start of the war). And of course, the lack of any media traveling at a speed faster than messenger hawk means that word of these atrocities is not exactly easy to spread.
Of course, maybe Private Li spends his leave telling the folks all about this Earth Kingdom peasant he burned to a crisp, but still, I honestly think the average Fire Nation citizen living during the war could have lived their whole lives never having a reason to suspect that the Great and Noble War for Global Prosperity wasn’t just that.
Of course, when you get to the Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom, one could reason that ignorance is much less defensible. Life in the Fire Nation colonies isn’t really delved into much outside of The Promise, and well, YMMV on how well the subject was handled there. That’s honestly an area I would have liked to see more of, along with the previously stated desire to see how exactly Zuko went about reforming the nation’s politics.
At the end of the day, ATLA goes into some pretty hefty topics for a family show, but it’s first and foremost going to be about its characters, rather than the finer political ramifications of its story. One could argue that’s a weakness of Korra’s, as it delves more into that but still doesn’t put as much thought into it as it ought to have. I suppose the lesson here is to politicize responsibly. Still, we don’t learn without stumbling a few times...for what my opinion as a straight (?) white guy is worth.
Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Feb 19th 2021 at 1:25:56 PM
Oh God! Natural light!
I think the main diference is that the nazis/imperial japan carry their atrocity at warp speed in lest of a decade, the fire nation have nearly a damn century to wage war, that is time enough to actually normalize whatever actituded the fire nation have, which add another level of complexity.
I think it is good to remember that "hundred years war" generally doesn't mean a hundred years of continuous war. Such wars usually consist of smaller conflicts timewise, only lasting a few years to a decade before both sides reach a truce of sorts, maybe even a tenuous peace. But the actual conflict is not over yet, hence why these several wars are then later conflated in a bigger "war" that can last over a century.
The historical hundred year war between France and England is a good example of this. It was not a single war, but a string of wars separated by peace, but the underlying conflict over who was to rule France did not get resolved until the end of that period.
In a hypothetical situation where the Nazis had not been defeated, but simply fought to a standstill with no side reaching a conclusive victory, there would have been a temporary peace deal, and we could have expected a second Nazi/Allied war at some later point. These wars could then later be regarded as part of the same conflict.
I think we need to regard the Hundred Year War in Avatar in the same light: the actual battles are not continuous, but no side is able to reach a conclusive victory over the other, so the underlying conflict is never resolved. And the show is basically the Fire Nation having a military breakthrough, being on the cusp of actually winning the conflict (even without the comet, really).
People calling it the hundred year war in the show is also a bit of an anomaly, by the way. Such terms usually only pop up when the conflict is over and can be seen in full from a historical perspective.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesI think the live action Avatar is in Development Hell now,sadly
have a listen and have a link to my discord server

In fact, to be clear, I am someone who would gladly Pay Evil unto Evil, fight fire with fire, and deliver vengeance onto oppression.
To be honest, that's still far better than what that brat deserves.
Even if you take away the possibility that a bunch of people died due to her actions, what she was doing would still make her a War Criminal. How does that make Aang and Katara better if the complaint is that the show was too forgiving to people like that?
At least let her be tried for her crimes by her own people (who are sure to treat her much more humanely), rather than the people who took everything away from her in the first place.
Edited by BrightLight on Feb 20th 2021 at 3:14:50 AM