Nearly and did are to different things...Aang nearly died while attempting to enter the Avatar state which would have ended the Avatar cycle for good...luckily his teamate had a way to save him on hand...I'd argue it's the outcome which maters more over how tight the circumstances were
People have been speculating getting the past lived back will be what the next avatar does. The next avatar usually fixes the previous ones mistakes then make their own.
Either that or allowing those souls back into the cicle.
Because without any of that previous avatars would be effectively erased out of existence. Which is much worse than regular death.
Not entirely Aang's fault. Gyatso wanted to hide the news, but fears about the fire nation made others panic and push to tell him early, which was too much pressure for the kid to handle.
It's hard to say he screwed up as Avatar when he had just found out about it, gotten no training, etc. The adults in charge screwed up big time - both Gyatso who naively wanted to protect him, and the others who panicked and forced the worst possible outcome.
The outcome for Korra is still that Thousands of years of avatars have been ctrl alt deleted. Thereâs definitely room to argue that itâs worse than Roku trusting his best friend wasnât uber corrupted and evil dying in the process, and being incorrect
>Roku trusting his best friend wasnât uber corrupted and evil dying in the process, and being incorrect
Roku didn't die *in the process* of trusting Sozin. He died years after that trust had *already* been broken.
Roku essentially had 3 pivotal moments that he showed Aang where he should have stopped Sozin.
The first was when Sozin first proposed fire-nation supremacy to him. Roku tells him off for this, but doesn't take any action here. This is the moment that Roku decides to trust Sozin.
The second was years (maybe even decades) after that point, when Roku discovered Sozin's colonies in the Earth Kingdom. This is the moment that Sozin broke Roku's trust. It's inaccurate to say that Roku "trusts" Sozin after this point, because that trust has already been betrayed. Roku tells Aang that this is the moment he should have put an end to Sozin's reign, and his biggest regret as an Avatar is allowing Sozin to continue to rule after this point.
The third moment was many more years after the second event, at the volcano on Roku's home island. This is the point when Roku died - long, long after Sozin had already proven to Roku that he's willing to betray his trust.
If Roku ***didnât*** trust Sozin, he wouldnât have let him continue to rule. Roku continually saw the childhood friend he had in Sozin, which is the explicit reason he lets him get away with all the stuff he gets away with. To say Roku doesnât trust Sozin is to ignore the very thing that led Roku to make the mistake that led to his death.
Hindsight is 20/20 and Roku says to Aang what he should have done because he knows better than to trust Sozin ***now***. But in the moment, it wasnât so. Sozin was his friend.
Now of course the statement that Roku died because he trusted Sozin is an oversimplification of matters, but the point very well gets across I think.
> If Roku didnât trust Sozin, he wouldnât have let him continue to rule.
It wasn't really about trust or not at that point. Roku demonstrated to Sozin what would happen if he continued his ambitions. You don't really need to trust that people have self-preservation instincts.
Funniest thing about that? During Sozins last moment he started to regret his actions. He didn't see the error of his ways especially the Airbender genocide until he was close to his death. Too bad, Roku didn't see that and the damage to the world has been done.
My belief's that the Fire Nation's imperialism started well before Sozin. We know by the time of Aang, the fire sages were more like a class of clerics that were part of the government, than a group dedicated to promoting spirituality and helping the Avatar. That change may have actually preceeded the war, not been caused by it. There are plenty of ways to find an Avatar young, and it's a big coincidence that the Avatar and the crown prince were best buds. There were probably some sages trying to make this war happen for a long time.
There was a long time between when Roku was revealed as avatar and when aang got to the sage temple. Sozin and his descendants easily could've pushed that change in that time.
On what grounds...Avatar Roku's failures lead to the extermination of an entire nation and its people, the loss of previous Avatars is by no means essential to being a functional Avatar...plus anyone past Korra will still have Korra to rely on.
Damn you guys are blinded by nostalgia. Losing the connection to past avatars impacts no one but other avatars, and in no way prevents them from doing their job.
And youâd argue thatâs somehow worse than and entire civilization and culture being wiped out??
You guys are seriously confusing your own emotional attachment with whatâs objectively good for the world. Ironically, that would actually make you guys pretty terrible avatars.
Which was a cost of victory easily proportional to the threat, seeing as Vaatu was the greatest threat in 10,000 years. Only one other avatar faced a threat as big, and that was Wan who also faced Vaatu.
Plus from a meta perspective it was something the writers had to do because otherwise the audience would have said "Kora should have just asked Aang what to do" for every single obstacle.
thereâs no room to argue, In a way Korra also set them free thereâs a balance to it thatâs the POINT. Those spirits are now free from the burden of having to reincarnate constantly and repeatedly have to follow an unending destiny full of an insanely heavy amount of stress & heartache. Korra losing the past lives still doesnât not measure up to the absolute devastation of an entire culture & peopleâŚ..literally 1/4 of the world was eradicated & she even helped fix that issue. Rokuâs mistake led to an entire genocide of people,weâre not gonna sit here and act like Korra losing those past lives is equal or worse than that.
"Nearly", that is the operative word. Yes she messed up, but she did fix her problem, rather than leaving it for some poor kid to deal with.
Also Korra had no real way of knowing what her uncle was up to, he had been fooling people longer than she has been alive, Roku knew that Sozen was an active threat to balance and did nothing
How is that her fault tho? It'd be one thing if she fought terribly, but she didn't. She fought well but Unavaatu was better so why does that equal her messing up?
Azula got the better of Aang multiple times and even killed him. Aang had no answer to combustion man and fled every encounter. Roku died battling a Volcano. Avatars face really strong opponents and they don't always win. Yet Korras loses are always highlighted the most for some reason.
Well I mean look at the white lotus and how it fell from grace.
I think the moral here is that only through strict self-discipline and careful guidance can a prevent an organisation straying from its path - and even then, cannot guarantee it.
Ah right, I forgot it was established as a secret police force, not an intelligence bureau that developed into secret police (it has been a while since I watched the series).
The white lotus becoming glorified bodyguards and like elite prison guards is... unfortunate, but it's not the same as becoming the police force of a totalitarian citystate that keeps segregation of classes, hides a world war from its citizens and conscripts unwilling citizens into the army.
I mean she would basically turn into a god. I don't think an immortal avatar would turn out well in the long run. They are still human, and are not perfect beings. Their natural lifespan feels like a solid safety measure that should to be respected
The basis of the immortality technique is stagnation. Something that the Avatar should be diametrically opposed to. Stagnation means she couldn't grow and change with the times. It would have ended very poorly had she maintained it into the later time periods.
It's pretty constant :P she canonically flushes red a lot when she's angry or embarrassed and she often thanks the spirits that her makeup makes her seem a lot more unruffled.
I still think she'd vote for Roku. Kyoshi worked her ass off to keep the Fire Nation politically stable, even compromising her own morals for the sake of the world. She'd be fucking livid at Roku.
Well to be fair, she let the entire continent (except Ba Sing Se and Kyoshi Island) get taken over by a warlord before putting her foot down and she didn't even intend to kill him, nor make him reverse his course.
Roku shut down Sozin, got killed in a freak accident then everything went to shit when he was dead. Sure, he is at fault for not preventing it from ever happening the future, but he acted. If Roku let Sozin go and colonize all of the Earth Nation then only stopped him right before he also took over some random, small Earth Kingdom town, then that is comparable.
Feels like allowing a conqueror regardless of their race to cause war and havoc across the Earth Kingdom is really, really bad. In fact, Kyoshi not stabilizing the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, so it was competitive to the Fire Nation after 230 years is her fault again. Probably not helping by letting a conqueror take it all over then when that figure was killed nothing was ready to replace it properly.
Roku is the only one we've seen that outright fails. Aang and Korra have setbacks, but Roku straight up failed to stop Sozin, leading to the 100 years war. Aang had to clean up his failure.
Shirked his Avatar duties to become bureaucrat, working on reforming the fire nation instead. While the Fire Nation *was* in a very bad place at the time the fact that an Avatar focused kinda way too much just on it meant that he actually set the events in motion that led to it becoming the Imperial superpower it was during Roku's time. While we blame Roku for not killing Sozin, the fire nation's problems were so much more than one Fire Lord at that point, it was an imperial superpower that economically needed colonies to continue its expansion. If Szeto had
A) focused on his Avatar duties more and
B) Used his extreme political skills to not just bring stability to the fire nation but improve the other nations too
Roku might not even have had to kill Sozin, though of course history would be so different Roku wouldn't be born.
Maybe I misread things in the Kyoshi-novel, but wasn't Szeto a pretty decent avatar? Yes, he focused on the Fire Nation pretty hard, but we don't read anywhere that the other nations needed the avatar in any way during Szeto.
Furthermore, he kind of started the 'imperialism' of the fire nation, but the clans were very much a thing during Kyoshi's time, so it must have been so during Yangchen and Kuruk as well. I would rather blame Kyoshi for 'extremely stabilizing' the fire nation by putting a tight leash on the fire lord (Zoryu iirc), for unifying all clans than Szeto.
Correct me if I'm wrong though, it has been a year since I read the novels!
Combing the lifespans of Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen, thatâs at least 300 years between Szeto and Roku. So much can change in that amount of time that I would hardly consider the problems of the Fire Nation in Rokuâs time as Szetoâs fault.
And after that is kyoshi. The Dai Li is still easily caused much more harm than not having past lives to talk to.
This fandom is like "who cares about inequality? The next avatar will be inconvenienced slightly, however will he cope? Fuck korra"
It's poorly worded, if we assume the question means who messed up the worst for sure roku, Kora probably messed up more, but Roku's one main mess up was far worse then all of hers together
Kyoshi: didnât stop Chin the Conqueror till he was on her doorstep
Roku: didnât kill a man who ended the culture of an entire element.
Aang: something in the comics idk (never read them)
Korra: gaslit by spiritual uncle
I think the outcome would be the same for the airbenders either way. Monks air shield him, He air shields himself and Appa, every other airbender else burns, Aang runs to learn the elements.
The difference is meeting Soka and Katara. The real power of the Avatar is friendship, and an invincible flying ball of the elements.
I dont know about that. I feel like its pretty obvious that if Aang had stayed he'd be dead. If Gyatso wasn't strong enough to survive I doubt Aang wouldve been
Before the other Airbenders died, Aang had a similar skill level to his peers, who all died. On top of that, his masters, who were better than him, died. Aang was an inexperienced Airbender during this time, not an experienced Avatar.
I wouldnât say he was inexperienced. Itâs been a while but Iâm pretty sure he achieved the level of master, as signified by his tattoos, before he ran away. Maybe he wasnât on the level of the older monks but he was certainly ahead of his peers.
A few examples which also suggest as much if I remember correctly: His peers were fascinated by his air scooter technique which if Iâm not mistaken was also in part how he attained master. Also, when training in the north with Master Pakku, Pakku mentions how Aang is a naturally talented bender but he relies on that too much. And lastly, when Katara gets her fortune told to her, sheâs told she will marry a powerful bender and then later Aang, solely using airbending as he hasnât learned other elements yet, puts on such a powerful display as he fighting an erupting volcano that Sokka comments how, âhe forgets how powerful a bender Aang really is,â to which Katara has an epiphany and agrees.
That being said, Iâm not sure he wouldâve been that much help when the fire nation invaded. If the older monks were unable to hold them off, Aang probably wouldnât have been much help especially not having any training in the other elements or the avatar state.
However, an argument can be made that the monks couldâve have helped Aang escape and then possibly learn the other elements and ways of the avatar state in secret, instead of Aang running away and getting trapped for 100 years which let the fire nation wreak havoc during all that time. Monk Gyatso did try to whisk Aang away before discovering he had already left. Perhaps if Aang had stayed, him and Gyatso couldâve left in secret, and the fire nation wouldâve never found him allowing Aang to train at his own pace and preventing 100 years of devastation by the fire nation.
I think it's probably an emotional response and not a thought out one they leads most people to pick Korra. For two reasons, one, we are engaged with Korra more than with Roku. By the time we learn of Roku's involvement, we've already accepted the outcome. Number two, is the viewer feels the loss more with Korra than with Roku. We never knew a time before the war, but we did know a time when the past lives were still there. We knew a time when Aang was still connected to Korra.
All and all, I don't think Korra messed up the most. She opened a gate as a teenager without know the consequences. Roku had decades to think about what the fire lord was doing, and chose not to take the threat seriously. He knew what could happen. I understand why, that was his best friend, but still, he knew what could happen, and his actions lead to genocide. Korra didn't know what she was doing, and her actions didn't lead to genocide. She fucked up less imo.
Yeah like we see korra mess up the most. Aang was responding to a collosal screw up from before the show. He already messed up The others just don't have the screen time. Korra is trying to show a story about a character who screws up and perserve4s regardless, ofc were going to see her screw up more.
Putting Roku above Korra is laughable,the man let an imperialistic and homophobic Firelord run freely despite having the chance to put a stop to him,meanwhile Korra fought against Kuvira despite still suffering from her poisoning by Red Lotus.
Korras biggest blunder,if you wanna call it that,was leaving trusting Unalaq and leaving the Spirit Portals open,but even that led to the restoration of air bending.
I feel like I'm completely forgetting something, but homophobic?
Edit: did none of you read the part where I said I'm forgetting something? I clearly forgot about the comics
Whenever they include something like that way after, itâs kinda funny as hell. Like I get Sozin would have been homophobic cuz he had no concern for morales if he was going to commit genocide, but it seems like one of the lesser evil things about him to add with all the other things he did.
the worst part about it is his sister is allegedly married to a female airbender (in canon video game) so I wonder what type of mushrooms he was on đđ
so from what i understand his sister loved a female airbender but didnt marry her bc of political reasons but she married a male airbender she didnt love also for political reasons. also sozin did not like his sister. intense and bitter sibling rivalries must run in the family.
Even if you focus on Korra's major fuck up. It only really affects her and the next avatars
Roku's fuck up lead to the death of thousands around the world, A literal genocide of a nation, the persecution towards a group if people, the loss of knowledge both regarding the different airbending styles of the four temples (no way Aang memorised everything), AND the spirit library's information on the Fire Nation (i mean everything else is now only accessable to spirits), plus the inevitable extinction of dragons, and sky bison.
I am super curious about what Roku's book is going to do for his image since the other books gave greater insight on Kuruk and Yangchen.
Honestly all of them fuck up and that causes the successor avatar to inherit their problems its a major theme.
Yangchen resolves alot of conflicts by pinning secular troubles on spirits/ sides with humans when there is a conflict between spirits and humans so Kuruk has to take care of the spirit world all of his Avatarhood ->
Kuruk hides the health problems the spirit world is inflicting upon him and dies at a young age due to them. Kyoshi inherits an era of criminality because theres been a long absence of an avatar due to kuruk dying so young. ->
Kyoshi undermines her political responsibilities and fixates on crimes that she couldve delegated. Kyoshiâs inexperience in politics causes her to mismanage a major civil war in the fire nation this leads to autocratic rule under the Fire Lord taking place in the fire nation. Meaning Kyoshiâs failures indirectly allowed Sozin to inherit this control of the Fire Nation over time. ->
Rokuâs passivity leads to Sozin eventually starting the 100 year war and the near destruction of all airbender ->
Aang resolves the 100 year war but supports plans to develop a neutral city on Earth Kingdom territory that was occupied by the fire nation during the war and never transferred back to the Earth Kingdom. This eventually is some of the reasoning behind Kuviraâs fascist ideologies being supported by some of the Earth Kingdom.
Im sure Korraâs successorâs will deal with some of the shit Korra didnt resolve properly but I dont think any of them fucked up too much more than any other barring maybe Roku. Even then Id say alot of avatarâs have made decisions as bad as rokuâs they just happened to not have as major of consequences.
The Avatar Cycle is just a random person being given way too much power and responsibility, who then fuck it up in some way and leave the consequences for the next incarnation to deal with, repeat ad infinitum.
Exactly. Rokus mistakes led to a 100 year long war and the genocide of an entire race. Think about it: World War 2 was 6 years long, and genocided most Jews in Europe. It has had lasting effects to this day. Imagine if WW2 had almost entirely exterminated every Jew and lasted 100 years.
Roku even admitted himself that he shouldâve stopped the war before it started whenever he talked to Aang. Acknowledging that as an individual is a sign of a person who knows what heâs talking about. Heâs underrated as an avatar, but thankfully heâs getting his own novel in July!!
The fact that ANYONE could think Korraâs mistakes and *involuntary* failures could surpass Rokuâs lack of action that directly led to the Hundred Year War is delusional *at best*
To be fair, Sozin wasn't genocidal until after Roku was already dead. It's been a minute since I rewatched ATLA, so correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC, Roku saw Sozin colonizing, fucking curbstomped him in his own palace and told him, in no uncertain terms, to stop, and that this was his one warning, and then war was literally adverted until he fucking died.
Roku wasn't blameless, but a lot of people in this thread are treating him like some sort of Neville Chamberlain trying to appease the Nazis. Last I checked, ol' Chamberlain didn't beat the shit out of Hitler at the Munich Conference and tell him to get the hell out of the Sudetenland.
I donât understand how people act like any other avatar at Koreaâs age wouldâve done much better. Literally none of them had fought a âdark avatarâ, someone truly on their level.
Aang almost ended the avatar cycle outright, and got lucky that katara could save him. I feel like considering he wasnât facing another avatar, thatâs worse.
I havenât read the kyoshi novels.
Roku is the worst by a mile to me. He had DECADES to address his emotional blind spot with Sozin. Aang and Korra were caught in spur of the moment stressful battles. Rokuâs conscious choice of inaction led to the (almost) complete extinction of the airbenders, and 100 years of war.
Roku's inaction led to the 100-year war and the Air Nomad GENOCIDE. Korra lost her connection to her past lives but helped bring about the return of the Aiir Nation.
Nostalgia clouds many people's judgments.
I would say Szeto was the one who messed up the most. He only focused on the fire nation. Resulting in imbalance in the world. This made Yanchen neglect the spirits as she had to juggle the worldâs problems. This lead to Kuruks early death. Rokuâs mistake was trusting Sozin at the Volcano. He stopped Sozin in his tracks when he first invaded the earth nation. I feel people blame him too much for not killing Sozin outright. But I know I would struggle with that decision too. He should not have trusted him ever again. Thatâs something I can fault him for and criticize him for.
Korra is fine, sure she made mistakes but definitely not the most.
Also people blame Roku for "not intervening". The man destroyed half of Sozin's palace, told him to fuck off, and Sozin indeed fucked off for like ten years until Roku died. In hindsight yeah, he should've went for the kill, but Roku didn't have the knowledge we have that Sozin would return to fuck things up after Roku passed away.
What Roku needed to do was address the imperialism in the fire nation at its root cause.
By not doing that he guaranteed that the fire nation would continue on its exact same path once he died. If the only thing you did to stop something is say "I will stop you" and didn't do anything else to block that course of action, then you are to blame for it when you die and it happens.
Roku chose not to intervene and there were insane consequences, including a genocide.
Korra didn't make any incorrect decisions, maybe apart from trusting her uncle. She just lost a fight, and it's not like that was a mistake that she willingly made
Roku caused more of a unfavorable position for the next avatar and the eventual near genocide of a nation. Which eventually threw the entire world into war for 100 years. Korra has done more significant damage but itâs all speculation because we donât know how her actions have affected the world in the future. People are way too biased against Korra
I knew looking at this post that people were gonna instantly go for the kill on Korra but in all honesty Roku was the worst one, allowing a world war to happen and having problems millions of people affected/killed, a whole culture was destroyed, and also gave way to racism toward fire benders. In a way him being the avatar and allowing sozin to live and go on advancing his plans is probably part of the reason that drove zaheer to wanting to take the avatar down/use them to take out world leaders cuz world leaders such as ozai and sozin and azulon and kuvira just fuel zaheers drive to take down the oppressive governments and take down any government because he doesn't want any new leaders coming forth and being worse than the last. Roku pretty much gave the red lotus a reason to exist which then also allowed unalaq to thrive and move forward on his plans with Vaatu. The recklessness of avatars/benders is what drove Noatak to become Amon and create the equalist movement. Which don't get me wrong the equalist movement was valid and what Amon did actually gave way to the nonbenders having a voice and getting the first nonbender president
Wasn't she the only avatar that didn't get to travel the world? That caused her empathy to be a little stunted. She learnt the most in that 1 night in the spirit world than she had in all her years before.
Szeto was just a fine autistic young man with a passion for paperwork, I demand he be forgiven as no one could truly know that just trying to help a people prosper will cause a genocide
Bro korra fucked up over and over and caused so many huge changes on the world. In the end the world becomes better same with the case of the other avatars but idk.
What about aang left the world unchecked for 100 years and caused so much pain and strife.
Honestly I really think itâs aang
Abandon your culture to genocide?
Allow a 4th of the planet to get genocided??
Obviously Korra is worse because.......... wait what were we talking about?
Honestly its really a tie between Roku and Yangchen, roku because he did nothing about Sozion, and yangchen due to how she neglected the spirit world leading kryuk to an early grave.
I would argue that Avatar Szetso messed up the most. By choosing to become a Fire Nation court official instead of doing more to aid other nations it caused a domino effect, Yangchen had to deal with a lot of problems for the world but had to neglect the spirits, this caused problems for Kuruk who spent most of his time dealing with dark sprits which ultimately cost him to die an early death, leaving many problems for Kyoshi to deal with. Kyoshi managed to deal with most of everything but there was also sparks of what would become the Hundred Year War in her time but she managed to keep it in check for awhile and probably halted the process for at least a couple hundred years, but even with her 230 year reign as the Avatar even she couldnât fix everything. Roku inherited a world where everything was mostly on the upswing but failed to see the dangerous ambitions of Sozin and when he did see was reluctant to take decisive actions against his best friend, and practically his brother, this in turn left a major mess for Aang to clean up. To Aangâs credit he did do a lot and managed to make peace in his own way but even he wasnât able to bridge the divide between benderâs and nonbenderâs, and that would become a problem that Korra would inherit. Though sheâs managed to make major changes and dealt with most of the problems itâs also possible that in the future weâll see problems that she wasnât able to deal with in her lifetime that will be inherited by the next Avatar. It seems no matter what each Avatar seems to inherit the previous oneâs problems that they werenât able to deal with in their lifetimes. Itâs not really their fault, itâs just a domino effect that always been in motion since Avatar Wan and most likely it wonât ever end. Because there will always be conflict and strife but thatâs the whole point of there being an Avatar in the first place, to deal with the conflict and strife thatâs constantly plaguing the world.
(Note: sorry for the essay, if youâve read all that hereâs a cookie đŞ for your efforts)
The dominoes argument is definitely true once the literary materials included, but I'd say size and positioning of the various dominoes could still be litigated. Even here, you end up with "y'all are blaming the wrong nations' avatars"
I think part of the point of Korra's story is that she *is* the Avatar that messed up the most so far. She's also the one for whom things were the most messed up, at least as far back as anyone can remember. She was a brash, headstrong girl raised to be the perfect hero and protector for a version of the world that was essentially gone by the time that she left her compound, and because of all of that, both she and the world paid the price.
But that's only half of the story, because Korra is about failure and loss, yes, but also about recovery, adaptation, and new growth and change.
She has to be the one who has failed the hardest - because that's integral to her becoming the one who can help the world that burned down in the Hundred Years War grow back. Wanting Korra to be the ideal hero and to not face failures and shortcomings is missing the point of the entire series, and doing it a massive disservice.
Roku chose to blindly trust his best friend and allow villainy to unfold unchecked. Korra chose to blindly trust a total stranger who kept changing his story about whether or not the three Water Tribes had a constitutionally unified government. And she did not stop to question her own blind trust in this total stranger even when he also changed his story about the reason why the Southern portal needed to be opened in the first place.
And I do call him a total stranger because SHE HAD NO IDEA WHO HER FATHER'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY EVEN WAS, at the time she first met her uncle the incredibly obvious villain.
Blind trust in a total stranger who keeps changing his story to get you to do what he wants at each individual step of his plan.
That is how badly Korra screwed up in season 2.
But it's not the character's fault. Because everyone screws up that badly in season 2.
Take a look at how Ming-Hua engages in every fight. And all the times that everyone forgot that Mako knows how to lightningbend. Until it was time for the villain in question to finally be killed by her incredibly obvious inability to defend against one incredibly obvious type of attack.
Failure to observe the incredibly obvious is a key symptom of Korra season 2. The world would be a far better place if the writers had rewatched "The Siege of the North" before getting the idea of doing a whole action movie about the meaning of Yin and Yang.
"Their names are Tui and La: Push and Pull and that has been the nature of their relationship for all time."
Okay, Korra was like a teenager when she got all the lives destroyed, and even then she was fighting something she couldnât really comprehend.
Roku screwed up badly. Korra had the excuse of being manipulated by a family member (Something that actually happens in real life) while Roku KNEW what Sozin was doing and basically let him off with a slap on the wrist.
He was basically the Third Hokage and Danzo all over again. And three guesses who the Third Hokage is.
Point is, while Korra messed up, she had excuses and itâs reasonable. Roku KNEW what was going on and let it happen.
Tbh Korra was made to be avatar at a really weird time, so it feels hard to fault her here. The world was experiencing massive change technologically and politically, she had to deal with reintegration of spirits, and this is after Aang of all people so comparing them is inevitable. However she did stop several people threatening to put the world out of balance, and indirectly revived the air nation. Roku's legacy is defined by him not stopping Sozin, and literally took his next 2 lives to repair his mistake (Aang with ending the war and Korra restoring the air nation). Roku is 100% worse.
I mean... She did destroy the Avatar cycle. Left the spirit portals open so Koh and father glowworm escape, destroyed Republic City twice, let Kuvira live. That's pretty bad, but definitely not as bad as a genocide and a century long war
I just want a subreddit where I get to talk about my favorite avatar, but half the posts on here are people complaining about Korra haters, and it's why I don't spend nearly as much time on here as I want to
Letâs spend more time complaining about the guy who said he spent way too much time chilling, surfing and making kissy faces with his girl⌠till she lost her face.
All these opinion polls posts are pretty subjective anyway.
I feel Korra has more opportunities to make mistakes because she has more challenges to face. Like Korra has to get 4 questions right vs. Roku has to get 1 question right.
I think Roku's biggest mistake is him not being proactive enough in ensuring Firelord Sozin does not stray off the path or have a backup in the event he dies. I can get him not wanting to kill a world leader who threatened them because Kyoshi also displays this level of mercy when the Earth King did the same to her.
Because early on, we already get the sensing Sozin is much more of a tyrant and a threat to peace. Since in his rule, he started the tradition to hunt for dragons, eliminate the same sex marriage, spread anti Earth Kingdom sentiments, and try to provoke military conflict with the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom. Any of these actions would raise an eyebrow, but doing all these together?
Roku is either very busy with Avatar duties, uninformed or has a very high tolerance for Sozin.
Really, Aang and Korra did nothing wrong in the grand scheme of things (as in, nothing beyond their personal lives).
Aang took care of business as far as we know.
The only thing that Korra did âWrongâ was lose to Unaloq, but that was because Vaatuu just hopped out of his body and directly attacked her soul in a way she could not have predicted. Itâs not something she did wrong, itâs something wrong that happened to her.
Kyoshi creating the Dai Li was a pretty big fuckup, but compared to Rokuâs mercy causing the near genocide of an entire race of people takes the cake pretty immensely.
So I've read everyone comments and I think many are forgetting that humans are stupid, including myself. I have watched all Avatar series (Aang and Korra) and I had NO CLUE who Roku was.
I think most people who did this survey did not know Roku either and just chose Korra. Now that you all revealed the failures of Roku, he's obviously the worst Avatar.
I disagree with it being Korra. All Avatars mess up and make mistakes, that's part of their character as the Avatar. I don't think Korra made the most/biggest mistakes. I would probably say Roku, just because he knew Sozin was starting to invade with the colonies.
I also feel like person made this poll knowing that it would generate some Korra hate.
See its funny, cus I'd say Korra made some of the least mistakes an Avatar has made imo, compared to Roku and Kyoshi at least.
But it's kinda the point that every avatar fucks up, and then a future avatar has to deal with that. It's part of the cyclical nature of avatars, where balance is restored and lost by their actions.
Has Korra made/will make mistakes across her role? Absolutely. Is she the worst avatar? God no, there's tonnes of them. But the hope in that is when an avatar falters, even a little, another will pick up from their mistakes and correct them.
I mean, Korra may have had a higher number of mistakes than the others, at least that we've seen, but the severities of Roku's big mistake was easily more severe than any mistake Koraa made. His mistake changed the world forever and ended up resulting in a brutal war that lasted for 100 years of misery and oppression. Even in Korra's time the world is still feeling the ramifications of Roku's mistake.
Objectively Roku and its not remotely close. Kyoshi was successful, as far as Iâm aware. Aang is very obvious. Korra fumbled but she did defeat all her villains. Shit happened but the world is at peace and the avatar still exists
Roku did nothing but wag his finger at Sozin. As far as Iâm aware he trained to master all the elements, had a wife, had his own island and repeatedly gave strong words to Sozin. Never made any real attempts to prevent him from the war whatsoever. None that were effective, in any case
Hell Roku *agrees* he fucked up. And his inaction objectively resulted in incalculable suffering and destruction
Bro I get Korra is by far the most hated avatar but man is this such a joke. Roku even admitted that that he screwed everything over with Sozin and the fire nation
Roku's actions directly led to the 100-Year-War. He, himself, would admit that - of these four specific Avatars - he made the most substantial mistakes as Avatar.
He literally tells Aang that it's not fair that he's being forced to fix the mistakes that Roku made, and apologizes to Aang for that fact.
Korra has the excuse of being young and sheltered. She didnât âmess upâ so much as get in over her head against opponents that were too much for her. And ultimately, she was the one who paid the price 90% of the time (Amon traumatizing her during book 1, losing connection to the past avatars, being poisoned, getting her ass kicked by Kuvira, etc). Compare this with Roku. His lack of decisiveness instigated a 100 year long war and the genocide of entire culture.
Not a big fan of Korra but Roku shouldâve seen Sozenâs entire plan. Ainât no way that guy was gonna help the one person standing in his way of global domination. He shouldâve taken him out the moment he heard about Sozenâs plan. Roku couldâve ended the whole process then and there but because him and Sozen were friends, he let it slide
Korra is the strongest one. She faced the most awful challenges. Sure, there was a space for screw :( Yet, she managed, and she has the greatest girlfriend, all other avatars can only envy.
Why people keep choosing korra???? Its not her fault all the zaheer shit happened, she didnt choose zaheer to be an airbender and also roku by light years people
Besides, the correct answer is actually Yangchen, because her successor had to literally spend his entire lifeâto the point of dying young as a consequenceâexclusively cleaning up her messes. No one even thought he did anything, because *all he did was clean up Yangchenâs messes.*
I count this one as the worst solely because nobody elseâs mistakes required their successor to spend their whole life trying to patch them back up.
Roku basically being the reason there was a 100 year war and the total genocide of the Air Nomads should have earned him top spot.
I still love seeing people call Korra a Mary Sue with an entire season of PTSD and severe depression keeping her away from her friends for 3 years straight.
Let's see, she released destructive nature spirits on all of mankind, and gave rise to not one but TWO of her own antagonists. Roku was blinded by loyalty, and chose to spare someone as opposed to murdering them for something they haven't done yet
I think in the long term, korra did made the biggest mistake. Trusting her uncle allowed Vatuu to escape and ultimately led to the severing of her past lives. Which doesn't seem like a big issue at first bur it really is.
Countless sources of knowledge were lost by this severing, knowledge that could be lost forever, like Wans story or the stories of countless Avatars who's loves weren't recorded. Knowledge that could help Korra or future Avatars who need guidance or advice on how best to go about things.
If Aang didn't have roku to guide him on his journey, he would have died or been captured long before the comet arrived.
I scrolled as far as I could and everyone is defending Korra. I hadnât even realized Korra even NEEDED to be defended đ¤ˇđťââď¸ I mean Roku didnât kill nor imprison a guy who confessed his plans to conquer the world though he very much had the power to đ¤ˇđťââď¸ Korraâs life was literally one big disaster after another and the girl got through them all somehow.
People saying Roku is the reason for the war are idiots. Roku died and the war didn't happen for 12 years. If Roku doesn't die, then he stops the war. Not even remotely his fault he died.
Yeah Korra is such a f\*ck up, she should have tried to do like Kyoshi and storm off to an island while hoping Amon accidentally fell to his death, or just let him take over and start a century-long war like Roku did!
When one mistake caused a whole culture to become extinct vs getting bodied by your uncle in a fight.
đŻ
To be fair, getting bodied by her uncle nearly threw the world into 10,000 years of darkness
Nearly and did are to different things...Aang nearly died while attempting to enter the Avatar state which would have ended the Avatar cycle for good...luckily his teamate had a way to save him on hand...I'd argue it's the outcome which maters more over how tight the circumstances were
Tbh Aang just got lucky he had katara around, korra's only real help was jinora and she learnt to be useful a little too late
Why too late? The loss of the past lives is like honestly not that bad compared to a century of global oppression
People have been speculating getting the past lived back will be what the next avatar does. The next avatar usually fixes the previous ones mistakes then make their own.
Either that or allowing those souls back into the cicle. Because without any of that previous avatars would be effectively erased out of existence. Which is much worse than regular death.
Not entirely Aang's fault. Gyatso wanted to hide the news, but fears about the fire nation made others panic and push to tell him early, which was too much pressure for the kid to handle. It's hard to say he screwed up as Avatar when he had just found out about it, gotten no training, etc. The adults in charge screwed up big time - both Gyatso who naively wanted to protect him, and the others who panicked and forced the worst possible outcome.
No, it's not, it's roku's though.
The outcome for Korra is still that Thousands of years of avatars have been ctrl alt deleted. Thereâs definitely room to argue that itâs worse than Roku trusting his best friend wasnât uber corrupted and evil dying in the process, and being incorrect
>Roku trusting his best friend wasnât uber corrupted and evil dying in the process, and being incorrect Roku didn't die *in the process* of trusting Sozin. He died years after that trust had *already* been broken. Roku essentially had 3 pivotal moments that he showed Aang where he should have stopped Sozin. The first was when Sozin first proposed fire-nation supremacy to him. Roku tells him off for this, but doesn't take any action here. This is the moment that Roku decides to trust Sozin. The second was years (maybe even decades) after that point, when Roku discovered Sozin's colonies in the Earth Kingdom. This is the moment that Sozin broke Roku's trust. It's inaccurate to say that Roku "trusts" Sozin after this point, because that trust has already been betrayed. Roku tells Aang that this is the moment he should have put an end to Sozin's reign, and his biggest regret as an Avatar is allowing Sozin to continue to rule after this point. The third moment was many more years after the second event, at the volcano on Roku's home island. This is the point when Roku died - long, long after Sozin had already proven to Roku that he's willing to betray his trust.
If Roku ***didnât*** trust Sozin, he wouldnât have let him continue to rule. Roku continually saw the childhood friend he had in Sozin, which is the explicit reason he lets him get away with all the stuff he gets away with. To say Roku doesnât trust Sozin is to ignore the very thing that led Roku to make the mistake that led to his death. Hindsight is 20/20 and Roku says to Aang what he should have done because he knows better than to trust Sozin ***now***. But in the moment, it wasnât so. Sozin was his friend. Now of course the statement that Roku died because he trusted Sozin is an oversimplification of matters, but the point very well gets across I think.
> If Roku didnât trust Sozin, he wouldnât have let him continue to rule. It wasn't really about trust or not at that point. Roku demonstrated to Sozin what would happen if he continued his ambitions. You don't really need to trust that people have self-preservation instincts.
Funniest thing about that? During Sozins last moment he started to regret his actions. He didn't see the error of his ways especially the Airbender genocide until he was close to his death. Too bad, Roku didn't see that and the damage to the world has been done.
My belief's that the Fire Nation's imperialism started well before Sozin. We know by the time of Aang, the fire sages were more like a class of clerics that were part of the government, than a group dedicated to promoting spirituality and helping the Avatar. That change may have actually preceeded the war, not been caused by it. There are plenty of ways to find an Avatar young, and it's a big coincidence that the Avatar and the crown prince were best buds. There were probably some sages trying to make this war happen for a long time.
There was a long time between when Roku was revealed as avatar and when aang got to the sage temple. Sozin and his descendants easily could've pushed that change in that time.
On what grounds...Avatar Roku's failures lead to the extermination of an entire nation and its people, the loss of previous Avatars is by no means essential to being a functional Avatar...plus anyone past Korra will still have Korra to rely on.
I think it's the fact that because Roku didn't kill Sozin the fire nation wiped out the air nomads to prevent the avatar from being able to stop them
Damn you guys are blinded by nostalgia. Losing the connection to past avatars impacts no one but other avatars, and in no way prevents them from doing their job. And youâd argue thatâs somehow worse than and entire civilization and culture being wiped out?? You guys are seriously confusing your own emotional attachment with whatâs objectively good for the world. Ironically, that would actually make you guys pretty terrible avatars.
Which was a cost of victory easily proportional to the threat, seeing as Vaatu was the greatest threat in 10,000 years. Only one other avatar faced a threat as big, and that was Wan who also faced Vaatu. Plus from a meta perspective it was something the writers had to do because otherwise the audience would have said "Kora should have just asked Aang what to do" for every single obstacle.
>ctrl alt deleted ctrl+alt+del doesn't delete anything...
thereâs no room to argue, In a way Korra also set them free thereâs a balance to it thatâs the POINT. Those spirits are now free from the burden of having to reincarnate constantly and repeatedly have to follow an unending destiny full of an insanely heavy amount of stress & heartache. Korra losing the past lives still doesnât not measure up to the absolute devastation of an entire culture & peopleâŚ..literally 1/4 of the world was eradicated & she even helped fix that issue. Rokuâs mistake led to an entire genocide of people,weâre not gonna sit here and act like Korra losing those past lives is equal or worse than that.
"Nearly", that is the operative word. Yes she messed up, but she did fix her problem, rather than leaving it for some poor kid to deal with. Also Korra had no real way of knowing what her uncle was up to, he had been fooling people longer than she has been alive, Roku knew that Sozen was an active threat to balance and did nothing
How is that her fault tho? It'd be one thing if she fought terribly, but she didn't. She fought well but Unavaatu was better so why does that equal her messing up? Azula got the better of Aang multiple times and even killed him. Aang had no answer to combustion man and fled every encounter. Roku died battling a Volcano. Avatars face really strong opponents and they don't always win. Yet Korras loses are always highlighted the most for some reason.
The reason is sexism
The reason is sexism
If you keep your eyes closed, you won't know the difference.
it's Roku by a freaking mile
Yeah. He fully admits that he fucked up and itâs his fault. If Roku saw this heâd vote for himself
They'd all vote for themselves. The Avatar is like, an ultra Jedi. Humble isn't part of the job description but it's definitely part of orientation.
Here enters Lady "I did nothing wrong" Kyoshi
The only thing she did wrong was giving up her immortality and letting the cycle continue, Fire Nation coulda never pulled that stunt with her around
She also made the Dai Li and we all know how that turned out
Well I mean look at the white lotus and how it fell from grace. I think the moral here is that only through strict self-discipline and careful guidance can a prevent an organisation straying from its path - and even then, cannot guarantee it.
I think the moral is just to not create secret police, it usually never works out
Ah right, I forgot it was established as a secret police force, not an intelligence bureau that developed into secret police (it has been a while since I watched the series).
I mean personally I dont really trust the CIA or FBI much either in terms of nog being corrupt
The white lotus becoming glorified bodyguards and like elite prison guards is... unfortunate, but it's not the same as becoming the police force of a totalitarian citystate that keeps segregation of classes, hides a world war from its citizens and conscripts unwilling citizens into the army.
I didnât know zaheer had a Reddit account /j
I mean she would basically turn into a god. I don't think an immortal avatar would turn out well in the long run. They are still human, and are not perfect beings. Their natural lifespan feels like a solid safety measure that should to be respected
The basis of the immortality technique is stagnation. Something that the Avatar should be diametrically opposed to. Stagnation means she couldn't grow and change with the times. It would have ended very poorly had she maintained it into the later time periods.
Logic dictates you're absolutely correct. My heart dictates the world clearly needed more of her "Fuck around and fight out" stance.
I'm sure she'd vote Roku, but she did have regrets making the dai lee
She didn't though? She could have literally ripped him in half and instead left. His own pride killed him.
Lady âmurder is okayâ Kyoshi
I doubt Kyoshi would
Gotta read the books. She often feels regrets and anxiety over choices. I remember one point where she's glad the makeup hides her embarrassment.
It's pretty constant :P she canonically flushes red a lot when she's angry or embarrassed and she often thanks the spirits that her makeup makes her seem a lot more unruffled.
I still think she'd vote for Roku. Kyoshi worked her ass off to keep the Fire Nation politically stable, even compromising her own morals for the sake of the world. She'd be fucking livid at Roku.
Well to be fair, she let the entire continent (except Ba Sing Se and Kyoshi Island) get taken over by a warlord before putting her foot down and she didn't even intend to kill him, nor make him reverse his course. Roku shut down Sozin, got killed in a freak accident then everything went to shit when he was dead. Sure, he is at fault for not preventing it from ever happening the future, but he acted. If Roku let Sozin go and colonize all of the Earth Nation then only stopped him right before he also took over some random, small Earth Kingdom town, then that is comparable. Feels like allowing a conqueror regardless of their race to cause war and havoc across the Earth Kingdom is really, really bad. In fact, Kyoshi not stabilizing the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, so it was competitive to the Fire Nation after 230 years is her fault again. Probably not helping by letting a conqueror take it all over then when that figure was killed nothing was ready to replace it properly.
Korra would vote Roku too because she's based
Roku is the only one we've seen that outright fails. Aang and Korra have setbacks, but Roku straight up failed to stop Sozin, leading to the 100 years war. Aang had to clean up his failure.
Nah it's Szeto imo
What did szeto do?
Shirked his Avatar duties to become bureaucrat, working on reforming the fire nation instead. While the Fire Nation *was* in a very bad place at the time the fact that an Avatar focused kinda way too much just on it meant that he actually set the events in motion that led to it becoming the Imperial superpower it was during Roku's time. While we blame Roku for not killing Sozin, the fire nation's problems were so much more than one Fire Lord at that point, it was an imperial superpower that economically needed colonies to continue its expansion. If Szeto had A) focused on his Avatar duties more and B) Used his extreme political skills to not just bring stability to the fire nation but improve the other nations too Roku might not even have had to kill Sozin, though of course history would be so different Roku wouldn't be born.
Maybe I misread things in the Kyoshi-novel, but wasn't Szeto a pretty decent avatar? Yes, he focused on the Fire Nation pretty hard, but we don't read anywhere that the other nations needed the avatar in any way during Szeto. Furthermore, he kind of started the 'imperialism' of the fire nation, but the clans were very much a thing during Kyoshi's time, so it must have been so during Yangchen and Kuruk as well. I would rather blame Kyoshi for 'extremely stabilizing' the fire nation by putting a tight leash on the fire lord (Zoryu iirc), for unifying all clans than Szeto. Correct me if I'm wrong though, it has been a year since I read the novels!
Nah you might be right, I have it out for Szeto
Lol what has Szeto ever done to you ;)
Combing the lifespans of Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen, thatâs at least 300 years between Szeto and Roku. So much can change in that amount of time that I would hardly consider the problems of the Fire Nation in Rokuâs time as Szetoâs fault.
He fucked up so badly that the next incarnation of the avatar had to directly deal with the consequences.
I stand by, an entire culture was destroyed because of Roku. Unless there is an unknown Avatar that actually helped destroy a culture it's Roku.
And after that is kyoshi. The Dai Li is still easily caused much more harm than not having past lives to talk to. This fandom is like "who cares about inequality? The next avatar will be inconvenienced slightly, however will he cope? Fuck korra"
It's poorly worded, if we assume the question means who messed up the worst for sure roku, Kora probably messed up more, but Roku's one main mess up was far worse then all of hers together
out of those at least. imo szeto was worse
Kyoshi: didnât stop Chin the Conqueror till he was on her doorstep Roku: didnât kill a man who ended the culture of an entire element. Aang: something in the comics idk (never read them) Korra: gaslit by spiritual uncle
Korra was still a kid during this example as well, where both kyoshi and Roku were well into adulthood.
Fr and all she did was get manipulated by her uncle, meanwhile Roku didn't kill Sozin who proceeded to wipe out a race
Kid raised sheltered and learned it wasn't even Aangs original desire but her own father and mentor.
Aang also ran away causing the air nation to be wiped out...every avatar fixes the others major mistake
ok letâs be fr here. That was a complete accident, and if Aang had stayed he would have died
We dont know if Aang wouldâve survived and saved them if he stayed.
I think the outcome would be the same for the airbenders either way. Monks air shield him, He air shields himself and Appa, every other airbender else burns, Aang runs to learn the elements. The difference is meeting Soka and Katara. The real power of the Avatar is friendship, and an invincible flying ball of the elements.
I dont know about that. I feel like its pretty obvious that if Aang had stayed he'd be dead. If Gyatso wasn't strong enough to survive I doubt Aang wouldve been
How tf was that aangs fault?? if he stayed, he would've died. running away was one of the best choices he ever made
Before the other Airbenders died, Aang had a similar skill level to his peers, who all died. On top of that, his masters, who were better than him, died. Aang was an inexperienced Airbender during this time, not an experienced Avatar.
I wouldnât say he was inexperienced. Itâs been a while but Iâm pretty sure he achieved the level of master, as signified by his tattoos, before he ran away. Maybe he wasnât on the level of the older monks but he was certainly ahead of his peers. A few examples which also suggest as much if I remember correctly: His peers were fascinated by his air scooter technique which if Iâm not mistaken was also in part how he attained master. Also, when training in the north with Master Pakku, Pakku mentions how Aang is a naturally talented bender but he relies on that too much. And lastly, when Katara gets her fortune told to her, sheâs told she will marry a powerful bender and then later Aang, solely using airbending as he hasnât learned other elements yet, puts on such a powerful display as he fighting an erupting volcano that Sokka comments how, âhe forgets how powerful a bender Aang really is,â to which Katara has an epiphany and agrees. That being said, Iâm not sure he wouldâve been that much help when the fire nation invaded. If the older monks were unable to hold them off, Aang probably wouldnât have been much help especially not having any training in the other elements or the avatar state. However, an argument can be made that the monks couldâve have helped Aang escape and then possibly learn the other elements and ways of the avatar state in secret, instead of Aang running away and getting trapped for 100 years which let the fire nation wreak havoc during all that time. Monk Gyatso did try to whisk Aang away before discovering he had already left. Perhaps if Aang had stayed, him and Gyatso couldâve left in secret, and the fire nation wouldâve never found him allowing Aang to train at his own pace and preventing 100 years of devastation by the fire nation.
Well Aang was a master at the age of 12 so he was much better than his peers
He definitely wasn't better than his master, who didn't stop the invasion.
Aang would have died if he didn't run away so no he didn't cause the air nation to be wiped out
also kyoshi lived for 270 years messing up the cycle a little who knows the avatar in place kf roku could have stopped the wat
Aang: Failed to defend his people because of his cowardice. (Basically Dereliction of Duty and Cowardice, two of the worst crimes a hero can make.)
Haters gonna hate
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Sadly, these posts just give them the attention theyâre looking for
I think it's probably an emotional response and not a thought out one they leads most people to pick Korra. For two reasons, one, we are engaged with Korra more than with Roku. By the time we learn of Roku's involvement, we've already accepted the outcome. Number two, is the viewer feels the loss more with Korra than with Roku. We never knew a time before the war, but we did know a time when the past lives were still there. We knew a time when Aang was still connected to Korra. All and all, I don't think Korra messed up the most. She opened a gate as a teenager without know the consequences. Roku had decades to think about what the fire lord was doing, and chose not to take the threat seriously. He knew what could happen. I understand why, that was his best friend, but still, he knew what could happen, and his actions lead to genocide. Korra didn't know what she was doing, and her actions didn't lead to genocide. She fucked up less imo.
"I think it's probably an emotional response" Welcome to every single one of these questions
Yeah, it feels like they made that poll knowing it would cause some Korra hate.
Yeah like we see korra mess up the most. Aang was responding to a collosal screw up from before the show. He already messed up The others just don't have the screen time. Korra is trying to show a story about a character who screws up and perserve4s regardless, ofc were going to see her screw up more.
Putting Roku above Korra is laughable,the man let an imperialistic and homophobic Firelord run freely despite having the chance to put a stop to him,meanwhile Korra fought against Kuvira despite still suffering from her poisoning by Red Lotus. Korras biggest blunder,if you wanna call it that,was leaving trusting Unalaq and leaving the Spirit Portals open,but even that led to the restoration of air bending.
I feel like I'm completely forgetting something, but homophobic? Edit: did none of you read the part where I said I'm forgetting something? I clearly forgot about the comics
He outlawed gay marriage, stated by Kya in the comics
Whenever they include something like that way after, itâs kinda funny as hell. Like I get Sozin would have been homophobic cuz he had no concern for morales if he was going to commit genocide, but it seems like one of the lesser evil things about him to add with all the other things he did.
the worst part about it is his sister is allegedly married to a female airbender (in canon video game) so I wonder what type of mushrooms he was on đđ
He would be that âitâs okay cuz youâre one of the good onesâ bs kind of person
exactly smt he would say until she pisses him off
so from what i understand his sister loved a female airbender but didnt marry her bc of political reasons but she married a male airbender she didnt love also for political reasons. also sozin did not like his sister. intense and bitter sibling rivalries must run in the family.
THIS LORE GETS THIS DEEP?
Kind of odd they included that detail given all the fan theories that Sozin himself was in love with Roku
Never heard this theory but itâs hilarious 𤣠I could see other way around but definitely *not* sozin being the closeted one
In the Korra comics, they briefly mention that Sozin/Ozai's empire weren't too accepting of gay couples.
IIRC it was because of the "risk of losing good genetics"
[https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Gender\_and\_sexuality\_in\_the\_World\_of\_Avatar#Sexual\_orientation\_4](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Gender_and_sexuality_in_the_World_of_Avatar#Sexual_orientation_4)
Even if you focus on Korra's major fuck up. It only really affects her and the next avatars Roku's fuck up lead to the death of thousands around the world, A literal genocide of a nation, the persecution towards a group if people, the loss of knowledge both regarding the different airbending styles of the four temples (no way Aang memorised everything), AND the spirit library's information on the Fire Nation (i mean everything else is now only accessable to spirits), plus the inevitable extinction of dragons, and sky bison. I am super curious about what Roku's book is going to do for his image since the other books gave greater insight on Kuruk and Yangchen.
Rokuâs getting a book?!
This month or next month
Oh cool!
bruh roku made a whole nation go extinct and started a 100-year war wtf
Honestly all of them fuck up and that causes the successor avatar to inherit their problems its a major theme. Yangchen resolves alot of conflicts by pinning secular troubles on spirits/ sides with humans when there is a conflict between spirits and humans so Kuruk has to take care of the spirit world all of his Avatarhood -> Kuruk hides the health problems the spirit world is inflicting upon him and dies at a young age due to them. Kyoshi inherits an era of criminality because theres been a long absence of an avatar due to kuruk dying so young. -> Kyoshi undermines her political responsibilities and fixates on crimes that she couldve delegated. Kyoshiâs inexperience in politics causes her to mismanage a major civil war in the fire nation this leads to autocratic rule under the Fire Lord taking place in the fire nation. Meaning Kyoshiâs failures indirectly allowed Sozin to inherit this control of the Fire Nation over time. -> Rokuâs passivity leads to Sozin eventually starting the 100 year war and the near destruction of all airbender -> Aang resolves the 100 year war but supports plans to develop a neutral city on Earth Kingdom territory that was occupied by the fire nation during the war and never transferred back to the Earth Kingdom. This eventually is some of the reasoning behind Kuviraâs fascist ideologies being supported by some of the Earth Kingdom. Im sure Korraâs successorâs will deal with some of the shit Korra didnt resolve properly but I dont think any of them fucked up too much more than any other barring maybe Roku. Even then Id say alot of avatarâs have made decisions as bad as rokuâs they just happened to not have as major of consequences.
The Avatar Cycle is just a random person being given way too much power and responsibility, who then fuck it up in some way and leave the consequences for the next incarnation to deal with, repeat ad infinitum.
Roku caused a 100-year war while Korra started a few small things. The answer is obvious
Exactly. Rokus mistakes led to a 100 year long war and the genocide of an entire race. Think about it: World War 2 was 6 years long, and genocided most Jews in Europe. It has had lasting effects to this day. Imagine if WW2 had almost entirely exterminated every Jew and lasted 100 years.
They all made mistakes that they didnât mean to cause but rukoâs effected people far more and worse than Korraâs did
Gotta love ruko
Roku even admitted himself that he shouldâve stopped the war before it started whenever he talked to Aang. Acknowledging that as an individual is a sign of a person who knows what heâs talking about. Heâs underrated as an avatar, but thankfully heâs getting his own novel in July!!
The fact that ANYONE could think Korraâs mistakes and *involuntary* failures could surpass Rokuâs lack of action that directly led to the Hundred Year War is delusional *at best*
Guy who let genocidal friend off the hook vs teenager who got beaten in a fight
To be fair, Sozin wasn't genocidal until after Roku was already dead. It's been a minute since I rewatched ATLA, so correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC, Roku saw Sozin colonizing, fucking curbstomped him in his own palace and told him, in no uncertain terms, to stop, and that this was his one warning, and then war was literally adverted until he fucking died. Roku wasn't blameless, but a lot of people in this thread are treating him like some sort of Neville Chamberlain trying to appease the Nazis. Last I checked, ol' Chamberlain didn't beat the shit out of Hitler at the Munich Conference and tell him to get the hell out of the Sudetenland.
The show didn't address it, but "non-genocidal colonialism" is nearly an oxymoron
Roku delayed the imperialist Fire Nation by decades. Itâs not like Aang would have killed Sozin were he in Rokuâs position.
what your average youtube viewer will see: cool fire guy before aang vs female
Honestly haters are just gonna hate
I donât understand how people act like any other avatar at Koreaâs age wouldâve done much better. Literally none of them had fought a âdark avatarâ, someone truly on their level. Aang almost ended the avatar cycle outright, and got lucky that katara could save him. I feel like considering he wasnât facing another avatar, thatâs worse. I havenât read the kyoshi novels. Roku is the worst by a mile to me. He had DECADES to address his emotional blind spot with Sozin. Aang and Korra were caught in spur of the moment stressful battles. Rokuâs conscious choice of inaction led to the (almost) complete extinction of the airbenders, and 100 years of war.
Roku's inaction led to the 100-year war and the Air Nomad GENOCIDE. Korra lost her connection to her past lives but helped bring about the return of the Aiir Nation. Nostalgia clouds many people's judgments.
I would say Szeto was the one who messed up the most. He only focused on the fire nation. Resulting in imbalance in the world. This made Yanchen neglect the spirits as she had to juggle the worldâs problems. This lead to Kuruks early death. Rokuâs mistake was trusting Sozin at the Volcano. He stopped Sozin in his tracks when he first invaded the earth nation. I feel people blame him too much for not killing Sozin outright. But I know I would struggle with that decision too. He should not have trusted him ever again. Thatâs something I can fault him for and criticize him for. Korra is fine, sure she made mistakes but definitely not the most.
Also people blame Roku for "not intervening". The man destroyed half of Sozin's palace, told him to fuck off, and Sozin indeed fucked off for like ten years until Roku died. In hindsight yeah, he should've went for the kill, but Roku didn't have the knowledge we have that Sozin would return to fuck things up after Roku passed away.
What Roku needed to do was address the imperialism in the fire nation at its root cause. By not doing that he guaranteed that the fire nation would continue on its exact same path once he died. If the only thing you did to stop something is say "I will stop you" and didn't do anything else to block that course of action, then you are to blame for it when you die and it happens.
Roku chose not to intervene and there were insane consequences, including a genocide. Korra didn't make any incorrect decisions, maybe apart from trusting her uncle. She just lost a fight, and it's not like that was a mistake that she willingly made
ironic how an act of mercy by roku started the war and then an act of mercy by aang ended the war
I mean, Aang did that because he didn't want to kill anyone. If he'd rage-punched Ozai's head off it would've ended the war just the same.
Roku let a genocide happen but okay
Pretty sure Korra stopped multiple full scale wars and Roku just let the biggest one in history slide
Roku messed up waaaaaay more than Korra. Korra fixed her own mistakes. Roku caused an entire nation to go extinct through his inaction
Aang stopped a war. Korra prevented a war. Roku failed to do either of those things.
Roku caused more of a unfavorable position for the next avatar and the eventual near genocide of a nation. Which eventually threw the entire world into war for 100 years. Korra has done more significant damage but itâs all speculation because we donât know how her actions have affected the world in the future. People are way too biased against Korra
She brought back an entire nation. I'd say she's doing pretty good so far.
I knew looking at this post that people were gonna instantly go for the kill on Korra but in all honesty Roku was the worst one, allowing a world war to happen and having problems millions of people affected/killed, a whole culture was destroyed, and also gave way to racism toward fire benders. In a way him being the avatar and allowing sozin to live and go on advancing his plans is probably part of the reason that drove zaheer to wanting to take the avatar down/use them to take out world leaders cuz world leaders such as ozai and sozin and azulon and kuvira just fuel zaheers drive to take down the oppressive governments and take down any government because he doesn't want any new leaders coming forth and being worse than the last. Roku pretty much gave the red lotus a reason to exist which then also allowed unalaq to thrive and move forward on his plans with Vaatu. The recklessness of avatars/benders is what drove Noatak to become Amon and create the equalist movement. Which don't get me wrong the equalist movement was valid and what Amon did actually gave way to the nonbenders having a voice and getting the first nonbender president
People love to hate Korra. If this poll was unbiased, Korra wouldn't have NEARLY that many votes
Itâs literally been a decade since lok has ended and I still canât believe sheâs getting this much hate đ
Literally misogyny actuallyÂ
We're just acting like Roku didn't stop a war because of friendship lol
Wasn't she the only avatar that didn't get to travel the world? That caused her empathy to be a little stunted. She learnt the most in that 1 night in the spirit world than she had in all her years before.
#1 Roku, #2 Yangchen, #3 Kuruk (his only real crime was trying to preserve people's memory of Yang Chen at his own expense)
1. Roku, 2. Szeto, everyone else
Szeto was just a fine autistic young man with a passion for paperwork, I demand he be forgiven as no one could truly know that just trying to help a people prosper will cause a genocide
Pure bias
Bro korra fucked up over and over and caused so many huge changes on the world. In the end the world becomes better same with the case of the other avatars but idk. What about aang left the world unchecked for 100 years and caused so much pain and strife. Honestly I really think itâs aang
Abandon your culture to genocide? Allow a 4th of the planet to get genocided?? Obviously Korra is worse because.......... wait what were we talking about?
Korra's biggest mistake was not being Aang. That's why they hate her
Honestly its really a tie between Roku and Yangchen, roku because he did nothing about Sozion, and yangchen due to how she neglected the spirit world leading kryuk to an early grave.
We like that sheâs dumb we like that sheâs dumb
I would argue that Avatar Szetso messed up the most. By choosing to become a Fire Nation court official instead of doing more to aid other nations it caused a domino effect, Yangchen had to deal with a lot of problems for the world but had to neglect the spirits, this caused problems for Kuruk who spent most of his time dealing with dark sprits which ultimately cost him to die an early death, leaving many problems for Kyoshi to deal with. Kyoshi managed to deal with most of everything but there was also sparks of what would become the Hundred Year War in her time but she managed to keep it in check for awhile and probably halted the process for at least a couple hundred years, but even with her 230 year reign as the Avatar even she couldnât fix everything. Roku inherited a world where everything was mostly on the upswing but failed to see the dangerous ambitions of Sozin and when he did see was reluctant to take decisive actions against his best friend, and practically his brother, this in turn left a major mess for Aang to clean up. To Aangâs credit he did do a lot and managed to make peace in his own way but even he wasnât able to bridge the divide between benderâs and nonbenderâs, and that would become a problem that Korra would inherit. Though sheâs managed to make major changes and dealt with most of the problems itâs also possible that in the future weâll see problems that she wasnât able to deal with in her lifetime that will be inherited by the next Avatar. It seems no matter what each Avatar seems to inherit the previous oneâs problems that they werenât able to deal with in their lifetimes. Itâs not really their fault, itâs just a domino effect that always been in motion since Avatar Wan and most likely it wonât ever end. Because there will always be conflict and strife but thatâs the whole point of there being an Avatar in the first place, to deal with the conflict and strife thatâs constantly plaguing the world. (Note: sorry for the essay, if youâve read all that hereâs a cookie đŞ for your efforts)
The dominoes argument is definitely true once the literary materials included, but I'd say size and positioning of the various dominoes could still be litigated. Even here, you end up with "y'all are blaming the wrong nations' avatars"
Roku hands down
100% Roku. If he wasn't blinded by his feelings and did what he knew was right. No war and oppression, and no genocide
"Messed up the most" and shows characters that could not control everything đ
I think part of the point of Korra's story is that she *is* the Avatar that messed up the most so far. She's also the one for whom things were the most messed up, at least as far back as anyone can remember. She was a brash, headstrong girl raised to be the perfect hero and protector for a version of the world that was essentially gone by the time that she left her compound, and because of all of that, both she and the world paid the price. But that's only half of the story, because Korra is about failure and loss, yes, but also about recovery, adaptation, and new growth and change. She has to be the one who has failed the hardest - because that's integral to her becoming the one who can help the world that burned down in the Hundred Years War grow back. Wanting Korra to be the ideal hero and to not face failures and shortcomings is missing the point of the entire series, and doing it a massive disservice.
Roku chose to blindly trust his best friend and allow villainy to unfold unchecked. Korra chose to blindly trust a total stranger who kept changing his story about whether or not the three Water Tribes had a constitutionally unified government. And she did not stop to question her own blind trust in this total stranger even when he also changed his story about the reason why the Southern portal needed to be opened in the first place. And I do call him a total stranger because SHE HAD NO IDEA WHO HER FATHER'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY EVEN WAS, at the time she first met her uncle the incredibly obvious villain. Blind trust in a total stranger who keeps changing his story to get you to do what he wants at each individual step of his plan. That is how badly Korra screwed up in season 2. But it's not the character's fault. Because everyone screws up that badly in season 2. Take a look at how Ming-Hua engages in every fight. And all the times that everyone forgot that Mako knows how to lightningbend. Until it was time for the villain in question to finally be killed by her incredibly obvious inability to defend against one incredibly obvious type of attack. Failure to observe the incredibly obvious is a key symptom of Korra season 2. The world would be a far better place if the writers had rewatched "The Siege of the North" before getting the idea of doing a whole action movie about the meaning of Yin and Yang. "Their names are Tui and La: Push and Pull and that has been the nature of their relationship for all time."
Roku, he messed up real bad
Roku literally caused a genocide and 100 years of war because he didnât want to kill his childhood bestie
Okay, Korra was like a teenager when she got all the lives destroyed, and even then she was fighting something she couldnât really comprehend. Roku screwed up badly. Korra had the excuse of being manipulated by a family member (Something that actually happens in real life) while Roku KNEW what Sozin was doing and basically let him off with a slap on the wrist. He was basically the Third Hokage and Danzo all over again. And three guesses who the Third Hokage is. Point is, while Korra messed up, she had excuses and itâs reasonable. Roku KNEW what was going on and let it happen.
Tbh Korra was made to be avatar at a really weird time, so it feels hard to fault her here. The world was experiencing massive change technologically and politically, she had to deal with reintegration of spirits, and this is after Aang of all people so comparing them is inevitable. However she did stop several people threatening to put the world out of balance, and indirectly revived the air nation. Roku's legacy is defined by him not stopping Sozin, and literally took his next 2 lives to repair his mistake (Aang with ending the war and Korra restoring the air nation). Roku is 100% worse.
I mean... She did destroy the Avatar cycle. Left the spirit portals open so Koh and father glowworm escape, destroyed Republic City twice, let Kuvira live. That's pretty bad, but definitely not as bad as a genocide and a century long war
I just want a subreddit where I get to talk about my favorite avatar, but half the posts on here are people complaining about Korra haters, and it's why I don't spend nearly as much time on here as I want to
Letâs spend more time complaining about the guy who said he spent way too much time chilling, surfing and making kissy faces with his girl⌠till she lost her face.
Why did you post this twice? Both posts are on after another on my home feed.
I think it's a stupid, loaded question in the first place.
Why is Kuruk not a choice?
All these opinion polls posts are pretty subjective anyway. I feel Korra has more opportunities to make mistakes because she has more challenges to face. Like Korra has to get 4 questions right vs. Roku has to get 1 question right. I think Roku's biggest mistake is him not being proactive enough in ensuring Firelord Sozin does not stray off the path or have a backup in the event he dies. I can get him not wanting to kill a world leader who threatened them because Kyoshi also displays this level of mercy when the Earth King did the same to her. Because early on, we already get the sensing Sozin is much more of a tyrant and a threat to peace. Since in his rule, he started the tradition to hunt for dragons, eliminate the same sex marriage, spread anti Earth Kingdom sentiments, and try to provoke military conflict with the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom. Any of these actions would raise an eyebrow, but doing all these together? Roku is either very busy with Avatar duties, uninformed or has a very high tolerance for Sozin.
Really, Aang and Korra did nothing wrong in the grand scheme of things (as in, nothing beyond their personal lives). Aang took care of business as far as we know. The only thing that Korra did âWrongâ was lose to Unaloq, but that was because Vaatuu just hopped out of his body and directly attacked her soul in a way she could not have predicted. Itâs not something she did wrong, itâs something wrong that happened to her. Kyoshi creating the Dai Li was a pretty big fuckup, but compared to Rokuâs mercy causing the near genocide of an entire race of people takes the cake pretty immensely.
So I've read everyone comments and I think many are forgetting that humans are stupid, including myself. I have watched all Avatar series (Aang and Korra) and I had NO CLUE who Roku was. I think most people who did this survey did not know Roku either and just chose Korra. Now that you all revealed the failures of Roku, he's obviously the worst Avatar.
I disagree with it being Korra. All Avatars mess up and make mistakes, that's part of their character as the Avatar. I don't think Korra made the most/biggest mistakes. I would probably say Roku, just because he knew Sozin was starting to invade with the colonies. I also feel like person made this poll knowing that it would generate some Korra hate.
See its funny, cus I'd say Korra made some of the least mistakes an Avatar has made imo, compared to Roku and Kyoshi at least. But it's kinda the point that every avatar fucks up, and then a future avatar has to deal with that. It's part of the cyclical nature of avatars, where balance is restored and lost by their actions. Has Korra made/will make mistakes across her role? Absolutely. Is she the worst avatar? God no, there's tonnes of them. But the hope in that is when an avatar falters, even a little, another will pick up from their mistakes and correct them.
I mean, Korra may have had a higher number of mistakes than the others, at least that we've seen, but the severities of Roku's big mistake was easily more severe than any mistake Koraa made. His mistake changed the world forever and ended up resulting in a brutal war that lasted for 100 years of misery and oppression. Even in Korra's time the world is still feeling the ramifications of Roku's mistake.
Objectively Roku and its not remotely close. Kyoshi was successful, as far as Iâm aware. Aang is very obvious. Korra fumbled but she did defeat all her villains. Shit happened but the world is at peace and the avatar still exists Roku did nothing but wag his finger at Sozin. As far as Iâm aware he trained to master all the elements, had a wife, had his own island and repeatedly gave strong words to Sozin. Never made any real attempts to prevent him from the war whatsoever. None that were effective, in any case Hell Roku *agrees* he fucked up. And his inaction objectively resulted in incalculable suffering and destruction
Bro I get Korra is by far the most hated avatar but man is this such a joke. Roku even admitted that that he screwed everything over with Sozin and the fire nation
Roku's actions directly led to the 100-Year-War. He, himself, would admit that - of these four specific Avatars - he made the most substantial mistakes as Avatar. He literally tells Aang that it's not fair that he's being forced to fix the mistakes that Roku made, and apologizes to Aang for that fact.
Korra has the excuse of being young and sheltered. She didnât âmess upâ so much as get in over her head against opponents that were too much for her. And ultimately, she was the one who paid the price 90% of the time (Amon traumatizing her during book 1, losing connection to the past avatars, being poisoned, getting her ass kicked by Kuvira, etc). Compare this with Roku. His lack of decisiveness instigated a 100 year long war and the genocide of entire culture.
Not a big fan of Korra but Roku shouldâve seen Sozenâs entire plan. Ainât no way that guy was gonna help the one person standing in his way of global domination. He shouldâve taken him out the moment he heard about Sozenâs plan. Roku couldâve ended the whole process then and there but because him and Sozen were friends, he let it slide
Korra is the strongest one. She faced the most awful challenges. Sure, there was a space for screw :( Yet, she managed, and she has the greatest girlfriend, all other avatars can only envy.
It's definitely Wan.
I mean Wan screwed up the most clearly
Why people keep choosing korra???? Its not her fault all the zaheer shit happened, she didnt choose zaheer to be an airbender and also roku by light years people
Besides, the correct answer is actually Yangchen, because her successor had to literally spend his entire lifeâto the point of dying young as a consequenceâexclusively cleaning up her messes. No one even thought he did anything, because *all he did was clean up Yangchenâs messes.* I count this one as the worst solely because nobody elseâs mistakes required their successor to spend their whole life trying to patch them back up.
Roku basically being the reason there was a 100 year war and the total genocide of the Air Nomads should have earned him top spot. I still love seeing people call Korra a Mary Sue with an entire season of PTSD and severe depression keeping her away from her friends for 3 years straight.
Itâs not just vaatu, she got her shit stomped more than any other avatar
Nah definitely Roku
I think it's roku bro. He literally left a world ready for wtf lol. Korra we don't know cause full story is unknown but so far pretty good.
I honestly think theyâre testing the misogyny of the fandom lmaoâŚ. Weâre failing
Korra screwed up worse than anyone else but it just happened to all work out for her in the end. Rokku fumbled hard though and did not recover.
Let's see, she released destructive nature spirits on all of mankind, and gave rise to not one but TWO of her own antagonists. Roku was blinded by loyalty, and chose to spare someone as opposed to murdering them for something they haven't done yet
I think in the long term, korra did made the biggest mistake. Trusting her uncle allowed Vatuu to escape and ultimately led to the severing of her past lives. Which doesn't seem like a big issue at first bur it really is. Countless sources of knowledge were lost by this severing, knowledge that could be lost forever, like Wans story or the stories of countless Avatars who's loves weren't recorded. Knowledge that could help Korra or future Avatars who need guidance or advice on how best to go about things. If Aang didn't have roku to guide him on his journey, he would have died or been captured long before the comet arrived.
I scrolled as far as I could and everyone is defending Korra. I hadnât even realized Korra even NEEDED to be defended đ¤ˇđťââď¸ I mean Roku didnât kill nor imprison a guy who confessed his plans to conquer the world though he very much had the power to đ¤ˇđťââď¸ Korraâs life was literally one big disaster after another and the girl got through them all somehow.
Where are those dumbass folk who love to scream how Korra fans love act like victims?
People saying Roku is the reason for the war are idiots. Roku died and the war didn't happen for 12 years. If Roku doesn't die, then he stops the war. Not even remotely his fault he died.
I mean Korra did bring back an entire nation that was previously extinct sooooooooo. I think Roku screwed up the most by letting Sozin live
Yeah Korra is such a f\*ck up, she should have tried to do like Kyoshi and storm off to an island while hoping Amon accidentally fell to his death, or just let him take over and start a century-long war like Roku did!