Adam&Eve have been such an amazing and patient sponsor, and I cannot recommend them enough. Use FUTURE for 50% off (some excl. apply) free shipping in US & Canada!
GET ON WRITING AND WORLDBUILDING VOL II I https://linktr.ee/timhickson
Thank you patrons — without you, I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do. https://www.patreon.com/hellofutureme (come join the Discord/writing workshops!)
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/tim_hickson_hfm/
TWITTER https://twitter.com/TimHickson1
A WIZARD DID IT MUG https://store.nebula.app/collections/hello-future-me
EMAIL [email protected]
GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18990222.Timothy_Hickson
SECOND CHANNEL https://tinyurl.com/ybhtz42g where I put extra notes for videos, vlogs, board game reviews, and other stuff from my life
POSTAL ADDRESS (if you’re kind enough to send me a letter or something!)
Tim Hickson
PO Box 69062
Lincoln, 7608
Canterbury, New Zealand
Script by meeeeeeeee
Video edited by Lalit Kumar (99% of the time)
0:00 Ep 1: Rebel Spirit
6:45 Ep 2 The Souther Lights
11:50 Ep 3 Civil Wars P1
14:25 Ep4 Civil Wars P2
17:25 Ep 5 Peacekeepers
19:50 Ep 6 The Trap is Sprung
23:25 Ep 7 The Sting
27:30 Ep 8 Beginnings P1
33:20 Ep 9 Beginnings P2
38:00 Ep 10 A New Spiritual Age
42:20 Ep 11 Night of a Thousand Stars
46:00 Ep 12 Darkness Falls
48:00 Ep 13 Echoes of the Past
50:20 Ep 14 Light in the Dark
The artist that designed my display pic! https://serem01.deviantart.com/
The artist who design my cover photo:
– https://raidesart.deviantart.com/
– https://raidesart.tumblr.com/
– https://www.instagram.com/raidesart/
Music by Epidemic Sound: http://epidemicsound.com/creator
Stay nerdy!
Tim
source
Korra good. (ALSO: *this DOES NOT MEAN any random non-bender can just search out a sky bison/the moon and learn the bend*. I think the ability to learn like this has been mostly lost as civilisation developed and they grew further from the spirit world. These guys lived isolated along sky bison for generations, airbending being the most spiritually connected element, and it wasn't even many of them. It would be so rare, so difficult and mystical at this point that doing so would be dismissed as rumour.
~ Tim
Lol at 2:26 is that shade at American baseball?
I didn’t like korra when I first watched it cause I kept comparing it to atla. But when i rewatched it when I was older I loved it because I realized korra reacts very humanely and not a super hero. The only thing I didn’t like was that they had a villain for every season which made it very fast pace.
How do you fix what's not broken bro
I would drop the Asami x Korra ship build-up and just left them as friends. It was born out of the same reason why this tradition plot wouldn't really work in the time the show was written in. Propaganda. Other than that I love the rewrite. It's so good! I wish they did this instead of what had happened.
Even in the original series. The lion turtle tells aang that before then bended elements. They bended spirits. They would bend the persons spirit to be said bender. At least thats the way I interpreted it.
I really love how you rewrote the season, and it definitely would've been more interesting, but I have to strongly disagree on the concepts behind Raava and Vaatu. The writers NEVER portrayed them as good and evil, and that is something that EVERYONE misunderstands.
To start with, people need to completely disregard the terms "light" and "dark". They have nothing to do with Raava and Vaatu and that was a terrible choice of vocabulary on the part of the writers; those two vocabulary terms are what caused the serious misunderstanding. Raava is the spirit of PEACE and ORDER. Vaatu is the spirit of CONFLICT and CHAOS. They are two spirits fused into one singular entity, balancing one another out. Never once in LoK do you hear Raava refer to Vaatu as "evil" or "bad", and never once do you hear Vaatu refer to Raava as "right" or "good". Those are CONCEPTS invented by us humans, who have a ridiculous psychological need to categorize everything into black-or-white groups.
Think back to Raava's conversation with Wan. She tells him that she and Vaatu battle for the fate of the world every 10K years, and that neither of them can ever defeat one another. When Wan asks what would happen if she or Vaatu won, Raava very specifically uses the term "IF", not "WHEN". Meaning every battle they've ever had has ended in a draw. They have never defeated each other, because that simply is not possible. They are fused as one being, meaning that destroying one would also meaning destroying the other. (And then Wan split them, blah blah blah.)
"Peace" and "Order" do NOT equate to good. "Chaos" and "Conflict" do NOT equate to evil. This is never what the writer's meant to say, and they spent S3+4 trying to get their message across.
In S3, "Old Wounds", we see Lin and Su start fighting each other head-to-head with their bending. Korra immediately asks Bolin if she should stop them, and Bolin tells her no because "fighting is part of the healing process". Now, rethink what I just said, but in these terms: RAAVA senses the conflict and chaos, immediately wanting to correct it, an inner subconscious feeling that urges Korra to act. Bolin tells RAAVA (indirectly through Korra) that "conflict is good", or put differently, that "peace doesn't solve every problem". And so Raava backs off and allows the chaos and conflict to play out. This here is the perfect example of Vaatu's influence bringing about better outcomes than Raava could hope to achieve. This is VAATU being GOOD.
Literally the entire plotline of S4 is all about Raava's influence being bad. Kuvira's whole motivation is based on bringing about ORDER and STABILITY to the Earth Kingdom, which is exactly what Raava would want to do herself. But think about what Toph tells Korra: "The problem was, [your former enemies] were way out of balance, and they took their ideologies too far." This is exactly what Kuvira is: Raava's ideologies being taken too far, and causing more harm than good. The entirety of S4 is all about the EVIL that RAAVA can create. Meanwhile, we get a subplot about "rebels" in the Earth Empire who're fighting against Kuvira's tyranny and subjugation. These rebels are fighting AGAINST order, which means they are being influenced by DISORDER, and these rebels are CAUSING conflict, not stopping it; ultimately, they are being influenced by VAATU, not Raava. Do we view these rebels as being in the wrong? No. We view the rebels as being in the RIGHT, as being a sort of vigilante-styled GOOD. This is S4's example of Vaatu's influence being GOOD.
Furthermore, the episodes also answered a very important question that the community at large has been pondering for quite a long time: Can there be an EVIL Avatar? The answer: YES, THERE CAN BE. Because Raava is NOT "good". Because "good" is a CONCEPT, which is subjectable to the individual perspective of every human being on the planet. We even see throughout S1 that one really annoying propaganda guy repeatedly referring to Korra as an "Evil Avatar!!!", because that is how they viewed her. She was evil in their eyes, not good, meaning that Raava cannot, nor ever should have been, viewed as the personification of "all that is good", and it's very unfortunate that everyone took that perspective when first watching these episodes.
"Beginnings" was a great duology of episodes, and I very much loved them. Your version isn't bad either, but like I said at the beginning of this comment, you kinda missed the whole point trying to be made (likely due to the terrible vocab choice). :/
Korra bad
overall a good rewrite, i feel like you leaned too far into Korra as the main character. While the Bolin plot in the actual show is well not great, it had inclusion of the rest of the cast.
Around that 30 minute mark you explain how you envison the way Avatar Wan learned how to bend elements. I love your take on it and I could not stop to think about the Sun Tribe. What if they were already among dragons and learned with them and Wan stumble across them, thus reinforcing that humans and spirits can coexist. The Sun tribe has an aztec motif and literally every other nation (even fire nation) has a more asian motif. It would be nice if they were a tribe that were not bound those clusters of humans for aeons before and it could also serve as a way to explain the "spiritual fire bending" used in the original show.
Lovely video! These changes are agreeable, and would definitely love to see it written one day. Sometimes, people just mess up and those actions have consequences. Not everything has to be Magnanimous Evil who planned everything thirty years prior. Or a secret society, or vying for power.
I prefer this treatment of Unalaq and I can see it, a man motivated by the healing of the spiritual since spurned spirits have real in-world consequences. The villain-of-the-week black morality every single season was trite, not to mention Unalaq's design looks so damn similar to Tarrlok. Half expected Unalaq to start bloodbending just to add more McEvil layers.
An internal struggle I can see added, to match Unalaq not setting up his brother's destruction of the northern spirit forest, is making him an unwilling chieftain. Perhaps he had another path he wished to walk, spirit guide or healer or something that didn't quite fit a traditional role for the son of a chieftain but gave him freedom, and sudden leadership (or next-in-line preparation) added expected responsibilities that didn't make him happy or fulfilled. Resentment toward his brother wouldn't simply hinge on Tonraq being haphazard with spirits and spiritual tradition, but that his brother got himself banished and Unalaq had to bear the brunt and fallout.
This, in my opinion, opens up the character dimensionality that Unalaq may not be as traditional as he may spout (and the speculation of other untraditional paths). He's traditional out of spite, in a way, which once it's revealed the hypocrisy, it can lead to working on it and character growth. And that's human.
And… I never understood why the writers whitewashed a two-faced, lobbyist, war profiteer, so I'm glad you addressed that. A lot of the botched politics in the series is addressed rather blasé, especially the civil war see-sawing and terrorist attacks. Varrick deserved jail.
I didn't like korra. lol
This was beautiful! and I love the journey you made for Korra. Learning how to live and utilize HER role in a changing world.
Also loved the side stories you had for Asami and the bending brothers. SOOOOOO much better than the original. Mako and Bolin working together, Asami kicking Varrick's rear end. The arc in Republic City and the Air family. Tenzin's struggle to accept something outside of what he had been from Aang as Air Nomad culture. The message of living along side and in harmony with nature. The contrast of Order as homogenous and Chaos as diverse. Raava and Vaatu BOTH being in Wan, HOly Smokes Tim! I want a reboot of the show with just YOU as the writer!!!
Only changes that would be better than what you're putting forward in "my opinion" are instead of the "Merchant of Death angle" I think it would be more interesting to have hints of Earth Kingdom Military working behind the scenes toward there own attempts at "WORLD DOMINATION"
This is fantastic. The way the themes of order and chaos were introduced in beginnings and continue to be relevant to the greater conflict between the north and the south and modernity versus tradition is masterfully done. I'm very sad this isn't the season we got.
The new philosophy that korra uses to deal with the man made conflicts in this rendition reminds me of Avatar Kuruk.
I think the idea of the avatar being fused with both vaatu and raava is so good. It just makes sense, the whole point of the avatar is to bring balance to the world, how can they do that without being balanced themselves
I would have LOVED to see this – especially instead of what we actually got
i LOVE this verion. from now on this is canon for me
I would've preferred if you had just skipped Beginnings, but I respect you sticking to the rules anyway.
Excellent rewrite can we expect videos on season 3 and 4? Nice touch on the Avarar fusing with Raava and Vaatu, there should be balance between order and chaos too.
wow I’m surprised this was actually good writing. most of these rewriting X series videos are super cringe and made by haters who just want a different show
But you somehow kept the original integrity of book 2 while also improving it. Not bad
My only real issue with this rewrite is the same one I think is the reason they just gave Korra her bending back: We don't want Aang 2.0. We don't want another show about the Avatar traveling the world to learn how to bend. Other than that, I love this!
Please fix the entire legend of Korra
In my opinion to fix The Legend of Korra is to create an overarching plot.
Currently every season has little to do with eachother and almost everyone agrees that Season 3 was the best with their writing and antagonists.
So I think the way to fix the story is to have the discovery of the Avatar in Season 1 in the first episode be a bigger thing.
I hate that the White Lotus changed tradition and looked for the avatar straight up instead of like in their historical counterparts only at a certain age.
It would be better if because of the Reconstruction at the Southern Water Tribe by the unified Nations, that Korra accidentally Firebends after watching a few firebending construction workers and a few moments later waterbends as well. That her father/mother or even her Uncle Unalaq sees this and it all kicks off. Either way who discovers it, it comes to Unalaq, who becomes jealous (that his children weren't chosen as the avatar while him being so dedicated to spiritualism) and given that he is already in the Red Lotus, devices a plot off screen after which the Red Lotus pretending to be the White Lotus, "checks" up on some rumours of a new Avatar and kidnaps Korra.
This happens in the current story too, but by changing a minor detail about how it happened, it introduces the Red Lotus early in the story, potentially shows them being locked up, adds in the Heroes of the Last Airbenders, like Zuko, and forces the White Lotus to teach Korra earlier as a bender.
Now that the red lotus is established and potentially Unalaq shown as an untrustworthy character, it sets up Season 2's and 3's story.
I like your suggestions about Season 1 and 2. Because it fixes the issues of Korra being so divisive
Dude, this was so good. I wish you could put it into a graphic novel and sell it without getting sued
more is needed
Korra good.
i feel like the big anime kaiju fight was just for fun, and im ok with that. The rava/other one kite design is interesting, but i see how it may seem weird, but i remember being a kid and just loving how they look
I had the biggest smile on my face when you described the little boy learning to Airbend at the end. I would've cried if I saw that on a TV screen back in 2014 and not BWAAAAAAAAAAAA
I like everything except removing the lion turtles as a source of bending. I think it's fine that this was an element of the world building and matches up with the role they were set up with in the original avatar with energy bending, and it provides a simple explanation as to how people gained the ability to learn from the original benders. We already see modern people like Toph learn to bend from the animal benders, but she's already an earth bender. So it still begs the question where do people get the power for bending in the first place and why can't non-benders learn from the "original benders" in the modern era? The turtles were a decent explanation for both things.
Seems like the majority of your rewrite is taking anyone who was evil and making them an anti-hero or sympathetic villain. It is ok to have some truly evil characters sometimes. Unalaq especially I think should be kept evil though his ultimate goal could change.. The vaatu+raava thing I could get on board with.. Integrating the storylines alittle closer I like but I think you have gone overboard with the North/South fight.. One side is supposed to be way stronger but you buffed up the south massively to the a non-sensical degree (basically they would have won with ease if not falling into spirit traps repeatedly)
53:55 this line from Asami might be the single most important line in the show, and it's not even in it.
It the perfect setup for season 3 while also connecting it to season 1 and gives a great foreshadowing for why Zaheer wants the avatar gone.
It also hints at an alternative role for the avatar after part 4: as a mediator between spirit and man, but without authority over either of them.
I feel the new part 4 is gonna focus more on the self-determination of people both as groups and individuals. Kuvira will fall only after taking republic city with her, and it's decided that the city won't be built back up again.
I like that the first avatar takes both spirits into himself, I think that rounds things out nicely.
I always wanted Ginora to get the chaos kite and become a second avatar. That's where it seemed like it was going with her connection to the spirit world. She would get to the tree, make friends, and then be chosen.
It gives an interesting conflict for Korra's doubts about being the avatar because now she's not special and her counterpart is way better with spirits
The best fix is officially declaring korra non-canon, people who like the show will still like it, and people who dont wont have that sour taste in their mouths, since its just official fanfic
"I will not be the last Airbender." – Aang
For a while, I was toying with a rewrite that was based around Unalaq taking Korra on a pilgrimage to various spiritual sites around the world to help her regain her bending abilities. I liked the idea of focusing on how the world was changing and the ways various places were handling spirituality, but I never really developed the idea enough to decide how the Harmonic Convergence stuff would be handled.
Hmm I know this isnt the season where it happened but the reason I disliked kora is because the essentially killed the avatar state this killing aang and all the others
I wouldn't rewrite it this way but oh man would I have loved the show if it was your version. Keep up the good work my man!
Fun video.
However I feel alone in actually liking the "Beginnings" two parter. I like what it showed and I liked the blending of messages from both series.
idk, I liked it. I don't like S02 but I liked those eps.