Kuvira - Blog Posts
The major arcana is finished!!!!!!!
I'm thinking of getting this printed in a mini zine. If you're interested please let me know since I'm looking for distributers for a copy for myself at least.
Commissions are open and info can be found here
My ko-fi is here
Why are my favorite ships always:
Different but in the way that they make perfect partners and achieve so much together. Believing in each other when it seems like no one else does. Different and despite that, they understand each other until they completely don't. Some kind of betrayal and at least one of them has abandonment issues. So much emotional constipation and painful pining. Childhood friends to [insert decades long mess here] to finally, finally lovers. "My heart has always been yours. Even when I hated you. Even when there was so much distance between us I thought we'd never pull through. There's no one else in this world for me. So, yes it's you, it's always been you".
And the only two that have qualified so far are Wrightworth (Phoenix + Miles from Ace Attorney) and Baavira (Baatar Jr + Kuvira from Legend of Korra). I love how Wrightworth's partnership led them to find the truth and redeem each other, while Baavira's led them to create a dictatorship and commit war crimes.
If you have any more examples of ships that fit, please let me know.
more legend of korra texts 🫡
Wait but now that Kuvira is in the swamp does that mean Toph is gonna fight her out??
I’m pretty sure Toph is going to go into Shrek state and get them all out like
Wants genocidal ethnostate. Plans genocidal ethnostate. Achieves end results in line with wants and planning except for one region. Doesn't get that region. Everything collapses.
"Well it was a good idea to start with, just taken to far!" -Toph
What does that even mean? Kuvira got like 99% of what she wanted and everything she wanted was exactly in line with her original ideology. The ideology was just completely unstable.
Ravablanca WIPS Page 15 I think. I actually do work for Wendy, so it's a snail pace. I dunno, maybe after this. I'LL go on a diet, lose some weight, learn how to get a six pack.
Some Ravablanca WIPS!
THIS IS TAKING ME FOR FUCKING EVER!
Ravablanca inks wip.
pg8 panel 3
pg9 panel 4
I'm trying to cut down my process. It took me about a week to make the last three pages for Ravablanca. And I'm hoping this project will help me make my own work in a faster timeline. This is my thumbnail for page four. I'm pretty sure I can speed things along. I used my notecards this time. But I still use the same template to kick around my panel layouts. Seeing what works. I'm targeting something that's ten pages. But maybe It can be 25. I'll probably be insane by that point.
So instead of making the story about the political maneuvering in the former EK they’re going all-in on the mind-control plotline? Sigh... At this point, I think it’s safe to say that Bryke don’t know how to write political stories. Every time they introduce a political topic like relations between benders and non-benders in Republic City or discord between the two Water Tribes, they always end up walking it back, changing the subject, or having the issue hinge on some piece of magic or technology rather than on the thoughts and actions of the characters. There’s no shame in not having the knack for writing politics, but when you keep trying to do it despite making a hash of it every time, you really need to step back and reconsider a few things. Heck, Faith Erin Hicks is handling the divisions in proto-Republic City in the AtLA comics far better than Bryke ever did. On a more speculative note, a part of me wonders if DiMartino is actually going to go so far as to walk back the end of B4 and Kuvira ruler of the Earth Kingdom again. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing. (Also, is it just me, or Asami just become a damsel in distress for Korra to save ever since their relationship began?)
It’s Korra and Kuvira vs Mako, Bolin, and Asami in The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part 3!
We now have the cover and description and they come with a major bombshell: Part Two is still months out and Part Three even further after that, but Mako, Bolin, and Asami become brainwashed and turned against Korra, along with others across the Earth Kingdom, .
This could be the result of the scientific experiments using spirit energy the Earth Empire remnant was conducting.
This is actually kind of exciting because we’ve never seen Team Avatar battle each other before and that’s now a possibility. Of course, Korra should realistically have a much higher base power level, but who knows what the spirit energy experiments have up their sleeve…
Here’s the full description:
“Kuvira’s true nature is revealed, and the Earth Kingdom will feel the consequences!
Thanks to Commander Guan and Doctor Sheng’s brainwashing technology, all hope for a fair election in the Earth Kingdom is lost. Korra works with Toph, Su, and Kuvira to plan a means to rescue not just the brainwashed Mako, Bolin, and Asami, but everyone else caught up in Guan’s plan! With the Earth Empire potentially on the rise again, Kuvira pulls another trick from her sleeve … but whose side is she truly on?”
You can see the cover and description for Part Two here. It comes out November 12th.
Part Three arrives on February 25th, 2020.
source
My own theory is that a majority of the new Air Nation is made up of former Earth Kingdom subjects for two main reasons. First of all, the simple fact that the Earth Kingdom is the most populous nation in the world means that, if the number of people developing airbending was equally distributed, the lion’s share of new airbenders would appear in the Earth Kingdom. Secondly, it seems like Tenzin got the majority of his “recruits” from Ba Sing Se, where they were refugees fleeing conscription and had no choice but to leave the EK, while others presumably came to Republic City as civil war broke out falling the Earth Queen’s assassination. By contrast, the Korra-era Fire Nation and the two Water Tribes were relatively stable and humane places, so the new airbenders probably had less of an impetus to emigrate. I imagine some did, but it wasn’t a matter of life or death for them. As for the airbenders who stayed behind in the Earth Kingdom, I had a dark idea about that. A few years ago, I was playing with story ideas for a potential Kuvira fic, and I hit upon this idea of a bunch of pro-Kuvira EK airbenders joining her army and being put into a special unit. With a training regiment crudely based off of whatever old books about airbending were floating around the EK, these airbenders would learn to control and manipulate poison gas as an offensive weapon against opposing armies and in fortification-clearing operations. While they would seem rather graceless and clumsy compared to someone like Tenzin, the fact that these “gasbenders” would be wielding clouds of the Avatarverse’s equivalents of mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine would make them terrifying in their own right, and they would be one of the many things that turned the world against Kuvira. Sadly I never came up with an actual story to put this idea in, but I still have the gasbenders in my back pocket for a rainy day.
Were there no new Air benders in the Fire Nation of Water Tribes? We saw the Air benders pop up in Republic City (EK colony) and Lin had reports of Air benders in the Earth Kingdom.
Does this mean Air benders come from “the people of the earth element” or that the other two nations just kept quiet about it? It certainly would have been interesting to see how the modern Fire Nation deals Air benders in their midst.
Where did the Air benders come from in the pre- fire- conquest days? Where they all born within the nomadic- monk society? That seems very unlikely. Where they born elsewhere and joined the order as a “higher calling”? Where they Air benders from all nations or just the Earth kingdom? and if so, why?
While Tenzin & Krew pressured the new Air benders to join it was a voluntary choice in the end. Was it always that way? what I’m getting at is … there may be people with Air bending abilities that are not part of the Air bending culture/ society. Are they self taught? are they lying dormant? What are the stories of the non joiners?
I must confess that one of the things I’ve always found interesting about Kuvira is how she expresses her gender identity within her role as the head of a revolutionary nationalist army. After all, modern military hierarchies tend to be drenched in masculinity even when they attempt to be egalitarian. At the same time, while revolutions offer the possibility of dissolving old roles and limits on behavior, they also tend to keep a few and develop some of their own. (There’s also the whole issue of how right-wing movements tend to describe the order they are rebelling against as “decadent” and effeminate, while their own movements offer a “healthy” masculine alternative. Of course, Korra never dug too deeply into the gender dynamics of Kuvira’s army, so any speculation would on this would essentially be building castles in the sky. What I can say, though, is that I’ve always felt Kuvira’s character design was harkening to this idea of what you could call “the soldier as woman.” She dresses and presents herself in such a way as to show that she and her army are one, even to the point where the only major difference between her and her soldiers is her collar and the armor on her upper back. At the same time, she isn’t trying to erase her gender and appear masculine/androgynous. She even keeps her hair long and tied up in a bun rather than shaving it off or going for the army-standard undercut. I think all this is what people have been getting at with this “butch/femme” discussion, but I don’t think that’s the best way to look at this particular issue. All that said, I’m not exactly a fan of this outfit from the upcoming comic.
I’ve always seen Kuvira as a woman with a rather austere sense of dress. As I pointed out above, instead of wearing a uniform with gold braid, sheets of medals and ribbon, or a cape and pauldron with elaborate armored segments like in her concept art, she wears a uniform that’s basically the same as every other one in her military. While this outfit isn’t too flossy or “femmy,” the tailoring, color coordination, and that big belt buckle feel a little too...well, bourgeois for Kuvira. It’s simple, yes, but it’s still an outfit you have to put together when you get up in the morning. Personally (and this is just my inner dirty socialist talking), I could easily see Kuvira rocking the zhongshan (”Mao”) suit, or something more akin to the military tunics Stalin wore in the 1920s and 1930s. (Hmm...Jenros, I think I have a Kuvira picture I’d like to pitch to you...)
Question: Why do people call Kuvira butch? Because she has muscle and doesn’t wear dresses or some shit? Are all women with muscle a butch?
Cause really when I think of butch I think of women who are suuuper big and muscular (rocking that T) like Zarya and Scorpia. Kuvira is more or less just a well built/toned female who looks classy as hell in anything she wears. She’s not super duper feminine but she’s not really butch either. She’s more or less in the middle.
Daily Kuvira #205
When there’s nothin’ else to do in prison. You might as well try some meditating.
She’s probably meditating along with one of the greats.
Now that’s interesting: Su rebuilt the domes of Zaofu. I always thought Kuvira’s order to dismantle the domes was a very important symbolic act. While her order was a practical directive to acquire enough refined platinum to build her mech, it also illustrated a fundamental difference between Suyin and Kuvira. Su’s concern was always to maintain Zaofu as a personal fiefdom separate from the Earth Kingdom. The city was built in a valley and each district had its own dome to isolate it from both the outside world and its neighbors. By contrast, Kuvira saw Zaofu as a model for how the EK could become a modern multinational "nation” that Su kept for herself. By dismantling the domes, Kuvira not only asserted her ownership of Zaofu, she also broke down the barriers that Su had erected to isolate Zaofu from the EK. To spread the gospel of Zaofu to the rest of the EK, Zaofu needed to come out of its shell and join the EK as a city like Omashu or Ba Sing Se. Seeing the domes rebuilt makes me feel that Su ultimately didn’t learn anything from her experiences in Book 4, and her main concern after returning home was to put everything back to the way it was and pretend the last four years never happened...which is a very Su thing to do. Unless, of course, this is a flash back, in which case disregard all that I have written. (Gonna tag @coppermarigolds and @the-moon-avatar in this post for funsies.)
The metalbending city of Zaofu, from The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part Two.
She’s trying her best. :3
I've good a good Kuvira sketch idea for you: little Kuv, age 10, in a homemade Avatar Kyoshi costume (think store-bought or low-rent Halloween) and messy makeup, taking her role VERY seriously.
Daily Kuvira #136
Someone help this poor child.
Bane/Bad Sean Connery Impression: “Oi am Rehpublic Schity’s rehkoning.”
Daily Kuvira #132
You know I had to.
Daily Kuvira #103 - Glasses
I had to go see the eye doc today..
Through determination and sheer bloody-mindedness, that’s how! Seriously, though, congrats. :D
Daily Kuvira #100
Holy crap how have I gone 100 gawt damn days of doing this so far?
Daily Kuvira #46 - memes never end
When you can’t remember if you locked your giant killer robot.
:3
Could you make one daily Kuvira a drunk Kuvira?
Daily Kuvira #31
Tbh I don’t know much about drawin’ drunks. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But Kuvira probably rarely drinks and when she does she’s the ultimate giddy dumbass.
Eeeeeee I love it!:D
I've got another sketch idea for you: Kuvira as Captain Kirk, and Bataar as Spock! (It's a bit of an in-joke; Todd Haberkorn, Bataar's VA, also played Spock in the online fan series "Star Trek Continues".)
Daily Kuvira #30 - NEEEEEEEERRRRRDs
You can tell this was Baatar’s idea.
Also bonus from my fav podcast:
Daily Kuvira #16 - Autumn
Taking time to get away from the city.
And perhaps visiting a friend….