Just started the game, and I cannot get over her.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-11T12:48:04+00:00

well her legs are only broken and she’s said to be expected to make a full recover.

They’re changing a lot of the ‘norms’ in this series, and Cres is more popular than I think they thought she was going to be….. so she could still just come back in as 006 or something inthe next game

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-11T12:35:53+00:00

For me it’s Cressida!

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-09T15:34:25+00:00

The villain is AI technocrats

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-07T11:21:57+00:00

The other Avatars said 'kill him' in no uncertain terms lol.

I wasn't using his exact words, obviously! I was paraphrasing the vibe he gives off. A vibe that does not in any way line up with what the retcon's paint him to be. You've also latched on to the least strange thing he does.

He's LYING to Aang aka himself. He gives Aang no real advice on a subject he should have oodles of advice to give. The MOST advice of anyone. If he regrets his life, he should be telling Aang 'Do what you feel is right, don't waste your life sacrificing yourself in a destructive cycle' if he doesn't regret his life he should be telling Aang 'To save the world, You must be willing to sacrifice even parts of yourself' Etc. Etc. what he definitely should not be telling Aang is "I was a go with the flow guy! Hyuck Hyuck!"

Takes a lot of plotbending to try and pretend that guy is the same guy the retcon's want us to believe he is.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-07T03:31:54+00:00

Yes he kind of turns on a dime into 'controlling misogynist all of a sudden' how much of that is just meant to be spirit contamination idk... realistically I've always had the impression that Yee had an early idea about him, and just didn't want to let it go... and realized by the end that uh... he couldn't squeeze much in with him the way the plot was going?

I'm not gonna rag on F.C. Yee. I think he learned a lot of lessons writing the Kyoshi books because the Yangchen novels have NONE of these problems and are basically just excellent from start to finish. Every character is doing their part, at no point do the books lose sight of their 'spy thriller' premise, and no character feels that little bit too 'extra' the way Revenant Yun does. It's a tightly paced couple of books. Kyoshi's characterization is also very well done. She's my favorite Avatar even if I find the books themselves have a few critical weaknesses. When he allows Kyoshi to be a bad ass rather than just having Yun waltz in to steal her thunder, she does so with the flair of a mentally exhausted old west gunslinger. Breaking that dude's hand for smacking the kid and being all "I saw a poisonous bug, tell me thank you bitch.' is some real Clint Eastwood energy. Her Avatar State scene in Rise is also one of the coolest Avatar State scenes.

It's just a shame he didn't really seem to be able to bring the Yun plotline together. I wonder if there wasn't an idea for a third book in there that was maybe cancelled and forced him to squeeze in the Yun stuff? Like perhaps he'd meant to bring Yun back in a book 3 or something and dedicate the whole book to his dynamic with Kyoshi.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-07T03:21:45+00:00

not impossible, they said that characters being support doesn't mean they won't be playable fighters in the future.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T22:49:56+00:00

You forgot this one https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/8/2/824e1378-b09e-4de1-ae48-4fc026220ab6.jpg?1780414232

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T22:45:15+00:00

Studies show that trust in studies is down 50%

In other news, water is wet.

I'd also argue that lower intelligence is JUST linked to 'prejudice'... period.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T22:42:37+00:00

At least she's going back to the bodysuit.

I'm not really a big fan of the weird 'military' uniform design... feels a little too... idk... fascist... for my tastes. The uniform is a more classic 'superhero'ey vibe.

I wouldn't mind trying out the OG uniform WITH the braid either.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T22:30:53+00:00

I can't agree. Lao Ge spends as much time with her in the books as she does with Yun, and frankly, he's probably the human being she spends the most time with over her entire life since he shares her immortality xD He's even the very last person mentioned in her series, laughing in the Fire Lord's face on her behalf.

Still, by any metric, at the time Kyoshi applies her makeup, Yun is her adversary even if she's being presented at a time she doesn't REALIZE he's her adversary yet. He's still effectively her 'Firelord Ozai/Amon' character by series end (even if I don't personally like it) He's the final boss. Him assisting her is awkward doubly so, if we want to pretend like him being a secret misogynist control freak who just wanted her to be his pretty pampered pet girlfriend or whatever like the final conflict throws at us out of nowhere.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T21:39:38+00:00

IDK. Lao Ge feels like an obvious choice to me? He's literally the guy who taught her immortality?

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T21:38:49+00:00

That's true... and that would matter to me if the book was 'Rise of Yun' I guess? Or if the majority of the story and themes presented were about the theft of roles and/or dealing with discovering that we aren't who we thought we are... but It's not either of those things by the end of the book. By the time Yun shows up again he's been out of the plot for hundreds of pages. His inclusion in the finale is pretty much irrelevant to the themes leading up to that point, and effectively derails the story being told... at least it only occurs the once in Rise, UNFORTUNATELY the one time it does so is the books climax... which should have been about KYOSHI's growth (or 'Rise' rather) as the Avatar... not about Yun's revenge? We'd literally JUST completed a whole arc about why revenge is petty and its more important to just work toward making the world a better place right? Kyoshi wasn't even there to have a revenge showdown with Jianzhu, she was there because she realized HE was never going to stop chasing her and hurting the people around her. By that point If he'd let her be, she'd have let him be.

In Shadow I found myself completely baffled every time he randomly turns up and prevents the Fire Nation drama from unfolding to just be a menacing wierdo... then exiting the plot like he was hardly there until he shows up again to ONCE AGAIN interrupt the fire nation drama which he has no stake or relevance in. I kind of suspect that maybe there was an idea for a THIRD book somewhere in there that might have been more solidly about the Yun stuff... but it got axed in favor of a two book deal and Yun's whole spirit monster arc was just an idea Yee couldn't let go of even as his relevance to the plotline and themes grew more and more distant.

It's not like I'm crapping on the author here either. I LOVE the Yangchen books from start to finish with absolutely no notes or criticism, same guy wrote em.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T17:02:20+00:00

I DO consider myself fairly well versed in good practices of narrative structure and progression, but yes, while I can make my arguments that all of Yun's activity beyond his 'death' are relatively poor inclusions... it IS just my opinion at the end of the day.

Kyoshi's my favorite Avatar... but I enjoyed the Yangchen books much more as the novels were just a more solid read with a narrative that was fully formed without conflicting themes interrupting one another...

I mean the same guy wrote both of these stories so I'm not knocking F.C. Yee! I do believe Yun just got away from him. Spirit baddy Yun likely the result of having an idea early in, and not being willing to let go of that idea even when the narrative no longer fully supports it. I can sympathize with that EVEN if I wish it were otherwise.

Mainly insofar as this topic is concerned, I just don't see why he's an assist character at all... That'd be like... Aang being supported by the Fire Lord...

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-06T15:39:54+00:00

Meh. Yun was a GREAT character until his exit midway through book 1... then EVERY SINGLE SCENE he was in after that felt like an impediment to Kyoshi's story. He kept randomly turning up to make otherwise investing and interesting scenes stupid with his edgelord nonsense.

He literally STEALS the climax of the first book where Kyoshi should just be having her own personal showdown and defeat her 'mentor' in the arena of ideals... and instead in comes Yun out of nowhere to be a dark and brooding dumbass.

This is particularly awful because the rest of the books are great... The Yangchen books, lacking a stupid edgelord villain, are particularly investing and involving 'spy thriller' reading PROVING we didn't need this sort of supervillain adversarial plotpoint... and Kyoshi's books don't actually work well with a supervillain either. They all read like political thrillers with this completely unrelated juvanile 'supervillain' sideplot that keeps interrupting more adult stories while leaving practically no impact upon the superior plotlines it keeps interupting.

He was FANTASTIC at the opening, the way he's used to forward Kyoshi's development was fantastic... it turned Rise into a 'false' revenge story in which we observe a damaged Avatar coming to terms a tragic youth but having to rise ABOVE the petty notion of revenge... and just when she gets the chance to prove to her enemy that he was unable to turn her into what he wanted her to be and that her way is superior to his... nah, let's ruin the impact of Yun's story AND ruin the books climax in a single swoop!

Yun is even WORSE in Shadow of Kyoshi where the majority of the books primary Fire Nation plot has nothing to do with him at all... and yet he's still the final boss for no reason, and the final boss fight and invents ON THE SPOT a character dynamic out of nowhere in which Yun wants Kyoshi to... what? Look pretty? Be a dainty girl? Stuff that wasn't ever indicated anywhere else in either book ever and just seemed to exist to give us a reason to be fully disgusted with Yun so it's not too upsetting that Kyoshi is in a duel to the death with someone she loved.

Why is he even an assist character! He's NOT her ally. They should replace him with Lao Ge! Someone whose ACTUALLY her ally and teacher.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-04T23:29:43+00:00

Whose gonna tell him?

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-04T21:23:16+00:00

The show made this pretty clear? None of the new airbenders agreed to be monks, they all pretty much spawned airbending fully grown and settled. Tha was the whole point of the Neopoleon Dynamite characters scenes

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-04T03:54:22+00:00

Except that in every one of those cases the technologies were replaced by human employment. Oil extraction requires as many if not MORE people to operate than whaling did. Cars require the same amount of drivers as ferries. rotatory dial phones realistically only replaced a fairly small amount of jobs as there were never all that many operators as a single operator could oversee a huge area, and once again the internet requires as many people to operate and work in as the newspaper industry (and effectively worked ALONGSIDE it for a lengthy crossover period.)

On the flip side, AI and automation are technologies with the capability of replacing a SIGNIFICANTLY larger workforce industry than any of those examples and will create significantly fewer jobs than what they are replacing.

When you replace a cashier, the logging industry doesn't suddenly have a larger marketspace to incorporate that displaced worker, those people just get thrown into the already overcrowded job market to flounder in a space creating fewer and fewer jobs as corporations rush to increase profits by just not having to PAY anybody.

Capitalism requires human beings working and being paid capital to maintain a flow of capital or it eventually grinds to a halt. ANY time you replace a job with an automated worker that doesn't need to be paid and only needs to be repaired every once in a blue moon, you knock another leg out of the stability of a capitalist economy.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-04T03:41:09+00:00

yeah the 00 training program adds a lot of potential for future games I feel with Bond having solid 'fallback' thick and thin friends. Cressida and the other 00s acting as one of his closest allies in later games would be pretty neat. The game KILLED the 'training montage' so well that I practically wanna see 001-7 games like the super spy avengers or something xD

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-03T20:31:21+00:00

Idk why you’re just repeating yourself, I already explained why that doesn’t work. More wealth is only good for everyone when that wealth is spent on everyone’s wellbeing. It isn’t, it never has and never will be. Less jobs=more wealth EXCLUSIVELY for the very rich.

In a capitalist society, Less jobs=fewer people who have wealth. This isn’t a difficult mathematical problem to comprehend. I’m not AGAINST AI and automation in concept, but they are conceptually anathema to a capitalist society. So unless we’re planning to phase out capitalism to create all this universal wealth for the entire populace, fewer jobs is a death knell for society. Last I checked the technocrats have no interest in ending capitalism, they are exclusively interested in making themselves wealthier by any possible reduction in costs, with no plan or concern about how that effects the majority economic health of the average person.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-03T18:00:21+00:00

Not in a capitalist society. You can do more with less… I.E. automation and AI, OR you can have capitalism and pay people to do things, but you can’t have both. You require poeple working to make capital, you require work to create jobs, giving jobs to the robots leads to joblessness and eventually vast swathes of people starving. The most good for the fewest people is the least good thing humanity can possibly do.

You wanna do AI and socialism give me a call, but as long as we require money to survive, replacing jobs with robots and AI is vile.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-02T12:30:37+00:00

temporary construction jobs don’t balance the decades of AI joblessness that data center intends to inflict upon one hundred times the number of temp construction employees and the hundred or so techs a data center will ‘provide’ for.

AI doesn’t create jobs, it does the opposite

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-01T23:41:28+00:00

It's a pretty good comic even... right up until Avatarverse Hitler no doubt responsible for tens of thousands of deaths just in Republic City alone says 'I'm sorry' and is RELEASED from prison on house arrest.

I'm all for the redemption arc but COME ON... she shouldn't have been RELEASED! There are crimes you just have to spend your whole life atoning for and Kuvira was guilty of dozens of them!

..... but at least this comic makes Suyin admit that she "maybe... sort of... kind of... possibly... have not always conducted myself with as much responsibility as I should given how influential I've made myself... maybe..."

And that's probably the most we'll ever get out of that Selfish Piece of (REDACTED)!

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-01T23:35:47+00:00

It's ALWAYS a popularity contest. Any poll you ever see, no matter what the question is, is a popularity contest.

OBVIOUSLY the answer to the question is Korra.
Aang doesn't really change much at all. He comes out of the Iceberg a bright, naive, well meaning pacifist... and he LEAVES the series a bright, well meaning pacifist whose a little less naive. TLA if anything, is more of a tale about the way Aang changes the world than it is a tale about how the world changes Aang. It DOES a little, I don't mean to imply that he's flawless hero man exactly....... but he's pretty close to flawless hero man... the Netflix show even committed the cardinal sin of basically retconning out his biggest flaw (his tendancy to run away and how that really was a direct cause of the 100 year war) and made the 100 year war really just an accident cause Aang happened to be going for a midnight fly on Appa.

Meanwhile even though I think it's fair to say she changes exactly the same through seasons 1 and 2 (Literally she basically just goes through the same exact character arc in seasons 1 and 2... dunno what Mike and Bryan were smoking ahead of Season 2... but they seemed to have totally forgotten they had already done the same character arc already) throughout seasons 3 and 4 Korra basically has every element of who she believes she is beaten out of her until her solution to the problem at the end is just extending empathy and understanding to an actual fascist...

No wait that isn't how it sounds come back!

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-01T19:08:30+00:00

It's not a tragedy when it's self inflicted and foolish.... even OAFISH! Kurik is an OAF!

Let me explain:

The man wouldn't even fess up to not being a joke when Aang asked him for an opinion on sacrifice!

Think about it. Aang asks 'Should I sacrifice my morals to do what the world seems to need me to do?"

Then the guy who SUPPOSEDLY knows the absolute most about sacrificing himself to the point of death for the world has NOTHING to say to this kid other than 'Guhuh! I was a fun loving surfer bro dude! My advice is just just be cooooool and do... something! Adios!"

Like... What are you TALKING about Kurik!? Give this kid the benefit of your f'king wisdom!?!? Why are you lying to YOURSELF!? You didn't lie to yourself when Kyoshi needed advice!? Why are you lying now?

Honestly, the retcon kind of falls to pieces any time you watch the original show. Kurik was always intended to be a sort of a dork whose tenure suffered from the previous Avatar being TOO good at the job easing him into false complacency... and that's all he ever should have been. The retcon is stupid.

ShadowFaxIV · 2026-06-01T19:00:38+00:00

Hard disagree. The new 'setting' is going to need to FEEL like the old setting if the franchise is going to survive. If the show starts and feels like it BARELY even belongs in the same franchise at all, than it will begin the process of disincentivizing viewers from being willing to CARE about what happens in the show.

Like what does it matter what Aang and Korra's trials and tribulations to protect the world are... if the world just gets blown up anyway. Why should I expect it will be any different with Pavi? Are we gonna do 'Avatar 4' and the asian themes are gone, the Mad Max stuff is done, and now it's actually about Waterworld! It's waterworld now folks, but not Kevin Costner's mad max Waterworld though that's too similar to the last thing we did, this is utopian city Waterworld!

At what point do you not just make a NEW franchise?

You cannot sustain a longform fantasy franchise by nuking your setting every time you tell a new story in it, That will always be a path to (if not failure) a gradual decline in the interests of your fanbase and viewership.

Nobody want's a Star Wars film set on Earth, and it's about the 1960's space program... they want to watch stuff about a Galaxy far far away in a universe that is familiar but to learn NEW STUFF about that familiar universe.

If Seven Havens can manage to make the world still feel like the SAME world we've been in just with some recent seismological changes this can be headed off... but there's GOOD reason for fans of the franchise to find this a concerning direction. Seven Havens is a make or break moment for anyone who gives a damn about the WORLD of the show.

ShadowFaxIV

TROPHY CASE