[FFML] [Firefly][ATLA] The Powers in the 'Verse

[Adrian Tymes]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Lawrence Chu <lawrence at sandwich.net> wrote:
> It's mostly a hand wave at the moment, just a way to explain why we wouldn't have seen benders in the 'Verse. I figure the Equalist revolution doesn't end after Korra Book 1, and the class wars that amount to benders/non-benders keeps going until it gets to be too much and the non-benders win out.

There's "rule by non-benders", and then there's "bending
isn't done even by servants".  The revolution was about
the former; nobody was suggesting or favoring the latter.

> They would, but do you think they'd let the public at large know? All we know, Alliance would have bender-powered tech in the Core, but again as slave labor.

Only if they had managed to redevelop it in secret.  Otherwise,
word would filter in from the Rim.  (Even word of the Reapers
has filtered in; the only reason the Alliance has gotten most to
dismiss them is that the Reapers are confined to the Rim.)

> I'm pretty sure it's established that Chinese are the lower-class working people in Alliance territory (hence our only seeing white people on Alliance ships and the use of Mandarin as the language for most expletives).

Not universally.  In fact, of the two "first among equals" worlds
in the Core, one is English and one is Chinese.  It's implied
that the upper reaches have ample amounts of both - and then
there's crossbreeding.

> I'm also imagining that for some reason it's only Asian people with the genetic predisposition towards bending.

Again, cross-breeding.  The genes can be anywhere in the
population by now.

Of course, given how little we see of the Core, it is entirely
possible that benders mainly stay in the Core (which
appreciates their service and elevates them - and actively
tries to relocate Rim benders to the Core).

> I was thinking more a Gaia-appointed Avatar, not a council-elected one. Each planet senses the people inhabiting it and chooses one.

The Alliance would still try to appoint one, perhaps convincing
the Avatars of other Core worlds that they aren't actually
Avatars.  ;)

Alternately, they might recruit that one per planet into a special
task force, and to heck with the planet they're from.