To be fair, in ATLA there were airships, a giant mechanized drill, the gondola/ski lift things from Boiling Rock, and the Fire Nation’s all-terrain transport/tank things they always have.
They didn’t go from the Middle Ages to 1926, there were lots of tech innovations in ATLA. Other than the mech suits, LoK had a pretty natural progression of technology. In real life, the steam train became common pace in the 1820s and a century later we had movies, airplanes, and a little bit later the atomic bomb.
It’s totally fine if you want to see more Middle Ages Avatar, but in that case you should also mention your frustration with ATLA’s airships, tanks, giant drill, and gondola. However, you’re totally right that their cities changed dramatically in less than a century. But to be fair, they also changed a lot in the real world too.
Here are two pictures of New York, from 1850 to 1950:
It’s just like arguing “they have bending, that speeds up technological innovation, because they don’t have to come up with xy, they just can bend it”
Yeah they had bending for 10000 years, an avater or a team of bender could be in space year 1 if you want o fanfic it into working out… imagine elfs would come up with machine guns because one team has all the time they need to build it from no knowledge at all with out the hustle of passing the torch
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u/MulberryChance54 Feb 19 '25
Aang.
And my main reason is that the writers for Korra screwed up with the worldbuilding.
No civilisation would be able to jump from the Middle Ages to 1926 in only 70 years or so. Even if one nation was 300 years ahead in technology.
Same as for the mindset of society. Jumping from highly spiritual to New Yorkers to Weimar Republic to Buddhists is pretty wild and very annoying.