Lin Beifong: Avatar's Most TRAGIC Character⎮An Avatar: The Last Airbender Discussion

hey there and welcome back to another Avatar video and today we'll be talking a little bit about the Legend of Korra and usually my videos revolve mostly Around The Last Airbender as I have a firmer understanding of the events and the characters of that show compared to a successor but today I'm throwing that preced into the wind to talk about one of the characters from Legend of Korra and honestly she's one of the best written and most compelling characters within the entire franchise and I want to talk through how she has perhaps one of the most tragic stories of all the characters in the show and of course that character is Linda Fong and you might be sitting there thinking what Lynn does not have the saddest life story of all the characters in the franchise what do you mean there are so many characters that have had way worse experiences than her and yeah that is kind of true there are a number of characters that have had much lower lows than her but I think there are very few that have had such a consistently mediocre life as Lin Bay thong God when you really sit down and think about it it gets more and more depressing the more you think through a life story it's just a big gray blob of there from the beginning her life was destined to be a little bit more difficult than most she was born to toffbe Fong who was widely considered to be the greatest of all time earthbender and the pioneer of metal bending she was always going to have a lot to live up to pretty much the same as all the children of the original gang their parents were Heroes and prodigies of one form or another and thus they had to grow up with that shadow looming over the top of them but for Lynn this initial pressure was compounded by her less than adequate home life to put it pretty bluntly I mean her mum was just not very good at being a mum throughout the course of the Legend of Korra we learned that from the get-go Toff was very much checked out of actually doing any real parenting she herself had had very overprotective parents and thus she didn't want that for her kids but in classic fashion as these things often go she over corrected and approached parenting with truly impressive apathy pretty much letting her kids do whatever they liked and well yeah yeah it's pretty parenting and so Lynn and Sue began to compete for her attention Lynn by trying to follow in her footsteps as a member of the police force and Sue by acting out becoming a criminal both to try and elicit some sort of response and of course this set the Two Sisters up on a collision course as this acting out came in the form of criminal behaviors which meant that by the book Lynn was forced to intervene which in turn earned her permanent facial scarring that's nice and this in turn was completely swept under the rug by her own mother who ripped up Lynn's report and sent Sue off to live with her rich grandparents to allow things to blow over and all of this because it wouldn't be a good look for the chief's daughter to have been caught doing things like this so that's already an impressive amount of trauma for lin so far the absentee nature of her mother really culminating in this family's implosion which in turn leaves her estranged from both her sister and her mother until the actual events of the show itself and like not estranged in the way of oh you feel good after cutting out toxic relations but in a far more bitter context of Lynn desperately wanting them to take accountability and constantly having that thrown back in her face ouch oh and by the way she apparently spent her whole life asking her mum who her dad was and never got a response until her mum was super old and her dad could potentially already be dead and well I doubt that's going to give her much closure but okay and so let's skip ahead to the Future she reunites with her family and guess what what is the overwhelming opinion from basically every character how do they respond to Lin well they make her out to be the most unreasonable member of the family of all time the one who simply can't let things go after everybody's already made peace despite the fact that nobody's offered a true proper apology Sue Toth Cora they pretty much all double down on the Lin is unreasonable angst train they belittle her they Gaslight her Lynn why are you being so unreasonable about all of this it's been years we've let it all go why can't you let it go it's really holding back the family why do you want to hurt us like this Lin in hurts our feelings that you're angry etc etc and when even the show's own narrative frames your terrible life as kind of your own fault and that you need to let things go you know you've just taken a massive L but of course the dreary existence of limbe Fong does not end here because even aside from her family life and her relationships to them her actual personal life seems to be nothing to write home about either now like I said before Lynn grew up as part of the next generation of Team Avatar with all the children of the various different members and over the course of her life she cultivated a close relationship with tanzin Aang and katara's youngest son and at the time of his birth and for most of his life he was one of only two Airbenders until the death of his father left him as the last of his kind the head of the ear nation and the only member of the air Nation who actually maintains the ability to bend air kind of an important thing and now for a lot of their youth it seemed like they were romantically involved at least from what the show says and they seem to be very much in love and even by the time of the show when when they've not been together for well over a decade you can see there still is some genuine affection underneath all the bitterness and resentment but of course since this is the life of limbe Fong she doesn't get to have happiness right so let's have all of that tumble down because ultimately tenzinfelt responsibility to have children and continue the restoration of the ear Nomads and the Art of airbending and I don't think it's ever actually specified in the show itself but I don't think that Lynn seems like she has a whole lot of desire for that sort of life and indeed I think that one of the creators or the writers or something said that this was the main reason for their deteriorating relationship that he wanted children and that she didn't now don't quote me on that but I think I remember hearing something about that in the past so yeah already from that it becomes quite clear that their relationship was always going to have an expiration date and there's no shame in that nobody's at fault for that it's just how it plays out that makes you feel a bit sad for lin but then and also don't quote me 100 on this either I'm not quite sure of the relationship timeline here the way it felt when they explained things in season one it very much felt like Tenzin immediately dumps lymphapemer as soon as she comes out about her feelings towards him so from Lynn's perspective it probably felt like their relationship was on borrowed time at first but I don't think that makes it hurt any less to have one of his underlings acolytes declare their love for him which in turn Spurs him into dumping her immediately and shacking up with her also I very much doubt that they just Express mutual feelings and do nothing but talk and then he goes off to end things life's messy I think there was most likely some overlap and thus it didn't really end on her terms and she felt cheated and shamed by her long-term boyfriend dumping her for a much younger woman who then gives him everything he ever wanted I wonder why she seems so bitter and jaded towards everything at the start of season one literally taken Al's left and right year after year it must weigh down the soul but the trauma Express does not stop there for our beloved chief of police because there's more pain and suffering like that time she gets massive I guess survivor's guilt from when they do the raid on the Sato mansion and a bunch of her officers get kidnapped and their bending is stripped away or when she feels like she has to quit her job as chief of police a position she's dedicated her life to in order to adequately fight back against Oman and the equalists or perhaps that time she sacrifices herself against said equalists to buy time for the air bending family to escape Republic City in the first place and in the end her efforts just being futile as they ended up getting captured anyway and need to be rescued by Korra while she ends up losing her bending for a time which well I think that would be very traumatic like losing part of yourself and honestly being blood bent in the first place is probably very painful even after you get your powers back I could see it taking a massive toll on you psychologically but then she just keeps sold entering on ready to suffer in many more ways lovely so yeah Lin Bay Fong is there a sad Arc than hers like just consistently sad I mean there are characters that go through things that I would argue are far worse Zuko scarred by his father exiled and abused but hey he got his happy ending iro loses his son but he finds happiness in raising his nephew and redeeming his actions as a fire nation General Aang his people were genocided and he got warped into the future losing the majority of people that he knew but hey at least he did get a happy family that he wanted in the end etc etc there's lots of characters with lots of trauma but I don't know if there's any character or at least any good guy character that has to put up with the level of unrelenting that Lynn does except maybe cabbage man and it's just on such a consistent basis and it's never really talked about she has her issues they never get dealt with and everyone just moves on while she stews in her bitterness and it's very depressed addressing realistic but very depressing nonetheless I mean it kind of feels like a villain origin story if you ask me and so anyway I'll probably end the video there long story short Lin's life is unexpectedly shitty and that's just her whole luck her life's hard and she cops the blame for being a bit upset about this fact the end and so with all that being said I'll just remind you that these are only my opinions and now I'd like to hear yours what did you think of all this you agree that Lynn is perhaps Avatar's most tragic character or at least the most tragic major character or maybe you disagree and you think I've overblown all of this I'm curious for your thoughts so make sure to like comment and subscribe and let me know

Channel: Smarty Pants

Views: 143,655

Keywords: lin beifong, avatar, atla, last airbender, lok, legend of korra, nicktoon

Id: jm10rHF3ku4

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022