1/2 I have a conspiracy theory that Viren cares so much about Harrow, Amaya, and Sarai that he just hangs back and lets them do most of the action so they don’t realize he makes them completely irrelevant. Either that or he just wants to hide the fact that he’s totally OP, Palpatine-style.
Yeah, I mean… there are ways to balance magic in a setting like this, and it seems like they just… don’t.
I actually have a lot of intricate headcanon to explain the general decline in dark magic since the mage wars, plus its danger and personal cost corruption-wise, and even lasting or permanent enchantment effects like Claudia’s snake bracelets, but so far the actual canon is pretty much like “dark magic requires a reagent and incantation, except when it doesn’t, and it causes corruption, except when it doesn’t, and it can do anything the plot demands, but no one uses it for anything else” lmao
And then meanwhile they ignore any weakness primal magic is meant to have if it serves the plot, like thank god they gave Callum Ibis’s staff because I was going to lose my ENTIRE GODDAMN MIND if he was able to do SKY magic while fucking UNDERGROUND. Also the bullshit about Rayla “not feeling connected to the Moon” underground like GIRL YOU ARE NOT A MAGE. A moon opal is literally FREE SPELLCASTING, you do not NEED to feel “moonier” for this! She could be literally ON THE MOON and would not be able to cast that spell without an outside source.
That being said in outlining this fic I am literally like “okay, ratchet back, we gotta let Harrow and Sarai do some shit too” so… yeah.
It’s funny because I’m also like… a chunk into season 2 of ATLA and they actually??? do a really good job of keeping non-bender characters relevant???? Like ngl back in the day I thought “Sokka is the team strategist” was a fanon thing or a way they tried to develop him late in the series, but no, he’s actually legitimately like that as far back as the first season.
