georg-prime replied to your post: More spoilers
I thought that beginning the story by showing dark mages seem totally okay to use an sentient infant like Zym as a weapon and power source was proof enough that they were doing plenty of shady bad things? The fact that it is a kid show is also the reason I’m guessing to why there is a physical corruption to using dark magic, to explain the kids viewers that there IS some kind of corruption happening there, and to older viewers to understand that dark magic probably
corrupt the spirit too, and so dark mages just keep getting more and more power hungry, and killing more and more creatures/people, and inducing conflicts to get more power. Here for instence with Viren, he killed some of the human rulers to get the war he needs to be able to get more power and not actually for peace since Ezran and co are proving they can make it without more killings. I don’t disagree though that things wouldn’t be fixed as long as the elves&dragons keep treating humans like shit, but dark magic is not the solution and it’s making everything worse?
I’m not arguing that humans never did anything wrong (though judging them all by the actions of one or two people is also a problem, especially when the main person responsible for this is the Designated Villain who other humans end up working AGAINST, and ALSO these actions come at the end of a thousand year history where Xadia was the aggressor, so an argument could be made for self-defense even if you don’t support the means).
I’m arguing that elves and dragons are not held to the same moral standards by the narrative or the fandom that humans are, and that’s a problem that leads to some very dissonant messages, like the oppressed group in this setting bearing the burden of “making peace” in a war they didn’t start, weren’t allowed to stop, and have borne the brunt of for most of their history. Elves and particularly dragons actually did almost all of the same things that humans did, or worse, and they did them FIRST, but humans are still treated like the aggressors and the ones who have to change in this story.
As for dark magic corruption--that’s an arbitrary storytelling choice not based in any serious and self-consistent moral analysis of the actual act of doing dark magic. Sure, from a Watsonian perspective, Dark Magic Bad, but my critique comes from a Doylist standpoint: there’s no REASON the writers had to make it Bad, and making this brand of magic arbitrarily bad is really kind of crappy of the creators because it allows for this narrative where humans, the oppressed group, the “lesser beings,” rising above their station and gaining magic that puts them on equal footing with everyone else actually is a bad thing. Like, yikes! Very much yikes! That is not a socially responsible message and not supported by the actual morality of any of the actions and circumstances shown! The fact that this type of magic makes black veins and nasty glowy eyes and characters who use it are prone to evil smirks was a poor writing choice that I really did not expect from the people responsible for ATLA and for all the amazing, progressive rep within this show itself.
