. That's at least thirty years between the time he suffered abuse at his father's hands and the time he sets his plans into motion. I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone who internalized their abuse so much that they made sure their entire adult lives revolved around it.
I've studied half a dozen real life serial killers, serial rapers and actual criminals that have enacted insane acts of cruelty, ranging from those that developed their sociopathic tendencies at a young age due to abuse to those whom didn't manifest it later in life, at times a decade after their prime. If you haven't heard of anyone internalizing abuse to that degree, look at the prison system, and you'll find more real life examples than you could ever want - trust me. If you think he's a drama queen, understand that there are men that did terrible, terrible things in secrecy cause their priests or neighbors did equally terrible things to them. On that note, it doesn't even have to be as severe as I may make it seem; look at all of the instances of high-stress college students doing these horrendous things or the kids pushed to excel and 'be the best' only to fall short - or even succeed - only to ultimately do something terrible. It happens ALL the time, and if you don't see it, look at the media and observe the world around you. I understood Amon and his plight because it definitely was a real one and it was far more 'realistic' than Zaheer and his goal to destroy centralized government. I can't honestly combat your points on Unalaq; as a viewer, you don't really appreciate what he did because you were meant to see it coming.
I simply feel completely opposite about the Red Lotus. I feel it was a shallow organization that we had almost no actual expansion on. It was a tool, as we saw it. I mean, it went from having five members to a whole bunch of people shrouded in red cloaks prepared to poison the Avatar. How? Where was the setup? The Red Lotus is a splinter group of a SHADOW group. A lot of wasted potential. It was just a backdrop to highlight Zaheer. I literally feel like every Red Lotus member, save Unalaq, was a support for Zaheer instead of their own character and any depth they had was immediately shallow. Even P'Li literally died to free Zaheer from his early ties; to me, that looks like a roleplayer that introduces a character in a DBZ RP just to kill them and send their RPC into Super Saiyan. She wasn't there or integral long enough nor was their romance emphasized enough, in my opinion, for it to have been that influential. It was forced. It was fast. It wasn't as hard hitting. I haven't seen a scene since the final one of Season One where the boat blows up where I just go "Damn, that's amazing writing", granted I'm thoroughly impressed and entertained.
Avatar: The Last Airbender had one linear, central plot, but it expanded on it and a world beautifully. From episode one, you knew what that show was about. I feel that was amazing displayed in season one of Legend of Korra, but with the introduction of Season Two with Harmonic Convergence and Season Three with the Red Lotus, I feel like it's become somewhat diluted in the sense the seasons don't string together, the plotlines are more individual and I really, really feel like the merging of the Spirit World and normal World is a beautiful idea, but the plotline that induced it was just too large in scope. It literally reset the whole series, the whole connection to the past lives, it answered a lot of questions REALLY quickly and the third Season didn't get close to matching its scope.
Anyway, I should get back to posting tomorrow. Work and all. Definitely this weekend. I swear to god, people smoking pot on the clock... I get a solid 21.5 hours overtime, but damn.