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Forum Name: Symphony of the Sword/The Order of the Rose
Topic ID: 367
Message ID: 11
#11, RE: S5M5 Pt 1- Honeymoon By the Sea
Posted by Mercutio on Aug-13-13 at 11:11 PM
In response to message #0
Big ups to Jeanne for starting the thread. Time for opinions! So many opinions.

I never really thought we'd actually get Avatar folded into UF, and now that it's happening I don't quite know what to do with myself. This is like back when Utena ended up folded in; I was pretty stoked then too.

>XINQIWU, SANYUE 12, 291 ASC

Hmm, so we're about a hundred twenty years out from the series. I understand the reasons behind it, but man, I am rather disappointed that this makes it deeply unlikely Tenzin, Lin, Asami, and Bolin won't be around except maybe in Valhalla. Especially Asami.

Tenzin's kids are REALLY hanging in there, tho. I mean, that's not unheard of in Diqiu; the line of Fire Lords are super long-lived, and Bumi managed to last a long time. Hell, Lin and Tenzin look amazing for people pushing sixty, in LoK. But man, based on what we see later? Jinora et. al. are rocking it awesome old lady style.

Only nine years till the next comet, too.

>There was only one person who could do that. He immediately set
>aside his broom to hurry back to the main compound. The masters had to
>be informed: The Avatar had returned.

I'm unsure as to whether or not that 'the' should be capitalized or not. It doesn't look quite right to me, but I'm fuzzy on the actual grammar.

>"The Acolytes aren't airbenders," she said. "They follow the
>Air Nomads' old ways to honor them, but so far as we know, no amount of
>study can make a bender out of someone who wasn't born with the gift."

I'm not sure how much you guys care about hewing strictly to canon (Ben implied in a previous thread that it's a Big Deal for Phil) but I'd like to note that we have Word of God on this not being correct within the source materiel. It is possible within the context of Avatar to become a bender through focused study and spiritual discipline. It's just extraordinarily, incredibly rare, a bodhisattva-level accomplishment of spiritual development.

>He was one of those men who wore middle age
>ambiguously, with no particular clues as to which end of that long curve
>he was really at.

A hundred and twenty is pretty damn good to still be looking like you're merely middle-aged.

>Korra grinned. "True. Go there and give the person at the desk
>my card," she said, handing him such an object. "They'll take care of
>you. You're set up for three nights, it's all taken care of. My
>wedding present to the pair of you," she added, her grin becoming a bit
>sentimental.

There are way to many instances of this scattered throughout the story for me to document them all, so I'm just gonna seize on the first one: I am really digging Korra actually being adept at the whole, you know, "I am an important person thing" thing you guys have going on. Korra the fully realized, mature Avatar is still recognizably KORRA, but she has that fluid skill at existing within the system and working the resources available to her she didn't have in the series. It's all very organic and well-executed; I can easily see this Korra showing up to address the President and the Council and, rather than ending up awkward and manipulated, working the room like a professional elder statesman.

And then going out for noodles afterwards, because noodles rock.

>"Well," said Corwin, "remember how you were saying the other day
>that maybe we all should get a dog?" He made a sort of "ta-da" gesture
>toward the bison. "This is better."

Corwin is saying this with the kind of self-assurance of a person who probably did not have to clean up after a ten-ton ruminant the last time he was there.

>It wasn't
>really a saddle at all in any conventional sense, since his back was
>much too wide for any human being to sit astride of, but rather a sort
>of solid platform with raised edges, handholds, and places to secure
>baggage, sufficient for several people and their effects.

People have made the case convincingly that what you put on sky bison is less of a saddle and more of a howdah, like you'd put on an elephant.

>Korra waved until she was confident they wouldn't be able to see
>her any more, then turned to the others and said, "OK! That's those two
>out of our hair for a while. Who wants to try pinepear pie?"

You know, I just finished make this sort of verde-style chili with a lot of cactus pear in it, and all I can think is "man, pinepear sounds DELICIOUS."

>This was Utena's first experience with flying on
>something that didn't at least have seats, and she had expected to find
>it a little more daunting than she did.

Huh, does Utena not know that Corwin can fly?

I am not, of course, Utena. But if I had a boyfriend who could fly, I would totes have insisted on a trip or two up there so I could see what it was like to be in the air without tons of metal wrapped around me.

>Beyond the skyline, a gibbous moon was just
>rising, framed in one of the passes through the mountains that backed
>the city. At this angle, it seemed huge, bigger than Cephiro's moon -
>perhaps the size of Bajor in Jeraddo's night sky. Its silver light
>seemed to highlight the city's golden glow rather than compete with it.

Yue knows how to arrange things for maximum aesthetics, y'all.

>Corwin grinned. "That's Aang, one of Republic City's founders.
>He's my second favorite Avatar - he was the one before Korra."

Bah. Someone needs to be properly educated into just how hard Kyoshi rocked. :)

>No one seemed
>to think it was all that strange that the pattern had just been joined
>by a huge flying animal with two people aboard. People waved to them
>from the windows of airship gondolas and took photos.

I was reminded of this of an older work by Elliot S! Maggin in which people find it good luck for Superman to fly by their windows. I can see Republic City finding sharing the immediate sky with a sky bison as being auspicious, a sign of good fortune.

>"That's Shiro Shinobi Arena. It's a temple, all
>right - a temple of sport! Major League Bending, dangerball, I think
>they even configured it for an Earth Rumble once. Remind me, we'll
>check the sports page in the morning.

Y'know, I've been meaning to point this out for a bit... people in UF seriously need to buy themselves some smartphones. There have been a lot of times where they would have come in handy. Most recently, for Kaname; having something with a panic button app installed on it would have been real helpful during Wedding Attempt No. 1. I mean, waiting for the morning to actually check the dead tree version? You have an omni, Corwin. (Although right this second you are, admittedly, driving.)

>Enormous golden
>letters set into the building's facade at the top announced its name:

I only point this out because later on in the movement you make explicit distinction between letters and characters in kanji or tongyu; it seems off that Republic City's poshest hotel has it's sign in Standard. You'd expect elegantly-crafted characters instead, created by the finest calligraphers and rendered in the appropriately huge size by skilled architects.

(I may be overthinking this.)

>One was a powerfully built young man who might've
>been a Water Tribesman if not for his very fair skin,

... huh, really?

Corwin is the son of two people who are EXTREMELY white. They don't have white folks in Diqiu, so I guess something strange happened to give him the facial characteristics of an Inuit. It's not impossible, I guess, it just seems... weird. Not the only time this happens here, and I kind of have a lot of trouble buying it; Corwin seems like he should stand out as an obvious foreigner, especially with (what people are going to assume are) those tats on his face.

>Inside, the lobby of the Phoenix House was done up in the sort
>of style one would expect from looking at the outside of the building -
>lots of golden and copper trim, red leather, and lashings of that black-
>veined red stone.

I do love that Fire Nation aesthetic. The Phoenix House seems kind of like "Fire Nation goes Art Deco," which is awesome.

>Corwin stopped next to her and looked up at the photo, smiling.
>"The crew of the Phoenix Flight," he said. "I may have mentioned to
>Korra at some point that you're an early-spaceflight buff... "

I'm a bit surprised at all the phoenix imagery and the choice of name for the flight. The last guy in Avatar to go into the phoenix metaphor in a really big way... well, Phoenix King Ozai ain't well-remembered.

>A bellman appeared with a bronze cart, upon which Corwin and
>Utena's bags, once he'd placed them there, looked comically small.
>Meanwhile, the clerk slid a large, brass-edged, leather-bound book
>across the counter, along with an elaborate pen in an upright holder and
>what appeared to be an extremely high-end version of the kind of inking
>pad people used to use with rubber stamps.

I quite love the little touches in this sequence. Many people in Diqiu would, of course, be using a chop, rather than signing their name. Which is of course what the ink pad is for. I expect that they have a calligraphy brush behind the desk as well, and that Azana merely pegged the two of them as being exceedingly unlikely to use it.

(Corwin and Utena should totally get chops made while they're here. Chops are both inherently cool and well-made ones are the kind of functional objets d'art that Corwin would really like.)

>This, Corwin knew, was the style of the Southern Water Tribe,
>Korra's native culture - her house in the South Pole settlement of Senna
>looked much like it on the inside, or had when he'd last been there,
>some eight years before

Awww, Korra named a town after her mom. Can you say best mother's day -ever-?

>Like Senjo, they then left with deep bows,
>neither expecting nor awaiting a gratuity.

I really hope Diqiu isn't a tipping culture. :)

(Back when I traveled, always one of the things I made sure to check; am I going to need to tip, or will they be insulted?)

>The food was fantastic, spicy without brutality, and the wine - which
>they hadn't ordered, and which had simply appeared with the staff's
>felicitations - superb.

Wine nerd time: the Phoenix House's sommelier probably paired a semi-sweet riesling (NOT a dry one; not with spicy food) or a nice pinot blanc. Definitely a white, though; with spicy stir-fry, you don't go with a red.

>"Cheaper than taking a
>taxi everywhere. I suppose you could ride Sergei, but I don't think
>he's anywhere near big enough."
>
>"Hrumph," said Serge, eyeing the Avatar dubiously.

Oh, man. Anthy and Corwin's spawn is totally going to ride Sergei at some point, and it's going to be epic.

>Utena jumped behind the steering wheel,

I am now imagining that Korra has the exact same superpower as Brock Samson does; the power to always know when someone is in her car.

>"OK!" said Corwin. "Move the spark advance back to about
>midway, just until the idle smooths out - you'll feel it when it's
>right." She did so, finding the sweet spot without difficulty - he had
>noticed long ago, when teaching her to drive, that she had a natural
>affinity for this kind of thing. "From here on, it's pretty much like
>you'd expect. Oh - first gear isn't synchronized, so you can only shift
>into it when the car's stopped unless you double-clutch." He gestured
>vaguely forward. "Let's do this thing!"

I am now about to reveal myself as a complete philistine:

Fuck manual transmission.

That is all.

>Anne turned and saw that it was dominated by a large,
>framed portrait of a stern-looking young man - black-haired and amber-
>eyed, he might have been Azana's college-age brother - with a truly epic
>burn scar around his somehow-intact left eye.

Trivia: Zuko's burn is actually something only an extremely skilled, very precise master of firebending could pull off. Someone with less control would have ended up boiling the eye right out of the socket.

Ozai deliberately structured it the way he did as an advertisement of his puissance; it's visually arresting and heinous looking, an object lesson for anyone who might offend the Fire Lord... but it doesn't really physically impair Zuko in any way, thus preserving any potential usefulness Ozai might want to wring out of him in the future.

(Ozai was pretty... special.)

>"He has been all those
>things since he was but a child. And he has -long- been a kind, gentle,
>entirely unwitting thief and breaker of hearts. Maki of Kyoshi
>Island... my great-granddaughter Nyima, whom you met... half a dozen of
>the younger Air Acolytes, not all of them girls... even, -ridiculously,-
>my sister Ikki, who is nearly as ancient as I. When he was last here,
>a mere boy of 13, he conquered them all - a feat of which I suspect he
>is still ignorant."

Hmm. I'm about to tread on dangerous ground here, but I'm gonna make the attempt anyway.

You might want to dial back the "Corwin is awesome and makes all the ladies love him without him even trying" stuff. Just a bit. It's become somewhat self-congratulatory.

This isn't to say it hasn't produced some top-quality stuff. The pool the Valkyrie were running, that was comedy gold, as was Kaname's reaction to it. But this is... I think the third movement in a row that's had scenes with people just standing around kind of gushing about how much they and everyone else love Corwin.

I'm not saying stop entirely. It's an important part of the character. I'm just saying it's maybe becoming a bit much.

>"Anything," Anthy replied flatly, her voice becoming ever so
>slightly cold - not hostile, not even particularly aggressive, but with
>a distinct and undeniable edge. "Those who would do him harm. By fire,
>by sword, by stealth... " She sipped her tea, put the cup down, and
>went on calmly, "... by conspiring to deprive him of old and cherished
>friendships."

Yeah. THIS isn't going to bite all three of them at some point. No sir. Not. At. All.

(I love this side of Anthy so much.)

>Nall cleared his throat, looked significantly around to make
>certain he wouldn't be overheard, and then leaned nearer to the window
>and said portentously, "The Earth King has invited us to Bosco's
>birthday party."

This whole ticket-buying sequence was well-executed, but it was a bit... twee, I guess is the word I want?

I get that Diqiu wants to keep things on the down-low, but there's enough commerce between it and Zipang that Standard has crept in as a widely-spoken second language and it can economically support regular transit service and commerce. Bare minimum, we're talking thousands and thousands of people who are in on it. That's not really the kind of thing you can keep a lid on anymore, even in a galaxy of trillions. I mean, this isn't even strong encryption; any idiot could have picked up that passphrase, handed over anonymous, untraceable cash, and headed for Ba Sing Ce.

>"If you get out to Ba Sing Se
>sometime, check out the Wall Museum. Some of the stuff the Fire Nation
>got up to back then... " She shook her head. "Seriously crazy."

... it's the drill, isn't it? They kept the drill in situ and turned it into a museum.

I liked this whole sequence with Anne and Azana, although I do feel like maybe some discussion is merited at some point of the potential advantages of some of Anne's non-traditional demonstrated abilities with fire. She can set stuff on fire without needing to actually THROW fire at it first, which seems like it would be something rare and considered of great potential and power.

>"Ah well. Let's get our -couture- on. Have to admit I've been looking
>forward to this."
>
>"Are you secretly a girl?" Utena wondered as she took his arm
>and they crossed the street to the shop.

Sometimes the banter does drive home that despite the very fast growing up they've all done, these people are still teenagers. :)

>the food was excellent, and, unlike in most
>other fine dining establishments either of them had experienced before,
>the management wasn't shy about the portion size either.

This would actually be a black mark for Kwong's if I hadn't checked the annotations and seen that they have portion selection on their menu, something I wish more restaurants would do.

I can't speak for everyone of course, but if I'm going to the trouble of going to an actual sit-down restaurant with a dress code and a maitre'd and a wine list, I want to -dine-. That means I want to have a soup, a salad, an appetizer, the entree, and then dessert and coffee. This of course necessitates relatively small portions on each of them. If an "entree" is going to be an enormous platter of food the size of my torso (which is what you get at a Chili's or an Applebees) that means no appetizer and probably no dessert.

>"Are you kidding?" Utena replied. "With a little industry, you
>can keep this going for -days!- Your editor will be on the edge of his
>-seat.- And when the payoff finally comes - and it will, if you trust
>us - you'll be number one with a bullet on the Tribune society page.
>Play your cards right, that could take you anywhere."

Ugh. Emily Wong is on the society beat? Really?

I mean, we all gotta start somewhere, but the society pages are where legitimate newsgathering goes to die. They are (or were, as print continues to die as a medium) the domain of the courtier press, people who believe that the purpose of a newsman is to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. See: Quinn, Sally.

I hope Emily gets off that desk as soon as humanly possible before it warps her.

>Exclusive Photographs by Our Correspondent, Emily Wong

She's at least getting her own bylines, always a plus.

>"I beg your pardon," he said, sounding dismayed. "This must
>be a typographical error. Is it a tigerdillo or a tigervark? This just
>says 'tiger'." He shook his head. "Oh dear. That'll need to be
>corrected posthaste."

I was waiting all story for this joke... and it did not disappoint.

>"No it is not. This is a representation of Noatak,
>alias Amon, the figurehead of the Equalist 'revolution'.

... eh?

Amon... wasn't really a figurehead. He was actually in charge. Or does the historical record take the stance that Amon was, in fact, just a figurehead and the real mastermind was Hiroshi Sato?

>"Being obvious was the whole idea," Corwin told her. "Keep
>people looking at the spectacle so they don't notice the real chicanery.
>Think of the guy who ran that Black Rose thing... "

On my initial read, my first thought here was "Huh. They remember that?". I mean, Akio did a pretty thorough job scrubbing out the Black Rose arc of SkU from everybody involved except himself and Anthy. Hell, he went so far as to use the weird-ass time warping nature of the ongoing failed Tournament to mess with the physical nature of the campus. I suppose there have been a lot of opportunities for those blocks to get popped off during the Symphony (Utena has been through, what, two, three different apotheosis events since then?) but damned if I can recall when and if that was made explicit.

Then I considered it context with the scene it segueways into. Sending Nemuro to DSM, especially -under his own name- seems almost suicidally overconfident on Akio's part unless his only goal is to rile up Utena and Company, or if he doesn't intend for Nemuro to be there for long. (Both possibilities I haven't entirely discounted.) I mean, the first generation of Duelists don't live there anymore, but they're in and out on a fairly regular basis.

But it's only suicidally overconfident if Akio doesn't know they actually remember him and his shenanigans, isn't it? Then all he has to worry about is Anthy, and he may figure Anthy is ashamed enough about what she was doing as Mamiya that she won't have told anyone. (He'd be wrong about this, but Akio doesn't understand Anthy 2.0.) In that case, there's a hell of a lot less risk.

>Professor Hideki Nemuro smiled engagingly. "Oh, not at all, Dr.
>Tiefeld," he replied.

I was really hoping his name would "Chirikazu Nemuro." :(

(Old old old fanfiction joke/reference.)

Nemuro has changed a fair bit since the second time he died, I've noticed. Nemuro v1.0 and Mikage Souji were not what you'd call chipper or enthusiastic people. They were driven, certainly, but their personalities were cold, distant, laconic. Dryly intellectual.

This guy is not. He's involved, passionate. Quite, quite mad of course. Dying twice and being resurrected by a Duke of Hell will do that to you. But "graduating" really seems to have changed him. I'm actively wondering how much that has to do with Utena unraveling his little Black Rose scheme; Utena does revolutionize peoples lives, after all.

(I kind of feel bad for UF-Mikage in a way I have trouble feeling bad for UF-Touga. Mikage seems like he still has redeeming, or at least sympathetic, facets to his character. Touga is just a small, nasty, petty kind of evil. Something happened to him between SkU and SoS that utterly stripped out anything redeeming or, indeed, even very interesting about him.)

>"Why should the poor man be suspicious of us?" Souji Mikage
>replied, shrugging. "Our credentials are perfectly valid. The
>University of Tothis is a fully accredited institution."
>
>"And a wholly owned subsidiary of Shrine Investment Partners."

This provoked a visceral reaction in me; I have done a lot of work with for-profit, privately owned universities. They are the scum of the earth, preying on vulnerable people trying to build a better life.

Also, fuck the Corporate Sector. Seriously. The WDF should have burned that fucking place to the ground when they had the chance.

>"Most of them I vetoed." She rolled her eyes. "I
>don't think anyone today really wants to know that I was once arrested
>for vigilantism on San Hua Bridge, for instance," she added, drawing a
>laugh from the others.

I dunno, it seems like, with a distance of some years in place, Korra would be obscurely proud of that one. :) Although I imagine that negotiations broke down when she wanted the wording to be "On this spot in 170 ASC, Avatar Korra was arrested for doing the police's job better than they did." With a footnote reading "YOU HEARD ME LIN."

>"Nall and I, we're used to the idea
>that most of our loved ones are likely to make it at least as far as we
>do. And the ones who don't, well... we'll have plenty of warning, at
>least. But Korra? She isn't aging, but as far as we know she's still
>mortal. She might live until Fimbulvetr. Or tomorrow afternoon she
>might just... stop. We just don't know. Nobody knows. -She- doesn't
>know. So every day they stole from us... "

This is a little bit petty and self-righteous on Corwin's part.

... that's intended as a compliment, by the way. Corwin's a passionate dude, and that's not always gonna play to his benefit.

While I acknowledge they've fucked up a number of times, I'm pretty sympathetic to the White Lotus. Being the support network for an Avatar as headstrong as Korra can't be easy, and Utena is a giant metaphysical wild card. Wanting them not to hurl headlong into each other is a natural precautionary measure.

>She'd
>seen a number of races billed as "vintage" before - the Nekomi Institute
>of Technology Motor Club, of which she was a member (or had been - was
>she in fact still a -student- at NIT? She'd have to check into that, it
>had been a very odd year), held vintage and retro events quite often.

Don't they have that event where they challenge people to build cars that never existed, but SHOULD have? I recall reading something somewhere about crazy steam-powered cars and other such automotive chicanery.

>Then, with a look of gleeful realization, she ran back around
>and seized Corwin by the front of his jacket, giving him a shake.
>"Corwin! Did you grow up to be a -gentleman burglar?!-" she demanded,
>grinning widely into his face. "Do you have a heist team?" she went on,
>getting more and more excited as she explored the idea. Nodding toward
>Utena, she asked, "Is she your social engineer? (Spirits know he'd have
>to have one,)" she added wryly to Utena with a wink, making her giggle,
>before returning her gleeful eyes to Corwin. "Do you have a getaway
>driver? Can -I- be your getaway driver? I will literally change my
>face and let Ryo have the company if I can be the getaway driver in your
>heist team."

My one thought on reading this was "if Minami is ever put in the same room as the Leverage, Inc. team, they will end up breaking into the Federation Senate to steal all of Bill Clark's pens, and Nate Ford will not have any idea why they did it or, indeed, why they are now being chased by the gendarmes through narrow alleyways in a stolen Peugeot that Minami is SURE she can make jump over the Seine if she finds the right ramp."

>"Oh, stop it, Ryo," Minami chided him, pulling to a halt in
>front of their next destination. "You watch too many movies."

"The Piandao serials are not just -movies-, Minami. They are -high art-. Haven't you ever seen 'Burning of the Golden Temple Part XIII?' Amazing wire work, just amazing."

>Taken by Storm will continue in
>Part 2: Goodbye and Hello, as Always

Seeing the quote from his namesake makes me hope that Corwin's kid gets a better name than said namesake's son did.

Well, 'Merle' isn't a bad name, I guess. But Merlin? Dara should have thought that one through.

Normally, here's where I'd go into a wrapup of general thoughts... but I got nothing to add I didn't already go over. At least not at the moment.

-Merc
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