>>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 general rule I was taught, aeons ago, was that if the bit that comes after the colon is a complete sentence in its own right, you capitalize it, and if it's just a list of things, you don't. I don't always think of it, but it's somewhere in my mental stylesheet, all the same.

>I'd like to note that we have Word of God on this not being correct
>within the source materiel.

I'm just enjoying the mental image brought on by the phrase "source materiel". It makes me think of the original stories as things that have to be brought in on trucks, like military supplies.

Anyway, it's possible Korra's just wrong about that. She's not omniscient, after all. It certainly hasn't happened within her lifetime that she knows of, anyway. There are probably legends of old-timey airbenders who did that? But she also owns The Complete Adventures of Wang Fire on crystal, so she knows a thing or two about buying into legends. :)

>>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.

It's worth noting that from the perspective of someone from New Avalon, 120 is the righthand edge of middle age. We'll be looking at this a bit more in the next movement.

>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.

"Took me long enough... "

>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.

No canopy.

>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.

If you're envisioning something like that scene from the '70s Superman movie, I'm afraid it, uh, doesn't really work that way. At least not for Corwin. He doesn't really fly so much as levitate, anyway, which isn't as exciting for potential passengers. It's mainly useful for not falling to one's death.

That said, she's flown a New Avalon Police jetpack, and that doesn't have a seat, so what she's really comparing the experience to is what it'd be like to, say, go wing walking. Large vehicle, but no actual seats. It's a strange experience, and quite unlike jetpacking or paragliding or whatever else have you.

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

Oh, Corwin's well aware of that. He has great respect for Kyoshi. But he doesn't like her. :)

>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.

Heh, I like that.

>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.

There's no signal in Brown Sector. We covered that.

>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.)

Just getting into the spirit of the thing.

>>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.)

Or simply not bearing in mind that a building with a square footprint has four sides. :)

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

Well, sure, if he's anything recognizable, it's going to be that, simply based on his hair and his eye color. And the Viking cheekbones. He's odd-looking, but not as outstandingly foreign-looking as Utena (who, in the time-honored anime tradition, has a Japanese name - anyone in Diqiu just seeing her name somewhere would assume she was from Kyoshi Island or the Fire Nation - and doesn't look even slightly Asian). :)

(In a similar vein, thanks to the art style employed in the source, I'm not havin' this "he must look Inuit" thing. Only the -really old people- in either Water Tribe look Inuit. Korra's dad looked like Corwin's Uncle Balder with a dye job and a tan. :)

>>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.

That was kind of the idea, actually. "Phoenix" as in rebirth, the five nations working together, etc. - Project Phoenix Flight was a major step in the rehabilitation of the Fire Nation's foreign policy image. We'll hopefully get round to telling that story one day. We have notes for most of it, as a byproduct of the design of this very scene.

So yeah! You were wondering what Korra did on her first Comet Day?

SHE WENT TO THE MOON.

:)

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

Well, someone named a town after her mom. It might not have been Korra herself, except inasmuch as she may have said, "No, don't name it after me, if you have to name it after anyone you want to give some credit to, name it after my mother."

He says "I don't wanna be on no stamp, man"
I say "King, I understand"
He says "My mama should be on that stamp, man"
And then he fires his .44 into the television
Elvis and I

>>Like Senjo, they then left with deep bows,
>>neither expecting nor awaiting a gratuity.
>
>I really hope Diqiu isn't a tipping culture. :)

Nope. One of the many refreshing things about traveling there.

>(Ozai was pretty... special.)

Indeed. One hopes that at some point he attempted to escape and one of the Kyoshi had the opportunity to put him down like the mad dog he was.

... one is not a Buddhist monk, you should understand. :)

"Me, on the other hand, I say guys like you are always worth 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.

Mm, you may have a point there. In fairness, Jinora's not really coming across with any news there, and she proceeds to make exactly the same point. Anyway, it's lead-up to something we'll get to later.

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

I congratulate you on your perspicacity, sir! Nall is living out a spy-movie fantasy. He's doing that on purpose; it probably hasn't really been done that way for years. The ticket agent is just too polite and well-trained to give him the hairy eyeball about it. :)

(As Phil notes in the annotations, most people do it online these days.)

>>"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.

There weren't a lot of other options. I mean, it would make a lousy restaurant.

>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.

Azana would probably make note of that, yes.

If she knew about it.

It's only the first day. Patience, weedwhacker.

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

Oddly enough, that's Emily's basic response to the situation too.

>>"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.

Possibly so, but he was also indisputably an obvious bit of branding, which in Corwin's eyes makes him deeply suspect as the actual mastermind. I mean, that would be like believing that the guy who set the Reichstag fire* was the real mastermind behind the Nazis' rise to power, or that the ringmaster really runs the circus.

Anyway, historians are probably still arguing about that, given that many of the key figures in the incident disappeared and were never seen again. Hell, there are probably some who insist, based on the fragmentary documentation available, that it was really all Batroc. :)

* No, not the Dutch patsy, Göring.

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

... they had the chance?

>>"So every day they stole from us... "
>
>This is a little bit petty and self-righteous on Corwin's part.

A bit. Although it's worth bearing in mind that he includes Korra in that "us"; he's not just talking about himself and Nall.

>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.

They did it at least once, back in the days when Belldandy and Keiichi were students; that's where Utena's car (the AC Cobra with a back seat) came from. It may not have been run in the new kids' lifetime, though.

>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."

"Do you take care of this car? The tires feel a little splashy."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.