You know, I don't think I've had a relationship with a source this cockeyed since Evangelion. Watching the actual show is in fact very slightly painful, like a psychic paper cut.

--G.
"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" - Loki Laufeysson
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LAST EDITED ON Sep-20-13 AT 10:04 PM (EDT)
 
Also, I guess it stands to reason that they don't cover basic astronomy at the Rhode Island School of Design, but gawdamn, the thing at the end of episode 202 is making me crazy.

--G.
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Bolin. Buddy. Listen to me. Are you listening? Good. Now wave off. You are not even going to get the courtesy of a reacharound here. Go back to center court and wait for your brother to drop the ball. Because he's going to.

--G.
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>Bolin. Buddy. Listen to me. Are you listening? Good. Now wave
>off. You are not even going to get the courtesy of a reacharound
>here. Go back to center court and wait for your brother to drop the
>ball. Because he's going to.
>

Spoiler for season one, perhaps. It's not exactly surprising that an earthbender is a bit stubborn about getting what he wants.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

I still can't tell if Bolin telling Mako he was so good at breaking girls hearts was just Bolin being Bolin or one of the sharpest burns I've ever heard.

Because seriously. I half expected him to bust out a z-formation series of snaps after that.

-Merc
Keep Rat

"This year's keynote speaker is an audio tape of droning moans leaden with subliminal tips about achieving personal prosperity and how to come clean about the terrible things you have done, you cretin."

>I still can't tell if Bolin telling Mako he was so good at breaking
>girls hearts was just Bolin being Bolin or one of the sharpest burns
>I've ever heard.

I'm not sure those things are necessarily mutually exclusive.

--G.
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I think the most amazing thing about Book 2 so far is that, even in the strange and timeless otherworld where the Avatar shows happen, Unalaq has somehow acquired a copy of Matt Fraction's Five Fists of Science, read it, and used it as the basis for his game plan. And also that he knows about the 1933 Reichstag fire. It's astonishing. He must be some kind of freakin' wizard.

--G.
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Sith Lord.

I mean, seriously. He sits there in the dark, in his giant empty throne room, waiting for the naive young nexus of power he manipulated away from her friends and family to come report to him.

I'm surprised he didn't tell Korra that everything was proceeding exactly as he had foreseen it, and then ask her about the situation on the Forest Moon.

-Merc
Keep Rat

"We are at a presumptive war with a projected enemy whom we cannot yet see, or even be certain of, but who are probably bloodthirsty giants."

>Sith Lord.
>
>I mean, seriously.

Yes, well, looking forward to the bottomless pit.

--G.
"The Dark Side of the Force is a route to many powers, some of them considered... fucking weird."
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Well, fire is just the byproduct of transfer of motion into bodies, so a firebender could potentially excite sufficient electrons in a target to blast the fuck outta them with lightning... buuuuuut that assumes they know about that sort of thing, which might be the case and might not.

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

Lightning generation is, in fact, a high-level Firebending technique in canon.

Master Iroh explains: "There is energy all around us. The energy is both yin and yang; positive energy and negative energy. Only a select few firebenders can separate these energies. This creates an imbalance. The energy wants to restore balance and in a moment the positive and negative energy come crashing back together. You provide release and guidance, creating lightning."

TDTTOE. :)

Huh. So, potentially, some scientifically-minded firebender might work out that exciting quantum foam produces some very interesting effects, and thus we have the first bender-powered FTL drive.

Of course, it won't actually happen, because bending works differently beyond the veil, but it'd be pretty interesting to see that happen nonetheless. Iunno, maybe I'm just a sucker for great machines powered by a chorus of people.

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

>Lightning generation
>is, in fact, a high-level Firebending technique in canon.

Not anymore, it isn't.

Lightningbending, much less metalbending, appears to have been democratized and industrialized by the time of Legend of Korra. Mako can lightningbend. Random Triad bosses can lightningbend. It's so common that power plants offer part-time work to lightningbenders to aim themselves at dynamos in order to generate juice for the city, and there's enough competition for those jobs to keep wages for them rather depressed.

The fanon explanation for this I like best is that lightningbending isn't actually all that HARD, it's just that under the ancien regime the various high-ranking firebenders were sitting on the technique and not teaching it to anyone who wasn't considered worthy; low-ranking soldiers just had to know how to hurl fireballs at their Earth Kingdom counterparts.

There's real-world precedent for that kind of thing; various nations have at times criminalized people who weren't part of the ruling elite from arming themselves with weapons that were considered too good for them (usually swords) while allowing them other forms of armament that weren't considered "noble."

-Merc
Keep Rat

"The Sheriff’s Secret Police said they can bring no charges against The Traveler, as Night Vale recently voted to decriminalize time travel."

>>Lightning generation
>>is, in fact, a high-level Firebending technique in canon.
>
>Not anymore, it isn't.
>
>Lightningbending, much less metalbending, appears to have been
>democratized and industrialized by the time of Legend of Korra.

...which is completely irrelevant to my point, that being "the creators have thought of it and made it a thing". But thank you for the clarification.

Merc.

I'm not going to tell you to stop that, I recognize that it's your schtick, but can you maybe dial it back a little before someone murders you in your sleep?

--G.
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You can tell that's a genuine Uncle Iroh quotation because it sounds really wise and profound, but doesn't actually make any damn sense. :)

--G.
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And here I was thinking it started out sounding almost exactly like one of Master Yoda's most famous lines.

"I like it when we go to Chancellor Palpatine's office. He gives me candy!"

-- Anakin Skywalker, Episode II, not really

So Bolin, you bounced back from having your heart shattered last season...and immediately landed a psycho girlfriend. Would you like to top that by having a swig from this nice cup of hemlock?

>So Bolin, you bounced back from having your heart shattered last
>season...and immediately landed a psycho girlfriend. Would you like
>to top that by having a swig from this nice cup of hemlock?

I've already said what I think he needs to do. Anyway, it wasn't shattered, just dented. That'll buff out. :)

--G.
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>So Bolin, you bounced back from having your heart shattered last season...and >immediately landed a psycho girlfriend.

I have to admit that I'm, like, 40% convinced that Bolin is totally, totally gay and simply hasn't realized it yet. It would explain his attempts to woo ladies who are either very obviously not that into him or who radiate "BAD NEWS" to every person in a ten mile radius. Plus his generally high levels of fabulousity.

-Merc
Keep Rat

"Your existence is not impossible, but it’s also not very likely."

>I have to admit that I'm, like, 40% convinced that Bolin is totally,
>totally gay and simply hasn't realized it yet. It would explain his
>attempts to woo ladies who are either very obviously not that into him
>or who radiate "BAD NEWS" to every person in a ten mile radius. Plus
>his generally high levels of fabulousity.

In light of the haircut this week...yeah, let's just go with that.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-27-13 AT 10:37 PM (EDT)
 
Wait. Unalaq is evil? He's the bad guy? I did not see this coming at all! </sarcasm>

Okay Korra, you tried being reasonable and patient. Time for some proper Republic City mayhem!

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I'm vaguely hoping that there is something more complex going on here than just Unalaq being a water-flavored, religious fundamentalist version of Long Feng.

But still, I mean good god. "You've served your purpose"? Only evil people talk that way, Unalaq! Did you take Evil Overlord Elocution lessons while studying the Senator Palpatine Playbook?

-Merc
Keep Rat

LAST EDITED ON Sep-28-13 AT 12:28 PM (EDT)
 
>I'm vaguely hoping that there is something more complex going
>on here than just Unalaq being a water-flavored, religious
>fundamentalist version of Long Feng.

Well, either he's a genuine medieval-Church-style jackbooted zealot ("Kill them all; God will know His own"), or he's playing one as part of a still bigger villain power game. Either way, A) I called it and B) he needs to die in a fire.

Modest Mussorgsky, this show tasks me. I'll give them this, they created a thoroughly investable protagonist. It's uncannily like watching an actual friend fuck up over and over again. :)

--G.
"Turns out that's actually one of my Avatar powers. Bending all four elements; bridge between the spirit and material worlds; choosing the wrong guy."
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>"Turns out that's actually one of my Avatar powers. Bending
>all four elements; bridge between the spirit and material worlds;
>choosing the wrong guy."

So she's the Prince Zuko of Avatars.

Actually, no fooling, I'd feel better about watching Korra make spectacularly bad personal choices if I thought the show was trying to deliberately build the same narrative around her that ATLA build around the Prince of Bad Decisions. Zuko learning to actually make good choices at least some of the time was painful at times but it was well-executed.

With Korra, I... honestly can't tell. Sometimes the show seems to celebrate or excuse her bad choices in ways that, say, it never celebrated Zuko siding with Princess Crazycakes.

-Merc
Keep Rat

See, I got the impression Korra was learning from her mistakes. A year ago, she'd have gone in swinging and probably ended up punching the wrong people. Here she at least tried other options before making with the ass kicking.

It's just a shame this was a situation where she wasn't supposed to be reasonable.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

>See, I got the impression Korra was learning from her mistakes. A year
>ago, she'd have gone in swinging and probably ended up punching the
>wrong people. Here she at least tried other options before making with
>the ass kicking.
>
>It's just a shame this was a situation where she wasn't supposed to be
>reasonable.

One of the issues Korra has is that her progress in "learning from her mistakes" and being able to properly "deal with" social maneuvering is that it seems to be operating on a 'two steps forward, one step back' principle. Praise and support is sucked up almost desperately, but the fuse is still present, and there's only so far she'll take it on the chin before lashing back out.

Keep in mind, by this point, Korra's only been out of the White Lotus compound for almost a year. If she'd been normally socialized from the get-go (which may have been impossible anyway, despite Tonraq and Senna's desire to give her a "normal life", thanks to her knowing she was the avatar -- possibly, it could've been worse!), then she would've had 12+ years of social reaction development that she still hasn't accumulated.

But, she's learning! She's slowly building her support network and peer group, and working on making her own choices, even if they're bad ones... and, well, mistakes are how people learn not to DO that thing again. Sometimes it just takes repeated blows to the head to get it to sink in.

--- Philip
(also, remember, there exists nothing like TV Tropes at that point in the Avatar world. Although Korra is capable of functioning in social environments, she isn't genre savvy since I don't think she was exposed to such genre stuff while growing up. The audience may (and did) immediately peg Unalaq as a villain, but Korra's got to learn it the hard way.)

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here"

>(also, remember, there exists nothing like TV Tropes at that point in
>the Avatar world. Although Korra is capable of functioning in
>social environments, she isn't genre savvy since I don't think she was
>exposed to such genre stuff while growing up.

Much as I would love to cut her some slack, I'm... not convinced a person has to be "genre savvy" to smell what that guy's cooking. Besides, he's from the North. Even without the dubious guidance of web-based genre fandom, she should've figured out by now that those assholes can't be trusted. :)

--G.
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I bet Hasook was from the north.

(Fucking Hasook.)

I kept expecting Bolin at some point to say, in his oh-so-chipper voice, something like "Oh hey! Nice to meet you, Chief Unalaq. Hey, aren't you the guy who gave Tarrlok his job? I bet that makes things awkward between you and your niece! A ha ha ha ha! Ooooh, squid on a stick!"

-Merc
Keep Rat

>I kept expecting Bolin at some point to say, in his oh-so-chipper
>voice, something like "Oh hey! Nice to meet you, Chief Unalaq. Hey,
>aren't you the guy who gave Tarrlok his job? I bet that makes things
>awkward between you and your niece! A ha ha ha ha! Ooooh, squid on a
>stick!"

I kept waiting to see if they'd hit all the "totally controlling girlfriend" tropes on their bingo cards by having Eska drag Bolin to an incredibly awkward dinner with her father. But it seems they decided to skip that step and go straight to the forced marriage part of the program.

>I kept expecting Bolin at some point to say, in his oh-so-chipper
>voice, something like "Oh hey! Nice to meet you, Chief Unalaq. Hey,
>aren't you the guy who gave Tarrlok his job? I bet that makes things
>awkward between you and your niece! A ha ha ha ha! Ooooh, squid on a
>stick!"

I think I've turned a corner in my understanding of Bolin since I realized the other day that he is, in fact, Ray Stantz. Seriously. Any Ray line you can think of? Bolin's the one who would say it. He would let the others talk him into triple-mortgaging his house if he had one. He would warn people not to look at the trap after they'd already had a chance to look at the trap. He would say, "You forget we were present at a vast, unexplained undersea sponge migration!"

Bolin is the one who would think of Mister Stay Puft.

--G.
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This is... this makes way too much sense.

And also brings me joy because the Ghostbusters are extant in UF and that means Bolin could become some sort of ectoplasm-bender and it would be so awesome and and and

and i think i need to calm down

---
"She's old and lame and barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

LAST EDITED ON Sep-30-13 AT 05:40 PM (EDT)
 
The one caveat I have is that while Bolin would certainly pay nearly eleven grand¹ for a beater... Ray was actually equipped to do the restoration work. :)

Bolin, if he tries to rebuild a classic '59 satomobile, best-case scenario is he ends up with a pile of satomobile parts. Worst-case scenario is that, through a series of highly improbable events, he and Asami end up participating in an illegal street race that eventually becomes an illegal boat race that eventually becomes a high-speed police chase culminating in the both of them being arrested... by Mako.

They won that part they needed, though!

-Merc
Keep Rat

¹1984-2013 dollars conversion. Ray remains extremely lucky Peter didn't deck him on the spot.

>Bolin, if he tries to rebuild a classic 59 satomobile, best-case
>scenario is he ends up with a pile of satomobile parts. Worst-case
>scenario is that, through a series of highly improbably events, he and
>Asami end up participating in an illegal street race that eventually
>becomes an illegal boat race that eventually becomes a high-speed
>police chase culminating in the both of them being arrested... by
>Mako.

N.B. You have your scenarios reversed.

--G.
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Bolin has gone bye-bye, Mako. What have you got left?
I'm sorry Korra, I'm petrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

Polychrome

Bolin, if someone asks you if you're a god you say YES!

>Bolin has gone bye-bye, Mako. What have you got left?
>I'm sorry Korra, I'm petrified beyond the capacity for rational
>thought.

Eh, that one's a bit of a mismatch. Egon actually has more personality.

--G.
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Mako is definitely not Egon.

Bolin is Ray, Korra is Peter, Asami is Egon (think about it!) and Tenzin is Winston.

Mako?

Mako can be Jeanine.

-Merc
Keep Rat

LAST EDITED ON Oct-01-13 AT 09:07 AM (EDT)
 
>Mako can be Jeanine.

As pleasing as it is to consider the scene in which Korra coolly lays the savage burn that is the "food service or housekeeping industries" line on Mako, Janine is far too prominent a role.

No, I'm thinking he's the cop who says, "Ah, some nutcase brought a cougarine to a party and it went berserk."

--G.
or possibly the one who says, "Dropping off."
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I'm reminded of an old maxim: all stories are based on bad decisions, though some are worse than others.

---
"She's old and lame and barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day."
Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here

--G.
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>shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here
>
>--G.
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"Your winnings, sir."

"They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on."
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

All I know about Avatar et. seq. is what I've read here.

But there's a heavy-equipment rental place along my path to work, and they currently have a programmable sign that reads:

Rent
Toro
Dingo

And all I can think is, "a torodingo sounds exactly like a critter you'd find on Diqiu. Half bull, half dog, all bite, no bark..."

I'm not entirely certain why one would want to rent such a creature, though.
(Nor whether I wish to be informed/enlightened.)

>I'm not entirely certain why one would want to rent such a creature,
>though.
>(Nor whether I wish to be informed/enlightened.)

What, you've never been bored? Never had a long night? Never had a lot of shelves to put up?

--G.
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