>>Tenzin is kind of Korra's mentor. He never patronizes her, except
>
>... almost every time he speaks to her. Come on, watch that clip
>again and check his tone of voice when he says, "You'll figure it
>out."

Honestly? I got the impression Tenzin genuinely believes Korra is gonna figure her shit out. Tenzin believes in Korra! Just, like, in general. At worst, I'd concede that he's really bad at expressing this belief, but Tenzin is a deeply, painfully awkward person in general.

(I actually believe, and I think the series bears me out on this one, that Tenzin is perpetually terrified that people will discover he's a bit of a fraud. The irony being, of course, that everyone in the whole world is scared of that all the time.)

>>.. wait, what? What'd Lin do?
>
>Well, most prominently, she stood there doing the square root of
>fuckall while President Fuckstick repeatedly exceeded his authority,
>with that growly "I agree with everything the authority figure is
>saying" face on.

The face is kinda Lin's default expression.

I'm not sure Raiko actually exceeded his authority at any point here, tho. It seems like Raiko has way more authority than is sane to vest in one person, but that's different from exceeding it. In which case, not really her job to undercut him, although I suppose you could argue that Raiko is doing such a poor job she should resign.

Lin did interject to save Raiko and Korra's collective asses when they were about to have a knock-down drag-out argument in public, in front of the press. There's just... that wasn't going to go anywhere good if allowed to continue, regardless of who was right. Imagine if Churchill and Atlee, or Harry Truman and Bob Taft, or LBJ and Hubert Humphrey had been about to get into a public screaming match with each other with a million cameras and microphones pointed at them. Their aides would have physically manhandled them apart so fast it isn't even funny. Lin stepped up there.

>>Okay, I'm actually gonna offer an extremely limited defense of Raiko.
>
>Just for the record, there is no defense for that guy. Seriously,
>none. "He's poorly informed as to what is actually going on" is a
>further indictment of his competence, not a defense.

I don't think it is entirely reasonable for Raiko to be fully up to date on Korra's whole personal... situation. I mean, there's plenty else to indict the guy for.

I dunno. It might just be because I was hoping Raiko would be a bit more complex than what we're getting.

>>Okay, this one I'm going to mount a much sterner defense on. The White
>>Lotus don't seem to be all that jerky here. I mean, yeah, that group
>>of guards was pretty snide to Zaheer. Zaheer tried to kidnap and/or
>>murder a four-year-old.
>
>Oh, I don't specifically care that they were jerks to him.
>It's that they're always jerks. If you're supposed to be the
>good guys, you can either be jerks or you can be incompetent.
>Both doesn't get a pass from me.

Fair enough. I do admit that the organization seems to have really, really gone downhill. To a certain extent that was inevitable; it's ambit is much wider than it once was. But you'd expect the Elder Lotus' to still be men like Piandao.

>>Asami got a whole shit-ton of money from Varrick. When he bought a lot
>>of Future Industries? I can't see her having given that back to
>>him.
>
>To him, no, given the circumstances, but on the other hand, if she
>actually got the company back, one expects the judicial system would
>have expected the money she got for it to go somewhere else.
>Just because the dude's a felon doesn't mean she gets to get back what
>she sold him and keep the money he paid for it.

I would submit that one should never be surprised at the kind of financial bullshit that the entire idea of corporate personhood lets you get away with when it comes to moving cash around. :)

(More seriously, it seems like Raiko actually seized Varrick's interest in FI and then simply awarded it directly to Asami. I don't speak spanish, so I'm not 100% on that.)

>>Eh. Aang had the same thing going on, where he'd flip back and forth
>>between "this kid is really wise for a twelve-year-old" and "wow, you
>>are the most passive-aggressive brat in the universe."
>
>Well, yes, but Aang. Was. Twelve.
>
>And a bit of an idiot. And on a much kiddier show.
>:)

You have a much, much higher opinion of teenagers than I do, I'll say that. :) From my perspective, Korra having her shit together to the extent that she does is truly, incredibly remarkable. It's her being as awesome as she is that's the outlier, not her incredible insecurities.

Or maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd at that age. From what I remember these days, none of us knew what the fuck we were doing and we were alternately really depressed and really pissed off about that.

-Merc
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