>Almost all stories need villains. Using a villain in a story doesn't
>imply approval or acceptance of his evil so long as it's made clear he
>IS the bad guy. Killing his worthless ass is just cathartic.

True. I think the sticking point for me here is that Lavrentiy Beria was a real person who did enormous amounts of harm to innumerable other real people. Using him as a foil in this context could be taken as trivializing their real suffering, though I like to think that on some level, given how poorly he comes out of this, it's getting a little of their own back.

>What interested me the most is Azula gives no noticeable signal in the
>story to Boone. I'm tempted to think Boone took the shot on his own
>initiative (possibly listening in through equipment Azula had), and
>given the sheer seething hatred he had for the Legion, I'd say his
>killing Beria without orders fits his MO rather precisely.

They've worked together for a long time by this point - long enough for Azula to trust that Boone will recognize when the appropriate moment has arrived, even if she doesn't give him an explicit signal. Also, he knows her well enough by then to be aware that when she says something like, "But he probably won't see me," that means they're pretty much done there. :)

(I don't think he could actually hear her - later in the story she needed ED-E to address the team audibly - but she was facing the window, so it's not out of the question that he was reading her lips.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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