LAST EDITED ON Dec-17-13 AT 08:35 PM (EST) by Gryphon (admin)
 
[Quick simplification. It seems neither special characters (what with the inconsistent-encoding problem) nor double quotes work very well in DCF subject lines. --G.]

Oh, hey, new thing!

I was looking forward to finding out why Juniper and Azana had showed up all disheveled, and here it is. Good stuff.

*reads*

> He was a tall, slim young man, maybe Azana's age, maybe a little
> bit older, with similar coloring - a Fire National, or a Republican with
> mostly western ancestors.

*wonders if that's Shinzen again*

> He was dressed well, but gaudily, in a
> three-piece suit of slightly-too-bright-red and black satin, with a
> brick-red shirt and a bolo tie whose clasp was an enameled medallion
> with a symbol similar to that on the Fire Nation flag.

*abandons that idea*

> He had his hair in a pompadour, slicked up with
> something shiny and smelling powerfully of musk, and his easy, lazy
> smile revealed a couple of gold teeth.

*double-takes*

...Cronus?

> Well-dressed and well-groomed Kaiten might be, but Anne's
> street-honed instincts instantly caught a whiff of wrongness about him,
> quite apart from the eye-watering pong of his pomade.

Cronus what are you even doing here

> Anne would have instinctively disliked him anyway, on the basis
> of his oily manner, his fake smile, his central-casting-gangster
> clothes, his intrusive rudeness, Azana's obvious distaste, and the fact
> that he called women who obviously did not like him "baby"

I don't think the management even knows you exist

> "That's OK, baby, I'm not here looking for help with anything,"
> said Kaiten casually. "Fact of the matter is, I'm here to help -you.-"

Oh, of course. You're here to try to mack on women who want nothing to do with you because you're a slimy creep. Why did I even have to ask.

(No seriously note: Cronus Ampora is a side character in the webcomic Homestuck, and is drawn from the same vein of "loser creep who overdoes hairproduct (among other things)" as Kaiten here. I have been reading entirely too much Homestuck fanfic that transplant the characters to other settings and my brain was in "spot the Homestuck character" mode, that's all.)

I think it's more a case of a 'type' than anything else. I've met a couple of that kind of schmuck IRL, though none with the 'red' motif as of yet, nor any with supernatural abilities concerning fire.

>I think it's more a case of a 'type' than anything else.

Yeah, Kaiten is initially just supposed to come across as the ANSI standard "gangster dandy" type - like a greaser, only Ambiguously Asian in the Avatar style.

--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.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-18-13 AT 06:30 PM (EST)
 
Z535-compliant gangster labeling here ;-p

Uh... OK then.

--G.
(yeah, no idea)
-><-
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.

Azana's epiphany might be the best description of a limit break I've read. The Authors here could teach the professionals a bit about writing action sequences.

Brian

I've been reading a lot of Exalted fiction recently, so it struck me more as a kind of Second Breath. No longer a mere firebender, Azana is now a Chosen of the Fire Dragon. Of course, Exalted doesn't fit into UF's cosmology at all, but the feel of the passage is what I was thinking of.

This raises the question that first popped into my head when I read this last night: When Garnet showed Azana the True Fire, did she give her some sort of gift that unlocked her potential, and it wasn't until she was at the edge of defeat that she found it, or did she just show Azana the True Fire, but seeing it allowed Azana to have an epiphany that jumped her up to GrandMaster level (or something like that)? Either way, it's clear that _something_ unlocked and she was able to tap into it, I'm just curious as to whether Garnet did something directly or indirectly to make it happen.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

>This raises the question that first popped into my head when I read
>this last night: When Garnet showed Azana the True Fire, did she give
>her some sort of gift that unlocked her potential, and it wasn't until
>she was at the edge of defeat that she found it, or did she just show
>Azana the True Fire, but seeing it allowed Azana to have an epiphany
>that jumped her up to GrandMaster level (or something like that)?

More the latter. If one may belabor a metaphor slightly, Garnet didn't patch Azana's operating system, just showed her how you get to a command prompt.

--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.

It's amazing what you can do with root access.... :)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

It's amazing what you can do with a shell, if all you normally have is GUI access. Root is a bonus, but even without it it's still a paradigm shift.

Thanks for the answer, looking forward to learning the rest!

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

>More the latter. If one may belabor a metaphor slightly, Garnet
>didn't patch Azana's operating system, just showed her how you get to
>a command prompt.

Hmmm...Sooooo....could Nall do the same thing?

"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

>>More the latter. If one may belabor a metaphor slightly, Garnet
>>didn't patch Azana's operating system, just showed her how you get to
>>a command prompt.
>
>Hmmm...Sooooo....could Nall do the same thing?

Well, no, because he doesn't breathe fire.

(Waterbenders do a thing or two with ice, true, but seeing it done by a dragon isn't going to provide them with any kind of primal insight. The dragon/firebender thing goes back to the origin of firebending. That doesn't map to other kinds of bending.)

--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.

>Growling in frustration, Karana grabbed him by the breastplate
>of his armor and shook him, then kept hold of him with one hand and
>pointed to the hydrant again with the other. "Valve! Metal! Bendy-
>bendy!" Letting him go, she clonked him on top of the helmet. "NOW,
>son!"

This had me cackling out loud. I can't quite place who she's channeling there, but she's doing it quite well.

>>Growling in frustration, Karana grabbed him by the breastplate
>>of his armor and shook him, then kept hold of him with one hand and
>>pointed to the hydrant again with the other. "Valve! Metal! Bendy-
>>bendy!" Letting him go, she clonked him on top of the helmet. "NOW,
>>son!"
>
>This had me cackling out loud. I can't quite place who she's
>channeling there, but she's doing it quite well.

The last bit is a little Ryo Sato-esque, but then, they probably do know each other.

--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.

I need to catch up on Avatar:TLOK, I've only seen a bit of season 1.

>I need to catch up on Avatar:TLOK, I've only seen a bit of season 1.

Well, Ryo Sato's an original character, so not sure how well that'll help you. ^_^;

--- Philip

	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"

(Standard disclaimer about life just kind of happening to me for the last two months. Seriously, screw you The Universe.)

An Etude! Hoorays.

>Technically
>speaking, it predated Republic City itself, having been the core of the
>wartime Fire Nation colony chosen by Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko as
>the hub of their bold experiment in nationbuilding - the capital of the
>United Republic of Nations.

Tangent: I like to imagine that in whatever dark place his soul ended up in, Sozin considers the existence of the Republic as complete vindication of his whole Fire Man's Burden philosophy of international relations and nation-building. Because Sozin was a crazy monster, but he at least had a certain kind of vision (also self-delusion) that was sorely lacking in his son and grandson.

>A year ago I was up to my shoulders in trouble (and usually in filth).
>Nobody gave a damn about me except the people who wanted to strip away
>everything that makes me who I am and use my body as a weapon.

Second tangent: Man, I can't wait until the Psi Corps decides to do something arrogant and ill-advised with what must look to them like an underdeveloped planet full of powerful human psions. It's going to go hilariously wrong for them.

(I generally assume that anytime the Psi Corps has tried their particular brand of skullduggery in places that aren't EA strongholds already, such as Jyurai or Braal, it has gone completely pear-shaped for them in ways that ended up with dead Psi Cops and embarrassing trials.)

>"Karana is convinced, or claims to be convinced, that I am,"
>said Azana. She paused to take a sip of tea, then went on, "She nearly
>got us arrested in Caldera City once, for demanding that we be admitted
>to the Royal Palace in the middle of the night, on the grounds that I
>was 'the rightful Fire Lord'."

It's entirely possible that Azana is related to Zuko but not in any way part of the extended Royal Family; Zuko's actual lineal descendants are probably well-documented even if some of them ended up down at the heels, but they might have kept the existence of his much younger half-sister quiet. I can't imagine Ursa wanted to go back to doing the whole Princess thing.

Or Karana is wacky in the head. Or both!

>"Some of Zuko's detractors claimed he'd had her killed, or
>banished her to some spiritsforsaken corner of the world - because she
>was a threat to his rule, or simply an embarrassment to the family."

I think 'Agni-forsaken' might flow better when you have cause for Fire people to deploy this particular phrasing, but that's just a stylistic preference on my part.

I imagine that Azula is a convenient mythological figure for unreconstructed Fire chauvinists. She's not Ozai (nobody is going to want to try and defend or justify Ozai openly) but she was one his most effective tools and has that long string of being a conquering hero under her belt before she just up and vanishes after being beaten by a cheap shot.

Also, she killed the Avatar. Not a lot of people have that on their resume.

>Besides the tie,
>he had an ostentatious gold watch chain across his waistcoat and a lot
>of gold-rimmed mother-of-pearl buttons, and wore what looked like
>snakeskin cowboy boots.

Ugh. Has anyone who wasn't a giant douchecanoe ever worn snakeskin cowboy boots unironically? Because I don't think they have. Especially not with a suit.

>"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Only your chunky little pal
>from the South Pole gets to call you that, right?" He spread his hands
>in a gesture of mocking surrender (Anne noticed that his nails were
>varnished the same red as his suit)

Okay, for a mob torpedo, Kaiten looks completely ridiculous. I mean, my god man. Develop some fashion sense. His don should be ashamed of himself for letting him leave the house like that.

>He was sharp-
>featured, just on the right side of what could be called "rat-faced",
>and somehow the gauntness of his narrow cheeks seemed a bit unnatural.
>His nose didn't quite look in proportion to his face, like the noses of
>mummies Anne had seen in books. His eyes were that stereotypical
>firebender amber, but murky, without the sharp clarity of Azana's, and
>one was open ever so slightly wider than the other.

In light of future events, I have to say that I very much like this passage right here, but I think it could have been better executed without hitting the nail on the head so hard with Anne's follow-up.

The way you put that description of Kaiten together, it looks on a first pass like he's just an ugly thug. People are prepared to believe thugs are ugly, it's a genre convention and longstanding stereotype.

Only Kaiten isn't ugly because he's evil. He looks like he does because he has been fucking himself up with Comet. This is the Firebender equivalent of the gaunt-cheeked heroin addict look people get after a couple months of chasing that dragon really hard.

You could have just slipped that in there real quietly, which I think might have worked better than having Anne immediately point it out to the reader. Better that we only realize after the fact, when the Doctor is telling Korra that Kaiten has been doing this to himself for a long time, very intensively, and let us have that 'OH' moment.

>"You will
>note at this point that I am not asking you whether I can help you."

You know, they may not share any genetic code, but when Azana decides to turn the old Fire Nation "I am better than you and I know it" dial up to eleven, the resemblance to Azula does suddenly become... strong.

>Something in the way she handled her chopsticks,
>perhaps, elegant and precise, or the very pointed way in which she
>barely ever looked at him, and then never for more than a half-second.
>It was the most poetically administered cold shoulder Anne could
>remember witnessing.

Like that, right there. 'Course, if Azana were Azula, Kaiten would have died right after she said "Hah" and put her cup down. But the resemblance is there.

>"Or do you -like- seeing us kept down by the
>dirt merchants and ice babies?"

You know, the Fire Nation needs to work on its racial slurs. I mean, seriously. This is the best they can do? They lack the punch of something like "troq".

>"You've gotten away
>with disrespecting the Triad before now because the boss was afraid of
>the old man and the Avatar, but that's all over now. We don't need to
>worry about Ito any more. We don't have to worry about -anybody- any
>more."

Yeah, because people who hit on the bright idea of using supercharged firebending to conquer everything in their way have an amazing track record there, buddy. Hey, I've got an idea. You and your friends should wait a few years and do some hits of Comet while the actual comet is in the sky. I bet that will work great!

(I know I'm joking, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were already firebenders who are actually considering doing this.)

>Then he pulled the item at the end of his watch chain from
>his waistcoat pocket, revealing that it wasn't a watch, but rather a
>small silver vial.

Okay, despite my general disrespect for Kaiten's whole aesthetic, I have to give him some serious style points here, because that was pretty cool.

>Of all the things she had expected him to do, actually
>starting a fight in broad daylight in the middle of the Firetown street
>market hadn't been on the list. Even the Agni Kai were usually subtler
>than -that.-

Given that the fight is about to kick off, I'd like to take this moment to discuss your portrayal of the criminal element in Republic City. There's probably some overthinking involving here.

I'm italian-american, so I have more than a bit of a passing interest in the subject. And the vibe I've been getting around the Triads so far in Diqiu is... hmm. It's hard to describe. It's got sort of an "the mob in the 70s and 80s" feel to it. Their time is passing and they just don't know it yet; law enforcement is beginning to really get wise to their various levels of bullshit, and they've hollowed themselves out from the inside and gotten into some drug-running shit that just isn't going to pan out the way they think it is, and their leadership just isn't agile enough to adapt.

Kaiten in particular strikes me as being the sort of person who would have been one of those interchangeable guys with suits who were always surrounding John Gotti in photographs. Someone who thinks they own the whole city, they're untouchable, respected and wealthy, they got women and blow and their boss is a big important man and they're important too by association. But everything is about to change real, real soon.

I dunno. Could just be me.

>"We all have to be together for that to work," Karana said
>seriously. "Only by all our powers combined can we summon the Avatar."
>
>The cop blinked. "Really?"
>
>Karana snorted. "No," she said. "Don't be a dope."

Let's be fair to the poor guy, that would not even be in the top three craziest metaphysical things surrounding canonical Korra. God knows what UF-Korra has on tap. :)

Also: challenge coins are just inherently cool.

>"Yo! Beifong! Little help here!"

Ahahahahahahahaha.

I love that the cops are called Beifongs. That's just... oh man, it could easily have been overly twee, but instead it is awesome.

>(with a discreet
>boost from Anne's TK, what little of her mental bandwidth she could
>spare for it)

Man, Anne's telekinesis is going to make all the benders completely jealous when they learn about it.

"So wait. You can just... lift anything you want with your mind? It doesn't matter what it's made of?"

"Pretty much."

"... cheater."

(I often forget just how powerful Anne is going to be once she figures out how to harness all her talents. I mean, yes, we got a little taste of that in Blades. But the woman is just going to be this unstoppable force of nature.)

>When she let it out,
>her eyes snapped open, clear and bright once more - and the fire that
>suddenly wreathed her hands was a clean incandescent blue, like the
>flame of an acetylene torch.

I can honestly say that I didn't see this coming.

As always, I feel like I ought to have had more to say about the fight scenes, but there's never really anything in them for me to pry open and discuss. People fought! And it was cool! So... yeah.

I do want to talk about the blue flame a little bit; we sort of got into it a bit in the Agreement in Principle thread but it's slightly more relevant here.

Depending on how common being able to generate the blue flame in Diqiu is, Azana's career arc may have just taken a fairly radical turn. If it's merely rare but not unheard of, it is still a pretty big feather in her cap; whoever handles merchandising for the Fire Ferrets will probably be very pleased indeed, and of course her achieving that degree of mastery and insight brings honor and respect to Master Ito and her academy. Juniper may have gotten in on the ground floor of someone who might suddenly be very in-demand as a sifu.

If this is a "literally nobody else has been able to do this since Azula" situation, though, where the blue flame is a one-a-century talent, then all that gets dialed up to eleven. Azana may find herself the subject of some rather unpleasant attention from her mothers ultraconservative political faction, for example, who would really like to have someone who harkens back to the ancien regime in their corner. Katara may ask her cousin to renew his friendship with his old schoolmate to ensure that the exact opposite of that happens. It could cause trouble for her MLB career, with opposing teams claiming unfair advantage, the bending equivalent of using a corked bat or putting an airbender on the team.

So there's that.

This also might have some relevance to what happens if and when Azula tries to return to Diqiu as Princess Azula, as opposed to Sarah Inazuma. It's hard to dismiss someone as a crazy person if they can generate a kind of bending that only Azula (until Azana) could do.

Anyway. Sorry for taking so long to get to this. I'll see about polishing off the Azula mini-stories over the next couple days. Although I've said THAT before...

-Merc
Keep Rat

>Second tangent: Man, I can't wait until the Psi Corps decides to do
>something arrogant and ill-advised with what must look to them like an
>underdeveloped planet full of powerful human psions. It's going to go
>hilariously wrong for them.

Give them a little credit; they generally do enough scouting and research to know ahead of time if a previously unknown population is likely to present a problem. Most of the people who are in actual operational charge of the organization are not maniacs, just assholes.

>It's entirely possible that Azana is related to Zuko but not in any
>way part of the extended Royal Family

That is the most likely scenario, yes.

>Zuko's actual lineal
>descendants are probably well-documented even if some of them ended up
>down at the heels, but they might have kept the existence of his much
>younger half-sister quiet.

After the end of the Hundred Year War, I doubt there was any real need to do that. If he had a younger, previously unknown half-sibling who was Ozai's offspring, sure, that would be a potential issue, but Kiyi (and any other children Ursa and Noren might've had after we saw them) wouldn't be anywhere on the succession line anyway. Besides, I like to think that Kiyi and Zuko were pretty tight. :) That's not to say the Hira'a branch of the family couldn't be obscure - in fact, I rather expect it was and is - but they don't actually have to have been hidden in some kind of bizarre government coverup. Think of all the obscure cousins and other distant branches any real royal family must have, of whom nobody much has ever heard.

>I can't imagine Ursa wanted to go back to
>doing the whole Princess thing.

No, no indeed. But there was never any real chance of that happening, anyway. One of the relatively few genuine advantages of being an autocrat in a pre-telecommunications world is that if you want your mother left in peace, she's bloody well going to be.

>Or Karana is wacky in the head. Or both!

I wouldn't go so far as "wacky in the head", but she was drunk.

>>"Some of Zuko's detractors claimed he'd had her killed, or
>>banished her to some spiritsforsaken corner of the world - because she
>>was a threat to his rule, or simply an embarrassment to the family."
>
>I think 'Agni-forsaken' might flow better when you have cause for Fire
>people to deploy this particular phrasing, but that's just a stylistic
>preference on my part.

Azana is largely agnostic about these matters; she might've picked up the habit of referring to the spirits rather than Agni from Karana.

>I imagine that Azula is a convenient mythological figure for
>unreconstructed Fire chauvinists.

I rather doubt there are many of those around any longer, at least in the sense (which I think you've hinted at assuming the presence of several times) of people who harbor some kind of realistic desire to see a return to Sozinite ideals and what have you. I mean, keep in mind it's the year 291. Expecting to find an actual, practicing Sozinite in the Diqiu of 291 ASC is like assuming that there are still people in England who are actively scheming to restore the Stuarts to the throne, or active hardcore Tory cells in Atlantic Canada plotting to overthrow the upstart Continental Congress and restore the American colonies to the Queen's dominions. It rather strains credulity.

>Also, she killed the Avatar. Not a lot of people have that on their
>resume.

It's really not that impressive an accomplishment when you read the not-even-very-fine print about him only having been dead for maybe half an hour.

"You forget, we were present at a vast, unexplained undersea sponge migration."

"Ray, the sponges migrated about a foot and a half."

>Ugh. Has anyone who wasn't a giant douchecanoe ever worn
>snakeskin cowboy boots unironically? Because I don't think they have.
>Especially not with a suit.

I wouldn't entirely put it past Ryo Sato, actually, but only if he was actually riding an ostrich horse at the time. And yeah, he wouldn't wear a suit for that.

>>"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Only your chunky little pal
>>from the South Pole gets to call you that, right?" He spread his hands
>>in a gesture of mocking surrender (Anne noticed that his nails were
>>varnished the same red as his suit)
>
>Okay, for a mob torpedo, Kaiten looks completely ridiculous.

There's a definite comic-opera aspect to the dress sense of his echelon in the Agni Kai. The intended aesthetic is not so much Mafia as glam rock.

>In light of future events, I have to say that I very much like this
>passage right here, but I think it could have been better executed
>without hitting the nail on the head so hard with Anne's follow-up.

That's entirely possible, although then it would've been rather hard to convey what she was trying to warn Azana about. Ultimately, it seemed better to point up the sharpness of her street instincts than be cagey about what was going on with Kaiten, but maybe not.

>Yeah, because people who hit on the bright idea of using supercharged
>firebending to conquer everything in their way have an amazing track
>record there, buddy.

Actually, if you look back far enough, the track record is about 50-50. I mean, it sure as shit worked for Sozin.

>the vibe I've been getting around the Triads so
>far in Diqiu is... hmm. It's hard to describe. It's got sort of an
>"the mob in the 70s and 80s" feel to it. Their time is passing and
>they just don't know it yet

There is an element of that, particularly with the Agni Kai. They have long been the most thuggish and reactionary - and yet most flamboyant and showmanlike - of the city's Triads, and so the most likely to sort of bullheadedly refuse to accept that the times, they are a-changin'. There are others whose leaders are at least willing to take chances on new ways of organizing and operating things. Heck, there's at least one that's gone completely legit - in the late third century, the Triple Threat operates entirely above the board, as a civic organization, kind of like the Rotary Club or Kiwanis. (That occasionally messes with Korra's head.)

>>When she let it out,
>>her eyes snapped open, clear and bright once more - and the fire that
>>suddenly wreathed her hands was a clean incandescent blue, like the
>>flame of an acetylene torch.
>
>I can honestly say that I didn't see this coming.

Neither did Kaiten...

>If this is a "literally nobody else has been able to do this since
>Azula" situation, though, where the blue flame is a one-a-century
>talent, then all that gets dialed up to eleven.

Since the disappearance of Princess Azula, one other person has indisputably firebent a blue flame before unimpeachable witnesses; but only once, and on a very special occasion.

>Azana may find herself
>the subject of some rather unpleasant attention from her mothers
>ultraconservative political faction

I'm not sure Azera belongs to a "faction", as such. Like I said before, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone, apart from the sort of people who in other circumstances would be standing at bus stations insisting that they are Napoleon, seriously wants (or thinks there is any chance of) a return to the pre-Zuko Fire Nation's "the murders will continue until all the survivors love us" foreign relations policy. Even Azera doesn't want that.

>Katara may ask her cousin to renew his friendship with his old
>schoolmate to ensure that the exact opposite of that happens.

If it came to it, Katara and Azana are old schoolmates too; their careers at Piandao Academy overlapped by a couple of years. So there's that pretext to be had if she really required one to keep tabs on her. Anyway, I doubt Shinzen and Azana have so lost touch since graduation that "renewing" anything would be required. He doesn't live in Republic City, but, as Azera amply demonstrates quite often, there are telephones now. :)

>It could
>cause trouble for her MLB career, with opposing teams claiming unfair
>advantage, the bending equivalent of using a corked bat or putting an
>airbender on the team.

If she used it in competition, and its greater intensity provided some clear advantage not otherwise obtainable, the other team might have grounds for a protest, but otherwise... well, this is a sport where they used to, and occasionally still do, let the Avatar play, so long as she promises to stick to whatever color belt she's wearing. The sanctioning body is clearly not that bothered about what extralegal things players might do so long as they don't do it. Besides, it could be argued that it's simply a very advanced form of the art, and if you were going to go after her for it, you might as well penalize, e.g., the winner of this year's Future City Historic GP for being a better driver than the others.

--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.

>>Second tangent: Man, I can't wait until the Psi Corps decides to do
>>something arrogant and ill-advised with what must look to them like an
>>underdeveloped planet full of powerful human psions. It's going to go
>>hilariously wrong for them.
>
>Give them a little credit; they generally do enough scouting and
>research to know ahead of time if a previously unknown population is
>likely to present a problem. Most of the people who are in actual
>operational charge of the organization are not maniacs, just
>assholes.

This is true, but... well. I'll just say in my own mind, even when they plan things out competently and think they've got all their bases covered, the Psi Corps strikes me very much as a "sure, I can fit that in my mouth" organization. :)

>>Zuko's actual lineal
>>descendants are probably well-documented even if some of them ended up
>>down at the heels, but they might have kept the existence of his much
>>younger half-sister quiet.
>
>After the end of the Hundred Year War, I doubt there was any real need
>to do that.

Mmm, really? I mean... I can see that eventually being the case, but one imagines they'd want to keep them hush-hush for awhile. Zuko's early years were... fraught. They were a ton of assassination attempts and I sort of got the impression that the unstated reason the Kyoshi Warriors were imported wasn't just because they're the best they are at what they do, but because Zuko literally could not trust his own people. Sort of a Swiss Guard sort of deal. In that sort of a political environment you want to keep the fact that two huge sources of leverage are alive and well and living in an isolated village on the down-low, I think.

It's not a big deal, though, really.

>Besides, I like to think that Kiyi and Zuko were pretty tight. :)

I would really love to see people in general (not you guys specifically, although I certainly wouldn't complain) do more with Kiyi. Much like Kori, she's just absolutely loaded with potential that is curiously unmined so far.

>>I can't imagine Ursa wanted to go back to
>>doing the whole Princess thing.
>
>No, no indeed.

Although on reflection, maybe Kiyi wanted to do the whole princess deal if she found out that it was a potential option. I wouldn't have minded being a princess when I was a kid.

Or even now, really. Princess' get to do all sorts of cool stuff, like fly on zeppelins and conquer the Earth Kingdom and have awesome wire fights. :)

>>I imagine that Azula is a convenient mythological figure for
>>unreconstructed Fire chauvinists.
>
>I rather doubt there are many of those around any longer, at least in
>the sense (which I think you've hinted at assuming the presence of
>several times) of people who harbor some kind of realistic desire to
>see a return to Sozinite ideals and what have you.

This may be inartful phrasing on my part. "Unreconstructed" implies a lot more than I wanted it to; I almost used "crypto" but that particular formulation doesn't get a lot of play around here. :)

What I'm imagining is sort of a Niall Ferguson, apologist-for-empire, Zuko-ruined-everything sort of Fire nationalism. People who recognize that they're not going to be re-annexing the Republic anytime soon (and really, who would want to? All that race-mixing, ugh!) but will construct elaborate defenses of the Hundred Year War and write books defending Fire Nation culture as inherently superior to that of the other nations. Probably they also create a lot of dolchstoss narratives around Zuko as part of the whole "the Fire Nation didn't lose, it merely declined to win" thing.

That's just me, tho.

>I mean, keep in
>mind it's the year 291. Expecting to find an actual,
>practicing Sozinite in the Diqiu of 291 ASC is like assuming that
>there are still people in England who are actively scheming to restore
>the Stuarts to the throne, or active hardcore Tory cells in Atlantic
>Canada plotting to overthrow the upstart Continental Congress and
>restore the American colonies to the Queen's dominions. It rather
>strains credulity.

Oh, right, nothing like that. That would be just silly, even for me.

>>Also, she killed the Avatar. Not a lot of people have that on their
>>resume.
>
>It's really not that impressive an accomplishment when you read the
>not-even-very-fine print about him only having been dead for maybe
>half an hour.

I recall being very impressed at the time. :) Seeing it happen on-screen with no warning and no ability to immediately pop in the Season 3 DVDs was... stressful.

>There's a definite comic-opera aspect to the dress sense of his
>echelon in the Agni Kai. The intended aesthetic is not so much Mafia
>as glam rock.

Now I really want to see a big-budget rock opera about mobsters.

>>In light of future events, I have to say that I very much like this
>>passage right here, but I think it could have been better executed
>>without hitting the nail on the head so hard with Anne's follow-up.
>
>That's entirely possible, although then it would've been rather hard
>to convey what she was trying to warn Azana about. Ultimately, it
>seemed better to point up the sharpness of her street instincts than
>be cagey about what was going on with Kaiten, but maybe not.

It's not a big deal; my personal aesthetics usually trend more towards preferring things to be subtle rather than explicit. It's personal taste, not a value judgment.

>>Yeah, because people who hit on the bright idea of using supercharged
>>firebending to conquer everything in their way have an amazing track
>>record there, buddy.
>
>Actually, if you look back far enough, the track record is about
>50-50. I mean, it sure as shit worked for Sozin.

Short term, yeah. On the other hand, Sozin might not have liked what his ideals did to his country long-term. He might have done it anyway if he'd known that eventually it would lead to Zuko and a golden-ish age of stability and prosperity for Diqiu, with a strong and advanced Republic based on an alloy of the Fire Nation strengths and those of the other nations, because Sozin was all about the ends justifying the means, but I sort of imagine that Sozin would regard Azulon and Ozai with deep and abiding contempt.

Especially Ozai; Sozin was a monster, but he harbored actual beliefs in something greater than himself. Ozai was just a thug who turned Sozin's beloved Fire Nation into nothing but a hate engine.

TLDR; it depends a lot on what your definition of "worked" is. :)

>there's at least one that's gone completely legit - in the late third
>century, the Triple Threat operates entirely above the board, as a
>civic organization, kind of like the Rotary Club or Kiwanis. (That
>occasionally messes with Korra's head.)

That actually makes a ton of sense, as the ecumenical gang would of necessity have to be the most practical and tolerant one.

>>It could
>>cause trouble for her MLB career, with opposing teams claiming unfair
>>advantage, the bending equivalent of using a corked bat or putting an
>>airbender on the team.
>
>If she used it in competition, and its greater intensity
>provided some clear advantage not otherwise obtainable, the other team
>might have grounds for a protest, but otherwise...

Oh, I'm not saying it would work, but if I were the other franchises, I would consider taking hard-line measures to ensure that we didn't need to face off against someone who had firebending +1 equipped. That's the kind of thing you do not wanna do if at all possible. :)

-Merc
Keep Rat

>>>It could
>>>cause trouble for her MLB career, with opposing teams claiming unfair
>>>advantage, the bending equivalent of using a corked bat or putting an
>>>airbender on the team.
>>
>>If she used it in competition, and its greater intensity
>>provided some clear advantage not otherwise obtainable, the other team
>>might have grounds for a protest, but otherwise...
>
>Oh, I'm not saying it would work, but if I were the other franchises,
>I would consider taking hard-line measures to ensure that we didn't
>need to face off against someone who had firebending +1 equipped.
>That's the kind of thing you do not wanna do if at all possible. :)
>
>

What does the blue flame do, anyway? Azana's use of white-hot flame is apparently at the edge of acceptable in the UF version of the rules. If all the blue flame does is burn hotter, it's probably not legal for competition.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>This is true, but... well. I'll just say in my own mind, even when
>they plan things out competently and think they've got all their bases
>covered, the Psi Corps strikes me very much as a "sure, I can fit
>that in my mouth" organization. :)

All I want to say is I love that metaphor. I love it so much.

>I'll see about
>polishing off the Azula mini-stories over the next couple days.

Oh good. I endeavor to avoid bearing specific audience reactions in mind as I work, much less consciously tailor the material accordingly, but I do have to admit I've been curious as to what you'd make of a few bits of the later ones.

FY(and everybody else's)I, there will probably be one more of those, though you shouldn't wait for it as I have not in fact started it yet; I'm still kicking it around in the back of my head.

Once it's done, the whole Azula cycle thus far (from Blue Harvest on), will be collected into an off-Forum omnibus, like the one for the first half of DSMP! Season 1 - including the Mojave Hitchhiker's Guide entry and accompanying casino vignette. Prospective titles include Desolation Angel (with apologies to Jack Kerouac), The Blue Flame Chronicle, and Travels with the Phoenix Queen, or possibly more than one of them with a colon in there someplace.

--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.

Can I get a shout for The Crazy World(s) of Sarah Inazuma, after this guy?

---
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