So I was sitting here thinking about Korra and Asami's carefree college days, when there were no apocalyptic world crises, no free-range supervillains, no dimwitted boyfriends, and the biggest problem of the day was figuring out what in the hell that one math professor with the incredibly thick Fire Nation accent was saying. Good times.And it suddenly occurred to me that in a Youthful College Adventures scenario, United Republic President Raiko (or, as I have affectionately dubbed him in my notes on The Legend of Korra Book 3, "President Fuckstick") would be the William Atherton/Jeffrey Jones character. Every '80s fun times adventure comedy had one. Walter Peck from Ghostbusters (Atherton), Principal Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Jones), Professor Hathaway from Real Genius (Atherton again), and so on.
Now, because it's not Korra's dharma ever to get a completely free ride, there would still be stuff happening during her college years that she would have to take time to deal with. Weird shit happens constantly in her world (and frankly, she brought a bunch of it on herself by choosing not to close the Spirit Portals at the end of Book 2 - hey, turns out that door was locked for a reason, who knew?), and people are always having the wacky idea that, because she's the Avatar, it's her job to fix it. In Korra and Asami's University Adventures, this would usually take the form of Raiko calling up and demanding that she drop whatever she's doing and report immediately to action stations, and then it turns out to be something like "the All-Republic City Celebrity Golf Tournament will be rained out unless you do something."
Anyway, this train of thought led directly to the following mental image (and before you point it out, I know the line being quoted was actually said by Atherton's character, it still works):
- An Actual Crisis Worthy of Korra's Attention is in progress. Let's say, for the sake of facilitating the image, that Lusca
is attacking ships in the harbor. The RCPD and the army have turned out and are making the usual sort of progress they make against any threat, and all armies make against kaiju generally, which is to say the square root of fuckall. Raiko is pacing around tearing his hair, and getting more and more annoyed because he turned the Avatar Signal on twenty seconds ago and where is she.
- Korra arrives, plainly having just dropped everything and hustled over as fast as is (super)humanly possible. She's underslept and out-of-sorts, because it's the middle of finals week and she did not need this tsuris right now. While she stands at the quayside taking a look at what she's up against, Raiko comes up and starts ranting at her about how nice of her it is of her to grace them with her presence in such a leisurely fashion, and would it kill her to show a little sense of urgency in matters concerning -
- And she snaps, having taken this kind of abuse with quiet stoicism for the last 12 or so hypothetical exercises, gets right in his face, and shouts, in a voice that is clearly audible to every cop, firefighter, reporter, and Member of the Public gathered on the waterfront,
"Now you listen to me! You groveling bug - I have exams! I am doing the best I can so get off my back!"
Then turns and exits, surfing out into the bay on a waterbending wave to see if she can find out what the giant octopus spirit's problem is and maybe persuade it to go away. In her wake, all of Republic City applauds, and Fuckstick slinks off to his office in utter defeat.
Two weeks later, he is arrested for tax fraud and sent to Boiling Rock. Reading the article about it in the paper to Korra over breakfast, Asami turns to the camera and smiles a knowing little smile. End of season 1!
--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.