>>I'd like to note that we have Word of God on this not being correct
>>within the source materiel.
>
>I'm just enjoying the mental image brought on by the phrase "source
>materiel". It makes me think of the original stories as things that
>have to be brought in on trucks, like military supplies.

"Phil, are we out of Jinora?"

"Uh... darn it, we are. I'll have some more overnighted."

>>A hundred and twenty is pretty damn good to still be looking like
>>you're merely middle-aged.
>
>It's worth noting that from the perspective of someone from New
>Avalon, 120 is the righthand edge of middle age. We'll be
>looking at this a bit more in the next movement.

Also worth noting that I could stand to brush up on the data provided back in the Featured Docs as to this kind of thing, myself.

>>People have made the case convincingly that what you put on sky bison
>>is less of a saddle and more of a howdah, like you'd put on an
>>elephant.
>
>No canopy.

True, although you could rig one up easily enough.

>If you're envisioning something like that scene from the '70s
>Superman movie, I'm afraid it, uh, doesn't really work that
>way. At least not for Corwin. He doesn't really fly so much as
>levitate, anyway, which isn't as exciting for potential passengers.
>It's mainly useful for not falling to one's death.

That was exactly what I was envisioning, yes. (Don't judge me.)

You've ruined my illusions. :(

>>(I may be overthinking this.)
>
>Or simply not bearing in mind that a building with a square footprint
>has four sides. :)

I... er, am actually completely clueless as to what you mean by this.

>Well, sure, if he's anything recognizable, it's going to be
>that, simply based on his hair and his eye color. And the Viking
>cheekbones. He's odd-looking, but not as outstandingly
>foreign-looking as Utena (who, in the time-honored anime tradition,
>has a Japanese name - anyone in Diqiu just seeing her name somewhere
>would assume she was from Kyoshi Island or the Fire Nation - and
>doesn't look even slightly Asian). :)

I am reminded of... it was either in Full Metal Panic or FMP: Second Raid, where a bunch of mercenary guys have Tessa and Kaname cornered at the school, and they order them to "send us over the white girl."

It was like... WHICH white girl? :)

>(In a similar vein, thanks to the art style employed in the source,
>I'm not havin' this "he must look Inuit" thing. Only the -really old
>people- in either Water Tribe look Inuit. Korra's dad looked like
>Corwin's Uncle Balder with a dye job and a tan. :)

Fair enough. I'll be the first to admit that the people in Avatar only look in very broad strokes like the cultures they're built to resemble, but there are certain broad similarities within the universe itself.

>>I'm a bit surprised at all the phoenix imagery and the choice of name
>>for the flight. The last guy in Avatar to go into the phoenix metaphor
>>in a really big way... well, Phoenix King Ozai ain't well-remembered.
>
>That was kind of the idea, actually. "Phoenix" as in rebirth, the
>five nations working together, etc. - Project Phoenix Flight was a
>major step in the rehabilitation of the Fire Nation's foreign policy
>image.

You know... I really hope Zuko managed to hang on to see that happen. Especially because of this:

>So yeah! You were wondering what Korra did on her first Comet Day?
>
>SHE WENT TO THE MOON.

This is the best goddamn idea I've ever seen for what should happen on the next passing of Sozin's Comet. 115 would be really pushing it, even for Zuko's family, but man, being able to contribute to that sort of thing, even as just a "I am the former Fire Lord and I give this project my approval" stature-lending thing, would be the final expiation of his families sins for him.

>>(Ozai was pretty... special.)
>
>Indeed. One hopes that at some point he attempted to escape and one
>of the Kyoshi had the opportunity to put him down like the mad dog he
>was.

One of the things that makes Ozai so frightening, at least in my opinion, is that he isn't really mad, per se. He's entirely sane. He was probably a very effective ruler of the Fire Nation; he's intelligent, incisive, understands people, all that stuff.

He was just, you know... evil. :)

Besides, him dying in an escape attempt is way too merciful. What I like to imagine is that after he'd made his point with a few years in that tower, Zuko had his Dad moved to a comfortable prison-apartment somewhere on the Palace grounds. A high room, with a great view.

And then he made the old man spend the next half-century watching him tear down and rebuild the Fire Nation into something Ozai would have found abhorrent and weak. He'd make sure Ozai had access to plenty of broadsheets and other news sources, too. Maybe have them read aloud to him.

>"Me, on the other hand, I say guys like you are always worth
>it."

I forget where, but I once read a fairly decent little fanfic wherein, after Ozai rather comically declared "I'm still alive" in response to Suki's query, Sokka considered the architect of his peoples near-genocide philosophically for a couple seconds, and then simply straight-up knifed him right there in front of Aang.

(And it would have to be Sokka. Toph, for all her tough-girl persona, doesn't have the experience of life as prey of the Fire Nation all the others have, and Suki I don't think quite has the nerve to kill an unarmed, beaten man in cold blood.)

>>This whole ticket-buying sequence was well-executed, but it was a
>>bit... twee, I guess is the word I want?
>
>I congratulate you on your perspicacity, sir! Nall is living out a
>spy-movie fantasy. He's doing that on purpose; it probably
>hasn't really been done that way for years. The ticket agent is just
>too polite and well-trained to give him the hairy eyeball about it. :)

You know, I sometimes congratulate myself on seeking out subtlety in my fiction, and then when it shows up I just entirely miss it.

It's especially annoying because I totally called Nall's desire to do just this in Try, Try Again. ^.^;

>>... it's the drill, isn't it? They kept the drill in situ and turned
>>it into a museum.
>
>There weren't a lot of other options. I mean, it would make a
>lousy restaurant.

Well, they could have broken down and moved the thing out entirely; it represents a vulnerable point.

That said, with their sudden combined mastery of both air power and artillery pieces, the Fire Nation sort of took Ba Sing Ce's walls and obsoleted them overnight. Postwar, they probably rebuilt that big gap the Dai Li carved in the thing, but the drill likely wasn't a priority anymore.

>Azana would probably make note of that, yes.
>
>If she knew about it.
>
>It's only the first day. Patience, weedwhacker.

Hrm.

I am forced to admit that, if I were still doing martial arts, that would not be... an INACCURATE sobriquet to hang on me.

>>Amon... wasn't really a figurehead. He was actually in charge.
>
>Possibly so, but he was also indisputably an obvious bit of branding,
>which in Corwin's eyes makes him deeply suspect as the actual
>mastermind.

Interesting. I am now curious as to his thoughts on Big Fire. I mean, really. "The Magnificent Ten?" Even for a cadre of metahuman supervillains, that's a pretty on-the-nose piece of branding. They might as well have their own line of action figures; the Fabulous Fitzcarald with real snapping action, Shockwave Alberto with a pack of tiny cigars you can tuck inside his suit.

>Anyway, historians are probably still arguing about that, given that
>many of the key figures in the incident disappeared and were never
>seen again. Hell, there are probably some who insist, based on the
>fragmentary documentation available, that it was really all Batroc. :)

Hey, within Amon gone, it is totally Lieutenant Batroc's time to shine! You'll see! He's gonna build his own revolution! With hookers, and blackjack!

>>Also, fuck the Corporate Sector. Seriously. The WDF should have burned
>>that fucking place to the ground when they had the chance.
>
>... they had the chance?

I am maybe wrong about this, but... my impression has always been that in the immediate aftermath of the War of Corporate Occupation the WDF was basically running the table and could have gotten support for rending Genom and all their creations limb from limb if it had wanted to.

Starfleet had been mostly destroyed (and even if it hadn't been, various Federations members governments had been largely destabilized and were in need of a lot of restructuring) and Genom had brought basically everything it could spare that wasn't doing stuff like pinning down Salusia or the Quarian Union to Zeta Cygni... which led to all that hardware being either destroyed or captured. Plus, the WDF had gained serious cred by being right about Genom all along. The other major military power still standing at the time was Salusia, close WDF allies.

Given that, it seems like that represented a primo opportunity to rip apart Largo's little kleptocratic empire he built out in the Corporate Sector and subject it to MAJOR restructuring.

I mean, I understand the counterargument for not pulling the trigger on that; it would have meant continuing the war for months, possibly years, as they subdued the Corporate Sector system by system and arranged for the occupation and administration of a vast volume of space and billions of people. So taking the soft victory and letting Kwei-chang Kane and later on Larry Mann handle the situation delicately makes a certain amount of sense. But the end result of that process seems to have been Corporate Sector Lite: Less Megalomania, More Fascism.

But the chance did exist.

(I could of course be wrong in my read on the situation as it was then.)

-Merc
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