Legend of Korra!

[Alja-Markir]

Once more, time for my thoughts as I go through the latest episode. (Gotta come up with a snazzy title for this. But later, WATCH NAOW!) Let's rock!

1) So... yeah. Pabu is very convincing. And adorable. So is Bo Lin.

2) Man, EVERYONE has a statue in this city. (Except Sokka. XP)
2a) Aahhh... feels good to finally have that callback out of the way.
2b) Also, feels good to finally have a name: Gon Long.
2c) Although I kinda suspect it was a setup...

3) Sex-ay Bo-Lin. Welcome to paradise indeed...
3a) "Now pat me dry."
3b) Aaannnd right back in. Excellent.
3c) "Ooh! Ooh! I vote makeovers!"
3d) "Emergency! Emergency! Comin' through! Beep Beep! (Whimpering)"

4) Calling it now, Korra misinterpreted Capitalism for Terrorism.
4a) And that setup hunch from before makes sense now, intentially portrayed that way...

Nine minutes in and already making wild conjecture on plot points. Gonna finish up and then come back with more.

~Alja~

[Alja-Markir]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG...

LIN DOES IT TOO!



~Alja~

[Alja-Markir]

Well, I was kinda half right.

So the Cabbage Corp thing was a setup by the Equalists, but not for the intelligent reason I expected. I thought they'd frame Cabbage Corp as a way to draw attention and resources away from them, keep the cops busy hunting down a bunch of rubes, wasting time and effort and instilling a false sense of security, then strike out from hiding and shame them some more, ruin their public image even more completely.

But instead, it was some sort of ridiculous ploy to capture... ya know, they didn't exactly say who they wanted to capture, did they?. Hiroshi supposedly wanted them to come to his secret underground weapons factory beneath his home in order to capture... Lin? Tenzin? Korra again? Why lure them there, though? Why reveal not only Hiroshi's connection to the Equalists, but also the existence of his secret weapons factory and his new super weapon, just to nab three targets, one of whom Amon has expressly stated he's leaving for last anyway? Why not just set up an ambush at the bridge instead? Korra, Lin, and Tezin were alone in a deserted part of town when they went to meet the "informant", a bunch of goons could have shown up and captured them then much more easily and without having to reveal any secrets.

In other news, OH MY FUCK IS LIN A BADASS. Her mum ought to be damn proud of her.

Oh, and props on Asami for not letting Mako treat her like a helpless girl. Just one question though - if Mako and Bolin took the elevator down alone... how did she get down there so fast after them?

Here's a metaphysical question, platinum? So on the one hand, okay, sure. It's a very heavy element - atomic weight of 195.084 - which could arguably be what makes it so hard to bend. All the common rock-forming minerals have specific gravities between 2.5 and 3.5. Cast iron sits at about 7.21, wrought iron at 7.77, cast steel at 7.85, and rolled steel at 7.93. But then something like pure gold has a specific gravity equal to a whopping 19.29, and platinum is even higher with a staggering 21.51.

So based off of specific gravity, metalbending iron or steel is about two or three times harder than bending rocks. And bending "heavy" metals is another two or three times harder than that, or roughly ten times harder than bending stone!

But then there's the rarity problem. Iron is the fourth most abundant element in the earth's crust. Platinum is something like the eighth least abundant element in the earth's crust, just above (and roughly three times more abundant than) gold. Where the fuck is Hiroshi getting it all? Do we just assume that Avatar rarities are unrelated to our own? Or is it maybe an Elder Scrolls type situation, in which it's not the same substance as our own version, it merely uses the name? (Like Elder Scrolls ebony being a metal compared to real ebony being a kind of wood?)

Oh, big question, why is Lin resigning? She was originally worried about the fallout if she raided Hiroshi's home without good reason, but it turned out her raid was justified, and in fact turned up vital information about his connections and the existence of a new Equalist weapon. Yeah, the party got overwhelmed and only narrowly escaped, leaving behind several officers, but that's to be expected - they weren't prepared for the power of an advanced technological weapon that no one could have predicted. If anything, this should be fuel for Lin's fires. Freeze and seize Sato's assets, publically play up Sato's mental instability over his wife's death to deligitimize the Equalists, and point out the hypocracy of the Equalists condemning the power and authority of supposedly "oppressive" benders by employing one of the richest and most influential men alive to create weapons for a bunch of power hungry thugs.

Also, Team Avatar really needs to invest in some electrical insulation. Will make their lives so much easier. Although Tenzin in a rubber suit might be disturbing. Most of the rest I could live with though.

~Alja~

[gcninja]

Goddamit. I wanna read the spoilers but it doesn't air for 2 more hours here

[Alja-Markir]

ALL OF THE D'AWWWS!

~Alja~

[gcninja]

So what I'm assuming is that she's an officer who really treats her metalbenders as close to family. Thus why she was upset, they go to Amon and lose their bending. Even if they come back alive, look what happened to Tahno. Not only are they bendless, jobless as well. You have to also think, sure they FOUND this place but a)where else does he have a factory b)he got away c)how man more mechs did he have?
Capturing Lin and Tenzin would be great for Amon even without the Avatar. Take out two big benders; Aangs, the cities hero, son and Lin the head of police would make him look great to equalists.

Oh and Makir, I was surprised at Platinum too but just shrugged it off as, "hey, it's a cartoon they could have oceans of it. Hell, they had a prison in the middle of a volcano and nobody died from noxious fumes or BURNING."
Enjoyable nonetheless. My big issue is how canon fodderish the police are.. That's about it.

[Alja-Markir]

For the record, it's MaRkir. *winks*

I prefer Alja anyways.

~Alja~

[Dave-O_Boy]

My issue with the show is that it seems to be moving a bit to fast. They're not letting the plot twists develop enough for them to have real emotional impact and that's a bit disappointing.
For example: In the original Avatar You knew Zuko would eventual join the GAang by the start of season two, but he didn't until nearly 3/4th of the way through season 3. That long development aloud Zuko to have a complex and interesting motive and arch. Now it's a bit to early to tell, but so far in Korra just about every episode has had a major plot reveal or twist. In this recent episode we find out that Sato is secretly working for Amon because benders killed his wife. Now he seemed like a reasonable person before that, but he went from sensible and likable to cartoon evil super scientist over the course of a couple of scenes and he was only introduced as a character about 2 episodes beforehand. Even in Long Feng had a longer arch then that.
When it comes right down to it, I appreciated slower pace of the original series more than the faster pace of Korra.

Also, Think all these people lost their family to the same fire bender? Maybe that guy will end up being the real villain.. hah.

[Master Gunner]

Presumably the framing of CabbageCorp was done just to distract and mislead the police. It was only leveraged to capture Team Avatar after the fact, what that possibility presented itself. They didn't do the ambush at the bridge to avoid accidentally revealing the mechs too early, and risked bringing them to the hidden factory to ensure that Sato had complete control. Had he attempted the ambush at any above-ground location, the likelihood of Team Avatar escaping would be far higher, especially with airships around. As GC said, Amon may want to leave Korra for last, but taking out Tenzin and Lin would be a massive victory for him. Also, Sato may well be acting on his own here, not under any direct orders from Amon.

As for the platinum, that is an odd one. I would guess that the wall and the mechs are actually plated in platinum, rather than actually solid platinum. The wall is just insane if it were pure platinum, and while I'm no engineer, I suspect there would be difficulties in making a mech out of solid platinum. I don't recall any instances in Avatar of people bending Earth while lacking line of site (for instance, while Toph was trapped in a metal casket, she never attempted to bend the Earth below her, despite knowing that it was there, to upend the cart, or otherwise use rocks to break the casket). It could be that because they can't bend platinum, they can't bend something hidden behind platinum either. So the wall may well have just being concrete, and the mechs steel, but however earthbending works prevents them from bending it without having to the platinum as well.

I see this ending very bad for Sato though. We all remember what happened when Toph was told that bending metal was impossible, even for her. I don't expect her daughter to be much different.

As for why Lin is resigning: like she said, she wants to work outside the law. She knows that whomever replaces her will be going after Sato with the full extent of the law anyways, she doesn't need to be there to do that. This is personal for her, now, and she's prepared to do some very ugly things. Things that she could not possibly get away with as Chief of Police, at least not without a mountain of paperwork that she'd rather avoid.

[JustAName]

As for the quick pace, I believe this is a shorter series? It was slated to be a miniseries, but due to the high viewing of the first episode, they got more?

As for recent stuff, yeah, I think the person in question may have been acting on their own.

[Deedles]

Really liked this episode, it held some interesting twists, and also revealed why the whole situation with Sato sponsoring them out of the kindness of his heart and such just felt too good to be true.

It also had me crying at the end, because Korra is such an selfless and beautiful person for telling Mako to go and support Asami even though Korra obviously loves him. It must of hurt. ;_;

[EikoandMog]

Oh god, I knew it was coming. "NO! NOT MY CABBAGE CORP!"

[beramode0]

Saw the episodes but can't read the spoilers since I'm on a phone. So i'm gonna say one thing about I soooooooooo did not see thaaaaat. Sarcasms aside Bolin's friggin adorkable XD

[Deedles]

...

[beramode0]

Oops fixed it.

[gcninja]

[Dave-O_Boy]

The best version of that meme is the one with Saaka and Suki kissing with the Moon being the reaction picture.

[gcninja]

See previous page in the big pic dump

[Dave-O_Boy]

...Y'know that's probably where I saw it. haha

[Alja-Markir]

~Alja~

[Matt]

I am on episode 3.

So far this appears to be Social Privilege, The Series (with special lessons in intersectionality). I think this is pretty cool.

I think it's doubly interesting that they've framed the show from the perspective of the oppressor class, and made the villain the head of a radical civil rights movement.

Just what are they going to do with this metaphor, I wonder.

-m

[JayBlanc]

My issue with the show is that it seems to be moving a bit to fast.

I actually kind of like this. Because it's completely messed up my ability to predict where the show is going. (I'm a writer, and I've learned to sport narrative hooks...)

So as I've gone through this I've thought "Well, this will be a slow build up to a face off between Korra and Amon just like in..." Nope, happens in episode 4, "Okay, well then we're going to follow theFire Ferrets on the long road to the championshi..." Nope, happens in episode 6, "Right then, the season finale is obviously going to be..." Nope, Sato is exposed as a financial and technological backer of the Equalists in episode 7. I have no idea where they are going, and they keep ramping up exactly how serious and and on the edge of total chaos things are.

Plus Kora's Flashbacks to what I think are Anng's life, are trailing crumbs of _something_...

[gcninja]

Plus Kora's Flashbacks to what I think are Anng's life, are trailing crumbs of _something_...

I was actually wondering about those too
were they there by mistake, slipping into the spirit realm and into the past or is Aang doing it himself? I think looks fun and adds a lay of mystery i HOPE we'll find out soon enough

[AlexanderDitto]

The first series is only 13 episodes long. It HAS to move fast. We're already halfway through the show.

[beramode0]

Damn it Alja. I went to the previous page and saw all the pics you posted and now I can't stop laughing.