Korra 4.9

[psocoptera]

YES ZAHEER YES YES ASAMI WORKING ON THE SUPERWEAPON SITUATION YES. Okay I am basically at the point of insane squeeing every time they show us anything on this show but there was just so much to love here. Asami twisting Varrick's wrist. Bolin being all earnest and mature with Opal - not that she didn't totally have a point that a picnic was hardly going to make up for the past, but I still found the way he went about it totally non-cringe-inducing which is amazing for romance on this show. (Now if we could just get a little more Jinora/Kai...) Korra's conversations with various people about whether they still believe in her as the Avatar and OH MY GOD GOING TO SEE ZAHEER I really wanted that and didn't actually think they would do it. Confirmation that Zaheer spends all his time in the spirit world (and is basically only still in that prison because he wants to be, come on, he could be through those chains in seconds if he chose) and Zaheer helping Korra because he doesn't like dictators and... I might ship it a little now guys I'm sorry.

Question: is Korra putting too much emphasis on her injury/recovery for why she wasn't invited to the strategy meeting? Because I feel like it's been a running theme for the whole show that the various civil authorities (Lin, then Raiko) aren't particularly eager to work with the Avatar or include her in their councils. (Also related to that scene, I felt like Izumi had a good point that the Fire Nation does not have a great track record with wars. (And how great was it to see Fire Lady Izumi and her sexy little glasses? I am really enjoying the representation of middle-aged ladies on this show.))

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

that was awesome. random thoughts i had:

1. yay Zaheer is smart and flexible enough to revise his views in light of new data.

2. why the hell is Zaheer the only competent therapist on the planet?

3. Asami is still Batman! she is now Batman working on the fucking Manhattan Project! eeee!

4. they've been setting up Hiroshi to help out in some way later on. Varrick has saved everybody a couple of times. Zaheer just helped out the Avatar in a huge way -- seems like they're setting things up to have an antagonist from each of the previous books helping the forces of good to save the day?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

2. Clearly therapy was traditionally a specialty of Airbenders and was nearly eliminated from the Avatar world in the genocide. 170 years later Zaheer woke up with airbending and also a surprisingly enriched insight into interpersonal dynamics. Once word gets out he'll have a steady stream of clients visiting him - Bumi and Kya working through their issues over Tenzin being the favorite child, Lin trying to get over her fear of intimacy, Wu looking for direction in his life. (Hahaha I love this way too much.)

3. I continue to think Asami might be the other wealthy industrialist-inventor superhero, the one whose daddy made weapons, but it is less clear who Korra is in that analogy.

4. HMMM. Okay, I have a new theory about whose heroic self-sacrifice is going to take down the bomb - I think it's going to be Kuvira's. I think the superweapon is going to be *intended* to be a beam weapon but it's going to become unstable and threaten to take out all of Republic City (if it's Kuvira's arc, it should be Zaofu, but for the show as a whole it has to be Republic City) unless it's shut down in some way that is clearly going to kill the person doing it, and Kuvira is going to have a redemption moment and realize she's gone off the rails and she only ever wanted to protect people and this is how she makes things right. I mean, she clearly was a good guy until a few years ago, she doesn't have one of these turned-evil-in-childhood backstories. I really like your theory that we get someone helping/redeemed from each season, and if someone's going to get redeemed from book four it's going to have to be *in* book four, and I feel like it would be a really nice closing note for the show to have the big bad get saved for once instead of killed/imprisoned.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I mean, for "heroically dead" values of "saved".

[q10.livejournal.com]

3. but when Asami is out there solving shit in person, her problem-solving strategies are relatively tech-light (an assortment of gizmos like the stun glove, maybe, but nothing like an awesomesuit that defines her powerset), very hand-to-hand and improvisational, and highly dependent on exceptional agility and physical training. that all seems much more Batman than Iron Man to me.

4. that could really work.

[q10.livejournal.com]

yeah...

well they sorta went there with Tarrlok already.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hm, true. Although I'm picturing them playing it a little less pointless-tragedy, a little more triumph-over-catastrophe.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, okay, that is a solid argument and I retract my case. (Although I still think it's important to keep an eye on her being in the "making amends for my parent's misdeeds" trope rather than a revenge trope.)

[q10.livejournal.com]

and she could still go all flying mech-suit before the end, which would tilt things the other way.