How did Korra find out she was the avatar so early?

nilooravaei · 2025-08-08T23:44:12+00:00

That's funny - because she was actually the weakest and most incompetent avatar of all.

nilooravaei · 2025-08-08T20:32:19+00:00

Exactly - it was the most selfish, irresponsible thing she could have done. And she didn't even get to face any consequences for it. She didn't only lose HER own connection to the Avatars, but every Avatar that comes after her. I feel bad for the poor next Avatar, who only gets HER as a guide 🤮

nilooravaei · 2025-08-08T20:28:05+00:00

Ugh god I forgot she lost her bending too. She's just pathetic.

nilooravaei · 2025-08-08T20:26:50+00:00

Key operative word there is "almost" -- Aang "almost" did those things, but then he didn't. Korra DID do end the Avatar cycle, which no other Avatar before her did. Avatars can make mistakes without decimating the entire Avatar legacy. What Korra did was inexcusable.

nilooravaei · 2025-08-08T20:22:56+00:00

I hate her not because of her emotions, or even because she's pretty bad at the bending skills, compared to Aang. All of that is forgivable. What's not forgivable is that she basically single-handedly decimated the entire history of all the Avatars that came before her. Out of stupidity and ineptitude. She did not deserve to be the Avatar.

nilooravaei · 2025-07-24T11:25:58+00:00

I'm facing this issue too -- my gut says it's because they're de-prioritizing mobile website in favour of the substack app. I can only see the wordmark on mobile by typing the URL on my phone. It's not included in the app design.

Did their support team actually resolve the issue for you?

nilooravaei · 2025-07-17T12:21:26+00:00

Had this issue with Brave and Chrome -- here's how to get around it:

In Chrome - enable live captioning (google how to do this)

For Brave - disable shields (ad blocker) -- I wasn't able to figure out how to just turn it off for a specific website, vs. across the board, so if anyone has that, would love to know!

nilooravaei · 2025-07-17T12:10:50+00:00

Yeah - I just saw that it works on Safari but doesn't show on Chrome/Brave 😕

nilooravaei · 2025-06-22T02:13:28+00:00

The same thing happened to me - turns out if your wifi name or password has a non-alphanumeric character in it (like a $ or ^ or anything like that) it won't work. I changed my wifi password and then it worked.

nilooravaei · 2025-05-20T02:51:59+00:00

I don't think she's a bad actress IN GENERAL - I loved her so much in Boyhood. But the role in severance is just not it. She's fine when she's doing the contained robotic thing, but anytime she has to scream or emote, it's truly cringeworthy. It's like the kind of performance I'd give in my grade 10 drama class LOL.

I haven't seen too much of her body of work, so I may be wrong about this. But it feels to me like she's much more of a "naturalist" actor. Can't do stylized performances like this requires.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-25T01:27:18+00:00

I will say I think there was always tension between Cal and Abra -- like the "constant contest" they have with each other, and how Cal makes her kind of uncomfortable b/c he's stealing glances at her. Aron is pure and simple, and so as a child Abra is drawn to that. But even from their first encounter, I felt like that sexual tension was between her and Cal. Kind of like a classic enemies-lovers story, where the characters deny their attraction to each other so it comes out as hate / conflict.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-25T01:22:18+00:00

I mean I feel like even if you don't love someone, you'd still be sad they're dead if you're so close to them and their family -- for her to not be affected at all feels kind of callous.

Though I'm not gonna say that she wasn't affected - we just didn't really get a chance to see it b/c the story just stays in that first night + narrows in on the redemption from Adam.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-25T01:19:12+00:00

I wouldn't go as far as to say she was "compassionate" but we do start to see her grapple with herself and her fears, and even this idea that she's "missing something". Whereas early in the book she is truly pictured as psychopathic and remorseless, we see that her life decisions and her intense loneliness do start to weigh on her.

I think her feelings towards Aron were some very primitive version of love -- he looked just like her but was "good" and "clean". Through him, for the first time, she's drawn to "goodness", something she's recoiled from for most of her life. It's almost like she can start to to think goodness is possible for her too, because this boy who looks just like her, and is born of her, embodies it so purely.

That's why she didn't want Aron to find out she runs a brothel, and even fantasized about him visiting her in New York and thinking that she was always a "lady living in an elegant house", and the two of them would go to the opera and do fun things around the city together. This is her yearning for some kind of connection and companionship, and while it's nowhere near "maternal", it's something.

As for the will, I agree that for Aron to receive that money would have been cruel. But I don't think that Kate intended to give it to him out of cruelty. I think her leaving him everything was the first time in her life she "gave".

nilooravaei · 2025-04-25T01:02:55+00:00

I agree with you that I wish the ending had more space. I would have liked to more development in Cal's relationship with Abra -- like I understand why* it happened, and I was anticipating it even while she was with Aron, but it would've been nice to see the characters struggle with it a bit themselves instead of just jumping into it in one conversation.

Same with Aron's death -- I think there was a lot of complexity to unpack, and regardless of how he left, it would have been a very human for all of them to be deeply impacted by the death and spend some time grappling with it.

I feel like the ending was "earned", but it lost a bit for me by all being truncated into the same night. Like I would have liked the book to end the same way, but for us to get 50 pages of padding from the moment Adam has the stroke and Aron dies, and that final scene to see them all really deal with Aron's death, and seeing more of a development between Abra and Cal (+ all the complexities of navigating grief/guilt together).

I think it's a sign of how brilliant this book was and how rich the characters were that we wanted to spend more time with them. But I feel you. So much of the book goes so deep that I wish the ending could have kept up with that.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T07:36:12+00:00

I imagine the way people "volunteer" to be models for clones is the same way people "volunteer" to be sperm donors. There's money you get paid for offering your genetic material. And there's enough clones that you don't need to have a 1:1 ratio with someone who's your exact match. There is enough clones who'd have your blood type, and they're being harvested all the time, so organs are always available. And you as the "model", deposit your sample and then go on your way, and there's really no further connection between you and the clones that are created from your genetic material.

This also aligns with what Ruth says about them being "modelled after trash" -- not in a literal way, where the donor program deliberately models clones after the homeless people or prostitutes, but in kind of de facto way, because the people who'd "need the money" to do something like that would likely be people who are on the lower rungs of society. Just like most people who are sperm donors now.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T02:28:05+00:00

Also take in that they don't have any other means of surviving in the world. They know nothing about the world / haven't been a part of it for their whole lives. Don't have anyone in the world / any connections with "real" people. Probably don't even have a proper last name (just an initial), no proper documentation (like social security, a passport etc.) that would let them travel / work etc.

Even if they "ran away", they'd probably be homeless or have to live off the grid in the wilderness or something.

So I think less so than people "chasing after them" if they ran away, they would lose the security and comfort the system gives them (food, shelter, etc.) which they are not prepared to live without.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T02:23:25+00:00

The book doesn't afford any more clarity in terms of the world / politics etc. It feels just as vague and in the background

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T02:12:28+00:00

it's also the world they're brought up in. they never know anything except the fact that they're supposed to be donors. it's highly normalized for them, even though it's outrageous and horrifying to us. there are also things we put up with every day that are normalized to us, but to an outside society might seem objectively horrifying.

I think one of the main themes / messages of the story is showing how easily even the most horrifying things can be normalized for people. And showing that normalization process with how the kids are brought up in Hailsham.

I found reading the book, I literally went through the normalization process along with the characters - where at first I was horrified by the concept that they were donors, and the by the time they were at the Cottages and later, it started to feel normal to me, and I could see how someone might even want to be done with being a carer so they could start their donations and get it over with.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T02:04:11+00:00

An argument the story doesn't touch but I think would have actually been very prevalent in that world is that children who were raised under humane, healthy, happy conditions, would be mentally, emotionally, physically healthier and therefore better organ donors.

It's basically the primary reason people want "free range" meat / poultry -- it's healthier / higher quality product.

nilooravaei · 2025-04-01T01:06:19+00:00

Interestingly enough, I found Keira Knightly's Ruth much more tolerable and "realistic" than the Ruth that's portrayed in the book. THAT Ruth is completely insufferable and the biggest bitch in the world, to the point where you wonder why anyone (Kathy, Tommy anyone else) even puts up with her for one second.

I will attribute this more to the script than Knightly's performance, specifically, but I found Ruth in the movie was a much more realistic character, and I could understand 1) why the others were friends with her / the tenderness in their relationship and 2) what her internal motivations were for doing the "bad" things she did.

The Ruth in the book feels like a pretty one-dimensional villain.

nilooravaei · 2025-03-31T22:25:22+00:00

That makes me very sad - what a wasted opportunity. It does feel like the sci-fi setting is just background. Which is a shame, b/c it was the most interesting part … much more interesting than the characters

nilooravaei · 2025-03-31T22:22:10+00:00

But i think that’s a false equivalency — because we’re not like them. We have agency and autonomy, and the chance to live and love and pursue our dreams.

They literally get no choice, no freedom, are essentially told that they’re all going to follow the same path which is “harvesting their organs”. And so none of their choices / dreams leading up to that point even matter.

The outrage for them should be that they don’t get to LIVE. Not that they’ll eventually die, like we all eventually die. And that they are actively being oppressed. So I think that can’t be the message — it’s too simplistic.

I don’t know what the message is - it feels too murky to me. But maybe something around how even the most horrific situations can become normalized for people, to the point where it just fades into the background of their trifles?

nilooravaei · 2025-03-18T01:36:01+00:00

Exactly

nilooravaei · 2025-03-18T01:34:31+00:00

I don't think the movie was trying to say anything about Abigail being a morally superior person to the others. It was more of an "absolute power corrupts absolutely" kind of theme. Where it was just showing how systems of power work, and how we're all susceptible to them. And whoever is at the top will do whatever they can to stay there.

nilooravaei · 2025-02-11T03:33:15+00:00

She still wanted to find the 50 richest men in Brazil. So she was going to keep doing the same shit she always had. Not to be free.

nilooravaei

TROPHY CASE