I Watched The Legend of Korra, so I'm Reviewing It

Between lacking cable TV when it was airing and not being inclined to use…alternatives…since it was something I was highly certain I’d like and could safely purchase ‘blind,’ I’ve finally gotten around to watching The Legend of Korra. And yep, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

The tighter, more story-focused approach was a nice change of pace from The Last Airbender. You can tell this was originally supposed to be a mini-series, because it’s only the first season but still tells a complete story. It’s even self-contained enough that you could watch it without having seen Airbender. You wouldn’t get as much out of it, at least when it comes to the many nods to the original, but the meat of the story would still work on its own.

When I first heard the series was being extended, I’d assumed they were also extending the initial Republic City story as well, but that’s clearly not the case. Rather, it looks like they’ll tell a different story each season, which, again, is a neat change from the original show. Because it’s shorter it was also able to focus more on a specific theme, in this case prejudice, which was only somewhat touched on in the original show. That being said, I do think they could have done a little more in showing the discrimination and power imbalance between benders and non-benders. They did show it, obviously, with things like the Triads and the all-bender City Council, but personally, I didn’t feel completely sold on it being the reality of things. But that’s probably over-analyzing things. It’s like Doug Walker said a few times in his vlogs for Airbender – it only gets critiqued to that degree because it’s already a step above most kids’ shows. There was also a few things I didn’t completely like about the truth behind Amon, but that’s far too spoilery to elaborate here. Still, it was a strong, well-done story that was different enough from its predecessor, while the focus on the Avatar and the need for balance kept it connected to its predecessor, and I really enjoyed it.

The change to an urban, pseudo-1920s setting was also cool. It’s a definite contrast from the traditional East Asian aesthetic of the original, perhaps even too abrupt of a leap. But really, the first series already had airships, tanks, iron-hulled warships, and even a train, so cars, radios, and skyscrapers aren’t that much of a stretch when you think about it. Granted, you could argue that those were jarring in the original. But regardless, Korra’s setting was still interesting and well-designed, and again, a nice change from the original. Another limitation of having a shorter story was that we didn’t get to explore Republic City as much as we could’ve. There’s more story potential for things like the Triads, the politics of the city, or the myriad of social ills, like poverty, that plague it. But again, limited time, and for all I know some of it feature in later seasons.

The cast was well-done too. I think they did a really good job with Korra. She’s headstrong and rebellious like the creators described her, but it’s not overdone. She can be goaded into things, and chafes at having to be patient more often than not, but she can admit when she was wrong, is aware of her own faults, and isn’t fearless. Mako and Bolin are both likable, and have shades of Zuko and Sokka, respectively, without feeling like they’re basically version 2.0 of the latter. Asami could’ve been the annoying romantic third wheel or just a spoiled rich girl, but they made her useful and capable of holding her own in a fight, which was good. They go for the typical love triangle thing with Korra/Mako/Asami, which was annoying, but not overly so, and I liked that they didn’t make it a constant catfight between Asami and Korra. You get things like Asami saying “I like Korra” even while she’s chewing out Mako for being non-committal in their relationship. The supporting cast also worked well, especially the authority figures like Bei Fong, Tarrlock, and Tenzin, whose qualities made them foils for Korra. Tenzin was my personal favorite – you just feel for him sometimes, being the only one trying to keep this wacky bunch in line. Some of the rest were underdeveloped, which was unfortunate but understandable given the format they’re working with. In particular I was a little disappointed we didn’t get to see more of that homeless guy – he looked like a fun character.

So, to complete the cycle, yeah, I definitely enjoyed it. Not absolutely everything, but the stuff I didn’t was outweighed by what I did. I’d be looking forward to the next season even if the trailer didn’t make it look awesome. Which it does.

Anime Thoughts: But if You Seal the Gates, Won't the Titans Just Bring in Some Devious New Trick?

Attack on Titan [ep. 14 - Still Can't See: Night Before the Counterattack, Part 1]
Well, it looks like everyone in the Survey Corps is weird at best and batshit insane (he sniffs people!?) at worst. But given their line of work, I guess you do have to be a little off to agree to that kind of job. And I never said I was complaining. Because I’m not – that promises to be mighty interesting, or at least entertaining, and sure enough we’ll see more of them next time. I’m looking forward to it.

I didn’t expect it to happen, but this episode actually brought up some of the things I’ve wondered about before. It turns out the priest we saw in the first episode was part of the sect called the Wallists, who were only a fringe faith until the fall of Zhisanga (I’d assumed the priest was part of the mainstream religion of the setting, and that it had one). What’s important to here is that they apparently consider the walls the work of God. Which is interesting, because I’ve mentioned it before, but how exactly would you build walls this extensive, let alone in time to save a decent portion of humanity from the giant nudist cannibals, who’d presumably be a serious barrier to getting it done uninterrupted? Especially if their appearance was as sudden as we’ve been told. And where would you get enough stone? Not to mention the sheer logistics of the whole thing. That their origin may be something not human definitely makes a lot of sense. And it’s making me reconsider discarding the idea that something other than humans are responsible for the Titans. You know, because I didn’t flip-flop enough with my speculations while watching From the New World. I’d initially written the walls off as ‘suspension of disbelief’ and not that important to the central focus of the story, but it’s nice to see that it’s something that will be addressed at some point. The same thing with Eren killing the slavers as a kid. I ended up not commenting on it for the relevant episode the way I wanted to, but yeah, a nine-year-old (didn’t the episode say he was eleven? Eh, still way too young) rushing in and killing people is abnormal. Well…I write something like that, but then I think of how much shit goes down in the Third World, or even just the really crappy neighborhoods in western cities, and I start to doubt it. So I suppose it’s better to say that it’s abnormal for a kid raised in well-off circumstances like Eren to do something like that. Then again, we are talking about the guy whose father seems to be basing his parenting on Using Your Child to Further Your Own Ambition by Gendo Ikari, so again, maybe not so weird after all.

And like I said last time, this is definitely more like it. They had the trial, introduced the kinds of positions people would take when faced with something, or someone, who’s either their best chance of fighting the enemy yet, or the one that will doom them all, and are moving on. The story works better when it’s moving at a brisk, efficient pace, rather than dwelling on the same thing for too long. I’ve heard that it’s a new studio animating this and they were struggling, hence the need for a recap episode, and that probably explains the sluggish pacing of the Trost arc too. Regardless, things seem to be moving along now and hopefully they’ll continue that way.

Should've Gone with the Porn - The Uncanny Valley: Dragged In

Well that was different. It’s own trailer made it look like it’d be darker than it was, and Dragonbored had set my expectations of what the tone of the anthology would be. And that’s probably deliberate on both counts. It even started out with a typical ‘loser with a crappy job gets called on to save the world’ thing, but then it turns out the aliens just want our cats! Which in hindsight they were clearly hinting at, with the music playing in the clinic and the two customers both having cats (at least I assume the guy getting his pet back had a cat, since ‘Fluffy’ is a stereotypical cat name); plus, the aliens learned about us through the internet, and as we all know, everything on the internet is just incidental sideshows for its real purpose – porn, and cat videos. So in a sense it’s just an extended take on that joke, and while I did suspect it might be cats when the aliens said “this species,” I was sort of disappointed it wasn’t something weirder or more obscure. But that quickly changed, because the rest of the short was really funny. And even a bit sad – I thought Phelous in particular did a good job of acting really sad he’d lost his cat. And even though the rest mostly did their performances as straight-up jokes, it’s still true that we’d all be sad if we suddenly lost our cats. Which made the part where the aliens discover everything else about cat behaviour really funny. Because, as any cat owner can tell you, it’s all those obnoxious behaviours that leave you convinced your cat is deliberately being an asshole or has an evil agenda, not just those that look adorably hilarious in a YouTube video, that make cats endearing. That’s probably true of any pet, but it’s cats that dominate the world of online videos and memes, so there you go. So yeah, not what I expected, but that’s definitely the point. It was still funny, a lot of fun to watch, and a loving tribute to cats and pets in general. I’m curious to see what they’ll do with the next one.

Anime Thoughts: It'll only get worse from here

Attack on Titan [eps. 11-13 - Icon, Wound & Primal Desires: The Battle for Trost, Parts 7-9]
Now that’s more like it. These episodes were way more interesting and got me invested in whether Eren was going to succeed or not. They spent too long trapped in Trost just trying to get out, and then the stand-off with the garrison soldiers dragged on longer than it needed to, so it was great to see them introduce something and resolve it in what felt like the right amount of time. What really made it work, besides the fact they managed to succeed at something for the first time in the show, was how it was undercut by the looming spectre of the Colossal and Armored Titans. It creates the feeling that this could all be temporary, since the Colossal or Armored Titan could pop up at any moment and go *punt* ‘nice try.’ I like how the story uses the idea that no matter how much humanity might succeed, it may ultimately be fighting a losing battle as a way of creating tension. The characters aren’t the most well-developed, but they’ve built up at least some of them enough that they’re worth rooting for – though there’s been a serious shortage of Sasha since the Battle for Trost started and that damn well better get rectified. It’s a good balance between hoping for the best and wanting the characters to succeed, and knowing that they’re vastly outclassed and potentially at the mercy of their enemy at every moment, possibly with little chance for them to really do anything besides go down fighting.

Which is the great thing about this show. It’s an action show on the surface, and you can enjoy it for the fights where characters take down monsters while swinging around Spiderman-style, and the novel ways they devise to better fight the Titans. But then it has the deeper level that looks at the way humans react in desperate situations – the way ‘every man for himself’ attitudes can flare up at moments of crisis, the paranoia when they think the enemy could be in their very midst, the extreme measures that need to be taken. Having Eren lose control of his Titan form wasn’t the most novel twist, but it was still a good use of ‘to fight monsters, you need to create monsters’ and the dangers that entails. Plus, it’s one more hint that the nature and origin of the Titans may be more sinister than everyone realizes. Suffice to say, I no longer believe my earlier suspicions that they were aliens/alien biological weapons or some kind of divine punishment. After all, who says Eren is the first person to transform into a Titan and lose control?

Not that I think we’re going to get answers anytime soon. I still wanna see what’s in the basement, but if that’s going to involve retaking Eren’s hometown, not to mention making it back there in the first place, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. There’s enough else that’s good about this series to keep me watching, but the Mystery of the Basement just adds one more reason to.

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet [eps. 11-13, Supreme Ruler of Terror, Moment of Decision & Legend of the Verdurous Planet]

I can’t think of a good lead-in, so I’m…telling you that, for some reason. But anyway. The Alliance-by-proxy was unsurprisingly Borg-like, what with how it greeted Pinion’s fleet with basically ‘you will be assimilated, resistance is futile,’ and as totalitarian and dogmatic as you’d expect, defining happiness as how well everyone understands their position and performs their role, and having the skewed perception that people on Earth ‘fear’ the Hideauze. As far as I can tell, nobody really ‘fears’ them. They’re wary of them and avoid antagonizing them, but they also accept that if they don’t bother the Hideauze, the Hideauze won’t bother them; there’s no perception of them as an active threat. But then again, in this case the Alliance probably defines ‘living in fear of’ as ‘not actively trying to exterminate’ – you know, because any right-thinking person would instinctively find the Hideauze abhorrent and desire to wipe them out of existence, so fear must be the only reason they aren’t.

It also highlights one of the big ironies of the series, the fact that both sides actually believe in cooperation. The Gargantians, of course, believe that everyone should be included, and differences will only make them richer for it. The Alliance also wants all humans to come together for the betterment of their race. Problem is, it has a specific vision of what that means, to the point where they exclude people who do not meet a specific definition of ‘human.’ The theme here isn’t so much ‘cooperation is better than hostility’ as it is how noble purposes can be twisted into something harmful, and the danger of thinking your way is the best way, becoming so invested in it that it becomes ideology and anyone who feels otherwise no longer just disagrees with you but is repugnant, even outright blasphemous. When you get down to it, what basis does the Alliance really have for despising the Hideauze other than ‘turning into a space crustacean is icky’? And that touches on the idea of what, exactly, makes us human. We didn’t spring out of the primordial ooze as nearly-hairless bipeds – we evolved over time into that form as a means of adapting to our environment, which is exactly what the proto-Hideauze faction was trying to do; they even called themselves ‘Evolvers.’ It wasn’t necessarily ‘natural’ evolution, since it was probably at least somewhat directed and controlled, but since humans didn’t always exist in their current form, which the Alliance considers ‘pure,’ what makes changing it somehow worse or ‘not how humans do things’ than using machines to overcome our limitations? It’s a question with no right answer, which shows just how arbitrary discrimination and prejudice are.

Also, my speculation that Amy might die so that everyone could learn how bad fighting was? It would’ve made no sense when you think about it. Everyone doesn’t need to learn fighting is bad – the Gargantians already know that, and the people of the pseudo-Alliance were presumably just brainwashed by Striker. It’s Ledo who needs to learn something, and it’s not that fighting is bad, but that you can make your own choices, and since he was already starting to do by virtue of encountering a different way of life than the one he’d known, all that was left was for him to recognize that by rejecting Striker’s vision for humans on Earth. Amy’s death would serve no purpose in that kind of character arc, and as for losing someone close to him to complete the coming-into-his-own journey, Chamber makes way more sense since he’s known the latter for so much longer, presumably his whole life. He was basically Ledo’s mentor. And his character arc ties into another major theme of how each generation needs to make its own path, rather than blindly following the course of those who came before, which may not even be relevant anymore.

Overall, it was a good show. It didn’t quite live up to what it could’ve been, but it still had some good themes, even if ‘we’re all the same,’ or at least ‘we’re not so different’ and ‘you need to follow your own path in life’ have been done before, and the setting was still colorful and fun. Not the best thing ever, but I’m still glad I watched it.

Flowers of Evil [eps. 12-13]

Not much to say about episode 12 except that yes, in turns out Nakamura’s parents, or rather, her dad since her mother’s no longer around, isn’t abusive, just neglectful. Not that he’s necessarily wrong in finding her difficult to understand, but he doesn’t seem to be trying very hard. I’m not a parent, so I won’t dwell too much on this, but I still think it’s plenty fair to say he isn’t doing a good job of trying to help her. And he’s not the only one. That’s the reason I’m not completely happy with the phrasing I used last time, about how Nakamura is responding to her situation “in completely the wrong way.” It’s still true, strictly speaking, but it puts too onus on her alone. As much as she has responsibility for her own behaviour, you can’t blame her quite so much when she’s lacking in support from her peers, teachers, and the adults in her family. It’s also uncertain how much of what she feels is frustration with her present circumstances and how much is actual clinical depression. And now it feels weird that that never occurred to me until I was typing that sentence. The boredom of living in a small town and typical teenage frustrations with one’s peers and angst over whether you’ll ever do anything with your life explain her feelings to some extent. But if she has depression that adds a whole other dimension and really would go a long way towards clarifying why she acts the way she does.

Also, points for Ai. I can’t think of any ulterior reason she’d have to ask Yamada and what’s-his-name about Kasuga, so the only explanation I can see is that she’s in some way concerned about him. Not that I think she’s suddenly supremely worried about his well-being or anything, but she still felt the need to ask about him instead of writing it off as a weirdo being weird. I may have been wrong about her. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Well, that turned out a bit longer than I thought it would. But anyway, episode 13. Spending a few minutes at the start just lingering on Kasuga being in Nakamura’s room was one thing; the anticipation and ‘man, this is such a bad idea!’ made it uncomfortable, which is exactly what it was meant to be. We all know what happened the last time Kasuga was alone and did something ill-advised, and Nakamura is unlikely to be as forgiving as Saeki was. But then we got the constant flashbacks like the episode was a recap on fast-forward (or in some cases, rewind), and then glimpses of things that hadn’t happened yet with voiceovers like in the next-episode previews, and I was just confused. Then: ‘End of Part 1.’ And I thought to myself, ‘oh, that makes sense.’ I’m not sure why I was assuming the show would somehow tell the whole story, since I knew shortly after I started watching that the manga has ten volumes so far, so why wouldn’t I assume it was only going to cover part of it? Granted, it did sort of feel like it was building towards an ending; the way things had played out up to now, the story could’ve been wrapped up at this point.

But it wasn’t, and if the preview hinted at one thing, it’s that shit hasn’t gone down yet, not even close. From the look of things, Nakamura’s going to get worse, Saeki will become jealous, perhaps even vindictive, and if the end of the episode is anything to go by, Kasuga’s just turned to the dark side. Some of the stuff that I wrote earlier feels premature now. Sure, if things had ended here, it would ultimately be a minor episode in his life, but since now it’s clear things have just gotten started, well, he may be more screwed than I thought. Worse, rather than making ill-advised decisions because he’s struggling between doing the right thing and fear of the consequences the former will bring, which is at least understandable, it looks like he’s actively embraced the part of him that feels anger and frustration. Normally, it’d be great that he wants to help Nakamura, but it looks like he’s just going to encourage her self-loathing and insecurity, albeit under the guise that it’s what makes them better than the ‘shit faces’ they’re surrounded by. It’s the same as what she was doing to him, only in reverse, and it’s interesting to see how the power dynamic between them has changed. Sure, Nakamura could still tell everyone about what he did, but that was never really the point; it was just a way to get closer to what she thought was a kindred spirit. Once he ‘rejected’ her by choosing not to run away while they were on the mountain, she gave up. Now that she’s symbolically defeated and powerless, Kasuga’s the one in control. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to use that power in a productive way.

So yeah, I really hope they make a second season. There’s so much wrong going on here, but that’s what makes it so compelling to watch.

Say, whatever happened to the little girl? - The Uncanny Valley: Dragonbored

So like the title says, I watched Dragonbored, the first skit in Channel Awesome’s 5^th-year anniversary anthology, The Uncanny Valley. This assumes you’ve seen it, so yeah, spoilers. Overall, it was a good look at how we distract ourselves with things like fantasy and video games (and fantasy video games) to escape the tedium of our everyday lives and how it can lead us to forget what the real world can offer. Barbarian (I forget everyone’s names) had a point – “this world has so much to offer and yet you treat it like a burden.” We live in an age where so much of the world is so easily accessible in one form or another, so many different people, places, and ideas are there to be met and seen as never before, yet we so easily become focused on the same-old-same-old routine, turning to artificial worlds to alleviate boredom and using the internet as a means to veg out, rather than explore and encounter new things (yeah, that last part isn’t explicitly in the short, but it fits the general idea). But at the same time, there are limits like international borders and needing money to experience much of it, hence why we need to devote a substantial part of our lives to our jobs. Something that Barbarian’s learned, presumably the hard way, once he’s become acclimatized and just as worn out by an everyday routine as Jerk was.

But that’s more of a ‘bigger picture’ thing than what the short is actually about, which is the same thing on a more personal level. You can infer the stuff from last paragraph in Barbarian’s speech to Jerk, but in practice he was talking more about Jerk’s more immediate circumstances. Even within that narrow sphere there was lots of room for the latter to improve things, but he was squandering it. He felt entitled to more than he had but he blew off his responsibilities, ignored his girlfriend, and was rude to his co-workers. Really, I nicknamed him Jerk because he was kind of unsympathetic – being unhappy with your circumstances is one thing, but taking it out on others is another. To be fair, the party was held without telling him and they ate and drank some stuff that were his to say they can’t, but it still made the point that his colleagues were willing to include him in a more social context, or to be included in something he organized, which he failed to realize. He clearly had issues he needed to work through, and people who expressed a willingness to help him, but he chose to instead ignore it all and then acted slighted when someone else got everything he wanted. Barbarian may have been a fish-out-of-water with medieval-esque attitudes, but he was succeeding because he was confident, outgoing, and, albeit with the aforementioned out-moded attitudes, treated others well. That was the lesson Jerk failed to see – he can’t expect things to come to him, he has to work for them. You know, like he worked to create such a strong, high-level character in Skyguard. He kept trying to make a point that all of Barbarian’s achievements were actually his, which is true, and that makes the lesson doubly true, since his in-game character is a manifestation of everything he needed to succeed. He was doing in the game what he could’ve been doing in real life. Of course, you don’t have to be an extrovert to be successful, but you still need to believe in what you want, and at least make it clear to others.

                                         

The ending also surprised me a little. I’d figured Jerk and Barbarian would both learn their lesson – Barbarian that this world may be exciting, but it has its own limitations, Jerk that Barbarian has something to teach him about success, and they’d switch places. But they seem to be going for a Twilight Zone style, what with the framing device of a narrator, the similar style of title, and the ‘careful what you wish for’ moral of the ending, so it actually makes sense.

That being said, there were a few things that bugged me. One was how Jerk’s girlfriend was so easily enamored with Barbarian, to the point of giving a pass to not just things like a chattel comparison but his assertion that women are somehow special and not people with their own strengths, faults, and personalities like everyone else. Now, I’ve seen enough of Doug Walker’s views on gender elsewhere in his work to be certain this isn’t an expression of his own opinions, just the sort of values you’d expect someone like Barbarian to have. And, given the short length and narrow scope of the story, the important thing is that Jerk is destroying everything around him, including his relationships, and that’s what’s most important about his girlfriend, narrative-wise. But when that’s often the case with female characters, even when there’s no reason for it, it still grates. I’m also a little iffy on the part with the boss and Barbarian, specifically how the boss talks about this being the “post-Obama” age and “we” (as in, black people) have power now. Obviously, yeah, there’s still a long way to go before people of color can be called equal, and I don’t think anyone involved was trying to say otherwise. Presumably the point was that everyone has something to contribute, and they were going for a role-reversal joke with the boss calling Barbarian “my ethnic friend.” I guess I just but I didn’t see the point of doing it that way. Third, there was that joke about the different meanings of ‘gay.’ I don’t know if Jerk calling a bunch of shirtless men hanging out together “gay” was meant to be part of how generally unlikeable he was – now he’s homophobic too! – but the part where Barbarian put his arms around the other guys, said “then gay men are we” and they reacted uncomfortably seemed unnecessary. Again, I didn’t see the point since Barbarian’s values dissonance is already well-established.

So yeah, there were a few things I didn’t like about it, and stories about fictional characters entering the real world, or the consequences of taking escapism too far, have been done before, but it was a fun watch and I’ll definitely check out the next short.

Anime Thoughts: Wait, only Saeki's parents called the police? Not Kasuga's?

Flowers of Evil [eps. 10-11]

When Saeki reacted to Nakamura’s claims about why Kasuga wore her gym uniform on their date and what else he did with it with ‘I don’t care, as long as it was because he cared about me!’, she started to seem almost too forgiving. Seriously, does nothing she hears about this pile of insanity faze her? But hey, that’s her choice, and it’s not like it’s a bad thing that she doesn’t jump to conclusions, since apart from the fact that he actually was wearing the uniform, everything else Nakamura said was BS. And since she admitted to Saeki that her offer to be friends was insincere and that she lied to Kasuga, no doubt Saeki’s realized anything Nakamura says should be taken with a grain of salt. And, still, I think that’s the point – Saeki isn’t a judgemental person, and is willing to accept people as they are – she outright tells Kasuga as much. This is just her following through on that and not suddenly changing her mind the moment she learns something unpleasant.

Which is something Kasuga doesn’t seem to have realized. At the start of episode 11 he’s spent a whole month in a funk, avoiding Saeki, convinced his life is over, and generally becoming withdrawn. It’s a difficult and guilt-ridden time for him, especially now that he’s been found out, so it’s understandable that he’d be bummed out so much, especially when, as someone who appears to be comfortably middle-class, this is probably the worst thing he’s gone through. But at the same time, the world didn’t end. He may have destroyed his chances of having a relationship with Saeki, but she’s still forgiven him. His parents were disappointed and upset, but they haven’t disowned him. The only people who know he’s responsible at all are the few who should know (and Nakamura). It was wrong, and probably something that’ll bother him for the rest of his life – I know I’ve done a number of things when I was his age or younger that still make me cringe (I’ve never stolen a girl’s gym clothes, but I have said some pretty insensitive things) – but he hasn’t screwed himself over as much as he thinks. He may not have the life experience and perspective to realize it yet, but in the grand scheme of things, this is a bump in the road. And there’s nothing stopping him from moving away for college or a post-graduation job, so yes, contrary to what he thinks, he can, in fact, ‘get outta this town.’

But enough about Kasuga. I’ve been wondering when we’ll get to find out more about Nakamura. In episode 10, when Saeki called her house, the way her dad talked made it sound like her parents may be neglectful, rather than outright abusive as I was previously assuming, but nothing other than that. Now that the issue of Saeki’s gym uniform has been resolved and Kasuga’s clued in to how Nakamura feels, hopefully we’ll finally get to see just what makes her tick. I stand by my assessment from the first post on this show, but it can’t be said enough that she’s reacting to it in completely the wrong way, and I really want to see just why that is. When she told off Kasuga in his dream, I even started to wonder if she’s going to commit suicide, since he, effectively, rejected her by choosing not to run off with her. And now that the person she pegged as the only one who might ‘get’ her has turned away, presumably she’d feel like she has nothing left. Since he’s finally about to do what she wanted all along, I suspect that might change, but I suppose we’ll see.