who only by moving can balance

Feelings the first: I've just had A finish Season 1 of Korra, and I'm going to be making him watch Spirited Away before Season 2, because that sequence is frankly one of the few things I like about Season 2, so. BUT. Having very recently watched the end of Book 3 of A:tLA with him, I Noticed a Thing about the end of Season 1 that I had not, previously, and then FEELINGS. There comes the point, in Book 3, where the Gaang have collectively decided that they're going to wait until after the comet... and don't bother telling Zuko, who consequently starts attacking Aang while everyone's building elaborate sandcastles in a desperate attempt to get people to take the end of the world seriously. There comes the point at which Aang snaps, says "Enough!", and blasts air down a corridor toward Zuko, knocking him out of it. This precipitates a sequence of events that culminate in Aang going off on a Journey of Discovery, by himself, in which he decides that this, this, is the principle on which he will not compromise, in the face of more of his past lives than he's ever previously talked to telling him he must. And the lion-turtle ex machina teaches him energybending, which solves his ethical dilemma and is very chronologically close to him finally getting control of the avatar state.

In Season 1 of Korra, the very first airbending move that Korra ever uses is that very same blast-down-the-corridor knock-someone-out-the-end. "Oh -- no -- you -- don't," she says, and airbends.

This is the narrative cue for her to go on her own Journey Of Discovery, to the South Pole, where she walks away from everyone because she can't face being around people and them telling her that Everything Will Work Out... and she connects with her past lives, all of them, and Aang ex machina teaches her energy-bending, and she achieves the avatar state, and -- it is all there, in that one moment of this-far-and-no-further, and that one airbending move.

Aang puts out the fires in the Earth Kingdom with the first waterbending move Katara teaches him. I still cry over that every time, too.

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Orphan Black is also a bunch of FEELINGS, also has spoilers (up to 5.07), and also comes with a content note for Significant Gore slightly beyond what one normally expects of the show, along with all the usual "everything is horrifying but I love all of them" caveats.

So we had Mrs S, really very recently, saying to Rachel, "There will come the day when you need us."

sebastienne and I had been side-eying, a little, the return of all the minor characters, and S. at least has been kind of unimpressed with the Endless Layers Of Conspiracy. As of this episode, though, I am loving how all the threads are getting tied up, how we're getting all the stories, how we're seeing what people decide to be -- we'd already been delighted about Kira getting agency and being treated as though she's independent and she matters and she can be trusted --

-- and then Rachel's eye. Rachel, who was promised family, who was promised autonomy, who was promised that she was no longer an experimental subject, who was lied to, who has the horror of the world come crashing down on her and realises she doesn't want this any more, she doesn't want this, just as Kira's getting autonomy from her family and Rachel's taking it away in turn --

-- well. Rachel's eye. Rachel has her eye because, last time Kira was in captivity, she and Cosima conspired to help Sarah put together a device to incapacitate and hopefully kill Rachel. She has the eye because of Kira, because Kira made all the arrangements -- via storytelling -- for Sarah to fire a pencil into Rachel's skull.

Rachel was given the replacement, without consciousnes or consent, and without being told what was done to her.

And in realising that, in realising how badly she's been lied to about respect and family, she makes her decision. Kira tells a story, again, via drawings, this time more sophisticated and much more aware of what she's doing -- and Rachel chooses autonomy too, finally. Not the (forgive me) sterile facsimile of autonomy offered by Neolution, but instead: she chooses to slip her minders (she had been promised she would have no more monitors; she was turned into a monitor, and goodness but wasn't the reveal of the mirrored-into-infinity stack of tablets a moment-of-dawning-horror reveal), she chooses to let Kira go, and she chooses to dig her eye back out of her skull with the people who put it there watching, as an unambiguous and final statement. The broken stem of the martini glass is a rather more sophisticated and adult tool than the pencil, perhaps, but oh the parallels between her and Kira, past and present, as she sedates Kira and sedates herself and thinks about freedom of choice and the right to consent.

I just. Wow.