#and your tonally tame-looking episode

[yourlocaltrylingual]

these sure were episodes that were broadcast

#doctor who #on the one hand the new duo is amazing #ncuti especially #but on the other the plot??? #what the hell is this #i really don't vibe with the fantasy angle and it's kind of a bummer #like the giggle was fine and all as a special but if the entire season is like this 💀 #save me steven moffat #and your tonally tame-looking episode

[magnorious]

Review: ‘A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers’, Percy Jackson Episode 5

**Spoiler Alert for the entire book!**

I would like to start this review off on the nature of adaptations and when to go astray, given the less-than-stellar dip in quality of episode 4. Inevitably, details must change from the source material, some things are unfilmable. The source material in question here is in first person, which leaves so much of the story outside the protagonist’s head unwritten.

Had this season been given, say 10 episodes, and worked to establish the side characters we watch fight and die in the name of the gods and their friends later down the line, no one would have complained. Characters I won’t name (but iykyk) that got criminally little ‘screen time’ during Percy’s POV in the later books, only to have incredibly tragic demises were sad enough. Now imagine if, assuming the Disney show can accomplish filming all five books, we got to see these characters grow for all five seasons.

The era of TV we find ourselves in treats filler as universally bad and unacceptable. Plopping down on your couch on a weeknight to watch an off-beat episode of that cop drama you love or that addictive doctor show, or teen romance, that didn’t require your full attention all the time because every scene was important to the plot doesn’t happen anymore. An episode that was funny or charming or a romantic little side quest putting the characters we love in interesting circumstances is now far and few between. It still told the grand story, even if it didn’t service the grand plot. That’s the nature of television.

The filler everyone complains about is when it’s uninteresting, contrived, and very clearly for no other reason than to pad the runtime. Taking a C-list monster and giving her an unnecessary monologue and a need to ‘hunt’ that wasn’t in the book? Boring filler.

Cutting back to camp and really selling us on how Luke is an awesome dude looking out for all the younger kids so he can twist the knife later? Good filler! He’s the main villain of the series (besides you know who) and we got so little of him in the books because it was limited to Percy’s POV. Build his relationships with Chiron, Beckendorf, Silena, Clarisse, the Stolls, and the other demigods he ends up turning Dark Side with him. Make him the lovable everyman because he really did love the kids. He hated how the gods treated them. Die hard book fans, if the writers really went for it and understood why his character does what he does, would have loved it.

Now onto the episode that I was hoping and praying would be more like episode 3 than 4.

So. They included the snipping of the thread. And Percy wasn’t there to see it, nor was it at all as creepy and foreboding as it should have been. I kept waiting for them to flash back to Percy’s experience in the river with the naiad and they didn’t. Maybe they ran out of under-water effects budget. Percy’s “maybe my dad does love me” tonal whiplash is disappointing since 90% of the river scene was lost (and he didn’t even come out of the water dry).

Ares’ casting isn’t what I pictured but it fits really well and I can’t place why. His features don’t really feel *godly*. Him starting Twitter wars is wonderfully petty and absolutely in-character. He just acts like an unhinged jerk, not the God of War, as funny and entertaining as it is.

It is also disappointing that Annabeth is the one that snarks to Ares and not Percy, because his attitude is what eggs on their big fight on the beach while she and Grover actively try to tame Percy’s temper. The episode, to this point, is *fine*.

Everything after… I was laughing at the absurdity. The absolute deadpan confusion on their faces when “What is Love” starts playing like the mixer accidentally edited in a track from their Spotify. The set designers forgetting that “Waterland” is a waterpark, not just an amusement park. Grover being unrecognizably sly and confident in front of Ares when he wasn’t supposed to be there at all. Some of the dry attempts at humor, like Percy’s “I think I heard this at an orthodontist” line, not in itself funny, but his dry delivery was.

Grover’s ongoing conversation trying to probe Ares is hilarious, even if that’s not Grover on screen. It’s not bad, it’s just… not Grover. Percy and Annabeth’s jaunt and awkward exposition and line delivery in the Tunnel of Love is also *fine*. Them hyperfocusing on the Fates’ string this episode is another *interesting* change and so is Percy’s second attempt to sacrifice himself in a scene that’s way more dramatic than it needed to be. Boy is all teary-eyed convinced he’s going to die here in this trap when, in the book, he was trying to get Annabeth to move her behind because she was petrified by robotic spiders. She has her come-to-Jesus moment here, which was sorely needed for this version of her character who, up to this point, had very little depth.

And there are no robot spiders. Did they not have the budget for robot spiders? Is Percy not allowed to have the rest of his powers? Were they too afraid of giving Annabeth a phobia? Did they just desperately need to inject some angst into this scene? All of the angst, to the sound of heartbreaking violins in a score that also went way too hard. Nobody seriously thought Percy was going to bite the dust here, did they?

Overall, this is better than 4, but not as good as 3, if I had to rank them. If you pretend this isn’t supposed to be the first season of at least five, Grover likely doesn’t seem like a problem. His whole arc, across all five books, is gaining self-confidence and courage. He can’t grow into a brave Lord of the Wild if he starts his journey back-talking the God of War.

Annabeth not having her entirely useless panic attack over the spiders and forcing Percy to have to save them was the main takeaway from the original trip to Waterland. She’s not perfect, but this flaw is also entirely outside of her control, it’s in her blood as a child of Athena. It’s ridiculous that someone as smart and strong and cunning as she is can be petrified by spiders – but that’s the point. 

The commentary on how the gods, as a family, constantly backstab each other was interesting. Not sure that this episode was the best place for it, but it’s nice that it exists.

The changes that were made were entertainingly confusing. It was not what I ordered, but I didn’t hate what I was served. Ares is easily the best part of this episode, but it is glaringly obvious that this show, whether by budget or the Powers That Be, is allergic to action scenes.

Here’s to hoping they saved all their eggs to drop in the basket of the big climactic beach brawl, because this is still an action-adventure series, not just adventure.

#pjo series #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #review

[moomingitz]

I just finished Jak II last night, so I'll give my random thoughts and opinions both it and the first game(I played both back to back) while they're still fresh in my mind. Most of them concerns the second game in the trilogy. Also, I played the original PS2 releases on a CRT television set, because not only did I not want to deal with the potential problems with hooking up an old system on a modern smart TV, but I wanted to play them as they were intended to be played:

- These games look gorgeous on a CRT screen and they aesthetically still hold up very well to this day. I really do mean it when I say that these games, style and story wise, are tailor made for an animated series adaptation.

- While I really do like the more dark and dystopian direction the series took after the first game, and that it's an example of doing that sort of thing right is a hill I will die on, I still wish we could have seen more of the timeline in the TPL before they made the shift. I wanted to see more about the sages, the cast's lives and backgrounds in Sandover Village, and learn more about Gol and Maia, before the switch. I think we can all agree the transition could have been smoother. And again, I liked the direction they went with after the first game, so it’s not like I hated the change. But, I really do think the series would benefit from a remake, reboot, or being adapted into an animated series, as it would allow for a good opportunity to better ease people into the eventual tone and setting change later on. Like retcon certain things, add several hints and foreshadowing to Jak's real origin like maybe his explorer uncle being well aware that Jak is his descendant from the future, have the knowledge and research of the sages have an effect on what happens in the future(like in the fan fic, "Captive Voice", where surviving documents of Gol and Maia's experiments with dark eco became the blueprint for the Dark Warrior Program), and so on. Maybe even have something of an epilogue of the first game's story that serves a segway into the second game's story. Little changes and details like that would make a difference in helping the overall trilogy feel more cohesive, and even help make the tonal and setting shift hit harder.

- Playing through the first game feels bittersweet. What I mean by that is now having hindsight knowing that Jak will eventually go through some pretty traumatic shit, and seeing this as a happier period in his life where being a hero and adventuring was this romanticized thing to look forward to, when in reality it's something that would eventually take a very real emotional and mental tole on someone especially that young. Kind of like going back and watching the earlier episodes of Steven Universe. You know what’s coming.

- I don't think people understand just how much of a difference good voice acting, voice direction, and cinematography can make in a video game, especially story driven ones. I think the voice acting alone is one of the crucial reasons why Naughty Doge was able to pull off taking the series into a more mature direction and making Jak no longer a silent protagonist to project yourself onto. There are dark gritty serious games even today where it's hard for me to take seriously because the voice acting in it completely fucks it all up. Gonna keep saying it, but these games would translate very well into an animated adaption.

- Despite the whole darker and mature shift they took after the first game, Jak II is actually very tame by today's standards. Remove the occasional cursing and raunchy humor and the game, tone and story wise, feels just like an action cartoon that would have aired on Toonami(in a good way).

- Jak II has a reputation for being really difficult, but in all honesty I actually didn't really have a hard time getting through it. Don't get me wrong there are difficulty spikes in the game, and how the check points work in some of the missions is bull, but I think people tend to exaggerate the game's difficulty(unless you're playing hero mode). I pretty much breezed right through the first act of the game, and it was only until I got to the second act where the difficulty spikes began for me, but I still managed to get through them with some practice. While I did used to play and beat this game a lot during my edgy teen years, this was still my very first time playing in over 15 years, yet I had no where as much of a hard time as I used to back then. Hell, I only died twice during the final boss fight; the first time was on purpose so I could get full health back, and the second time was due to trial and error. I actually died more during the final boss in the first game! Playing the original PS2 release on an older CRT TV probably also helped, since it controls the best for obvious reasons.

Yes, the game can be difficult and unfair in some places(fuck that ring race with Erol and the ambush in the water slums), but it's no where near the level of a typical NES game. As long as you take your time, strategize, memorize the hub areas, and utilize the combat and weapon system that doesn't just involve spamming the jump spin and shoot move(like I used to), you'll get through the game just fine. Or just don't be DarksydePhil.

- I'm gonna have to agree with people that Haven City is just a bit too freaking big to traverse around. It's not as egregious compared to other sandbox like games, and I had the place pretty much memorized, but a warp gate or two could have made a pretty big difference in cutting down the time going from mission to mission.

- There's not really much of an incentive to further explore Jak II after you beat the main story campaign, unfortunately. So unless you're into the lore or world building of the game you won't really get much else out from it after you beat the game.

- Dark Jak is, unfortunately, very underutilized. The only time I really used that form was during the final boss fight and that was about it. Guess that's another thing this series shares with the Sonic franchise back in the mid 2000s when it comes to dark edgy forms...

****

Despite some minor gripes, I still enjoyed Jak II. Going to start Jak 3 later today or after I get home from work tomorrow. Thinking of playing Jak X and Daxter afterwards. I might try out The Lost Frontier... might.

#Jak and Daxter #Jak II #video games #opinions #personal

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 91: Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

“That’s me, the nice one.”

Considering Steven’s entire personality revolves around putting others first, I’m amazed that it’s taken this long for a “it’s great to help out others, but remember to take care of yourself” episode to come along. The closest thing we’ve had so far is Sworn to the Sword, but even that was more about Connie learning the concept of prioritizing others too highly above herself than actually practicing it.

It’s a tricky subject, because we should be kind and helpful when we can, and taking time for yourself is something that can come across as selfish or unfeeling in a culture where selflessness is virtuous. Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service handles its lesson beautifully by leaning in hard on the importance of balance, rather than suggesting that focusing on the needs of others or the needs of yourself are the only options. And while I’m sure this is a moral that could be taught with the Crystal Gems (Pearl or Ruby in particular) I think our human protagonist is a terrific choice for two reasons.

The first reason is that Steven’s problem of overextending himself to help others usually involves helping the Gems, the people that should be helping him. This is a whole can of worms that will be talked about way more come Steven Universe Future, but if the Gems were able to see that Steven needs to cool it and take care of himself, they would’ve taught him that a long time ago. It isn’t until What’s Your Problem? that one of them realizes that they maybe shouldn’t be putting so much pressure on him to comfort them, and it’s sad but not surprising that this revelation comes from his sister instead of one of his moms.

The second reason is that giving this lesson to a minor character like Kiki allows Steven more leeway to ignore it. So he does.

I've been Kiki. I’m sure a lot of us have. My go-to instinct is to try to help people (I mean I ended up a librarian) but it took me a while to realize that it was exacerbating my own depression to put all the worries of others on my plate. It didn't mean I stopped caring about people, but I had to learn healthy boundaries to keep my own head above water. Having similar friends means I've also been Steven, trying to help others who don't know how to stop helping others, without realizing until later that we had the same problem.

In that sense, this episode about pizza dreams becomes monumentally important to the series, because it’s Steven’s entire problem in a nutshell. Kiki learns the episode’s lesson in a running sequence that evokes Stevonnie's joyous sprint in Alone Together, but the ending is undermined by cutting back to Jenny and Steven for one last joke. I hated that cut when I first watched Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, because the episode was funny enough that it was okay to end on a sweet moment instead of shoving another gag in at the last second, but watching it again I'm struck by what it forebodes. Kiki is running free, but Steven is asleep on the boardwalk, because even though he helped Kiki figure out that she needs to stop overwhelming herself with the needs of others, he has overwhelmed himself with her needs. And he’ll continue to try and help everyone he sees no matter what. And the further we go, the unhealthier it gets. We see in the very beginning of this story that he understands the value of me-time, preparing a nice dinner for one in his room, but you get the sense that he stops thinking he deserves it right around the time he hears that his mother shattered Pink Diamond.

Let’s talk about Kiki for a second, because she’s such a perfect lead for this story. We don’t know much about her coming into her debut focus episode, especially compared to her twin. She’s nice, but a lot of people in Steven’s universe are nice. She seems to have a stronger work ethic than Jenny, which may or may not be why we don’t see her as often in social situations. She enjoys wordplay enough to not just tell puns but provide commentary on them, which makes her a winner in my book. And most recently, we saw she was willing to pretend to be in love with Ronaldo to help out in Restaurant Wars. I’m not quite mean enough to say feigning attraction to Ronaldo is a sign of true altruism, but I will say she’s way more open to doing whatever it takes to help others than he was.

It isn’t the deepest background of a recurring character, but it’s enough to make it understandable that she’d do Jenny’s work for her. From there it’s a simple matter of going overboard and bringing Steven with her.

It's a little weird talking so much about huge character arcs and intricate plotting in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, because the episode itself is super silly. The dream sequences leading up to the finale are hilarious, showing once again how good this crew is at capturing the wacky nuances of dreams, but this time without the tonal interruptions of Lion 3 or Chille Tid. Steven is an expert dreamer by now, and relishes helping his friend while being a huge dork. This is the second episode in a row where a distinct anime influence is felt, this time evoking more specific inspirations, from the title to the absurd Evangelion reference at the climax, with plenty of shonen gags in between. Steven is ostensibly a consumer of children’s media, and while I hope he hasn’t watched Evangelion at his age, it makes sense that his dreams would reflect that in the same way his story in Garnet’s Universe references the likes of Chrono Trigger and Usagi Yojimbo.

Silliness also pervades the editing; the early cut between Steven beginning his meticulously prepared dinner to snoring on the couch with pizza dripping everywhere is my favorite, but I like that we mix it up with actually seeing Steven immediately fall asleep after declaring himself a dream warrior. The dramatic music and intense closeup on Kiki as she explains that she has the same nightmare every night is a funny way to reveal how bad her problem really is while showing how she’s repressing it,.

Then of course there are the jokes. Steven Universe is no stranger to comedy, but rare is an episode with with this many jokes told by characters, rather than situational humor common to television. This is another reason why I appreciate Kiki’s presence, because again, she’s all about that wordplay, capping Steven’s series of pizza-based gags by pointing out that “time to cut the cheese” isn’t a pun (which is debatable; if you define puns as jokes that exploit homonyms, she’s right, but if you include alternate definitions of identical words in that definition, she’s wrong). The highlight, of course, is “pepperanhas.”

I actually think this much humor sort of hurts the message, though. I understand why it’s so prevalent in a dream episode like this, but Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service has a solid message that can be hard to absorb when there’s gag after gag to keep you laughing. The message isn’t hard to understand—the episode has subtlety, but the lesson itself isn’t subtle—and I don’t think any show should preachily value the moral over the plot, but it makes for a tonally imbalanced outing. I still like this story, but it’s just off enough that despite its many strengths and its surprisingly solid place in the overall story of the series, I don’t love it.

That said, I have no complaints about the character work: this is the second episode with just two voice actors (after Open Book), even if one of these actors is voicing for two, so it makes sense that we get a little extra focus on the characters than usual. I’ve already talked about Kiki’s people-pleasing and inability to quash her self-sacrificial tendencies, but this is also a fantastic snapshot of Steven at this point in the show. He's still a goofball, and he's still a good friend, but he's dealing with more nuance than he’s had to in the past. I love his instinct to panic and apologize for going into Kiki's brain without permission, considering his good intentions hurt another friend in The New Lars. And I love the tiny taste of teen attitude when he's exhausted and exasperated and snaps at Kiki with bitter comedy instead of childish anger (which he also apologizes for). For all the silliness, he’s maturing.

Plus, we don't even get that clean of an ending for Kiki, despite her running free in the last scene. After the big confrontation with Pizza Jenny (full name Pizza Jenny Pizza) clears Kiki's mind up, we see that her problem isn't fully gone. While looking around the landscape of her brain, she has to follow up "All the cheese is gone!" with "...well, most of it." You can't snap your finger and fix everything, and Kiki is bound to have lingering issues when it comes to helping herself versus helping others. It’s truly challenging to overstate how prescient this small townie episode ends up being to Steven Universe Future.

This is Jenny’s third episode in a row, and it finally addresses a strange character beat of hers that’s been mentioned, but never seen: that she’s “the evil twin.” She’s more social, a Cool Kid who bends the rules with the freedom that comes with her car, and she apparently conflates liking metal bands to being bad (come to think of it, it’s weird she doesn’t bring any metal influence to Sadie Killer and the Suspects’ sound), but none of those traits qualifies as “evil.” She’s dismissive of Lars at times, but who wouldn’t be? And remember, Jenny was the one who stepped in front of Garnet’s fist to save Steven in Joy Ride, and Jenny was the one whose instinct was to help Stevonnie when their car stalled in Beach City Drift. So it’s about time we actually get some evidence that she’s any sort of bad twin.

It’s pretty tame, which I appreciate given her consistent depiction as a good person. At worst, she’s taking advantage of her sister’s nature, but seeing how the situation resolves it’s more likely that she’s just being selfish and thoughtless than cruelly manipulative. Which isn’t great, but she’s a teenager, which explains not only her behavior here but her desire to exaggerate how bad she is to define herself, especially as a twin who’s bound to be compared to her kind sister. And when Kiki stands up for herself, Jenny is fine picking up the slack (despite the perfect teen reasoning that Kiki likes running so there’s no reason not to run and deliver pizzas).

Was Kiki named so that this episode’s title could eventually work? I have no idea. But I wish we saw more of her than we do: it took ninety-one episodes for her to get a focus episode, and she won’t have another speaking role until Pool Hopping, which is an absurd fifty-two episodes away. Townies in general are intermittent figures in the show’s balancing act of the magical with the mundane, but she’s a remarkably ancillary despite her similarities with Steven. They both work hard, care hard, and joke hard, and I feel like there are more stories to be told from their friendship. Kiki ends up going to the prom with Stevonnie in the non-canon comics, but I wish these kinds of stories had more room in the show. Do I prefer Gem shenanigans? Sure. But Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service is a fine example of how Beach City shenanigans are still worth exploring, and ends up being perhaps the most important townie episode in the series when it comes to sheer thematic resonance.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Again, the tone here is a little too varied for me to like Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service as much as I wish I did. There are a ton of great elements to it, but in terms of just being an episode I enjoy rewatching, this doesn’t quite make the cut. I obviously don’t hate it, but my feelings aren’t as strong as my gushing about its individual strengths might lead you to believe. Thematic resonance can only do so much!

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

#kiki's pizza delivery service #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[accidentalrabbit]

BE LOVED IN HOUSE: I DO

(series + special episode)

Taiwan 2021

RANK: B

A-pairing: Shi Lei x Jin Yu Zhen

B-pairing: Wu Si Qi x Yan Zhao Gang

C-pairing: Bai Xiao Qian x Wang Jing

Other character(s) i enjoyed: Yi Zi Tong

Overall review:

I hate boss-employee tropes in romance stories. They give me hives. But, despite giving me hives, Be Loved in House: I Do is a surprisingly good time, if you can get past Jin Yu Zhen being The Way He Is for the first few episodes.

I like that the series is set in a metalworking shop. That's new, and i think it's cool that the characters' jobs actually play a role in the story, and we get to see what they all specialize in. The part where Shi Lei, Bai Xiao Qian, and Wang Jing are all trying to secure a contract before Jin Yu Zhen does shows their workplace camaraderie despite/because of the new boss being kind of a dick, and i like that the random influencers at Yan Zhao Gang's café try to help them. It's nice that all the characters are fundamentally kind people trying to do the right thing (eventually; Jin Yu Zhen does start out basically evil), and all of them get to be with people they love in the end. I like Wu Si Qi and Yan Zhao Gang's B-plot relationship, mostly. It's at least something to watch while our lead couple is still struggling. And i really, really like Shi Lei's character. I don't even know exactly what it is about the way he's written that makes him so compelling, but he's doing great—and this actor consistently nails the tone and mannerisms i want to see out of him.

I think i like the references to Le Petit Prince? Something about how love tames and softens and makes us vulnerable to pain; something about Jin Yu Zhen choosing between the fox here at his side and the memory of the faraway rose that first tamed him. This frames the ending of the series as a kind of reversal of the ending of the book it references, suggesting that the act of cutting himself off from love was akin to Jin Yu Zhen committing a spiritual suicide, whose effects can only be reversed when he lets go of past hurt? Maybe i'm doing too much exegesis here; i don't recall a ton of thematic emphasis on this point, but i could be wrong!

I don't know how popular this opinion is, but i like Yi Zi Tong, and i really like the special episode that explores his backstory with Jin Yu Zhen. They were cute together, and the special episode had a surprisingly mature tonal shift for a storyline that improbably includes Jin Yu Zhen going into a six-month coma. And it even helps sharpen a nice thematic message: Sometimes things don't work out the way you expect, but life goes on after your coma, and you may even be able to heal. I like that Yi Zi Tong decides it's his fault that Jin Yu Zhen refuses to get over their breakup, and he therefore chooses the most dramatic and convoluted way to get him to move forward. I love a messy queen. The false love triangle is initially irritating, but the fact that it's false (and that he plays both sides) helps. And it does get Jin Yu Zhen to finally stop being so annoying, so maybe Yi Zi Tong really did know exactly what buttons to push.

Jin Yu Zhen and Shi Lei have very funny chemistry, and i love the reverse only-one-bed trope where both parties sleep together on the ground instead of the available bed. I've actually used it before in my own writing, so i'm biased, but i think it's a great way to subvert a trope to comedic effect. (And these two look good together! They're clearly having a good time.)

I had a good time, but:

I really loathe the boss-employee trope it's based on, and although there's not much that can be done about that problem, they could have at least made Jen Yu Zhen's workplace rule consistent. There's no reason for him to be mad at Wu Si Qi for dating someone outside of the workplace. It doesn't even begin to make sense. Also, his kicking Si Qi out of the house in the first place is…evil, even if it ends well.

In general i was slightly annoyed at how Si Qi was mostly written as a dumb child for laughs, but then occasionally the narrative asks us to believe he's responsible, smart, and mature. Maybe tone down the gags about how clueless he is about everything just 20% or so.

Not Si Qi and Zhao Gang talking marriage after like two weeks. Tap the brakes, girls.

All the characters act like it's common knowledge that Shi Lei has a crush on Cheng Luo at the café, but he looks at her like twice and says maybe three sentences at her over the course of twelve episodes. That could have been fully dropped, and with all the time it saved, she could have been given a personality. Not everything has to be a poorly executed ghost of a love triangle.

The straight couple had very little flavor. They're not bad, but there's time enough for a little pizzazz. I think their actors could have shined in these roles with a little extra character boost. Instead, they mostly repeat the same joke of Bai Xiao Qian being mad at Wang Jing and Wang Jing cowering from her gaze. As individuals though, they're cool.

Character(s) entitled to financial compensation: The proletariat. Isn't work oppressive enough without anti-love policies?

Conclusion: This series does a bunch of things that i don't love with just enough heart and verve to make me root for the lead couple anyway. I surprisingly think the plotline with the ex works, and the special episode makes the whole preceding plot feel a bit more mature than it actually is. It's funny, it's competently produced, and while the story doesn't always make sense, it at least has the decency to be cute. Would watch again.

For a love triangle with flavor, stick around to hear about Hey Rival, I Love You (2021)!

#be loved in house: i do #B tier #taiwanese drama #mine #reviews #shi lei x jin yu zhen #wu si qi x yan zhao gang #bai xiao qian x wang jing

[poorquentyn]

Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 5: The Hour of Ghosts

Series so far here

“There’s a tipping point in every tragedy where inevitability locks the exit doors on free will and you know that after this, there is no turning back.”

-- @racefortheironthrone​

Hello everyone. My name is Emmett, and I could have been imagined, designed, constructed, and sold as a consumer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I had just turned twelve when the first one came out at the end of 2001, I’d read the books that summer, and the infusion of swelling Hollywood orchestras and Peter Jackson’s beloved action schlock was perfectly calibrated to take my love for the material and shoot it into the stratosphere. I still look back on those movies with love...mostly. There are moments, especially in Return of the King, where the tone tips overboard: 

On one level, that’s what we want our heroes to say, right? We’re up against the odds, we might not be rewarded for our efforts, but let’s do it anyway; that’s the lesson a lot of great genre fiction is meant to leave us with, in one form or another. The problem with that clip is the knowing wink, the sly acknowledgement that after they’ve escaped so many other hair-raising disasters, this is just another day at work. I get the joke, but it would make more sense for (say) a Bond or Indy movie, where it really is just another day at work and part of the enjoyment comes from how what’s over-the-top for us is normal for them. In the context of LOTR, it’s tonally off, because this is not supposed to feel episodic. It’s supposed to feel climactic, like our heroes are genuinely in danger as everything comes to a head, and that’s marred when you expose the plot armor so blatantly. If this is just another day, why are we supposed to be invested in their risk? 

Of course, Peter Jackson didn’t invent that problem. It’s a storytelling problem. And that is why GRRM created Quentyn Martell. It’s why he tries to tame a dragon and why he fails: to reclaim the stakes and re-sensitize us to the risk. It’s not just that he dies, it’s how and why he dies. What does it mean to not have plot armor? What does it say about quest narratives that they can collapse so completely and yet the quester clings to tropes as if they’ll save him? How are we to live if Story fails as an organizing principle? “The Spurned Suitor” brings these questions to the forefront, right before “The Dragontamer” sets it all on fire. It’s the most reflective and dialogue-heavy of Quent’s chapters, the most thematically explicit; it’s the one that cuts through the hellish imagery dominating this storyline right to what it all means. In genre terms, where previous Quent chapters soaked the fantasy tropes in blood-red horror, this chapter has a distinctly noirish feel to it, in terms of both imagery and theme.

“The Merchant’s Man” introduced Quent reeling from his friends’ deaths; “The Windblown” caught up with him in the wake of the Sack of Astapor. In both chapters, as I said in the essays in question, GRRM’s focus is less the traumatic event itself than the psychological impact on Quent--both are about how one processes these existential challenges to the hero’s journey, and why one would keep going in the face of them. “The Spurned Suitor” pulls the same trick, but with a twist. In this case, the pre-chapter trauma that shapes the chapter isn’t an obstacle to the quest. It’s the outright failure of it. Quent reached the beautiful princess, proved himself willing (though not exactly eager) to transform from a frog back into a prince...but she said no. 

To be clear, chapter title aside, the horror here is not getting rejected by a pretty girl. (Like I said last time, Dany doesn’t reject Quent in favor of the dark dashing Daario and his lust for open war, but in favor of the dishwater-dull Hizdahr and the peace he ostensibly brings; as she tells herself upon agreeing to marry the latter, she’s trying to act on behalf of her people.) The horror here is getting rejected after losing your friends and killing screaming teenagers along the way; the horror is selling your soul to live a life you didn’t want to live, only to find you’re not even going to get that. The horror is that it wasn’t worth it. It all meant nothing. Story is a lie. Of course, if that’s all there was to Quent’s story, it would be tired and boring. What grounds it emotionally is that laserlike focus on the aftermath of that revelation, as it hits home harder with each step of the descent. What do you do when your easy narrative falls apart and you’re left with no good options?

In “The Merchant’s Man” and “The Windblown,” Quent’s reaction to this trauma and disillusionment was to repress what he’d gone through and done, soldiering on with the Windblown repeatedly intervening (as if sent by some sinister observing God-Author) to allow him to do so. Now that he’s faced with the failure of his quest, all the kid wants to do is to go home, but he can’t bring himself to face the shame of failure and (even more so) his survivor’s guilt...

“We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open.”

Just the mention turned Ser Archibald’s cheeks green. “No more ships. I’d sooner hop back to Volantis on one foot.”

Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?

It would be sweet to see the Greenblood again, to visit Sunspear and the Water Gardens and breathe the clean sweet mountain air of Yronwood in place of the hot, wet, filthy humors of Slaver’s Bay. His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe…

“I will not keep you here,” Quentyn told his friends. “My father laid this task on me, not you. Go home, if that is what you want. By whatever means you like. I am staying.”

...and so instead, he reaches out to the Windblown in the hopes that they’ll once again keep his quest going, even as their actions and attitudes continue to undercut the ostensibly righteous and hopeful nature of said quest. We see that right from the beginning of Quent’s penultimate POV chapter:

The hour of ghosts was almost upon them when Ser Gerris Drinkwater returned to the pyramid to report that he had found Beans, Books, and Old Bill Bone in one of Meereen’s less savory cellars, drinking yellow wine and watching naked slaves kill one another with bare hands and filed teeth.

This fighting pit, an unofficial but not-so-secret alternative to Daznak’s, is a glimpse of the Meereen outside the rarified domain of the Masters. The black market sprang up as the sanctioned one shut down, and that the Windblown are taking part reminds us of the sellswords’ own analogous role in The System, straddling the line between a standard part of Essosi military coalitions and a wild card constantly in the position to upset the applecart. 

That backdrop provides the thematic and emotional context for the decision Quent makes in this chapter. The hour of ghosts, indeed; the shadow city of alleys and cellars into which Team Quentyn descends in “The Spurned Suitor” is haunted, not only by those already dead but also by the deaths to come. As has been the case throughout Quent’s storyline, his personal struggles dovetail with (and are influenced by) the big picture of the Meereenese Knot. Just as Dany’s refusal obliterated the remnants of the “tale to tell our grandchildren” veneer, leading to Quent betting his life on a wild roll of the dice, so has her departure at Daznak’s shattered the pretense of peace, leading to the whole pot boiling over as ADWD comes to a close. Indeed, I’d argue that Quent’s quest and Hizdahr’s peace are analogous. They sound good on the surface, appealing to values we instinctively support, but quickly prove rotten underneath the gild, enabling the worst actors in the Meereenese Knot instead of righteous causes, before they both finally come crashing down at the same place and time in the Kingbreaker/Dragontamer two-sided setpiece. It’s all approaching the tipping point, personally and politically. 

But as I said, what makes Quent’s chapters more than glum grim deconstruction is the extent to which the characters are aware of this tipping point, that the story is falling apart around them, and that’s made explicit in “The Spurned Suitor.” On their way to their fateful meeting with the Tattered Prince, Quent and Drink argue about the former’s plans, and IMO it’s one of the most important and profound passages in the series. Let’s break it down. 

“ ‘The dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back —”

“Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?”

“This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”

“All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”

Gerris pointed to where a corpse slumped against a brick wall, attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. “Did his death have meaning?”

Quentyn looked at the body with distaste. “He died of the flux. Stay well away from him.” The pale mare was inside the city walls. Small wonder that the streets seemed so empty. “The Unsullied will send a corpse cart for him.”

“No doubt. But that was not my question. Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords.”

“They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory, power. That’s all I am trusting in.” That, and my own destiny. I am a prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins.

We see here that Quent’s sunk cost fallacy has completely taken over his decision-making process. Because his quest has already gotten people killed, it must continue, or in his mind, they died for nothing. This is, of course, extremely relatable. We’ve all made decisions like this, albeit usually on a much smaller scale. No one likes to admit failure, everyone wants to attach some meaning to their losses, and we’re meant to understand why Quent is so helplessly mired in panicked desperation. I can fix this, I will fix this, oh gods please I have to fix this...

GRRM makes this decision easy to empathize with in order to sucker punch us with the larger revelation: the basic mechanics of the genre are designed to create precisely such a sunk cost fallacy. You are supposed to lose companions--that raises the stakes, heightens our emotional involvement, and challenges the protagonist both externally (how do I logistically complete the quest without that companion?) and internally (how do I soldier on in the face of that loss?) You are supposed to have a low point where you question everything that’s led you to this moment. You are supposed to take an enormous risk. You are supposed to, literally or metaphorically, tame a dragon.

In Quent’s case, however, we’re dealing with a Last Hero who never finds the Children of the Forest--or perhaps, a Last Hero whom the Children pitilessly watch die. As such, when looking at his arc as a whole, those losses and low points don’t serve to allow our hero to prove himself and us to revel in victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Instead, they are warning signs that our hero ignores. Quentyn’s story interrogates reader assumptions about quest narratives: why do we embrace such a narrative? What are we overlooking when we do so? What if the quest in question rips those assumptions limb from limb and leaves them to bleed out on the deck of the Meadowlark, in the ashes of Astapor, in that hellish pit beneath the Great Pyramid? 

As far as what all this looks like to Quent himself, it’s made clear that what he’s relying on to save his quest (and his soul) isn’t anything intrinsic to his actions. He’s not counting on courage or ingenuity. He’s not even counting, first and foremost, on the Windblown. He’s counting on the story itself to save him, the elements of his narrative that would seem to demand he succeed: his princely heritage, his lost companions, the fact that he’s taking a big foolish romantic risk. 

But as I said a few essays back, the story is in fact out to kill Quentyn Martell, and so Drink does what good friends have to do sometimes: tell you that you’re spouting BS. “Fuck your lineage” is GRRM speaking through Drink, launching a deconstructive nuke at the idea that your bloodline is what makes you The Hero. That holds true with the *actual* heroes as well, of course--one of the major themes of Jon’s story is that everything he’s learned and struggled with is what makes him a worthy savior figure, not R+L=J in and of itself. But it’s different with Quent because he doesn’t have a grand destiny, earned or otherwise. As such, he’s left alone in an existentialist void, trying to create meaning out of what’s befallen his quest. 

And just as I wrote my series on Davos’s ADWD arc in order to talk about his letter to Marya, I wrote this series in order to talk about Drink’s response to Quent’s desperate plea to the gods that “their deaths should have some meaning.” This is a bold statement, I know, but: “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is the closest we’ve gotten to an overarching thesis statement for ASOIAF. It reaches all the way back to the first book, to Ned (who, like Quent, turns out to not be the protagonist after all) and his shocking demise. So many readers have interpreted that moment, as well as the Red Wedding two books later, as being indicative of nihilism on GRRM’s part. Everything is chaos, honor gets you killed and is therefore worthless, “power is power.” But this is not so. Ned’s legacy is not his death, it is his life. The children determined to find each other again because Dad taught them to stick together and be brave, the vassals who have set out to rescue and restore those children in his name, the memory both in-universe and IRL of a decent man who treated his servants like human beings worth listening to and who was determined to protect the young and innocent...all of this is the meaning of Ned Stark, not that he ended up as a head on a spike. By the same token, the meaning of Tywin Lannister isn’t that he died on the can. It’s why he died on the can, and that is because he lived a terrible life. His legacy is his family tearing itself apart, his hoped-for Lannister regime falling to pieces across Westeros, and his oh-so-symbolic reeking corpse. One of these men, for all his mistakes, found and spread a worthy meaning in his brief time on Terros, and the other, for all his triumphs, did not. We are all mortal; all of us, “from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat,” are ultimately helpless before the abyss that Quent leaps into in his final chapter. No one (not even Euron, try as he might) can change that. What matters, what makes us who are, what means something, is how we live our lives knowing that in the end, the house always wins.

“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is also the first arrow in my quiver when it comes to defending the worth of the new characters and storylines in the Feastdance. Why should we care about the Martells or the “Griffs” if they’re just showing up now and will probably die before endgame? Because moving the plot along to book seven is not actually what makes a story meaningful. Lives lived make stories meaningful:

The door to the roof of the tower was stuck so fast that it was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements, the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud, the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.” As if that could impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall.

Griffin’s Roost had been his, eventually, if only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had never lost their lands. He had. I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

And of course, Drink’s powerful words are GRRM’s message to us about how to think about Quent. Do not think that he meant nothing because he failed and died or because he was never going to be the protagonist, the author is saying. What matters is his life, the POV we have experienced and come to understand. He lived, he tried, he died. It is for us to remember him. I only wish he had heeded the lesson Drink was trying to teach him, before it was far too late. 

Only with that why firmly established does GRRM move onto the what, knowing that the former will lend resonance to the latter. The plot of “The Spurned Suitor” concerns Quent turning in desperation to the Tattered Prince and his Windblown for help taming one of Dany’s captive children, despite having betrayed them. As the city simmers and seethes around them, the princes meet in secret.

The sun had sunk below the city wall by the time they found the purple lotus, painted on the weathered wooden door of a low brick hovel squatting amidst a row of similar hovels in the shadow of the great yellow-and-green pyramid of Rhazdar. Quentyn knocked twice, as instructed. A gruff voice answered through the door, growling something unintelligible in the mongrel tongue of Slaver’s Bay, an ugly blend of Old Ghiscari and High Valyrian. The prince answered in the same tongue. “Freedom.”

The door opened. Gerris entered first, for caution’s sake, with Quentyn close behind him and the big man bringing up the rear. Within, the air was hazy with bluish smoke, whose sweet smell could not quite cover up the deeper stinks of piss and sour wine and rotting meat. The space was much larger than it had seemed from without, stretching off to right and left into the adjoining hovels. What had appeared to be a dozen structures from the street turned into one long hall inside.

At this hour the house was less than half full. A few of the patrons favored the Dornishmen with looks bored or hostile or curious. The rest were crowded around the pit at the far end of the room, where a pair of naked men were slashing at each other with knives whilst the watchers cheered them on.

Quentyn saw no sign of the men they had come to meet. Then a door he had not seen before swung open, and an old woman emerged, a shriveled thing in a dark red tokar fringed with tiny golden skulls. Her skin was white as mare’s milk, her hair so thin that he could see the scalp beneath.

“Dorne,” she said, “I be Zahrina. Purple Lotus. Go down here, you find them.” She held the door and gestured them through.

Team Quent is going underground and behind the curtain in “The Spurned Suitor.” In terms of the big picture, we’re seeing a Meereen that Dany never even glimpsed from atop the pyramid. On a more intimate scale, this imagery reflects the scales falling from Quent’s eyes about how the world works. He never thought his quest would involve cutting ethically murky deals in back-alley parlors (again, it’s suddenly a noir story), but if he wants to keep going for his fallen friends’ sake, it’s the only avenue he has left. It’s worth noting here how Quent contrasts with his fellow Questers for Dany. Where Quent wonders why Dany would ever choose him “among all the princes of the world,” Aegon has never even considered that she would reject him, because he was raised in a Perfect Prince bubble while Quent was told out of nowhere to Go West East, Young Man at age 18. Tyrion, too, wanders the shifting political sands of Essos in the wake of Dany’s crusade, but at this point in his storyline, he finds it hard to care about most of it, so his bitter detached cynicism makes for another illuminating contrast with Quent’s grief and desperation. And Victarion...well, as I’ve argued before, his story is the black comedy to Quent’s tragedy. Vic’s doom is presented as a huge joke on him by his puppetmasters: Euron, Moqorro, and George R.R. Martin. There’s no tragedy there because Vic keeps rejecting the possibility for growth or change. He’s there to be laughed at, by us as well as the monkeys. But with Quent, there really was a worthy life he could’ve lived (as I’ll get into next time). It’s just not this one, this one-way ride into fiery oblivion, escorted and enabled by the Satan of Slaver’s Bay and his motley crew. Speaking of which:

An undercellar. It was a long way down, and so dark that Quentyn had to feel his way to keep from slipping. Near the bottom Ser Archibald pulled his dagger.

They emerged in a brick vault thrice the size of the winesink above. Huge wooden vats lined the walls as far as the prince could see. A red lantern hung on a hook just inside the door, and a greasy black candle flickered on an overturned barrel serving as a table. That was the only light.

Caggo Corpsekiller was pacing by the wine vats, his black arakh hanging at his hip. Pretty Meris stood cradling a crossbow, her eyes as cold and dead as two grey stones. Denzo D’han barred the door once the Dornishmen were inside, then took up a position in front of it, arms crossed against his chest.

One too many, Quentyn thought.

The Tattered Prince himself was seated at the table, nursing a cup of wine. In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. He wore a brown wool traveler’s cloak, with silvery chain mail glimmering underneath. Did that betoken treachery or simple prudence? An old sellsword is a cautious sellsword. Quentyn approached his table. “My lord. You look different without your cloak.”

“My ragged raiment?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “A poor thing…yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable.” He gestured at the bench across from him. “Sit. I understand you are a prince. Would that I had known. Will you drink? Zahrina offers food as well. Her bread is stale and her stew is unspeakable. Grease and salt, with a morsel or two of meat. Dog, she says, but I think rat is more likely. It will not kill you, though. I have found that it is only when the food is tempting that one must beware. Poisoners invariably choose the choicest dishes.”

“You brought three men,” Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. “We agreed on two apiece.”

“Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who’d cut her breasts off. “Meris is a woman, I agree. You’ve still twisted the terms.”

“Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am. Three to two is not much of an advantage, it must be admitted, but it counts for something. In this world, a man must learn to seize whatever gifts the gods chose to send him. That was a lesson I learned at some cost. I offer it to you as a sign of my good faith.” 

We’ve got a literal descent matching the emotional/thematic one, to make a foolish risky deal that will end up claiming our protagonist body and soul, with someone who’s lying and spinning right off the bat, his deceptively simple appearance hiding a cruel sardonic heart...so yeah, like I said, the Tattered Prince is the devil of the Meereenese Knot, the tempter-corrupter figure luring Quent into hell. “Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am” is precisely the sort of way Satan and characters similar to him talk; they lie to you, and then they make fun of you for believing them. After all, Quent, you only got into Meereen in the first place because of the Tattered Prince’s deceitfulness...and because of your own. 

The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords.”

“I have need of those swords. Dorne will hire you.”

The Tattered Prince glanced at Pretty Meris. “He does not lack for gall, this Frog. Must I remind him? My dear prince, the last contract we signed you used to wipe your pretty pink bottom.”

“I will double whatever the Yunkishmen are paying you.”

“And pay in gold upon the signing of our contract, yes?”

“I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the banks. I can show you papers.”

“Ah. Papers. But we will be paid double.”

“Twice as many papers,” said Pretty Meris.

“The rest you’ll have in Dorne,” Quentyn insisted. “My father is a man of honor. If I put my seal to an agreement, he will fulfill its terms. You have my word on that.”

The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over, and set it down between them. “So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?”

You’ve been lying this whole way, to the world and yourself. What’s one more piece of wood on that fire? Again, though, it’s precisely that sunk-cost fallacy, the panicked certainty that it’s too late to turn back, that gets Quent killed. In so much of genre fiction, that “I started this, I have to finish it” drive is celebrated, even cast as the thing that makes you the hero. Here, it is revealed as a sad self-delusion that only serves to throw another body on the pile of the dead. Quent needs so badly to make his friends’ sacrifice worth it that he’s willing to sell out an *entire city* (namely, Pentos) to make it happen. The cynical world-weary Windblown are here to cut through that fragile narrative, telling Quent that neither he nor his story is special:

“I ask your pardon for our deception. The only ships sailing for Slaver’s Bay were those that had been hired to bring you to the wars.”

The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. “Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons. ‘My little son is sick,’ or ‘My wife is putting horns on me,’ or ‘The other men all make me suck their cocks.’ Such a charming boy, the last, but I did not excuse his desertion. Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another. You, though…several of my best are locked up in the queen’s dungeons thanks to that lying tongue of yours, and I doubt that you can even cook.”

“I am a prince of Dorne,” said Quentyn. “I had a duty to my father and my people. There was a secret marriage pact.”

“So I heard. And when the silver queen saw your scrap of parchment she fell into your arms, yes?”

“No,” said Pretty Meris.

“No? Oh, I recall. Your bride flew off on a dragon. Well, when she returns, do be sure to invite us to your nuptials. The men of the company would love to drink to your happiness, and I do love a Westerosi wedding. The bedding part especially, only…oh, wait…” He turned to Denzo D’han. “Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari.”

“A Meereenese nobleman. Rich.”

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. “Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?”

“She laughed at him,” said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King’s Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. “We came too late,” said Quentyn.

Interesting to note that Quent is pulling an UnKiss here, convincing himself that Dany did not laugh upon him revealing his identity and mission, when in truth, she did. That just goes to show how thoroughly he’s backed himself into a corner. “We came too late,” and so again, we have a Quent chapter ending with the Windblown enabling our hero’s descent. Of course, Quent is responsible for this decision--he came to them, not the other way around. I’m not trying to strip him of agency, as that would be a much less engaging story. But what I’m interested in here is how the failure of the quest, the shattering of the ideal, has led to Quent making this terrible decision. Here’s where GRRM’s existentialist-romantic take on the genre comes into play: Quent was taught to uphold and believe in certain norms because an ordered universe will reward him for it, not because following the rules is the right thing to do in itself. As such, when Quent’s quest proves over and over again that there is no inherent order to the universe, and as such no automatic reward, Quent loses all moorings; he doesn’t have that Davos/Brienne “no chance and no choice” ethos to keep him going in the face of the abyss. 

And that’s why he makes a deal with the devil: it seems like his best option. 

“I need you to help me steal a dragon.”

Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in a half-smile. Denzo D’han whistled.

The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said, “Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the sense to promise more.”

“If you want me to triple—”

“What I want,” said the Tattered Prince, “is Pentos.”

And as always, making a deal with the devil lands our protagonist in fiery torment, condemned by his own folly. After Quent’s death, Barristan takes responsibility for delivering Pentos to Tatters, and come TWOW, I think Dany will fulfill the bargain after confronting Illyrio RE Aegon. Because a deal with the devil can’t be undone--it just transfers from person to person. 

Indeed, it’s tonally appropriate that Quent’s quest climaxes not with him becoming the hero, but with him letting the devil back into paradise. One thing I noticed in this reread is how closely the form of “The Spurned Suitor” matches that of “The Dragontamer.” In both chapters, Quent trembles on the edge of the Void, wondering am I really going to go through with this, decides that he is, and this descent is promptly made literal. In his third chapter, he descends to the cellar to face the Tattered Prince and his cronies, sealing the doom that unfolds in his fourth chapter, in which he descends into the dank dark hell beneath the Great Pyramid to face Rhaegal and Viserion. One inextricably leads to the other; symbolically, the Tattered Prince is the dragonfire, the epitome of how Quent trying to “fix” his own story only serves to keep revealing how it cannot be fixed. This is your life, Quentyn Martell. You are not the hero. And just as with my second favorite character in ASOIAF, Stannis Baratheon, this revelation will be rendered in fire and blood. 

#quentyn martell #quentyn in adwd #gerris drinkwater #the tattered prince #asoiaf meta #the windblown #meereen #a dance with dragons

[mandareeboo]

I have some suggestions on anime for liveblogging (the first two I've suggested before, but bears repeating):

If your looking for something kid-friendly: "Little Witch Academia" is lighthearted and fun, with a cast of great female characters and honestly a better magical school story than Harry Potter (the fandom is also pretty yuri-centric with pretty much everyone shipping Akko the main girl with her female rival. I have not watched The Owl House, but most of what I've seen on Tumblr gives me some pretty big LWA vibes. They both seem to have adult mentor with a former friend turned sympathetic villain)

Another good one, "Digimon Adventure" is a fun action adventure cartoon from the late 90s that's better than any Saturday morning cartoon made to sell toys has any right to being.

If your looking for something funny, wholesome and cute, but a bit edgy with it's humor at times: "Zombieland Saga" and "Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun" are both anime currently airing their second seasons, and are really good. (Don't let the titles fool you, the "monsters" in these series are mostly goofy and loveable. Both have "found family" vibes. In fact Iruma Kun is literally about a sweet kid with a shitty family being adopted into better one, and making friends with a bunch of misfit demon kids.)

If your looking for something kid friendly, but gets a LOT darker as time goes on: "Digimon Tamers" is what happens if you give a kids monster taming anime to a writer mostly known for writing lovecraftian and psychological horror. But most of that darkness is in the last third of the series, which works since you care more about the characters at that point. It's got a lot of wholesome and cute aspects too, since theirs more emphasis on raising the digimon, and the main one starts out as basically a big friendly excitable puppy in the body of a fire breathing dinosaur.

If your looking for something with action, and some darker and scarier moments, but also with funny parts, and a lot of eccentric and weird characters: "Soul Eater" is one of my fav shonen series. I should warn you though, the first few episodes are pretty fanservicey, but iirc that gets toned down as time goes on. (First three episodes were based on what's basically pilot chapters, so are kind of tonally different from the main series ended up as)

Looking for something darker and more violent, but with good characters and story like Fullmetal or Madoka: "Re:Zero" is one of the best isekai anime out there and really keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's like groundhog day in a fantasy world, but replace "start over when you wake up the next day" with "start over when you die". It's also got a lot of great female characters ( Btw, some people have called it a harem anime, due to the male lead, and large cast of female characters, but I disagree, since only three of them are ever really treated as romantic interests so far, and it takes a looooong time for each of those relationships to develop, while most harem anime have at least 5+ girls that fall for the guy in the episode their introduced )

Lot's of options!!!! I'll go through them in order.

Little Witch Academia- watched part of episode one, but am otherwise unspoiled!

Digimon Adventure/Tamers- I've never seen any digimon before! I was a pokemon kiddo, with the slightest hint of beyblade. I think I'd rather learn via video games on that one lol.

Zombieland Saga- also a possibility!

Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun- I've seen a decent chunk of the episodes! Very silly, very fun.

Soul Eater- This is actually a bit of an odd one for me, because I DID watch it as a kid, but I remember practically nothing about it! I know that Soul can play piano and there was a weird red man in there, but that's pretty much it. I'd be happy to liveblog it semi-blind if peeps wanted that tho.

Re:Zero- Also possible!

#Ask #Anon #Question Mandar #Mandar Liveblogs

[throwingideasatthewall]

Clone Wars     The Mandalore Plot

             Season 2 Episode 12 

 - -    🖕     (I’m     sorry      that’s       just        for        the      morale       (Moral)         After         last    episode.     .

 Any way,  

 “15      Hundred,”

   Five         Leaders

   One    clearly     more     important,

  The   Galactic       senate       was      closer.

  Republic        Senate

  Leader

   Duchess        Saltine         .           Secretly       building         her         own       army          . . .

    Her    business.       . . .      Separatist        ...   

  She’s already       separate              ....    

    Also there’s a hologram     so it must be true             .         Never mind           Yoda’s     all powerful gossip mill ever being wrong

       Can’t            have          that              -            So they’re sending         Obi-Wan            and            Anakin              to             snoop,

          Or              just         Obi-Wan           *Pffft*

       Claims

        Going               to            snoop                  -           Going to get some tea          for master Yoda-                  -

     (I won’t do the standard valley girl-               Gossip clichés)

             Damn                   Aight!

              Blue                    Eyes!

              Blue                  Theme

           Snar-king

             Also is           that bitter-             ness-

         Okay.

           Big!

         (Scale                is               nice)

            Whelp,                 White

               Big                   Doors.

              Aight                  Whelp-

              Skipped                 tour

                Also,                    Painting                      Of                      Self                        ...                  Aight                       ...                    Glass                         . .                           It’s                       Glass.                        (Am                           I                        supposed                             to be                          getting                         something                             big                               and                            grand                                . .                                Or                             Holy?                                 .                                 It’s                                 the                                 same                                   as                                      any                                           big                                 building                                         ...                                      With                                  glass

...    Does     Obi-Wan      just     have          a       thing        for        glass       we      never       knew         about             ?

     Emotions          what           am               I         supposed            to            feel?

      Okay            ...         Recognized             ...           Also            who              is             this                 guy?               .                He’s               not               really             wearing              the              blue             themed                 clothes                  of                    the                guards                     ...                   and               everyone                    else                     ...                 Prime                Minister                    Alec                      ...                   Authority                  assumer                     .                     .                   Public servant

                One                     authority                     assumer                     to                      the other..

                    Also, like there’s                       anything else                          ...         Like he still a “peacekeeper”                          In his job                       description                         No?

                  They                     haven’t                     switched it                         to                     military                           yet                       (Quite)                        ...                     False                         ...                        IDK                             ...                        Yoda’s                           got                       holograms.                        ...

                       And the                           damn                         rumor mill.                          ...                      Can’t                         piss                          the                          guy                             off                             . .                       Republic                           ...                       Is this a trap?                             ...   

                     The Dutchess                          Satine values peace more than her own life.

                       But no   account       ability.

  Views

  What?

  ....

  Past?

  ?

 Okay yeah he was out of        order  

  But that immediate         sharp     response          Was      pretty      damn      harsh          ...

   Like dude sounded like he had     stabbed his toe against the table          ——         This dude took it to        murdered it’s family         ...    Why?

    Dude              ...     Assuming         a lot    of      authority         .           Over        the       tone           .

    Like      whose         family          did      Obi-Wan’s      statement           kill

     Damn         tox..       and          sharp            . . .             Severe             ...            Are            you           certain?         . . .           Damn             you            want              to          check            their            bodies...       . . .         Ser-      iously,       You’re          here          to          collect           a      statement               ...              (And           maybe           grab           some                 tea                for             Yoda...   ..

           Yeah like               dude escalated it         to a whole new level                  ...                    But you          are not helping                    ...               Mandalorian                armor                 ...                Right

           -                How-

            Dude seems              ,truthful-

            Also why is dude here getting the blight           of Obi-wan’s rage.

           Well

Not exactly    formal..

  ‘Shining       Jedi      Knight’

    What?

       ‘Again’

Should- I recognize this       person

   I     Distinct  

            Also did they send someone with the                baggage?

              After all these years you’re more beautiful than ever

              There was no emotion   in that line

             Flat

But then    again    maybe     he’s   moved      on          ...     Is         a      knight

...

 No     Attach      ment-

 Accuses

 Treachery

 It’s not     treachery     it’s-    leaving    neutrality-

  But   yeah      he      is a       gosp.

  Also yeah we just switched towns from a     unprofessional       to   professional       (Narc        Terms)

  Okay

   One     dude

  Why?

    He         had     emotion          ...     For             a       moment            ...   

   Aight

   Okay..

  Right...

   —-  Right

 “Violence,”

   Claiming authority      over a whole lot of people       ...

 Dark        ...      Commandos    

 He couldn’t have possibly been one guy

  Jedi       .

  Everyone-

     People         AUTHORITY

 .        trust worthy

 .    I know we sound defensive.

 What?

  No-

  Okay,    seriously,    what          is        with         the        tone     ...

Like yeah the dude was   sharp       ...

    But        not         in         a      defensive         way...

        In a             Whoa             WTF             Dude,             Where               Did               that            come             from-

          On the               Whoa            someone’s                not                    in a good mood

              Nothing                  defensive

              Dutchess                     flips on a                    dime                               .                       But that’s on a                    snark                      to                   professional                     Scale                        ...                      Only person acting sus is that dude that has no reason to be here and we have no idea what he’s doing

                     And I’m kind of worried that’s because the authors                        forgot to act-                         ually put anyone acting sus

                       So just had dude say it

                         Like yeah it’s obviously him that caused the problem

                          She has a valid point

They are       100%    snoops;

   And        if you didn’t want him here      why did you allow him.

     But mostly I’m on Obi-Wan        who they continue to treat           as a kicked puppy            ...

Like no   he was fine.  till a few minutes ago

  And is   equally guilty      (Particularly        of the things     he’s accusing him of)

  And the tone      suddenly       changed           To a smaller         Quasi-one for him

       He isn’t innocent

        And I don’t know why this keeps happening            to the Male characters

          When   an actual point is brought up against         them

 But like he was fine taking    pot shots        At       Dude,

    Now there’s suddenly         accountability

        The HECK,              Writers,

       Oh god,

       This is          turning            Boomer               -     And the mandate   dictating you learn   the baggage of the past      (Because dear frick    If the past       Fixed        The          Past,        Absurd)

  And not like the present      would be non-tox     enough not to start shit

 ...

   There seems to be a clear imbalance between       How the male characters are written and how the female characters are written

                                                                                                            Note; I                                                                                                                don’t                                                                                                                 give                                                                                                                      a                                                                                                                  fluff                                                                                                                   for                                                                                                                gender                                                                                                              Just                                                                                                         that                                                                                                          there’s                                                                                                            a                                                                                                       clear                                                                                                       dip                                                                                                     In quality                                                                                                     emotion

                                                                                                    When                                                                                                         one                                                                                                             it                                                                                                        identifies                                                                                                            as                                                                                                         such                                                                                                            Is                                                                                                          on                                                                                                      -screen                                                                                                          . .  .

We   have   three    main    female   characters;

  Padme; Who is       characterized           as          a       shrew        (Fine         you       can      cover        to        toxic      Relation     ships)

Ahsoka;        A child     who acts      far beyond        her age           (Unchildlike           Mature)           And             is           held          to       unfair  accountability         by        the     narrative        (And assuming           Anakin is an adult              This is only a problem        with the female characters               Barisse,               Quickly               Suffer-              Ing               Similar...

          But             not         anyone               else              (The               two              other                un-gender              ed          Padawans            React              Ing              In            Properly            Ordered                Fear              (About)

       Now Saltine            Characterized                Well                 Her              actions             pro-claim                  her                   A                  pretty                  fair                  Leader                     (If                snippish)                     Which                    is                    fine                     if                      you                 want                     to                   write                  about                    (Tox                       Ic                      And                  enabling                 relationships)                   -                  The                   issue.                    -                    is                  the                 way                    -                    The                  male                  leads                      Are                     portrayed..

  Look at this;

 What emotion is it trying to portray?

   Anger?          Jealousy?

   Heartbreak

    Innocence..      Is the only valid       answer I could         Come up        with..

    When I call it, 

                         - “ A kicked                              puppy dog look,”

       I mean;

                       “Lowering the standards to animalistic                                  To avoid accountability,”

                         It’s                         Cheating

                        If it was hurt,                            the irises                              Would                             Be                             Dilated                         Narrow-ed

                           Lip straight

                           This doesn’t   portray any human emotion

                           It’s cheating

                         -Good thing- I won’t ever have to worry about holding                             Obi-Wan or any of the others accountable                             -With puppy dog-                                          And it never happens with any of the                              female characters

                           Always 100%                               accountable

                           Even when                          they shouldn’t be. .

                                                                                              - Amidala,                                                                                                    Saltine                                                                                                       And                                                                                                    Ahsoka                                                                                                         are                                                                                                  characterized                                                                                                          as                                                                                                     shrew,                                                                                                   unreasonable                                                                                                   (Kicker                                                                                                        of                                                                                                     puppies)                                                                                                         And                                                                                                abomination

                                                                                                   While                                                                                                        our                                                                                                      (main)                                                                                                            male                                                                                                   characters                                                                                                           ...                                                                                                     Nothing                                                                                                              .                                                                                                         The                                                                                     second consequence                                                                                                       comes a knocking                                                                                     The puppy                                                                                                           Dog                                                                                                             eyes                                                                                                            - -                                                                                                           Come                                                                                                               Out-

                                    [Which is unfair                                       To characters of any                                        Ident-ification-

 ——

                           That’s enough about the                                  character rants                               Back to the                                 story

Aight

 Seriously,       What?

  [I know     that’s like being threatened by the army..”]. 

  But,       dude’s reaction was tame..  ...

  Layout keeps    changing        .       [Not a       consistency issue,          Just a        confusion one,]   

      -

     Okay          -         No        Emotion           -          Forced

           ???  

     Prospere

        Also that was a            tonal          change             ...       

       Whoa                ...

      Where            did         these        emotions         suddenly           come            from??

         Group              Death               watch

Great

           Tox               inside            enabling                 ...             Re-negades                  Hey plot relevan   -ce 

             Violence                     —                  War

              Tox

The very   definition        of      tox

             Great

               Oh you’re                 going to solve it                 with violence..

               Aight..

                Work-                       Ing-

               Criminals

                  On                      going                invest-igation                                       -                    Wide-spread                           Small

              She clearly noted it was            small..

              Move-ment

              Exact-ly

              Hooligans

              Vandalize

                Aight,                   Adults,

                Nothing                     More

-

               Cus-tody    

                Con-cord     -ia  Dude      stop      being        a        doubting        asshole        .

Thank God cut away from this unhealthy-

  Anyway,        It cuts      to what is assumed to be the moon.

   Al right just a     small camp

      If the            tox          people           want                 to        quarantine        themselves             . . .          O-kay             . . .              Well-

       Jedi

       Upset

You decide        The people         you        Inter-act          With              (And          tolerate        presence           of )

     Support              the           Death           Watch                  .           Your            small          club               .....       house             Isn’t             that              much              Of               a          concern              to             him              .  . .               And            clearly           wasn’t             serious                   .     .                    Duchess                Saltine.                   . .                   Peace                 -loving                   - -                   TOO                  subtle.                       .                     (She’s                        still                        an                      enabler)

                    So I                       wouldn’t                          get                           too                       wo-   rried                    

                  And

               “Promise,”

No he     doesn’t                                       . . .    this     seems    pretty   particularly      a     “screw        you      move”-     Sit        Ua-   tion        -       How-

  Yeah this is a pretty           “screw you” situation  

  Take        Over

 Whelp.

  That’s          Am-    bitious.

    Once the senate

     Mandalore

 Look,  that’s unlikely

  Like      she didn’t just explain yeah it’s nothing    don’t worry about it       . . .

   Like unless you watch something      go down    right in front of you.

  That’s it        —

   The “guy who caused the problem, is dead

   You’ve been given advanced warning about a group

   No reason to       escalate

    Military          Pr         esence

    Unlike the usual assumed authority they           are surrounded with,

     This will 

    piss them off.

    Most          Dis         tast          ful

    dude’s really assuming the worst but then again that’s the Dark side’s MO

       Death              Watch

   This is really some conspiracy          theory territory.

    Urgh, this plan        really sucks.

     Death         Watch

     Well it’s small, they have  armed guards...

       Gonna go with            no

       Back here

     Peace-keeper-

    Sure

     Front lines

              Of conflict

     Yeah,         As in they caused it by      assuming authority            Inst-      -           A job he had no authority to do and basically covers all peaceful resolution           -            Insinuating all the rest of humanity is savages ready to tear themselves apart, and only this dude’s influence - stops the 

      You know- they could study    peace instead.        Write       articles about it,          Do           Works.           Like you don’t need to start a war...          Or assume authority..

          To enjoy peace

           And to              keep it

 If it can be done with suffering,      it could be done very easily without,

             The work              of a peacekeeper is to make sure conflict                  does not                   arise

       No that’s extreme-      Authority           Assumption

     If someone’s going to be a      douche        bag,

     A peacekeeper          (Accountable)           As someone who doesn’t        enable bad behavior              (When it is enacted          against them,)

       And holds      them selves          Acco       untable,

    Desc-ription

And   your’s       is.    . . .   Seriously both these two have a pretty...  negative view of the world.       Both operating         under a similar; Must      control the world,                 Otherwise      every-thing      will fall apart-        -          Though         Obi-wan            Has              A           Point;            In            the          fact            that            his            Is           a        slightly          more         Per-son       al-        I must     do my part         to protect          the world,         While            Salt           -ine-               “I        must           get          others            to           pro     tect           Others           They         still draw       (erroneous)        blanks                At              the          “Anyone           needs           saving           from          anyone”              . . . .           Thing-   

      Realism         doesn’t         mean         terrible            . . .              (If anything it means having pride in                      your humanity                    and what it has                    accomplished).                              It’s the very   model.. of a good thing.                              If you’re   not   toxic)

                            Ideals       . . .   “Abandon”          -           ?

   Response

   Political     convenience         . ..         More specifically the        convenience... of self-destructive.. tendencies

       Whelp

       What         The            Frick?

When did    this happen?

  Seriously leaving       unwanton anything should’ve been a warning sign.                       ...    How     did   no one     notice       the apparent-        Un-       Wanted         -        Addi-tion?               -                 Okay

Well hope you have a good       enable healers on staff.

    Or maybe just        healers..

    Depending      on the    awareness           -         Okay

   Smoke

 Hool        igans.

  Yeah they could’ve

  (And we’re probably- going to discover that they did          through very complicated means.

   Like seriously Obi-Wan    jumping to    con clusions-

   Like five people got slightly inconvenienced

Are we sure         it is in a smoke bomb?

  Because that    seems pretty      likely

   Considering we haven’t seen any   damages so far.   

   And no one looks dead

    Also I guess    it’s time to act like a reasonable adult and let      Saltine handle her own problems.

    Off-world              Er

       So the   Separ   atists.

   Are you sure of that

  You’re the one that brought up that it couldn’t be      “Deathwatch”

  Stop bla-

  Eat shit Obi-Wan

   You were wrong

    Okay, time to be an authority assumer and launch an attack on those assholes

   (What?)

  She’s        overall peace

  She was planning...on     bringing those guys in anyway

 Hit     them. .       Hard.        This goes far beyond   vandalism..

   Then show the actual     dead..

    Because all     we saw..

    Was a smoke bomb                 and these guys coughing

     That’s pretty damn     -close to vandalism

          Next to     lighting firecrackers..

          In the park. .      .  

         Political            statement              against            your        government                  Oh          No,

       (Is that supposed to be            threatening?)

       Seriously all they did was throw   a smoke bomb        and heck off

        You

     Don’t act        surprised.

    Palace  

    Here   

             (Oh no                   they might throw another                  smoke bomb?)

               You’re just gonna let     him,

             Like he has a   point

          [But still the      intensity is way too high for what they’ve shown,]

         Oh               no,              Smoke,

      Inter-view

         What the heck    who gave him that authority?

         Like;        He’s just some random        Senate peacekeeper

    That’s...like

      No,

   Also yet no one needs medical attention       so just stay right there

    Dude couldn’t      have possibly been injured in the attack

    Or fled the scene

    Or activated whatever it was with                               remote detonation

   And also it’s up-to the apparently neutral peacekeeper          instead of any local authority

                                                                         Like your job is to dispense                                                                               food and                                                                      make sure everyone’s                                                                              ok

And yeah their military     and  “peacekeeping”          Sections are      Com-      bin         Ed         (And I’ll admit     I don’t know much        About     assumed authority        Lines)

                            But pretty sure                                  that’s like a                                 dude in                                   military uniform                                        (Out of                                        Country)                                       Yelling that he wants to                                      question people.                                       (Like you don’t have the authority                                           to do that)

                                      And is a pretty good way to get a rock                                      chucked at your head.

                                     Make sure everyone is okay,

                                      Then what about selective immediate accountability thing going on here can happen                                            (Appease                                                Logic,)                                           Scene

Dude’s the guards just freaking, bowed to him

I don’t   think-       Police        National     En-for       cers       -      Are usually     so kind

  To extra-     Ven           Ous         Forces         In-          ter           Ven-          Ing-          -        Like this was exactly what     Saltine was talking about              . .       Overextension         of authoritative            power

       (Not acco-untability   just what’s happening)

       .

      What?

      Was that the carrier?

      Who?

     You there

     Dude, that’s a normal reaction to a   military professional           Claiming       bullshit power,  

      Dude could’ve probably mistaken you for the             terrorists..

         Aight,              Right,

         Also       an attack just happened,

        (Yeah       it’s a little delayed          but he could’ve just         gotten news)

        Okay

        Talk

  Dude, the dude just saw an attack, saw an individual standing over the body of their leader (armed     Jedi-        Or          Sith)            I said person claiming to      “stay there”,                                              I’m not saying what   he’s doing is right,         But you’re having        a damn unsympathetic-   React-

    Older           Gentle-             Men-  

     (You know   I’m surprise no one blames Obi-Wan,            After             all,                   He’s the one that        lead her out here,

       Would’ve made sense for the         carrier           Guy,          The one that was acting        sus,  to be the      per-petrator

 (And he would have the knowledge to       frame Obi-Wan)

   That    would’ve been nice,

   Hurt you

    You didn’t

(Ergh)

    Seriously your leader was just-

     No one wanted to take her to a healer?

      After?

       (Like she didn’t want to get the       smoke inhalation thing checked out either?)

       Fair                     (But kinda of stupid)

      Yeet

      Frick

     Movie,          You- did not        earn the tone        to make that         work

   Seriously dude could be saying         “I won’t work with a terrorist,”           -    Also wow a     cult full of old people

  Real            .        intimidating

   Well time together of the guards          hold a funeral for that guy                   (Standard                Prac               -tice)                  And go kick that moon base.

        No- reas-

        He died

       Yeah,          Sucked

But a) don’t make buildings that tall         And           b) he did that           -            Damn             -          Aight            -          Re-            action           -            Why             -             Whelp

       Ahh,           No,

       He was all splayed out

      There’s         nothing dignified about the        position

        Nv

       ...         Emotions               Seriously      what am I supposed to feel.

      Why is there holy music playing in the background?

       Also          no one wants to get a healer?

      Like I know he fell           But seriously, 

      Not even gonna try

   (Like     I know I’m harsh,         But even         I would try..

        Do          Some-      thing       What-

    Why-

   Also Obi-won        is this the time?

    Whelp.

  Com-cord-ia

     Seriously, and that’s not just do you know a     coi-ncidence-

     Our moon

    But what did he actually say?

     [Because if it’s      ‘I thought he was a terrorist’,           Then          fair,]

      Body

     Escort

     Seriously are we not     covering what he said?

      Like the story seems to be lam     -basting him for being Con-cord       -ian

      But I assume innocence until proven     guilty,

   .. .

 Progress

 You can’t even speak their      dia-lect

  Yeah and      I know    (body language)

 But

“Especially     when you’ve just been involved in the death of a colleague,”

   She’s got         a point?

   Seriously, ever since Obi-Wan got here there’s been nothing but destruction

   I’m surprise she didn’t kick him right there right now and      is like this is why we’re neutral

 Like      this could’ve been some good story tension.             .

So what is the actual plot?

The guy who caused the incident   

is dead

The group      is extremely small  And unable    to prevent    arrest,

Cord-       Random        Couple

“I didn’t        kill   him,”

Dude,    seriously

If you were smart   you’d leave

And let Duchess handle the problem      which she was clearly doing

Before     things      went        to       very   light   shit        -      At     arrival         -        i’d        back        away           too          .       “I       Know,”

 How?

You       know what also would’ve been a good conflict?

   Duchess arriving in the    middle of it..

 Only hearing the man say          “Don’t do it,”                   And seeing him fall off..

    Obi-wan’s            “Catch,”              Gesture            ...     

    Mistaken         for             Shov           -ing               -            Duchess           not          seeing           his           face            ——          Showing              the             flaws                 of              her           assumed                guilty                  -                Mind                 Set-

           And               make                 for             some               good          emotional              tension                 -               Instead-

        Why I’m       still talking to you

        Despite having nothing to go on besides faith which seems beyond my general     compr-       ehensive      philos-       ophy           -

   (Con      sist      ent- characterization          what’s             that?

-Normally   I don’t work on the         rag on the         chara-     cterization       because         yeah        adults         can change what they do

  (but I do think it-     could be a bit more knowable        -       The changes seem to happen randomly          - and with little sentiment   connection        -        Or         type          Of       Pre         amble,

    Don’t        get               me       wrong             -             It           does            happen                 -             Rarely               -              I          just           think           it         could              be             done              with                 a              bit              more           delicacy               and           consistency                   -                  And               Care                  -                 What                   is                 that                reaction                      -                   What?

            Okay..

            Alright,                 What?

            Why?

            Okay

            That’s              happen                      -                    Ing

             First

            Right

            Okay..

             Least   they brought             a guard..

        Aight,            Okay,

    Con-cord

       That’s-               a different look

        Not                Gonna-             Com                pare-

        Agricultural

        Wait is that a different planet?

         -

         What?

      Mining           Base

       Yeah let’s   fuck with Mother Earth

  /Con- cord

    That can’t      possibly go         wrong                     -            Forests

       Oh,            yeah

       Dear           Frick

         -

      Finally growing   back-

     So you    stopped with that?

   (No burning pollutants             in the air?)

        Okay,                Well

            A more      well-established            palace than hers.

Which just saw a door        and then there was an even a smaller door

        And glass..

Appar-ently          has a thing         for glass.  

     Whelp-

     Okay- 

    Wait-

  The highly industrialized mass of cities- is the Galactic palace

   But the former mining facility is a beautiful orderly castle in the middle of a green field.

    I think someone got       the sets      messed up...

    Why?

      ?

  [This is really messed up]

  Also yeah there was some kind of   terrorism      and things got blown up...

   That’s weird..

    Council            -

     V-sla     

        Also one of your guys totally     died- 

     Members

Wouldn’t-

 [Okay,         hear me out,          I know         I’m doing       a lot of this;

    What if this conversation happened before,          In the castle;  

    To give us a list of         suspects;     And making sense;           As she is the top ruler of everything

    And then,        we broke into these little bits

      [Establish             the characters

       Then                   make them            plot point,]

                Also, this wasn’t the scene          shown earlier,          Was it?

    Separatists

      That would’ve been a          good line          earlier   

     ...

    Truth

    This was the man        who murdered

    So wait,         you did know about that?

     So why were you acting like the         Separatist claim was so out of the question?

  Correct;       Reaction            “Yes ma’am, of course ma’am             sorry about what happened,

      We-”

      Like Dude is acting pretty chill for one of his         citizens screwing someone up

      And        it’s             sus

    “Bomb,”

    So no one‘s         dead?

 Also         wait     ‘Memorial shrine,’”

     The heck           was that               never brought up?

       I thought it was just        the outside of the castle

       The dude screwed with a                     memorial ?

   Why?

        [The intensity in this            is whack..!]

   Hm.

  He was apparently part of       Death Watch     Wait,       when was that ever confirmed?

   Do          you        speak?

 A worrisome prospect

 That’s,       your reaction  

   Pardon

    What..?

   [The tone is   way off.]

  Not as in writing a     child-    like       an     adult       or   writing      an        adult       -like          a       child

    (Or        Animal)

    This is the         “What’s the emotion?,”

       There’s

Er-

   [The tone is so damn-]

   Whelp

   Aight-

  Random        Grab!

    Not         Okay!

    Words.        (Circ           um         stance-)

   Favor

  What

  Dinner

   - - -

     ?

   What?      The lip-sync’s      -  Off?

 I can’t   -tell-

   The tone is so   - distorted -

   Look     Around            Mining      facilities-

    Like        Seriously            -

   Do you     want-

   Also, he could’ve asked for a          damn tour

    [No need to do this             subterfuge.]

   Seriously,          Obi-Wan        is lazy         avoidant          smart,           Till it comes to      instigate            some shit

Un-      necess-        arily-

  aight... .

Oper-ational  

   [Damn      It]

     Tox

   Problems

Literally doing it

  Right now

Could, just asked for the   tour . .

Solutions

  No-

  Opposed

Well if you actually had some - character-ization

 .

Weren’t

  Tox*

|my brain’s starting to go numb 

    Why?

     [Not the brain,           The               Plot.]

      Whelp

      Right

     Also yeah, dinner after that

    Different guy?

   Dude-     Completely different    hairstyle?

Duchess

Condolence.

Retrieve

 Seriously,

  Just       Emot-        ion

 Very properly

That - looks     pretty different-

Where?

   ?

  Okay?

  Sh   adows-

 Okay cave carvings

  Right

 Aban-            On           -ed

I mean

It does

There’s stuff on it yeah

But they could take people for   tours down here  [The things samples on how it worked)

 [People do     stupid things]

  Wow

  OK so they have some helmets because it used to be a       manufacturing        plant

  Makes         Sense-

  Maybe you shouldn’t     screw with someone’s     display?

 What

  One dude  

 Great, you have one   Mandalore enthusiast

   Or a role          Actor-

  Whelp-

  Okay-

Mission

  With a light saber

   Yeah you start a talking 

  then you do the action          [if       necessary.]

   ...

Seriously      it’s one guy,

 Two?

  Okay

   ...

 Dude, Force     them.

  Obi-wan           -         

Obi-won sucks..     

...

Mis-      information

This dude’s a   dick isn’t he?

Like,          The     tone has been damn off            ...

  But this dude is supposed to be the villain   I think

(And it’s not the   carrier apparently)

Watch

Death      Watch.

Stands

Why do you care?

A person just died

And      we’re focused on this?

  Like,        Ma’am                -          Is your reputation     seriously,        The      biggest       thing       worry-           ing       you        right    now?         —-        Without         any      sardonics             -              Or        any               -  self-awareness          -       The tone  has been on the   floor since we started,

Right

Okay seriously 

that’s villain       lighting

Engineer

  How?

Also,                Some guys manage to smoke down the        outside of the palace.

   This is turning into the       intergalactic        incident?

        It            Isn’t-

      That’s a very          interpersonal matter.

And also ‘oh yeah this is gone beyond anything that I can expect but I won’t question you person who was supposed to keep track of it?

   Hmm

 Literally..

   Nothing about these        characters have been established

   Are      Satine and that dude close?

    What

  [it is a      Mess,]

Along

You

But       Is

Se-     paratists 

  Power-ful

   Don’t         Drink

Also wait   what was that logic?

   No-

  Okay,

   What?

   Jedi

  This one’s weak

  [if it was any other Jedi     these guys would be arrested 

     by        then]

   Harm- less

 I mean even      with it he was        fecking      useless..

So you’re going to call      Saltine          Now?

   Love..

   Whelp

   “Hey Satine I got my ass kicked again,”         (Why do they send him on           missions?)

       Time?

             Okay,

           Ice

         Fair,

      General

     Good,

        Right

        He clearly saw that              right?

     Al       -right

   Okay,         Now,

    Fatal-

    Why?

    Good,

      ??

     Took              ....          Dick               . .               Yet              ...

          Aight

          Nice

...

         Try                  Ing                 .. .

        Whelp

        Why?

        Look.

       Why?

       Whelp

 Obi-won is a     weak        bitch            (Term)

    Hate

    Un-

Un think the dialogue is       reversed here,

 Saltine was the one that was     heavily against             Involved           (Direct)           Approach

And the hair stroking thing 

just seems like something 

Obi-won       Would            Do...

     Killed

      This is really backwards

Obi-Wan is the one that is directly involved

Sal-tine          She’s very       sit on the sidelines     from what we seen..

       It        would        make        more                 ....

   ?

   ?

Ser-iously?

(What is going on with the        chara-             cter-             ization-       )

      Ag-

     Right-

I honestly thought that was     Rex for a minute

   Blue     ...is a theme

     ?

   Whelp

   (The        reenactors       are          getting          pretty           serious,)

     (Then again             she did        punch out)

       Jedi

      There’s two-

     Which           is two            more than           general Kenobi can handle,

    But he’s got Satine,        so that’s all right?

..

  Whelp

   Screw-

    Now         More

    Stand             and        fight

     So just          Satine.

     Stand            ...    

     You got your ass   kick-       ed

   Satine        should’ve         gotten         that line,

    Frick

   Whelp.   ..

  Heck..

     ?

   [Recap; That twist was real fucking stupid,  Obi-won gets beat up the fifth time the Remix, and does Satine get injured?

 I don’t know

  ....

   WTF!

When it’s not excusing it’s characters from   some accountability by   using cheap tactics,

    It’s tone         is a mess;

    The emotions          nowhere to be found

     The chara-cterization              “Off the wall”

* Not       in       a       good     way            .         I can’t honestly say            a single thing I           Le-           ar           n            ed 

    About          The         Chara-cters

     Satine? Apart from the narrative treating her like she’s completely unreasonable

      Nothing,

       I can’t say        a single thing for this character

       There’s seem to be an attempt   of banter between her and   Ken-obi

       But it’s completely               inconsistent

Honestly,    it feels like the writers     had      an      idea (Or       a line       Of       dia-       log        ue-         And        just       threw         it        in     hap     hazardly-”

Result-ing  in some (border  ling) reality breaking scenes

   Where a    character says something        happened

   Didn’t

 Which could work

 If the tone     wasn’t an absolute     MESS!

   Also the      villains

  Suffer        From       Clovis         Syn-drome

              (Or a near variant)

Because     nothing     is set up       -     The     tone   isn’t      even

   It feels like   we’re supposed to hate     this guy       Before    anything bad happens       (The same as with the      carrier-            Who             Did           Nothing)

     Screw     ing              Up             The            Story

Which is “Obi-Wan screws up        Every       -Thing         And          Lives-    -”

my thoughts on this episode;                 (In a more organized                form,)

  Is      that;

   “Obi-wan screws up everything,”        (As is my alternative       tone for this episode)

    *title

   Is a       Confused

 un- alt        ere         -d

 Mess

 Suffering;        From

   Lack of set- up, proper chara-cter-ization          Proper         Tone-       Emotion-           al        De-        vel          op          e         ment,       None           Chop-      ped,    flow-       ing          Narra-       Tive-

   And borders,        on not being able           to be         considered             a           story

    [Resemb-          Ling              Much            Of              The          “Blue         shadow           virus,”.          arc,          Except            With             -out              The         Abominations              But        More               nonsense,

[Bring back a persistent writing issue,      To refuse       to develop anything             correctly,]

Addition    Al;           A         Quick       Possible           Re-           Write        Recap;      (To wash     the bad taste    out of my mouth)

-Obi-wan             arrives           at the          Palace

   (Possibly           Soft,         Mournful               Play            Ing                 To           Indicate                        Sadness,          Loneli            ness,           Turn-             Ing             To           Harsh          -er            -Tri-            um           ph          an            t          (Pro            fes         -s        Ional          Music         [Heavy          Brass]

      The          Carrier           Greets           Ner            Vous                     ly            (Poss            Ibly             Try           -ing             To          Ex-pose             Dis        -spell-           The         Rumor      -s               (This         is his      cover)

    Poss-        Noting

    Obi-wan            meets          Sal-tine           Not-       Ic-eable               Wrist           Ful          Nes         s-

    Saltine             Is           Con-             Cern              Ed

       Snip-               Ish

        Believing            it to be        the Jedi Council.

          Dis-liking                 the               military            involvement                   in                    her country/                      Planet

             Till              Obi-wan               clarifies             that this is a             social call.                       .                  Ordered                     To                     Re-                 new                                Their                  Neu-                  trality                pledge-                    By                  Chan                   -cellor                         Palp                     atine,                The             rumors             Back               Hill,              Gossip,

          They go outside for               Saltine                  To                  Give                     A                   Public                 State                   Ment-                      That                     Goes                        Off                        —-                            (Possibly in the middle of Satine and                 Obi-Wan hav-ing                          An                        Argue-                      Ment                          Over                         Per                         form                           a                          tive                       Action                       (Neutral                          Vs                           Active                                    Phy-                        Sical)

                      That                           Occurs)

                     Obi-Wan                              is                             held                               in                            suspicion                              for                               being                               a                              military                              personal                              (                                 And the damages                         only beginning                                   when he arrived)

                                Not to     mention;

              Him being in, the hallway,                    The only one they can     place                    Where are the bomb                        was set     Things         Go   Badly

   (Possible circumstantial       Evidence,                        -Fram                  -ing

Either      way     Obi-Wan        is now     awaiting     some kind of trial

          Which                he makes it worse,

           By refusing,                 To wait,

           And trying             to find the actual                 suspect..

             He                does

              The            “Incident”                 Happens,

  And now it looks      worse than ever;

 Sateen cradling the   dying Man-d-      a-lorian

 Who        Invokes           The           Jedi            To           Blame

   Satine             Is           Up-          Set          (~Angry)

    Obi- won         Eventually            proves-        The Existence                  Of Death          Watch.                       But that       point-     It’s                      Al-ready                        Too                     Late,                  Bridges                   Burned                         In                      his                 pursuit                    for                  justice,                     Along                     with                      his                   relation                      ships                        . . .      Saltine             Taking               The               Evi                 dence            Coldly       Tell          -ing             Him               “To               Leave,”

         Victory                     At                  the                  cost                   of             everything                 dear,

[Leader               Not        Reveal        ed      Yet]

[Citi-       Zens         Pri-       Med         For          Darth         Sidious]

[Castle’s          Blue,         Fading           To           The            Neutral         Re-         flec-         tive         White)

        [Carrier               Possibly                 Hint-                  Ed                  Gone                  Often]

  [Senator           Possib           -Ly          Engaged/            Husband,               If               You                 Want            That           Drama

     Moral;            About            Mov-              Ing                On

                     [Ending                          scene                          possibly                             kept the same)

                     *To                          Foreshadow                           possible                              Anakin

                        But with a lot more weight-

               [End]

[alexander-mormont12]

TV shows that became unwatchable with age

Looper Staff

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, and sometimes, it turns out that the TV shows you used to love actually weren't worthy—and when we no longer see them through the warped lens of memory, it becomes clear that they don't stand up. Not all television is built to last, and here are a few old shows that have served their purpose and should never be rerun again.

Doctor Who

Before you get too upset, let's be clear: we're talking about the original, pre-modern version of Doctor Who. While much of the series' continuity and long-running themes were established during the days of Hartnell, Baker, and McCoy, it's difficult to sit through a three- or four-hour story arc with rubber monsters and a floundering Doctor. Sure, some of it has a bit of value for the ridiculous alien costumes alone, but for viewers accustomed to modern production values during an era in which television has risen to an art form, the camp and general plot-holery make the show hard to endure. Vintage Who barely stands up against Star Trek, and that's some serious camp. Just sit down and watch "Time and the Rani." If you make it out alive, you've probably used up one of your regenerations.

Daria

Many kids of the '90s look back on their grungy years of sarcastic indifference with a bit of regret, but at the time, nothing was cooler than casual nihilism. Emblematic of that attitude was Daria, the Beavis and Butthead spinoff that focused on the duo's smart, seemingly utterly indifferent classmate. At the time, it was relatable animation for people who were stuck between being kids and being adults. In retrospect, we know that Daria's unrelenting 'tude was an obstacle to valuable life experiences, and it can be hard to watch today—not to mention that every other character in the show is obviously a terribly broad caricature of high school stereotypes. And it seemed so real at the time.

Scrubs

At its best, Scrubs offered an entertaining comedy counterpoint to the glut of medical dramas on television. And there was even a time when Zach Braff's Dr. John Dorian was a sympathetic character whose everyday trials and heart of bronze was kinda worth watching… but as the show progressed, Dorian became less and less likable—and less insightful during his endless monologues. Finally, Braff left the show partway through the ninth season, leaving it to limp awkwardly to an anticlimactic conclusion.

Full House

If you were like most kids in the late '80s, you were probably parked in front of ABC's family-friendly TGIF block every Friday night. And your parents probably hated every second of it, because a little bit of Steve Urkel's insatiable lust for cheese goes a really, really long way—and Full House's saccharine morality and terrible puns were always hard to stomach. A hundred terrible catchphrases later, we're reminded just how awkward and unfunny the original show was, especially now that the series' continuation, Fuller House, has been given a second season on Netflix.

Married... with Children

Pushing against the borders of television decency was a pretty risky thing to do back in the days of Married… with Children, and no one pushed harder than Fox's original hit sitcom. That level of borderline-repulsive sass was something different in the '80s and '90s, but watching the exploits of Al Bundy now, it's clear that the program was pretty much an equal mix of embarrassingly easy fat jokes and sex jokes… and nothing else. Seeing what Ed O'Neill and Katey Sagal are truly capable of as actors just makes the broad, lowbrow junk of Married more embarrassing to watch. While it has a place in TV history, it should probably just stay there.

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

It's really hard to imagine a time when Hercules was seriously considered a watchable TV show, but six seasons can't be wrong. While the sword-and-sorcery adventure was one of the more popular syndicated TV shows of its era, its villain-of-the-week formula, grating soundtrack, and widespread overacting haven't withstood the test of time. TV audiences have come to expect a sense of continuity in a multi-season TV show, but Hercules completely ignored the linear flow of time and just did whatever, whenever, including rewriting the characters' own stories multiple times without any regard for the past. Once you have Herc witnessing the birth of Jesus, you've gone too far. At least we had Xena…and who needs a plot when you have Lucy Lawless?

Rugrats

It may be sacrilege to disparage any classic Nicktoon, but a show that once seemed like a clever look at the world through the eyes of infants has lost a lot of its charm—not least because it's hard to look past the constant baby talk and the grossly negligent parents. Angela never gets the discipline she needs to straighten out, everyone just keeps on having more babies, and anyone could have guessed that Chuckie would still be just as awkward in the show's unnecessary continuation, All Grown Up! Until someone comes along to animate the characters as balding, overweight 30-somethings struggling with depression and mortgages, we should probably just stick with Doug.

How I Met Your Mother

It's a sitcom about a dad who keeps his kids on a couch for nine years while he tells them, in great detail, about all of his greatest sexual conquests. The show's titular question was barely even answered by the end of the series, and in retrospect, the circuitous non-conclusion to the story fatally undermines How I Met Your Mother's replay value. (The forced in-jokes and cloying humor don't help, either.) Now that the nine-year nightmare's spell has been broken, we can live our lives again. Avoid the reruns; go forth and be free.

Highlander: The Series

Although the production value of Highlander: The Series was widely praised by critics at the time, television fantasy has come a long way since the 1990s. In an age when HBO spends as much as $10 million per episode to create Game of Thrones and audiences are used to seeing big screen quality on their TVs, the CBS show based on the film of the same name now looks terribly dated—and its problems go deeper than aesthetics. What at that time seemed like a sprawling epic has revealed itself as little more than a series of formulaic hourlong confrontations, pitting Duncan MacLeod (clansman and pupil of his movie namesake Connor) against one disposable immortal after another. Worse still, British actor Adrian Paul's performance is nowhere near the bar established by Christopher Lambert in the 1986 movie, lacking the rough edges and cool wit of the original Highlander.

The A-Team

The dramatic increase in TV production budgets over recent years has led to audiences expecting a certain amount of realism, and this is especially true when it comes to violence. As series like The Walking Dead continue to push boundaries, shows made in the days before a man could reduce another man's head to bloody mush with a baseball bat on primetime television begin to look awfully tame. The A-Team falls under this umbrella, a show on which thousands of mags of ammo are used on a weekly basis and remarkably, nobody ever dies. The longer the show went, the more ridiculous it became, getting to the point that a helicopter crashing into a mountainside and falling to the ground in a fireball caused little more than a scratch. Re-watching The A-Team today is guaranteed to awaken a bloodlust that you probably didn't know you had.

Saved by the Bell

While '90s spinoffs Saved by the Bell: The College Years and Saved by the Bell: The New Class have always been nigh-on unwatchable, the original show was once considered essential children's television. Digging out the NBC high school sitcom for your kids to watch today isn't advisable, however, as many of the lessons are painfully dated. The episode "The Mamas and the Papas" makes for particularly cringeworthy viewing, pairing the kids up in an effort to teach them about married life. The tone of the episode is summed up by A.C. Slater's definition of a "women's movement" (when she puts on something cute and moves into the kitchen). It also becomes apparent over the course of the show's four seasons that Zack Morris has a severe gambling problem, with every other episode involving Preppy making some kind of bet at the expense of his friends.

Xena: Warrior Princess

New Zealand-made cult series Xena: Warrior Princess is mainly remembered for the way it challenged female stereotypes and the discussions that raged over its supposedly lesbian subtext, though two aspects of the campy classic that largely escaped criticism at the time were its questionable production values and clumsy directing. This was always a show that asked you to suspend your belief for its duration, but watching it now, it's hard not to notice the multitude of reused extras and recycled sets. The tonal shifts also take some readjusting, with moments of dark violence randomly giving way to full-on musical numbers that make less sense than the show's version of ancient Greece, which is inexplicably rife with American slang. While Aphrodite's Valley-girl persona used to feel like a welcome quirk in a show built around them, in reality it's just one of the many things about Xena that give it a distinctive B-movie feel.