The memories of the seven-year-old I was inform me that the show was Batman The Animated Series grade excellent, so it's not surprising that people should remember it.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

...actually, scratch that, I was around nine or ten when it started airing.

Pirates of Dark Water still has a cult following. It's not a large one, as these things go; in terms of "90s cartoons that were cancelled before their times" the cult following of Gargoyles dwarfs it. But PoDW was pretty influential in certain circles despite not being very well known.

It's a bit like the completely apocryphal and inaccurate Brian Eno quote: "The Velvet Underground's first album only sold a few thousand copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band."

-Merc
Keep Rat

Given that I'm also a huge Zelda nerd, well... let's just say Umi's homeworld fascinates me and leave it at that, 'kay?

I certainly have nothing against old or short shows. "My" show is so old it was an OAV series that got cut short, which was rebooted into a full TV series years later. Nowadays, it seems like nobody but the oldsters have seen (or heard of) BGC these days.

Jeanne

	Jeanne Hedge http://www.jhedge.com
"Never give up, never surrender!"

This is the kind of nerd one-upsmanship that either eneves Mother eloping with
>Father doomed the family to extinction."

I bet this makes her just the FAVORITE aunt of her niece and nephew!

>"Listen to me!" Nall said urgently. "Nax is -not- the kind of
>dragon you're used to. He lives in Midgard because he's an exile. A
>war criminal. His Name means 'Cruelty, Never Mercy'. Now go!"

Interesting. I do wonder if that's a formal exile, or a "skipped town before the heat came down" exile. I can see it going either way.

I have to say that the fight with Nax seems a bit... hmm. Perfunctory? I know this is just a short, but it felt really superfluous in a way that nothing else in the story did; it's like "Well, we kind of promised a dragon fight, and Act III needs a big finish to send us offstage on, so... here you go." I wouldn't say it's dull, but it's just kind of... there. Nax swoops down, Nall kicks his ass, they all go watch Corwin and Utena get hitched.

I dunno, it could just be me.

>Then, smiling tiredly, he said, "Your homeworld is terrible,
>Umi. Let's never come back here again."

I'm kinda with Nall on this one.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Nope, made up on the spot out of more-or-less-randomly-selected syllables.

>One day, someone is actually going to make use of all those lovely
>international institutions that Megazone, Jeremy Feeple, and the other
>fine people of the Babylon Foundation and various diplomatic services
>have poured blood, sweat, and tears into establishing.

... and only you will enjoy that episode. :)

Also, in Fuu's defense, she doesn't know Umi's groom is a) prepubescent and b) probably even less into this than Umi is. She thinks her friend is about to be dragged off to whothechristevenknowswhat. These people are obviously goddamn medievalist savages, for all she knows they still do that parade-the-bloody-sheets-through-the-town thing. I didn't really wanna go there - see the annotations for a few notes about how I had to grapple with that whole corner of the premise a bit - but jeez.

>Okay, the Prince is officially awesome, but geeeeez. Kid is badly in
>need of seasoning.

Cut him some slack, he's the Hyelian equivalent of eleven and he's having a real hard day.

>Would it be safe to say that Izumi... is an elite warrior who's
>trained for many years in the art of stealth?
>
>(I'm sorry.)

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have is a very particular set of skills.... "

>Huh. Interesting cultural stereotype. I would have figured Fire
>Nationals would have a reputation as natural thugs and bullies;
>element of power and all that, plus the Fire Nation during the Hundred
>Year's War didn't really seem all that... subtle. More "burn down the
>village to make a point."

It's a little different on Kyoshi Island, particularly among the Warriors, where the main point of historical contact with the Fire Nation came in the form of infiltrators and assassins. (Looking at you, Mai.)

>Hell, putting just ONE guy on a door is a mistake to begin with. At
>that point you're not a guard; you're a decoration. Your job isn't
>actually protection, it's to give the hallway a finished look.

These guys are basically mallcops.

>What was that you were saying a few weeks ago about chi blocking being
>cheap, cheap shit, Ben? :)

Important detail:

She'd already won the fight anyway at that point.

It's not the Poke of I Win, it's the Poke of Stay Out of My Way Now, Defeated Person.

>I have to say that the fight with Nax seems a bit... hmm. Perfunctory?
>I know this is just a short, but it felt really superfluous in a way
>that nothing else in the story did; it's like "Well, we kind of
>promised a dragon fight, and Act III needs a big finish to send us
>offstage on, so... here you go." I wouldn't say it's dull, but it's
>just kind of... there. Nax swoops down, Nall kicks his ass, they all
>go watch Corwin and Utena get hitched.
>
>I dunno, it could just be me.

Use your damn imagination, boy. I gave you plenty of adjectives to work with.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Serendipity, then. Always cool when that happens.

>>One day, someone is actually going to make use of all those lovely
>>international institutions that Megazone, Jeremy Feeple, and the other
>>fine people of the Babylon Foundation and various diplomatic services
>>have poured blood, sweat, and tears into establishing.
>
>... and only you will enjoy that episode. :)

Hey, you guys manage to make that sort of stuff pretty awesome when you choose to dip your toe into that pool. Gryphon's murder trial was pretty damned riveting, and that was basically a political fight from beginning to end. I can't be the only one who thought so. :)

(I also have fond memories of Redneck and Jeremy standing before the Supreme Judiciary to make the case against Garth Zard'al, but I haven't read those passages in a very long time, and Redneck has since retired.)

>Also, in Fuu's defense, she doesn't know Umi's groom is a)
>prepubescent and b) probably even less into this than Umi is. She
>thinks her friend is about to be dragged off to
>whothechristevenknowswhat. These people are obviously goddamn
>medievalist savages, for all she knows they still do that
>parade-the-bloody-sheets-through-the-town thing. I didn't really
>wanna go there - see the annotations for a few notes about how
>I had to grapple with that whole corner of the premise a bit - but
>jeez.

I actually should have mentioned, I was rather glad you didn't.

It would have been very easy to make Umi's fiancee some sort of leering, groping fop and/or hardcore cultural reactionary, the kind of guy nobody minds seeing get mauled by a dragon. But you didn't, you went "basically okay, victim of his culture." That makes simply applying swift and brutal violence to the situation a lot more complex.

I really don't really blame Fuu, as such. Umi's family is doing something pretty barbaric to her. But man, it was kind of funny (well, it was funny to me, and in kind of a black way) the way you had Nall parsing out legal strategies, and then Fuu goes "NO LAWYERS DRAGON TIME NAO" and he rolls with it.

>>Hell, putting just ONE guy on a door is a mistake to begin with. At
>>that point you're not a guard; you're a decoration. Your job isn't
>>actually protection, it's to give the hallway a finished look.
>
>These guys are basically mallcops.

Being a mallcop is actually harder than people think it is, but I take your meaning.

>Use your damn imagination, boy. I gave you plenty of adjectives to work with.

Oh, the fight itself was well-executed. I got no complaints there. You've been choreographing these things for, what, twenty years? I'd actually feel really weird about going after it on that level unless something really egregious had happened.

My critique was more structurally based. It just kind of seems like Nax was there just to have a fight with; you insert an unambiguously evil bad guy with no real connection to the rest of the story or purpose for being other than for Nall to prove how badass he is (which Nall has already done a lot of times) by taking him down hard. Like you got to the end, realized there needed to be a final boss instead of everyone waving goodbye to Bogan and vanishing in a spray of light, and cobbled one together.

Not trying to be a dick about this, just calling it like I see it.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Actually, he's there for several reasons, of which the fight itself is probably the least significant. He's also there to provide key onlookers inside and outside the story with a heretofore unseen insight into the darker side of draconic culture, say a few things that make it more difficult for Umi and Nall to put certain thoughts back in their boxes, and reveal at least one important fact about Nall to several people who did not previously know it.

This installment is interesting to me mainly because not everything that gets raised in that way is immediately dealt with, but if I had immediately dealt with them (as feels like my more usual custom), I'd have people - possibly the same people, ironically enough - gigging me for everything being all pat and handled before the last commercial.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Hmm, fair enough. I suppose this could be on me; I'd already sort of internalized the idea that Nall, underneath the whole cat/cute boy thing, has some dark shit lurking in his cultural background. But Umi and Co. don't exactly have a readers-eye view, do they?

>This installment is interesting to me mainly because not everything
>that gets raised in that way is immediately dealt with, but if I
>had immediately dealt with them (as feels like my more usual
>custom),

Not only that, the thing feels like a one-off. It could almost be an episode of Brave and the Bold, even. There are things in it that I expect will come up in the future, but not precisely in the same way that, say, unresolved threads and revelation in the Symphony proper usually end up returning with a vengeance.

>I'd have people - possibly the same people, ironically
>enough - gigging me for everything being all pat and handled before
>the last commercial.

Maybe. I'm not renowned for my sterling consistency, after all. :) But, you know, not everything has to be one microscopic cog in a catastrophic plan. Sometimes things just happen and then they're over with without being part of a giant grand tapestry. That time Gryphon missed a whole Kilrathi War to go fight in the Beast Wars springs to mind; that was basically all pat and handled before the last commercial.

That said, there are times when rushing to wrap up everything up might be a poor stylistic choice. But you take things as they come.

-Merc
Keep Rat

... and was not the sixty-fifth piece(!) of a larger set of story arcs that aren't finished yet.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Also, this is, I feel, the first time that we've seen Nall actually worried about a fight since his investiture. I felt that, when he was talking to Umi and saying "get away while I talk" there was an implied "and when that fails and it becomes a fight stop walking away and start running, 'cause I'm not sure how this is gonna end up." I mean, we know it turns out alright in the end because of how the story is structured (and because it's EPU and the Heroes almost always win), but not knowing that? He's a guy walking into a fight that's 6:5 and pick 'em.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Probably about the same as when both players of a beat-'em-up game select to fight as CHUCK NORRIS...

... or possibly Jackie Chan (with or without sweet bean roll).

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

"Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

(sharp intake of breath) "Total protonic reversal."

"Right, that's bad. OK. All right. Important safety tip! Thanks, Egon."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Forgive me, but I would like to now remind everybody of the major good guys that we've come to know in this universe. The 'love and willpower' thing? It has been shown lots of time that it actually CAN do some pretty amazing things. Case in point: when Corwin meets Anthy? Just sayin'. :)

You cite when Corwin met Anthy; I would like to note that all the love in the world wouldn't have helped Corwin when he went into Cephiro if he hadn't also happened to be, you know, a god, and to have loads of actual, quantifiable power to hurl at Akio and his buddies and a number of get-out-of-jail-free cards.

-Merc
Keep Rat

I'd say 1) is closest. The Duchess basically treats Hyerul as The Only Place In The Galaxy That Matters. That Gryphon guy may be a Big Deal in Other Places, but she is a Big Deal on Hyerul, which *of course* trumps him. If he comes around to complain, she can tell him where to stick it.

>>It's a three-hour walk, and that's if we make good time through the
>>Valley of the Orcs - which I wouldn't count on, because, well, orcs."
>
>... seriously? They still have orcs on Hyeruul?
>
>Place really is trapped in the 14th century. What, is that Valley some
>sort of game preserve? They keep a few thousand orcs around in their
>natural environment so that noblemen can ride in, pop a few with their
>blaster rifles and feel like big men, protecting the stead from
>marauders like their ancestors did in the days when a longsword was a
>piece of high-tech weaponry?

I like that.

>I have to say that the fight with Nax seems a bit... hmm. Perfunctory?
>I know this is just a short, but it felt really superfluous in a way
>that nothing else in the story did; it's like "Well, we kind of
>promised a dragon fight, and Act III needs a big finish to send us
>offstage on, so... here you go." I wouldn't say it's dull, but it's
>just kind of... there. Nax swoops down, Nall kicks his ass, they all
>go watch Corwin and Utena get hitched.

Well, it provides Nall and Umi with a convenient distraction before either of them says something they really regret. I'd say anything below "second actual dragon, hostile" would barely register once they really get going.

And we know Nall is a badass, sure. But with his usual joking, easygoing personality, would we really know how much raw *anger* he's keeping in check over the whole thing, if a convenient outlet for that anger hadn't come along?

>Visibly terrified at the prospect of going forward with the
>day's agenda. He wouldn't even look her in the eye when her grandmother
>and his own chaperone, an elderly woman who (unlike Duchess M'belyyn'da
>the Elder) really did qualify for the title of "crone", had introduced
>them;

And I'm not sure I'd be entirely quick to judge here. Umi's family got out of Hyeruul; the Duchess attempting to drag them in is kind of a dick move. But everybody else has to live there, and Hyeruul seems like a pretty patriarchal place. That means if you're a woman, there are only a few paths to wielding real actual power and having a degree of control over your own life, and this is going to be one of them.

I'm reminded of a quote from one of Charles Stross' works, the Clan Corporate, about how that kind of intergenerational dysfunction can work:

"Look, the rules are really very simple. You grow up hating and fearing your grandmother. Then she marries you off to some near-stranger. A generation later, you have your own grandchildren and you realize you’ve got to hurt them just the way your own great-aunts and grandmother hurt you, or you’ll be doing them an even worse disservice; if you don’t, then instead of a legacy of some degree of power all they’ll inherit is the status of elderly has-been chattel."

The Duchess at least can wield power in her own right as a widow. Bogan's great-aunt might not even have that going for her.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Oh, that's not a coincidence, I assure you. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Maaaaaaaate, noice.

Bonus related content! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA8gJoT5yl4