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Post by tzigone on Feb 28, 2015 14:10:51 GMT -5
But that would negate that Sinbad waited until Maeve was gone to thank Caipra - which I think he specifically did so that Maeve wouldn't know she didn't do the unshrinking. That could be me projecting, though.
I'd call it two scenes in robes against one in simple clothing, as the fight with Rumina (well, hardly a fight; Caipra trounced her) and the unshriking followup take place back-to-back with no time to change clothes. Also, Omar is still in the same outfit at the end as he was in when Rumina was discovered, too. I mean, I agree that I think the peacock motif is more routine for her, but that does indicate it might be intended to be the same day. So completely agree that the peacock outfit is more of what she'd normally wear, etc. I just don't think the in-show evidence is really there to prove it. However, thematically, it's definitely presented that way. It's sort of a reveal. She was a cryptic speaker before, but then she showed up in dramatic fashion and showed what kind of woman Dim-Dim was talking about in those journals. And I do think the innkeeper not recognizing her/her level of power is a good indicator of that.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 27, 2015 19:34:22 GMT -5
In 2015, it's a few minutes on Google (admittedly we were already somewhat familiar with the monetary units from looking up things previously; it's sort of a hobby with us). In 1996, a bit of a different story. I had Internet then, but not nearly as much familiarity with searching online and I'm not sure how the number of sources compared, but we didn't have the Google books extracts or anything. Absolutely true. And I really don't mind the blatant historical inaccuracies a bit (I wouldn't like a historically accurate tale). I just enjoy noticing what they are. It's part of the fun for me.
I tend to agree, but she only had three scenes, didn't she? One talk with Maeve, one conflict with Rumina/fix for Sinbad, and the goodbye?
Have I gotten myself confused? I thought Sinbad specifically waited until Maeve had already left to thank Caipra and then Caipra said it was all Maeve? That's why I didn't why she said it; Maeve wasn't there, so it wasn't for her sake and Sinbad saw what happened. Did I get mixed up?
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Post by tzigone on Feb 27, 2015 6:48:22 GMT -5
Well, they did specifically mention being prisoner on a ship she was on, but I guess you can say they weren't together on the same ship before. And yes, I know it was technically a tiller thing, but it still feels inconsistent to me. I can't agree with Talia being content with second-class crew status. I mean, you could fanwank to say she was thinking "hey, less work for me" but it doesn't work for me. It's intuitive, when you hear a pirate and sailors had adventures together before (and it seems more than one-off to me) to think at least some of those adventures were on water.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 26, 2015 20:56:33 GMT -5
I checked on these, if you're still interested
1. Doubar: I'll get him interested. Got let him get a whiff of it first. Sinbad: He likes it. Doubar: Told you. The kid's a good gummer.
2. Doubar: I'd hoped they'd given up. Sinbad: We have the caravan's riches. They won't give up.
3. It's either made up or not in English; can't help.
4. Sinbad: You're sure there was a bridge? Firouz: Perhaps you mistook a wave of rising -- (gets cut off)
5. Bryn: I don't think so. Firouz: I believe the third tuck should have been a fold.
6. "Well, can't have him."
7. Doubar: "Just so you know, you're not going to get me to like this." Sinbad: "None of us do." Doubar: "We have to make sure they do the right thing." Sinbad: "We will."
8. Firouz: Despite the math I refuse to give up hope. Doubar: Now, that's the swagger, Firouz.
9. Ajeeb: You will remain in my heart. Farewell, blessing upon you.
Didn't get the name of the bandits. I only watched the bits necessary for dialog, so if you can tell me what scene to look it, I'll try for the name.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 26, 2015 20:33:18 GMT -5
I like this ep. It's the first after the premiere, and we get a feel for how future episodes will go. We also get that Rumina will be a recurring villain and the nature of Maeve and Dermott's relationship is revealed. So, to start, I think Doubar and Kula are cute. I'm not the only one who thinks so.I mean, everything appears completely platonic (except for her sitting on his lap) and no, and he repeatedly call her "friend" so nothing's going on there. I just think they'd make a nice match; that's all. Was amused how even after getting dropped out of Doubar's lap, she was laughing by time they left. She seems good-natured. I enjoyed the Doubar/Maeve scene at the beginning. I also really liked how Firouz completely read Doubar's worry for Sinbad in his gruffness and complaining. It adds to the sense of the characters having history, of them having known each other for a while. But Doubar's behavior regarding women at the tiller is a bit strange considering that he's later revealed to have (seemingly) spent extensive time on the same ship as Talia. We got to hear Dermott's voice - the only time ever. I guess to explicitly spell out the relationship. I liked his voice; why did we never hear it again? Is communicating words more difficult than communicating pictures? Most of the Sinbad/Rumina scenes are really quite good. I love how discombobulated and out of sorts Sinbad was when she kissed him. He did not expect that at all. It was great. And he is just so not into her. At all. In some moments he seems positively bored by her. Then he tries to play the charm while rejecting her, but is really patronizing. He saw her childishness and pettiness and failed to perceive that just because she's childish and petty doesn't mean she isn't evil and powerful and very dangerous. He was vastly underestimating/misreading her, and I just love his face when she just disintegrated the slave/servant and he was forcefully made aware of that fact. During the "escape" sequence where Sinbad is trouncing her guards, the look on Rumina's face is great. She looks like "this isn't supposed to happen" - like she is surprised it's not all going according to plan. But then he stops to make a quip in the window her face changes to a self-satisfied "I got this" type of expression and he's all tied up. Dermott was very easily captured this episode. Actually, every single one of them was easily captured this time. Still, it gave Rumina a card to play against Sinbad. What do you think Sinbad thinks of Dermott at this point? Would he do this for any animal - unlikely. Is it because Dermott is Maeve's pet/companion and it would upset Maeve a lot - probably. The third option is that he's already becoming aware that Dermott is something other than a normal hawk (not necessarily human, but something), and certainly the dialog after Turok's death is a clue that he has. The fight with Goz is good. Sinbad was going to kill him, but looked at him and, instead of seeing a beast, saw the man cursed by Rumina. Probably via the method that was being used on him. I don't think he'd thought of it as a spell-breaker at the time, but once he committed to that course of action, Sinbad stuck with it, even after Goz yanked him into the hole. I enjoy the dialog when Maeve is confronting Rumina (even though I think the magical battle is a bit dull). Maeve expected to be rememebered; it was important to her. It was nothing to Rumina. She doesn't even remember Dermott as one of her victims. He wasn't like Goz or any of the other guys she has penned; he didn't matter. Look at the battle; I've said before I think Maeve is very new to magic, and definitely she ended up on the losing end, but she had the upper hand several times. She has strong attacking power, for all that we don't see her perform nearly the breadth of spells that Rumina does. And she improves by leaps and bounds during the year on the Nomad. I think she must have focused on attack, since her stated goal has always been "kill Rumina." The closing was nice. Sinbad expresses concern over Rumina becoming a Maeve enemy (interestingly enough, that never really seemed to play out to me; she's still fixated in Sinbad later, but Rumina doesn't seem to regard Maeve any differently than the rest of the crew), and he's curious and asked about the backstory there. But he doesn't seem to regard it as a strategic need to know, but rather a personal curiosity and he easily and gracefully accepts that Maeve is not yet willing to share that information. I do have a few questions that I think I must have overlooked the answers to when watching the ep and wondered if anyone could help me out? - Why did Rumina's pool stop showing an image?
- Where did all the servants and guards go? They were just gone after the magic battle. Did she send them away or something?
Anachronism of the week: Kula using the word "grog." I know she just meant "alcohol" but it usually means ship rations with rum, and I think it always includes distilled alcohol. Rum didn't exist until the 17th century and no distilled alcoholic beverages existed (as far as we know) until the 12th century. But the really burning issue: Maeve's only been there a few minutes so why does Kula think her being drunk is the most likely explanation?
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Post by tzigone on Feb 26, 2015 19:08:16 GMT -5
Actually, raids were very common in Ireland. Irish raids by other Irish until the Vikings showed up in 795. Different kingdoms and clans and so on. The rich settlements were always being raided and raiding each other. And most of the settlements were Monastic towns. But they weren't the ascetic, poor monks we're used to. They were heavily tied to the clans, sometimes younger sons of kings were in charge of the monasteries. They were rich and political and actually some monasteries raided other monasteries. According to this site, there were at least 309 raids on ecclesiastical sites in the 563 years between 600 and 1163 and half of those were by other Irish. Actually, with the boat reference, I really thought it was a reference to vikings, except they showed up later, and Maeve didn't seem to have problem with them. Don't get me wrong; she certainly can have seen raids after she started traveling. But she can have seen them before, too.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 26, 2015 18:40:26 GMT -5
I had some doubts about certain points there, but your explanation makes good sense and although there were some obvious clues that something is wrong, I think that their fooling is believable and that it could happen to anyone. We'll have to disagree there. I was aware of the very obvious allusion to Stockholm syndrome. Still doesn't work for me. They made no effort to listen or ask anything even when she fought back and seemed a willing lover and they knew that. Despite blatant evidence that the situation merited further investigation, they just went right ahead and tied up and gagged her. That bothers me a lot. It seems very out of character to me. They didn't need to believe her, necessarily, but they did need to listen, to investigate, to try to ascertain the truth. I know they were in a hurry, but it could have at least been "let's get somewhere safe and find out what's really going on." Oh, I definitely think she still steals afterwards. Her speech at the end is just so much like her earlier speech about realizing her wrongs and not wanting to steal anymore. And then she stole a guy's horse. Nope, I think she's exactly the same after this adventure with Sinbad as she was before it.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 25, 2015 12:49:24 GMT -5
I thought I start a thread for the fics we don't intend to write, but still have ideas in our head about. And start with a few of my own. Please contribute yours.
Is Sinbad a daddy? - a woman arrives with a child that might be Sinbad's and would have been conceived during his missing two years. Now, in my head, the child belonged to another rainbow-bracelet wearer whose memories were affected a little differently than Sinbad's - mostly because she was already pregnant when her event happened and the powers that did this wanted her to remember her child. And it's am aunt who currently has the child who thinks it might be Sinbad's (because her sister told her to take the child to him when big-scary-baddie-that-she's-fighting showed up). But Sinbad really has no clue and it bothers him. Things get sorted in the end, but it really increases his motivation for finding out where he was and what he was doing in the time he doesn't remember.
Dermott in a funk - basically Dermott's sad and frustrated because Maeve is the only person he can really communicate with. It's lonely.
Doubar and Kula - from "The Beast Within"; I hope I heard her name correctly. They are so cute, so a story featuring them. Friends, friends and occasional lovers, friends who become lovers, whatever. Just the two of them interacting more. She's a strong woman, and can handle her troubles herself, but when local thugs give her trouble when Doubar is there, they'll regret it.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 25, 2015 7:14:42 GMT -5
Exactly! That's why I'm thinking of her as the daughter of a (high end/status) metal-worker - to help explain it. I think most of the pins and the necklace (at least in some shots) can pass for brass or bronze. The round one and the ring, though....
I know it puts her on the higher end of the economic scale, but that's what she's dressed for. And Rumina doesn't know/remember anything about her, anyway.
Now, we did see Rumina seemingly conjuring things out of thin air in "Double Trouble" (either that or transporting them from elsewhere, but with the bath...), but if Maeve could do that, she could conjure food for them when they were without wind in their sails in "The Prince Who Wasn't."
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 19:53:30 GMT -5
We've spent so much time on all the possible time-frames I just realized that I still don't know where "fifth century" came from. Does anyone else?
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 17:34:58 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestion, but that won't work because it places Rumina a child - I want them all adults. Plus it's too much of Rumina's life to me - being taken from her father, in a new place, etc. I really want it all to be such a non-event to her. Very forgettable and routine. If she's been taken away, the place she's taken to would be too memorable. Plus it's too much about Rumina. This isn't about her, her feelings or thoughts. My plan is she and Turok were just there a few days (up to a couple weeks) hunting down a magical artifact in a primitive backwater.
And it's important to me that Maeve never think Dermott is killed. Her story is the same from the start, but they don't believe her. She has to feel her parents' lack of belief in her, and if they are just believing one of the two mutually-contradictory things she told them, they're still believing her.
Talking here has given me a couple ideas, though. I think will have Dermott and Maeve get caught by Rumina (who didn't want to go into the filthy cave or where ever the artifact was). They want no witnesses to their "theft" (actually, no one knew it was there, so it's more finders-keepers, but they don't want to risk anyone important knowing they have the artifact or they don't want anyone else going after it, too), so kill anyone who shows up. But Rumina's bored, so decides to play with them first. Eeny-meeny-miney-mo and Dermott's transformed. She'll start on a slow death for Maeve, but then Turok's done and she's distracted and she might think she's finished off unconscious Maeve (or just doesn't care, since they're done) so away they go. Someone in the distance saw what was happening (ran towards them, but Turok and Rumina were gone by time they arrived) and it looked to them like Dermott was disintegrated. It's a complete non-event for Rumina. I just have decide if it was unfortunate circumstance that brought Dermott and Maeve to their attention or if they were spying because one or both of them (probably Dermott if one, since he seems to have a very strong sensitivity/judgement when magic is involved - see the ghost Prince, the Trickster, etc.) thought they felt wrong and were up to no good and decided to follow. I know it doesn't have tons of drama, but it's not meant to; I want something more in the flavor of her disintegrating her slave than of her fixation with Sinbad. Something she forgets as soon as it's done.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 17:15:10 GMT -5
Fair enough. I had been thinking the second attack on Sinbad was Turhan's guys, but that was another group of Bellamur's, wasn't it? So Turhan gets a pass. Jial gets one, too, I agree. I mean they said "we're here to rescue you" but she's a normal (non-adventurer) person as far as I can tell and may not be listening to closely to what the people who are gagging her and tying her up are saying. I probably wouldn't be.
But Sinbad and his crew still don't get one. My biggest problem is how they don't listen to Jial, and that doesn't go away.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 15:10:48 GMT -5
Maybe. But it seemed to be he wanted her back. That she was unconsenting didn't matter to him. I would say "if he wanted her dead, why bother kidnapping her?" but I can get the idea that Turhan might at least think Bellamur wanted to kill her personally. Or at least wanted to rape her before killing her.
There are several things that just aren't logical to me. Turhan has met, and fought, Sinbad. He should know Sinbad's noble nature. Instead of sending guys to threaten to kill him, he just needed to say "hey, let's talk" and then tell him his story, and let them talk to Jial. Sure, they might not believe anything (could think she was afraid for her life so lied about wanting to be with him), but if that's the case, he could just wait and attack them then. I'm not saying there's no risk involved in that plan, but it still seems the wiser course, to me. Heck, even have the threateners say "she chose to be with Turhan; try to take her and you die" - just get the idea in their heads she's there willingly.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 11:50:57 GMT -5
Actually, it's not about Rumina at all. This is just one important bit of backstory for a story set during the series. The main gist of the story idea (which would not be immediately revealed) is this: Their parents believe, truly believe, that Dermott is dead and Maeve has gone mad with grief. They believe she's living in a delusion, refusing to accept her loss. Believing this, they've essentially lost two of their children, because Maeve will not give up on Dermott and leaves to find Rumina and has not spoken with her parents since. They aren't evil or stupid, they're just wrong. And that wrongness, that view of Maeve, has not only affected her relationship with them, but every relationship forward. She tells no one the truth because her own family didn't believe her, so why would anyone else. She can't stand the idea of anyone else looking at her like she's broken, mad. Also, she can't have anyone trying to stop her from fulfilling her task, as they might do if they knew her reason, but believed it false.
But for this work, I absolutely must plot out a scenario where Dermott being dead is a logical, reasonable, belief because I don't want her parents to be narrow-minded fools. That's part of the tragedy of it.
I did consider Rumina having an attraction to Dermott, but I thought she'd remember him if that was the case. I mean, she never tried to turn Sinbad into a pet (though I do now have in my head the idea that her cat, Cicero is another former infatuation - thanks for that). I really want it to be something that was completely insignificant and forgettable to Rumina, but ended up encompassing Maeve and Dermott's entire lives.
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Post by tzigone on Feb 24, 2015 9:56:27 GMT -5
I dislike this episode. The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. What absolutely infuriates me is how they don't listen to Jahele (Jial? I'm not sure how to spell it). Okay, I'll admit that there was care taken in establishing in the beginning that one man was a rogue and the other a known hero. But that should never have outweighed what she, herself, had to say. At least Sinbad realized there was a problem, but he allowed it to be easily brushed aside by Firouz. I know they were in a hurry at first because they were under attack, but even after the others had escaped and had a few minutes downtime, the others still made no attempt to determine what the woman had to say about the matter. And I admit that I doubt a grown man's words would have been as easily dismissed. But the biggest problem is that I think it's out of character for our crew (particularly Sinbad) not to talk to her and find out what's going on before dragging her away.
The follow up to this is Sinbad changing his tune when Turhan wants to die without his love. There are people out there who'd commit suicide over unreturned affection. That he really wants her has no bearing at all on what she wants. And it hammers in even more how the man gets listened to more than the woman. And Turhan even wanting to die is really annoying to me. It's all about his happiness - what about maybe trying to rescue your enslaved love? What, once the other guy puts his hands on her, it's all over? No worth left, no reason to try to rescue her? I guess what we're supposed to get out of this is that he thinks if he loses her now, she's gone forever and he'll never get her back (I don't think he thinks she'll be killed?), but it's not very logical. I guess he's just defeatist.
Now, there are bits I like. I like Maeve commenting on Dermott being right there and Firouz not really noticing her empahsis. Maeve's "STOP!" scene is funny. And, of course, I like the Sinbad/Maeve shippiness at the end with Sinbad getting laughed at by his crew. But that's outweighed by how completely ignored Jial is.
Inconsistency: Maeve's "my hands are tied" - she's used magic when her hands were tied before ("The Beast Within", "The Ties that Bind") so that doesn't really work for me.
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