I started binging on the show, started season 6 yesterday.
Really enjoyed the first 3 seasons, not sure if Belters accents are racist or just dumb, but they are definitely grating and I havent managed to get used to them yet, also, Naomi Nagata doesnt really have the accent, wich is inconsistent but welcome.
Bobbie Draper is one of my favorite characters, I wish there were more interactions between Bobbie and Amos.
Marco Inaros is a very poorly written character, and the actor gives one of the worst performances I have seen in recent years, I think the story arc is great but goddamn the performance sucks balls.
I think the rules of space combat changed somewhere between seasons 1 and 5.
I was bummed out when Miller got venuse´d, but I enjoyed his contributions after that.
Seriously, Ive been hoping someone kills Marco and Pillip, just so I dont have to see them act anymore.
8/10 I would dub all the belters with the actors natural accents, they can keep the slang, that was cool.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Naomi's accent isn't inconsistent, she code switches. Belta accent comes out when she's talking to/about Belters.
I could not possibly disagree more about Marco Inaro. Keon Alexander nailed it.
Marco is such a vile person that perhaps it's hard to differentiate hating the acting vs. hating the character.
I swear he must have studied narcissists in depth...I get the same visceral reaction watching him as I do listening to Trump speak.
I can diferentiate between hating the character and hating the performance, the character itself is "meh", sort of a caricature, but the performance, instead of grounding the character into something resembling a human being, it dials it up to 12, where it´s a theater performance of the caricature of a terrorist.
There are other dramatic characters that have to deal with awkward lines (Avasarala), and they nail it, even if you can see them struggle through it, but Marco´s performance (by Keon Alexander) feels jarring and out of place, like belonging to a different genre, mabe a stage musical, or a soap opera.
Edit: Actually, the first time I was aware of the guy, was when Marco was captured, and the different factions were voting if they were going to space him or not, and the dialogue was awful, they gave the character some invisible super power of persuation that just doesnt translate to the viewer, but the performance was FINE, it´s when he gets the armada that becomes extremely stiff, moves around as if he was actually on a stage and generally not being a belivable character.
FANTOMAS on
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Yeah, I gave up in season five after having been enthralled with everything before that. The Free Navy / Marco stuff just lacks oomph compared to extra-solar horror.
I could not possibly disagree more about Marco Inaro. Keon Alexander nailed it.
Marco is such a vile person that perhaps it's hard to differentiate hating the acting vs. hating the character.
I swear he must have studied narcissists in depth...I get the same visceral reaction watching him as I do listening to Trump speak.
I can diferentiate between hating the character and hating the performance, the character itself is "meh", sort of a caricature, but the performance, instead of grounding the character into something resembling a human being, it dials it up to 12, where it´s a theater performance of the caricature of a terrorist.
There are other dramatic characters that have to deal with awkward lines (Avasarala), and they nail it, even if you can see them struggle through it, but Marco´s performance (by Keon Alexander) feels jarring and out of place, like belonging to a different genre, mabe a stage musical, or a soap opera.
Edit: Actually, the first time I was aware of the guy, was when Marco was captured, and the different factions were voting if they were going to space him or not, and the dialogue was awful, they gave the character some invisible super power of persuation that just doesnt translate to the viewer, but the performance was FINE, it´s when he gets the armada that becomes extremely stiff, moves around as if he was actually on a stage and generally not being a belivable character.
You do know that part of Marco's entire thing is that he is performing for the audience of the moment. Even to his own son he is performing the actions he thinks his son needs in order to do what Marcos wants. This is an actual thing narcissists do. It is why he has that "superpower of persuasion", which is a thing real world narcissists can do.
If you think that is full of BS and not real, just look at Trump for the real world example of this super power in action. I understand the desire to reject it as a thing that could never happen, but you'd be very wrong.
I could not possibly disagree more about Marco Inaro. Keon Alexander nailed it.
Marco is such a vile person that perhaps it's hard to differentiate hating the acting vs. hating the character.
I swear he must have studied narcissists in depth...I get the same visceral reaction watching him as I do listening to Trump speak.
I can diferentiate between hating the character and hating the performance, the character itself is "meh", sort of a caricature, but the performance, instead of grounding the character into something resembling a human being, it dials it up to 12, where it´s a theater performance of the caricature of a terrorist.
There are other dramatic characters that have to deal with awkward lines (Avasarala), and they nail it, even if you can see them struggle through it, but Marco´s performance (by Keon Alexander) feels jarring and out of place, like belonging to a different genre, mabe a stage musical, or a soap opera.
Edit: Actually, the first time I was aware of the guy, was when Marco was captured, and the different factions were voting if they were going to space him or not, and the dialogue was awful, they gave the character some invisible super power of persuation that just doesnt translate to the viewer, but the performance was FINE, it´s when he gets the armada that becomes extremely stiff, moves around as if he was actually on a stage and generally not being a belivable character.
You do know that part of Marco's entire thing is that he is performing for the audience of the moment. Even to his own son he is performing the actions he thinks his son needs in order to do what Marcos wants. This is an actual thing narcissists do. It is why he has that "superpower of persuasion", which is a thing real world narcissists can do.
If you think that is full of BS and not real, just look at Trump for the real world example of this super power in action. I understand the desire to reject it as a thing that could never happen, but you'd be very wrong.
When I read the first few books I had a hard time believing in Marco. This obviously insane guy with no real plan somehow convinces a significant number of followers, makes a deal with the Martian defectors, and actually pulls off a plan? It didn't seem like he could possibly carry out any of the actions described and he always seemed so transparently full of himself and his own delusions that nobody sane would ever follow him. But then the 2016 US election happened. I can't watch Trump speak anymore. My brain just rejects it and I get increasingly anxious leading toward panic. Admittedly I have an anxiety disorder, but still. And yet the dude's got legions of followers who love watching him ham it up and vomit word salad. Marco in the series is a significantly more subdued and rational megalomaniac than Trump but the real world example made his performance in the show entirely believable to me. You've got a population of oppressed people who are desperate for someone with the power to make them feel powerful. An over-the-top, hammy, Always Upright And Spitting In The Inners' Eye leader riding his surprise victory as the whole structure of his poorly-thought-out plan falls down around him totally worked for me.
Marco is a narcissist, but he's not stupid. He does have a plan, one that's good enough to get allies out of desperate people who are expecting to get genocided.
He's just too narcissistic to keep to the plan, and he doesn't quite have theory of mind, so he always expect people to do what he wants them to do, and never questions why they are helping him.
That turned out to be bad for him. Ironically, good for his cause, for a time, because the Inners are not actually genocidal.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
As much as I don't really care about Laconia it was incredibly satisfying for Duarte to treat Marco like a piece of dog shit he was scraping off his shoe and Marco just being blindsided by the rejection.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
For what it's worth I also bounced off the Marco / Naomi / Filip dynamic at first, but the more I analyzed those relationships, the more relatable it became.
In fact, now that I think about it I like how the Expanse moves form space and cosmic horror through the first few books, to tightening focus on human relationships and family.
in the books, the biosphere is wrecked, with a real risk of starvation for everyone. The plan is to wreck Earth, let Mars fall to it's own problems, and stop the colonization of a ring worlds by taking their supplies. The supplies would be used to kickstart the Belt into self sufficiency, at which point the Belt would be the dominant power, and might be able to prevent retaliation.
It's doable, if monstrous and desperate, but the timetable makes the Schlieffen plan look robust.
Marco proceed to ignore that in favor of playing war against the Inners. The only reason he didn't end up killing everyone in the Belt is that other Belters figured out how to get food out of yeast in incredible amount. Enough for Earth and the Belt.
The only reason he didn't get Borised is that the other, non-narcissist leaders realized that chaos would also wreck the timetable.
in the books, the biosphere is wrecked, with a real risk of starvation for everyone. The plan is to wreck Earth, let Mars fall to it's own problems, and stop the colonization of a ring worlds by taking their supplies. The supplies would be used to kickstart the Belt into self sufficiency, at which point the Belt would be the dominant power, and might be able to prevent retaliation.
It's doable, if monstrous and desperate, but the timetable makes the Schlieffen plan look robust.
Marco proceed to ignore that in favor of playing war against the Inners. The only reason he didn't end up killing everyone in the Belt is that other Belters figured out how to get food out of yeast in incredible amount. Enough for Earth and the Belt.
The only reason he didn't get Borised is that the other, non-narcissist leaders realized that chaos would also wreck the timetable.
Yeah, my problem with Marco's plan was always that middle step where he goes from space piracy to self-sufficient belt empire. He had no idea how to actually put it off. It was all "And then Belters will pull together and make it happen, like we always do!" except on a scale with no precedent, solving problems nobody's actually solved yet. His plan was almost guaranteed slow-motion suicide. People just going along with it felt wildly unrealistic to me until the whole Trump cult happened where he'd wave a hand, promise his health care plan or trade plan or whatever was gonna be great with absolutely no details, and people ate it up.
The yeast production breakthrough was a purely lucky break he had no way to predict would happen. Without it Earth would have died and Mars and the Belt would have fought a long war of attrition over what resources and pockets of viable ecosystem still existed until they all starved to death. I remember at least one person on the forums swore off the books at the end of whichever one ended with Earth getting hit with rocks because there was no visible way for humanity to survive it and they were convinced anything the authors came up with was going to be a pure ass-pull.
in the books, the biosphere is wrecked, with a real risk of starvation for everyone. The plan is to wreck Earth, let Mars fall to it's own problems, and stop the colonization of a ring worlds by taking their supplies. The supplies would be used to kickstart the Belt into self sufficiency, at which point the Belt would be the dominant power, and might be able to prevent retaliation.
It's doable, if monstrous and desperate, but the timetable makes the Schlieffen plan look robust.
Marco proceed to ignore that in favor of playing war against the Inners. The only reason he didn't end up killing everyone in the Belt is that other Belters figured out how to get food out of yeast in incredible amount. Enough for Earth and the Belt.
The only reason he didn't get Borised is that the other, non-narcissist leaders realized that chaos would also wreck the timetable.
Yeah, my problem with Marco's plan was always that middle step where he goes from space piracy to self-sufficient belt empire. He had no idea how to actually put it off. It was all "And then Belters will pull together and make it happen, like we always do!" except on a scale with no precedent, solving problems nobody's actually solved yet. His plan was almost guaranteed slow-motion suicide. People just going along with it felt wildly unrealistic to me until the whole Trump cult happened where he'd wave a hand, promise his health care plan or trade plan or whatever was gonna be great with absolutely no details, and people ate it up.
The yeast production breakthrough was a purely lucky break he had no way to predict would happen. Without it Earth would have died and Mars and the Belt would have fought a long war of attrition over what resources and pockets of viable ecosystem still existed until they all starved to death. I remember at least one person on the forums swore off the books at the end of whichever one ended with Earth getting hit with rocks because there was no visible way for humanity to survive it and they were convinced anything the authors came up with was going to be a pure ass-pull.
Kinda: the books indicates that the Belt can succeed, if they meet the plan's timetable.
Their main problem, before the books, was a lack of supplies, because it was all going to Mars. Once it started going to the colonies, they could get just enough to kickstart their own production, just before they starved. Since the people working with Marco expected to be cut off in favor of the colonies, they were seeing that plan as a last ditch effort to save the Belt.
Then they realized that plans were not important to the narcissist in charge of grabbing those supplies.
Now, they were wrong: the Inners were not planning to let them starve, but they were still in a difficult situation where their resources weren't needed, and a large chunks of their (current) population wouldn't be able to live on the colonies. Like Mars, the Belt was done for. But the Belters weren't.
Pax Meng ended up saving everyone, and would have provided self sufficiency, and the transport union gave an utility to people who couldn't adapt to gravity, but that wasn't known when the other agreed to Marco's plan.
Each arcs has multiple themes. That one had rehabilitation, narcissism, and blindness caused by overly focusing on the past.
After generally mistreating the belters for quite a while including the occasional Anderson station style massacre, the Inners murdered everyone on Eros just as a fun science experiment, then mauled the best agricultural colony as a side effect of their war
Yes the first one was a corp and the leader was punished but for many they aren't going to care. Someone proposing vicious retaliation and independence can look very appealing in that situation no matter how bad the plan actually is
Duarte and Laconia use Marco to advance their own plots. They give a narcissist with limited support, top of the line equipment and information that makes him into a major player in the OPA. Once he does the earth strike
all the other OPA faction get put on the spot of either joining up or being caught between Marco and the Inners. Mars gets knocked out by the defection and theft of its fleet. The UN gets pinned to Earth by stealth rock attacks.
None of this is something I think Marco could even have thought off alone, much less pulled off. Even the plan to kickstart their own production was probably Duartes. Marco never gave any signs of being inclined to such planning in his chapters.
Duarte also comes across a narcissist, but a high functioning one with serious delusions of grandeur. Once he becomes the villain in the last arc.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Duarte and Laconia use Marco to advance their own plots. They give a narcissist with limited support, top of the line equipment and information that makes him into a major player in the OPA. Once he does the earth strike
all the other OPA faction get put on the spot of either joining up or being caught between Marco and the Inners. Mars gets knocked out by the defection and theft of its fleet. The UN gets pinned to Earth by stealth rock attacks.
None of this is something I think Marco could even have thought off alone, much less pulled off. Even the plan to kickstart their own production was probably Duartes. Marco never gave any signs of being inclined to such planning in his chapters.
Duarte also comes across a narcissist, but a high functioning one with serious delusions of grandeur. Once he becomes the villain in the last arc.
I don't think they're delusions given that
he does manage to become dictator of all of humanity.
Duarte and Laconia use Marco to advance their own plots. They give a narcissist with limited support, top of the line equipment and information that makes him into a major player in the OPA. Once he does the earth strike
all the other OPA faction get put on the spot of either joining up or being caught between Marco and the Inners. Mars gets knocked out by the defection and theft of its fleet. The UN gets pinned to Earth by stealth rock attacks.
None of this is something I think Marco could even have thought off alone, much less pulled off. Even the plan to kickstart their own production was probably Duartes. Marco never gave any signs of being inclined to such planning in his chapters.
Duarte also comes across a narcissist, but a high functioning one with serious delusions of grandeur. Once he becomes the villain in the last arc.
I don't think they're delusions given that
he does manage to become dictator of all of humanity.
Sure, but he still had plans.
Duarte want to become the Emperor of 40K. Technically, I guess it ended up working better this time for him and everyone than in 40k, so that's a win, I guess.
I could not possibly disagree more about Marco Inaro. Keon Alexander nailed it.
Marco is such a vile person that perhaps it's hard to differentiate hating the acting vs. hating the character.
I swear he must have studied narcissists in depth...I get the same visceral reaction watching him as I do listening to Trump speak.
I can diferentiate between hating the character and hating the performance, the character itself is "meh", sort of a caricature, but the performance, instead of grounding the character into something resembling a human being, it dials it up to 12, where it´s a theater performance of the caricature of a terrorist.
There are other dramatic characters that have to deal with awkward lines (Avasarala), and they nail it, even if you can see them struggle through it, but Marco´s performance (by Keon Alexander) feels jarring and out of place, like belonging to a different genre, mabe a stage musical, or a soap opera.
Edit: Actually, the first time I was aware of the guy, was when Marco was captured, and the different factions were voting if they were going to space him or not, and the dialogue was awful, they gave the character some invisible super power of persuation that just doesnt translate to the viewer, but the performance was FINE, it´s when he gets the armada that becomes extremely stiff, moves around as if he was actually on a stage and generally not being a belivable character.
You do know that part of Marco's entire thing is that he is performing for the audience of the moment. Even to his own son he is performing the actions he thinks his son needs in order to do what Marcos wants. This is an actual thing narcissists do. It is why he has that "superpower of persuasion", which is a thing real world narcissists can do.
If you think that is full of BS and not real, just look at Trump for the real world example of this super power in action. I understand the desire to reject it as a thing that could never happen, but you'd be very wrong.
Yeah dude, I understand the character, and if Ive read the story instead of watched it, I probably wouldnt have much of an issue, my problem is with the performance, if you liked the perfomance, good for you, I think it was awful casting, for a character that was going to play such a big role.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
He hams it up, but I think he nails the performance tbh.
Heck one of my favorite scenes of him is where he dials it up to cartoon villain levels...
S6E3
when the Pella crosses paths with the Roci and he talks himself into attacking them, despite it being totally counter to their plans and Rosenthal pointing out how fucking stupid it would be. He's got this glassy eyed distant look mixed with crazed excitement. You can see the gears turning, finding an excuse for each of Rosenthal's concerns... then he does this big stupid grin and says "you should learn to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself!"
And then after they get their shit rocked he's doing his usual bluster, raging at how the Roci got lucky and the Pella needs a new pilot, "one who won't shit himself in battle" and fires Filip on the spot for daring to question his stupid decision. Then the moment he returns to his quarters, the doors close and he collapses, damn near has a panic attack. Because despite his performative rage, he's hyper aware of what's going on around him, how badly he's just fucked up, nearly died and catastrophically damaged his reputation in front of the crew.
Bit of a slog, not gonna lie. That whole Ilus adventure was my least favorite part of the show as well.
Murtry was the same asshole as in the show. Burn Gorman was brilliant in the show and I pictured him, when I read the book.
Amos is still fantastic.
Sadly, no Bobbie or Avasarala (aside from her iconic "Don't stick your dick in it Holden, its fucked enough already" comment)
Holden is still kind of a prick, but a few notches dialled down from the first book
That whole obsession of Dr. Okoye with him was a bit weird, especially when it got resolved with "Well, you just need to get laid"
That small epilogue, where Avasarala spells out how and why Mars is doomed as a colony/republic was pretty great - I don't think they splled it out in the show like that
I rewatched the first 5 seasons over the last couple weeks and one thing that I didn't catch the first time around is that Alex renamed the razorback to Screaming Firehawk, which is what he wanted to name the Roci in season 1.
Also I wish Cas Anvar hadn't turned out to be a shit cause I really liked him as Alex.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I suspect there's some kind of non-disparagement agreement in return for him not fighting over the contract and going quietly.
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
It was abrupt in that they killed off a main character, where the general assumption is that they are all invulnerable, and also which didn't happen in the book. But the extreme stress and risk of sudden death from high-G maneuvers had been mentioned and was a minor plot point several times across the prior seasons. So at very least that happening didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like they find him face down in his lasagna.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
It was abrupt in that they killed off a main character, where the general assumption is that they are all invulnerable, and also which didn't happen in the book. But the extreme stress and risk of sudden death from high-G maneuvers had been mentioned and was a minor plot point several times across the prior seasons. So at very least that happening didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like they find him face down in his lasagna.
Though it was abrupt in the sense that he seemed fine during all the high g maneuvers and bits that required a pilot but as soon he didn't need to actively pilot the ship, that's when he suddenly strokes out. It definitely felt a little weird.
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
It was abrupt in that they killed off a main character, where the general assumption is that they are all invulnerable, and also which didn't happen in the book. But the extreme stress and risk of sudden death from high-G maneuvers had been mentioned and was a minor plot point several times across the prior seasons. So at very least that happening didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like they find him face down in his lasagna.
Poor Shed says hi.
Phoenix-D on
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I think the way he was very unceremoniously kicked from the show helps save the character for me - everyone is very broken up about Alex, but no one gives a shit about Cas. I've found rewatching the show, I can still love Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
It was abrupt in that they killed off a main character, where the general assumption is that they are all invulnerable, and also which didn't happen in the book. But the extreme stress and risk of sudden death from high-G maneuvers had been mentioned and was a minor plot point several times across the prior seasons. So at very least that happening didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like they find him face down in his lasagna.
Though it was abrupt in the sense that he seemed fine during all the high g maneuvers and bits that required a pilot but as soon he didn't need to actively pilot the ship, that's when he suddenly strokes out. It definitely felt a little weird.
I actually thought they got super lucky in filming that, because there's a moment that very much reads like he's had a stroke on screen. It's right after the shot of the hard braking burn, it cuts to the interior of the ship and a close up on Alex, he's gasping for breath and sorta shakes his head like he's dizzy, then focuses back up. Assuming that was just what they had to work with, that they didn't get Cas back in to film extra stuff, that really worked out...
Plus there's a cool VFX detail in that scene - there are health monitors to the side of both characters. When we first see them, both Bobbie and and Alex have yellow warnings on them, but by the end of the scene Bobbie's has turned green, while Alex's remains yellow. When next we see him, it has turned red...
For the Alex scene, I think it ends up overly subtle for its significance in comparison to other events in the show. That leads me towards thinking it is an abrupt plot change. Like, Shed is suddenly a headless body with a coalescing blob of pooling blood. Miller basically has an entire episode walking around with a nuke. Every major character who dies has some significant screen time or clear indication of it. And then we've got Alex floating in space with a blinking bio-monitor off in the distance.
I think if it were intentional, we'd be holding on Alex stroking out while we hear Bobby's rescue over comms. Or have a more traditional narrative structure with Bobby dragging Naomi inside and then finding Alex. As is, it runs like Titantic cutting from Rose and Jack hanging onto the stern of the ship to old Rose saying, "Jack died that day." Or Shawshank Redemption just having a long scene where Red reads Brooks' letter. It's more tell than show (unless you're pausing the screen; Holden's bio-scans are legible when he's trying to figure out what's up with Miller too), and it shuffles the character off, only referring to them off-screen. That also has the side-effect that people will just sort of stop and awkwardly muse about Alex in subsequent scenes. They could just be awkwardly written, but they feel like add-ins.
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Unrelatedly, I think Cibola Burn has my favorite parts. But the space prison and tether sequences are kind of dumb. It's mostly Miller and an alien planet and the colonist/corporatist intrigue that I enjoyed. Also Amos. But Amos is good in both book and show form.
Looks like it takes place before the series, and goes into Drummer's life as a scavenger. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the 3d/EVA movement. Telltale games were usually kind of funky mechanically, so I wonder how free form they're going to make moving around in space(is it going to be sort of on rails, will you be able/need to rotate around, etc).
I came to post the same thing, but Cara Gee is playing Camina again so I'll buy it just to support her.
I am in the business of saving lives.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Same. But... I am annoyed it's Telltale after the dumpster fire that was their implosion. That management deserves fuck all. Hoping nobody involved in old Telltale's management has any position at the new one.
The novellas are good. Some were integrated into the show because of how much they helped some characters.
I'd read the ones previous to where you are and then just read them in order with the books. The later ones will spoil the hell out of events if read out of order.
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She fucking HATES space.
Really enjoyed the first 3 seasons, not sure if Belters accents are racist or just dumb, but they are definitely grating and I havent managed to get used to them yet, also, Naomi Nagata doesnt really have the accent, wich is inconsistent but welcome.
Bobbie Draper is one of my favorite characters, I wish there were more interactions between Bobbie and Amos.
Marco Inaros is a very poorly written character, and the actor gives one of the worst performances I have seen in recent years, I think the story arc is great but goddamn the performance sucks balls.
I think the rules of space combat changed somewhere between seasons 1 and 5.
I was bummed out when Miller got venuse´d, but I enjoyed his contributions after that.
Seriously, Ive been hoping someone kills Marco and Pillip, just so I dont have to see them act anymore.
8/10 I would dub all the belters with the actors natural accents, they can keep the slang, that was cool.
Marco is such a vile person that perhaps it's hard to differentiate hating the acting vs. hating the character.
I swear he must have studied narcissists in depth...I get the same visceral reaction watching him as I do listening to Trump speak.
I can diferentiate between hating the character and hating the performance, the character itself is "meh", sort of a caricature, but the performance, instead of grounding the character into something resembling a human being, it dials it up to 12, where it´s a theater performance of the caricature of a terrorist.
There are other dramatic characters that have to deal with awkward lines (Avasarala), and they nail it, even if you can see them struggle through it, but Marco´s performance (by Keon Alexander) feels jarring and out of place, like belonging to a different genre, mabe a stage musical, or a soap opera.
Edit: Actually, the first time I was aware of the guy, was when Marco was captured, and the different factions were voting if they were going to space him or not, and the dialogue was awful, they gave the character some invisible super power of persuation that just doesnt translate to the viewer, but the performance was FINE, it´s when he gets the armada that becomes extremely stiff, moves around as if he was actually on a stage and generally not being a belivable character.
You do know that part of Marco's entire thing is that he is performing for the audience of the moment. Even to his own son he is performing the actions he thinks his son needs in order to do what Marcos wants. This is an actual thing narcissists do. It is why he has that "superpower of persuasion", which is a thing real world narcissists can do.
If you think that is full of BS and not real, just look at Trump for the real world example of this super power in action. I understand the desire to reject it as a thing that could never happen, but you'd be very wrong.
When I read the first few books I had a hard time believing in Marco. This obviously insane guy with no real plan somehow convinces a significant number of followers, makes a deal with the Martian defectors, and actually pulls off a plan? It didn't seem like he could possibly carry out any of the actions described and he always seemed so transparently full of himself and his own delusions that nobody sane would ever follow him. But then the 2016 US election happened. I can't watch Trump speak anymore. My brain just rejects it and I get increasingly anxious leading toward panic. Admittedly I have an anxiety disorder, but still. And yet the dude's got legions of followers who love watching him ham it up and vomit word salad. Marco in the series is a significantly more subdued and rational megalomaniac than Trump but the real world example made his performance in the show entirely believable to me. You've got a population of oppressed people who are desperate for someone with the power to make them feel powerful. An over-the-top, hammy, Always Upright And Spitting In The Inners' Eye leader riding his surprise victory as the whole structure of his poorly-thought-out plan falls down around him totally worked for me.
He's just too narcissistic to keep to the plan, and he doesn't quite have theory of mind, so he always expect people to do what he wants them to do, and never questions why they are helping him.
That turned out to be bad for him. Ironically, good for his cause, for a time, because the Inners are not actually genocidal.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
In fact, now that I think about it I like how the Expanse moves form space and cosmic horror through the first few books, to tightening focus on human relationships and family.
It's doable, if monstrous and desperate, but the timetable makes the Schlieffen plan look robust.
Marco proceed to ignore that in favor of playing war against the Inners. The only reason he didn't end up killing everyone in the Belt is that other Belters figured out how to get food out of yeast in incredible amount. Enough for Earth and the Belt.
The only reason he didn't get Borised is that the other, non-narcissist leaders realized that chaos would also wreck the timetable.
The yeast production breakthrough was a purely lucky break he had no way to predict would happen. Without it Earth would have died and Mars and the Belt would have fought a long war of attrition over what resources and pockets of viable ecosystem still existed until they all starved to death. I remember at least one person on the forums swore off the books at the end of whichever one ended with Earth getting hit with rocks because there was no visible way for humanity to survive it and they were convinced anything the authors came up with was going to be a pure ass-pull.
Kinda: the books indicates that the Belt can succeed, if they meet the plan's timetable.
Then they realized that plans were not important to the narcissist in charge of grabbing those supplies.
Now, they were wrong: the Inners were not planning to let them starve, but they were still in a difficult situation where their resources weren't needed, and a large chunks of their (current) population wouldn't be able to live on the colonies. Like Mars, the Belt was done for. But the Belters weren't.
Pax Meng ended up saving everyone, and would have provided self sufficiency, and the transport union gave an utility to people who couldn't adapt to gravity, but that wasn't known when the other agreed to Marco's plan.
Each arcs has multiple themes. That one had rehabilitation, narcissism, and blindness caused by overly focusing on the past.
Yes the first one was a corp and the leader was punished but for many they aren't going to care. Someone proposing vicious retaliation and independence can look very appealing in that situation no matter how bad the plan actually is
all the other OPA faction get put on the spot of either joining up or being caught between Marco and the Inners. Mars gets knocked out by the defection and theft of its fleet. The UN gets pinned to Earth by stealth rock attacks.
None of this is something I think Marco could even have thought off alone, much less pulled off. Even the plan to kickstart their own production was probably Duartes. Marco never gave any signs of being inclined to such planning in his chapters.
Duarte also comes across a narcissist, but a high functioning one with serious delusions of grandeur. Once he becomes the villain in the last arc.
I don't think they're delusions given that
Yeah dude, I understand the character, and if Ive read the story instead of watched it, I probably wouldnt have much of an issue, my problem is with the performance, if you liked the perfomance, good for you, I think it was awful casting, for a character that was going to play such a big role.
Heck one of my favorite scenes of him is where he dials it up to cartoon villain levels...
S6E3
And then after they get their shit rocked he's doing his usual bluster, raging at how the Roci got lucky and the Pella needs a new pilot, "one who won't shit himself in battle" and fires Filip on the spot for daring to question his stupid decision. Then the moment he returns to his quarters, the doors close and he collapses, damn near has a panic attack. Because despite his performative rage, he's hyper aware of what's going on around him, how badly he's just fucked up, nearly died and catastrophically damaged his reputation in front of the crew.
The character ain't one note IMO.
Bit of a slog, not gonna lie. That whole Ilus adventure was my least favorite part of the show as well.
Murtry was the same asshole as in the show. Burn Gorman was brilliant in the show and I pictured him, when I read the book.
Amos is still fantastic.
Sadly, no Bobbie or Avasarala (aside from her iconic "Don't stick your dick in it Holden, its fucked enough already" comment)
Holden is still kind of a prick, but a few notches dialled down from the first book
That whole obsession of Dr. Okoye with him was a bit weird, especially when it got resolved with "Well, you just need to get laid"
That small epilogue, where Avasarala spells out how and why Mars is doomed as a colony/republic was pretty great - I don't think they splled it out in the show like that
Now I can go on to read "Nemesis Games".
Also I wish Cas Anvar hadn't turned out to be a shit cause I really liked him as Alex.
What isn't so cool is that the cast n' crew (Ty Franck and Naren Shankar especially) will swear up and down that it was the plan all along to kill Alex off the way they did or that it was a minor reshoot. We know from set photos that is not the case, so I can only assume there's some agreement in place to keep up the appearance that this was a neat and tidy departure, and not that they fuckin' fired the guy for being a creep.
Which is a bummer, because it means they never talk about how they fired the guy for being a creep. That's a good thing! Y'all should talk about it.
I had no idea about any scandal, and I thought it was extremely suspicious how abrupt his death was.
I suspect there's some kind of non-disparagement agreement in return for him not fighting over the contract and going quietly.
It was abrupt in that they killed off a main character, where the general assumption is that they are all invulnerable, and also which didn't happen in the book. But the extreme stress and risk of sudden death from high-G maneuvers had been mentioned and was a minor plot point several times across the prior seasons. So at very least that happening didn't come out of nowhere. It's not like they find him face down in his lasagna.
Though it was abrupt in the sense that he seemed fine during all the high g maneuvers and bits that required a pilot but as soon he didn't need to actively pilot the ship, that's when he suddenly strokes out. It definitely felt a little weird.
Poor Shed says hi.
I actually thought they got super lucky in filming that, because there's a moment that very much reads like he's had a stroke on screen. It's right after the shot of the hard braking burn, it cuts to the interior of the ship and a close up on Alex, he's gasping for breath and sorta shakes his head like he's dizzy, then focuses back up. Assuming that was just what they had to work with, that they didn't get Cas back in to film extra stuff, that really worked out...
Plus there's a cool VFX detail in that scene - there are health monitors to the side of both characters. When we first see them, both Bobbie and and Alex have yellow warnings on them, but by the end of the scene Bobbie's has turned green, while Alex's remains yellow. When next we see him, it has turned red...
I think if it were intentional, we'd be holding on Alex stroking out while we hear Bobby's rescue over comms. Or have a more traditional narrative structure with Bobby dragging Naomi inside and then finding Alex. As is, it runs like Titantic cutting from Rose and Jack hanging onto the stern of the ship to old Rose saying, "Jack died that day." Or Shawshank Redemption just having a long scene where Red reads Brooks' letter. It's more tell than show (unless you're pausing the screen; Holden's bio-scans are legible when he's trying to figure out what's up with Miller too), and it shuffles the character off, only referring to them off-screen. That also has the side-effect that people will just sort of stop and awkwardly muse about Alex in subsequent scenes. They could just be awkwardly written, but they feel like add-ins.
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Unrelatedly, I think Cibola Burn has my favorite parts. But the space prison and tether sequences are kind of dumb. It's mostly Miller and an alien planet and the colonist/corporatist intrigue that I enjoyed. Also Amos. But Amos is good in both book and show form.
Remember that time you were gonna kill me but didn't, and now we're good? That was great how that happened. Meet our new crew member.
I mean it absolutely was, we know that. Just how well the edit was pulled off is more the question
#4 Cibola Burn was my least favorite so far, as was that part of the show.
But #5 is amazing. Love how we dive deep into the main characters and I am big on world building. And the world building in this is fantastic.
So far, #5 is my favorite book of the series.
Looks like it takes place before the series, and goes into Drummer's life as a scavenger. It'll be interesting to see how they handle the 3d/EVA movement. Telltale games were usually kind of funky mechanically, so I wonder how free form they're going to make moving around in space(is it going to be sort of on rails, will you be able/need to rotate around, etc).
Are the novellas good? Should I go back and read the ones I missed, or start reading them now before going forward, or just skip them altogether?
I'd read the ones previous to where you are and then just read them in order with the books. The later ones will spoil the hell out of events if read out of order.