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SlothfulCobra posted:Garibaldi's accusations aren't even much to do with the fascism, he doesn't accuse her of bombing Mars or helping Nightwatch or any of the poo poo they were fighting against, it's just an accusation of "if you weren't with us, you were against us," which is its own perspective that could be problematic. Being pissed that she served for the guy who overthrew the government she swore to protect and installed his own fascist regime on live TV doesn't seem problematic to me at all.
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Oct 22, 2021 16:44
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Horizon Burning posted:i'm sorry but the whole canticle-inspired "great burn" thing is really dumb and doesn't really make much sense in the context of b5, which kinda makes me think JMS did lift it as a deliberate nod or homage. earth gets burnt to pre-industrial ludditism by an unknown side of the second human civil war and then just kind of left there. where's the rest of the EA? unknown. why is the entire surviving population of the planet being punished for the actions of the anti-ISA faction--a war kicked off, i should add, by a pre-emptive strike by the pro-ISA human faction. imagine that in today's world. 'oh, sure, we bombed these people so far back that they don't know how to build a combustion engine and only understand their culture in religious myths, but now we're going to take the time to raise them the right way. the way that just so happens to correspond to our ideology.' how many people died? how many people continue to die on earth's post-apocalyptic husk? why aren't the rest of the EA colonies helping earth? it's just bewildering when you start to think about it. it echoes the vorlons (which we even see humanity kind of become) but without an ounce of self-reflection given, y'know, that kind of obedience-or-punishment talk was a bad thing. I always considered that vignette a Star Trek episode JMS wanted to write but never could.
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Oct 25, 2021 17:23
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Jedit posted:They picked up $5.5bn in debt and paid $2bn for the privilege. It's likely that this will go down as the stupidest buyout in history. AT&T would like a word.
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Aug 24, 2022 14:07
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theblackw0lf posted:Something that occurred to me as I rewatched the show is that while Londo is responsible for the deaths of millions, he is also deeply responsible for the forming of the alliance, and it could be argued that without him there would be no alliance. It was him, first coming to G'kar with the idea of having both support Sheridan's war, and then him and G'Kar getting the other worlds to agree, that helped pave the way for the alliance. Without those actions, it's possible no alliance would have been formed. Or at least it would have been more of a struggle. Londo is an absolute case study in how to create and portray a deeply complex character. As for being pivotal players forgotten by history, well - who but historians would know anything about Alexander Hamilton if 1.) His wife and children hadn’t spent decades advocating for his legacy and 2.) if Lin-Manuel Miranda hadn’t written a smash musical about him? History is rough. Some people are lucky and get their parts reexamined. Some people will get forgotten completely, even if we are still feeling the impact of actions they took. Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Sep 1, 2022 |
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Sep 1, 2022 01:06
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Iron Crowned posted:
I wonder if they still have the stuff they filmed from when they tried to do that with Sierra. If it was just 6 months away from completion, you could probably upscale that bit and build a new game around it.
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Sep 19, 2022 18:46
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I said come in! posted:Babylon 5 is extremely dear to me and important. But i've been learning to just accept that if there is a reboot / more media for B5, then it doesn't really matter if it ends up bad. There is still the beloved original that will always exist. I don't always have to be an unhinged nerd. This has been where I'm at - I don't see any real downside to letting JMS have another shot just to see what happens.
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Sep 20, 2022 20:38
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Grand Fromage posted:JMS has said Earthforce people get flight pay if they do fighters, but that requires maintaining flight hours and if they stop going out, they lose the status and money. Thus. To be honest I'm surprised at even this amount of lamp-shading. Like, you can just shrug and say, "Dramatic license." It was a somewhat-experimental 90s sci-fi show with fantasy elements and eternally shaky network support. If in that context command staff flying combat missions bothers you, I don't know what to say.
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Sep 21, 2022 20:53
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I'm going to break into this riveting conversation to reflect upon that one time the Vorlons finished the Dilgar xenocide and Kosh went "lol what" and left. I kind of wish they had had time to review the aftermath of that. A bunch of diplomats having to tell their governments that no, there really wasn't anything anyone can do, it's the loving Vorlons. Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 18, 2023 |
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Jan 18, 2023 19:38
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:
And as you can see *gestures vaguely to...everything* this is not at all an unrealistic scenario. Though it would make for good television. "Senator, lodging a complaint with Vorlon High Command is like lodging a complaint with God. If you're lucky, they won't notice."
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Jan 19, 2023 20:59
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(((((("
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Q_res posted:Complain that the order is immoral, nobody asked you now shut up and do your job. Interestingly enough, there is a line Garibaldi says to G'Kar that touches on this exactly - …you don’t follow an order because you know for sure it’s gonna work out. You do what you are told, because your CO has the moral authority that says you may not come back.
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Jan 24, 2023 19:00
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FISHMANPET posted:Speaking of moral vs legal orders, when Lochley is explaining to Garibaldi why she sided with Clark, her defense was "you follow the orders you're given until they violate your morals" and that's kinda wild using that to justify siding with the side that shot down civilian ships. What the hell are your moral limits, Lochley. This was honestly worse for me than Byron - particularly all the station regulars applauding her (?!). As I said ITT: Being pissed that she served for the guy who overthrew the government she swore to protect and installed his own fascist regime on live TV doesn't seem problematic to me at all. To expand on that - a government is not just the executive (and if it is, guess what! That's an autocracy). If the President has illegally dissolved another branch of the government you have sworn to protect and you do not rebel or resign, guess what! You are saying that you are okay with that. It is clear that Lochley (as presented) has no problem with fascists as long as they are in her chain of command. I guess this was just JMS trying for a Civil Waresque reunification narrative and loving it up? Or maybe this was one of those studio decisions - "Make Sheridan bring on a Captain from the other side for drama! Also make her his ex-wife." It was gross then and it's super gross now.
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Jan 24, 2023 21:25
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Emotional pull vs musical complexity: FIGHT. Remember, nobody can like different aesthetics.
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Mar 1, 2023 01:01
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I dunno. Verifiable proof of the afterlife means you and your wife will be there too, eventually....
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Apr 1, 2023 00:38
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e X posted:On the other hand, he is not wrong, the later half of season four is incredible rushed and they are running through plot points at a ridiculous pace that does actually makes some of them hit less than they should. Time to fire up the 'ol Great Machine, I guess. While we're at it, I can think of a few additional tweaks to make to the timeline....
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Apr 2, 2023 17:36
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Polaron posted:Apparently they wanted to genuinely make him a love interest for Kira and that caused Nana Visitor to put her foot down, pointing out that it would be like a holocaust survivor falling in love with a member of Nazi leadership. Not to mention, from what I saw in the "What we leave Behind" 2018 documentary, apparently Marc Alaimo didn't have to work too hard to be a creeper.
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Apr 8, 2023 03:27
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I don't expect it will change my life, but it will probably be interesting to watch.
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May 11, 2023 16:11
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imho, the 90s CGI looked better. It continues the proud tradition of no budget, there’s just no magician with an Amiga this time. Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 17:55
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Horizon Burning posted:I believe an alpha of Into the Fire was leaked a few years back, you could fly a starfury around a bunch of ships. I had always heard it was (in theory) six months from release. They also had a bunch of filmed segments. Sadly, I imagine all the dev materials are long gone. If by some miracle they’re still around, they are deep within the bowels of Activision/Blizzard.
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Jun 17, 2023 18:08
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cmdrk posted:When Londo is scheming to tying up various loose ends with Reefa ( Londo actually has a powerful moral compass - so much so that it almost kills him! Like probably everyone here I've spent a lot of time thinking about Londo's motivations. Clearly he wants power - but I think only insomuch as it gets him respect. And respect for what? Thinking about it, respect for trying to serve the Republic. When Morden asks, "What do you want?", Londo doesn't say he wants to be Emperor, or to be personally powerful - the closest he gets to that is "I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to- to look back, or to look forward" - he doesn't want to feel like a buffoon anymore. He wants the Centauri to stop crumbling. He wants to be a good, patriotic Centauri in a system where that is not really encouraged. So he compromises to try and change that system - notably stopping well short of what Reefa is willing to do for the pure exercise of power. I don't think ruthless is a way of life for Londo - ruthlessness is a temporary, necessary evil to make the world a better place, which he thinks he can put aside at the end. And it's hard, right? Sheridan was pretty ruthless. Hell, Sheridan deployed WMDs and didn't even feel as bad as Londo did about it (should all Shadows be considered combatants/collaborators?) But what trips up Londo is that he has felt powerless for so long that he sees as everyone trying to warn him away from disaster as being part of the reason he's powerless. Therefore making those hard decisions even more necessary, in his view. And from his perspective this is fairly reasonable. Most of the folks who give him a heads up don't follow up with an alternative or a helping hand most of the time - it's just like, "Hey, you keep trying to fix things this way and you'll gently caress it up, bye." Londo tries to step up and do the right thing for the Centauri, and bear the burdens of what he sees as necessary evils until the moral weight of it almost kills him. Then it all goes to poo poo anyways. It makes me think a little bit about how a medievalist instructor of mine described Boromir in Lord of the Rings - "The wrong hero in the wrong place at the wrong time." And I think that's what makes Londo compelling and tragic.
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Jun 27, 2023 21:15
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) around the time the Emperor dies, Vir is sitting in the back of the room looking pretty unhappy. Londo asks him if this stuff makes him uncomfortable, which he affirms and Londo is like "yeah me too actually". He does have SOME moral compass, but he's a patriot first and foremost even though he sometimes has a really twisted view of what patriotism is.
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Rappaport posted:I think I've expounded enough on Londo, but Sheridan nuking Mark Twain and a Shadow base seems warranted since these Shadows clearly were in cahoots with their government. If they have one. The show is sort of unclear on this, but the "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY GALAXY" stuff at least implies the Shadows and Vorlons are a more cohesive society than the younger races. I'd rather judge a character based on actions and behavior than biology shennanigans. Does the fact that Delenn gets a period after the first season really change anything? I think it's pretty clear that the cultish behavior that crops up around Sheridan is because he is the charismatic leader of a vastly outmatched coalition fighting scary spider beings with godlike technology who apparently single handedly went to their homeworld, kicked them in the dick, died, and then came back to life. And this isn't like, what you read on the Timecube website, this is your ambassador saying "Uhh yeah looks like that happened holy poo poo." Then he goes on to kick out not one, but two (technically more, with the other First Ones) incomprehensively powerful civilizations right out of the galaxy. Also, after the scene with the crazy lady Garibaldi gets upset about, Sheridan then goes on to overthrow the bad President back home and get elected Best President. He's basically Jesus if he was also George Washington, FDR and Aragorn. Why the hell wouldn't he get cults? JFK Jr. gets a cult and he just flew his family into the ocean by being a dumbfuck. Also, remember how G'kar also became a messianic figure? Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 21:48
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I said come in! posted:I remember JMS saying he really hates that stuff like this exists, but I am glad that it does. Well, we hate that that Marcus story exists. It's an imperfect universe.
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Jul 6, 2023 14:42
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Chevy Slyme posted:That post is referring (I’m pretty sure) to a specific short story about far That is correct - I enjoy the Marcus character. That short story is gross.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:09
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Look, it's not their fault that humans were so primitive that they interpreted weapons-free sensor jamming as hostility! In all seriousness, though, it is a little shocking when the guys in the ironclad 360 noscope the President with a cannonball when he's sitting in the nuclear powered aircraft carrier's briefing room. Without killing anybody else important.
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Jul 6, 2023 19:15
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Narsham posted:The CGI implies high-tech, but if memory serves there's a very Indiana-Jones-style grinding noise when the aperture opens wider and wider. Look, it’s been a thousand years and they forgot the WD-40, whaddya gonna do?
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Jul 7, 2023 00:40
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"Valen, if the worker and religious castes get their own warships and weapons and presumably people to operate them, why do we need a warrior caste?" "Because if we call it the rear end in a top hat caste nobody will want to be in it." edit: I wonder how many times the Vorlons had to cycle Sinclair through the timeline before they figured out they'd get the results they wanted with a caste system. Gyrotica fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 16:30
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Just Another Lurker posted:Need to use a penetrating oil like Kroil, WD-40 is the wrong tool for the job tbh. :MinbariColbert: “Look buddy, I got a hundred jobs on the waitlist, there’s a civil war going on, and Nerid is out getting his head sharpened. You send me a work order that says “Get this fuckin’ Starfire Wheel working pronto” no ifs, ands or buts. It didn’t say nothin’ about it slidin’ open smooth as Valen’s behind. My guys got it done, you and your buddies got to play chicken with a muon gun, why you gotta bust my balls about a little grinding? You plannin’ on using it again anytime soon?”
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Jul 8, 2023 17:52
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McSpanky posted:Part of the big revelation of season four is realizing that the Shadows aren't as bad as they seem Is it the Day of the Dead again? Because I’m pretty sure this is Morden’s alt.
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Jul 22, 2023 14:02
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Slamhound posted:This is really interesting because the wave is Vir's answer to Morden's "What do you want?" So Vir also surrendered to his rage and need for revenge, thus damning Centauri Prime. This is a weird take. The only involvement Vir had with sentencing Morden to death was that Londo clearly heard about their little conversation. If Vir hadn’t told Morden to go die mad, Londo would have just killed him in a less entertaining way.
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Jul 29, 2023 17:46
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Vavrek posted:The interpretation I've seen is that everyone who answered Morden got what they asked for. Londo saw the Centauri stretch forth their hand and retake their place in the galaxy. G'Kar saw the Centauri crushed. Delenn saw Morden leave the room. And Vir got to wave at Morden's head. Yeah, that sounds like people got Morden confused with the genie from Wishmaster.
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Jul 29, 2023 22:12
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So I just got the chance to see Journey Home. It seems....kind of mediocre. We've done Sheridan and Delenn's love story. Saving reality seems like a needless escalation. In some ways this kind of felt like 'What if Babylon 5 was a Saturday morning cartoon'. The dialog was fine, there were a couple of interesting thoughts knocking around, but it really felt like a wasted opportunity to make the What If part mean something. Having Sheridan have to grapple with some of his harder decisions or even failures and come away from it feeling like he's made progress would have been a better character arc, particularly coming after the Telepath colony debacle and the bombing of Centauri Prime. Perhaps even juxtaposing his decisions with stuff that 'just happened' - have a little dialogue about the whole Great Man theory deal. Instead it was just a bit of vanilla fan service. I'm glad it got made, I don't regret throwing more money at Babylon 5, but it seems like a missed opportunity for something more substantial.
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Jan 27, 2024 19:46
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John Wick of Dogs posted:I'm gonna call Midnight at the Firing Line the pilot cause anyone watching the gathering probably gonna turn that poo poo off pretty fast Pretty sure you don't have to worry about scaring anyone in this thread away from Babylon 5.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:49
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Eighties ZomCom posted:Watched that recently and I think it's the same guy who's on the quest for the Holy Grail in a later episode. But yeah I had the same thought when I saw wraparound shades guy. I recently played through Planescape Torment and it seems to have made me more sensitive to the sheer 90's-ness of B5. David Warner, who also did Irenicus in Baldur's Gate 2, the Cardassian interrogating Picard in TNG, the reporter in the Omen, the Federation Ambassador in Star Trek V, Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek 6, Dr. Wrenn in In The Mouth of Madness.... I always enjoyed his work.
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Feb 1, 2024 17:55
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John Wick of Dogs posted:We misheard Lennier, he actually said they found out humans have "Minbari's holes" Are you saying this whole time the Minbari were actually losing their holes, not their souls?
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Feb 22, 2024 20:15
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cmdrk posted:Just got to Season 4 again. It strikes me that the Eye of Za’ha’dum seems to be very telepathic in how it mass mesmerizes people, speaks to them in the voice of their father (a common motif in bab5), and urges them to come land on the planet. Is it ever explained beyond being a techno eye of Sauron kind of deal? Seems odd for a species so weak to telepathy. It's techno-magic.
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Feb 23, 2024 15:31
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:The technomage novels touch on how it works, there's a technomage (IIRC the first technomage) who's mind is wrapped up in it and forced to operate it. I haven't read them in long enough that I don't remember more than that, but that's a place to look if you want more info. The wiki entry on it mentions that there's some more detail on it in the Mongoose B5 RPG, but that's non-canon. Also, do we ever really see that the Shadows themselves are weak to telepathy? Their regular ships are, but those aren't piloted by Shadows, it's enslaved other races, and the shadows seem to keep their actual selves off of the front lines. The Shadows themselves might actually be good at telepathy for all we know, they didn't seem to get hard-stopped the way ships do when they attacked Kosh on B5. As an aside, there could be lots of reasons other First Ones don't do it. #1: It conveys some kind of actual technical disadvantage (as you posit), but the Shadows do it for Shadow reasons (they think it looks really cool and ominous). #2: They never figured out how the Shadows do it. This is not particularly far-fetched: while they might have been around a million years, the technology could be fiendishly complex, and there are real-world examples of much simpler technology we just straight up lost that we can't reproduce accurately or only did so fairly recently (like the whole Damascus steel deal, and IIRC some kind of special welding they perfected in WW2 for ships but got lost afterward - can't find the source, maybe made that one up?) #3: They know how to do it, but the Shadows did it first, and they don't want to look like they need it. Personally I like the options that play into First One pettiness and hubris.
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Feb 27, 2024 18:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:Are there actually fewer Vorlons or are they just more reticent to leave their planet since they can't go invisible? Well, we never really hear back from the census workers we send, so...
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Feb 28, 2024 18:54
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Giving him a tragic wife backstory was also kind of weird (also, did we need more wife trauma on B5?). The way he seems to work in the show is just as a guy who backs the winner. He doesn't come across to me as either a true believer or a someone doing this job only because he's trying to put someone he loves to rest. He comes across to me like someone who enjoys working for the real big boys of the galaxy. He seems to me like he's genuinely comfortable unapologetically playing absolutely everyone.
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Apr 4, 2024 15:06
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