That's actually pretty damn good. I can buy that explanation!

> and other filler.

//But I think it’s fair to say that the last few episodes have felt weaker and less impressive from a storytelling standpoint. I was hyped for something entirely unique after episode 3. What we got felt more derivative then it led me to believe. //

It was a little jarring to see Jack use guns, I'll admit, but my primary issue with the romantic element is not that it's new or that it "fits snugly into the comfortable asexual Asian male trope" but that it just doesn't feel very well-done. There's no chemistry there. It doesn't feel as though Jack and Ashi have…

I think that you're discounting the possible strength of a platonic relationship (and I would find it disappointing if the show's writers decided that Jack cared less in the aggregate about all of the other people that he's met, than about Ashi).

Not a fan of this episode at all. The only thing it did was establish a romantic relationship that, honestly, I don't think was necessary at all.

> Although it is weird that in her first scene its like "I think you are so smart I'm going to tutor you."

Pretty sure that wasn't a flashback.

One more necro, as a fellow author: How are things coming along for you now?

Immortality is really only so awful when you don't have an off switch.

No, no, corrupted Gems could be dealt with. The Gem War had more than just corrupted Gems running around, though. Any of the Gems that we've seen, from Amethyst to Jasper, could probably hold their own against a large force of humans, and a squad of them would be even worse.

I have a feeling that the Gem War would have been very, very bad for any pop culture ancient civilizations on the same continent as the Gems.

Maybe knights got it from Pearl (or rather, the folks that knights got it from, got it from Pearl, with as many iterations back as necessary).

Yeah, good and evil are human constructs with no objective reference. But if you appreciate not having your head caved in with a rock then it's in your best interest to promote a meme to the effect of that not being socially acceptable behavior.
Not to mention that people are generally hardwired to begin with to not…

The idea that Vickers intentionally sabotaged the mission by hiring a bad crew is really neat. I like it.

I don't think that it's just superhero comics. Most stories in serial fiction all tie back into each other one way or another. Adventure Time stands apart from more than just superhero comics.