The specific ins and outs of it weren’t pertinent beyond establishing Phee’s soft spot for Pabu, but by way of illustration, take a look at the books for this line over the past few years. They’ve got a cover price of around 40 bucks, they’re worthless except to the relative few of us who play the game, so people price gouged while they could and some got hundreds per book. Or, take a spin through eBay and look at some of the random tchotchkes that have a ridiculous price. This is one of those - probably mass produced, out of production, not in any sort of demand to many, but also tough to find. The person who does have one can command any price from the person who wants it badly enough.
I know how supply and demand works, but we’re talking about a briefcase of credits. You tell me it’s the very last RPG book in existence, I’m still not paying $50,000 for it.
Besides, as far as negotiation goes, I don’t have to pay any more than a little bit more than the other competitors, unless I stupidly make it clear that I’m willing to pay a ridiculously outsized price for the item and that I won’t walk away from the table. If something is only valuable to me, you won’t know its value, you won’t know how much you can make me pay.
Your example of mass produced, out of production, tough to find, actually cuts very hard against your argument because we’re talking about, again, a briefcase of money.
There are 93 credit chips on the first layer, with at least one layer below. Based on the thickness of the case, I would guesstimate five layers minimum—there could certainly be more. Let’s say 5x100 to round and end up on the low side.
If you’re paying someone 500 credits, you use a few chips, you don’t need that much security, and it isn’t worth an attempted double-cross. So they aren’t 1-credit chips. If we go with an intermediate denomination, say, 20, then it’s 10,000. If you go with the “industry standard” for suitcases of money (100), it’s 50,000. And that’s if you go with the reserved estimation of five layers and don’t factor in any kind of formula to say that a credit is worth more than a dollar.
To steelman your argument, it would work if it was an original artwork from some particular artist. Maybe he was on the outs with the Empire and persecuted, or maybe a lot of his work was otherwise stolen or destroyed. That would work. It would only take a mention, and could be slipped in to the conversation without really changing anything.
However, the thing itself does not obviously appear to have any great value. It only seems valuable in the show because we are told that it’s valuable and they’re willing to pay a lot of credits for it.
We are, in fact, specifically told that it’s not intrinsically valuable (Tech and Phee’s conversation). Just that someone(s) on Pablo found it to be for their own reasons.
You might not pay an overly inflated price for the last RPG book.
I might not pay an overly inflated price for the last RPG book.
But someone might. (People apparently were, or we wouldn’t have seen listing after listing at those prices.)
That tchotchke that grandma had that just always gave (generic) you a warm fuzzy, and you don’t have anymore? Finding one like it may open the wallet wider than is typically reasonable. That seems to be the sort of general situation in play here, from the context of the conversations.
The double-cross seems less about the object itself than about Crowder & Phee’s implied history. He’s got an opportunity to spend 10 bucks on a Macguffin to make a disproportionate amount of credits and get rid of Phee, and he’s going to take it. This season would appear to have a background theme of the past coming back to bite the characters, either their own pasts or just situations long buried. This fits that pattern.
It didn’t work for you, and that’s fine. But there are plenty of real world examples of people losing their minds and tossing unreasonable cash at mundane objects because of whatever happiness boost it gives them.
1 Like
If it only holds value to someone(s) on Pabu, and not to Phee specifically, then she’d have to be a terrible negotiator to end up in a situation where it takes a briefcase of cash to buy the item.
The only other alternative would be if it was positioned as a ransom negotiation, which it wasn’t.
And again, you’re missing the point of supply and demand. They know that there is demand for the book from many corners, so they can hike up the price and essentially skip the bidding process. If there is no demand, they can’t demand that much, in large part because it is apparently not valuable.
If I have a widget I want to sell, and I think it’s worth ten bucks but can only get people to offer me five, when someone offers me fifteen, I’ll take it. I don’t know that that person would be willing to pay me fifty, because that person didn’t offer fifty. And if I asked for fifty, that person would say “no one else has offered you more than five bucks for it. I’ll pay you ten.”
You want something that fits that pattern, sure! I think this was poorly executed, and I’ve made pretty clear why. I’m even more disapproving of the choice now than I was when I originally mentioned it now that I’ve given it more thought.
As I said, it didn’t work for you, and that’s fine.
As a lifelong comics reader, I’ve seen plenty of instances of a (current SRP at the time) comic being sold for an inflated amount because of perceived (not actual) scarcity (with the price nosediving later on) for the scenario to not be unrealistic. Then there’s Todd McFarlane paying amounts so idiotically high for record-making home run balls, that even collectors in the field coined the phrase “Don’t be a Todd-iot,” for people overpaying for (ostensibly) one-of-a-kind items.
Given what we’ve seen of Phee so far and the interaction with Crowder specifically, factored in with her bringing the Batch along, I’d wager she didn’t bother with (onscreen) negotiations because she saw Crowder’s double-cross coming, and expected to get out with the tchotchke and the credits. Which she did. (Might have been planning her own double-cross, but Crowder made the first move.)
Sorry it didn’t work for you.
The last two episodes were pretty good. I’d say I’m impressed they killed off Tech, but we have no real evidence that they did and a fall from multi-thousand feet is not court-admissible evidence of demise in Star Wars nowadays.
I’m very interested by Emerie’s reveal, and am wondering what her story is. She was evidently cloned with advanced aging if built from the same set of genes, but doesn’t bear much resemblance to the clones or to Jango’s sister and has a normal name rather than some form of designation.
1 Like
Depends on when she was cloned. How long has Jango been selling his genes to the Kaminoans and why did they pick him?
Could be ‘sister’ as in ‘another “daughter” of Nala Se/the kaminoans’. Always leave room for poetic license!
Jango was picked to be the template for the clones, so he couldn’t have been picked until after the clones were planned to be produced and we have a pretty good idea when that was because of Sifo-Dyas. Plus, Jango says he was approached by “a man called Tyranus.” Even if Disney ignores some of the old Legends material that gave us more info on it all, they can’t ignore the movies.
As for the poetic license, yeah, that could definitely work and is what I expect, but I’m very curious where they’re going to go with it since it’s so wide open.
Sure, but how did they know his genes were a good match? It’s not impossible the Kaminoans got hold of a sample of Jango earlier, played around with it and created Emerie. When Sifo-Dyas/Tyranus rocks up and asks for a clone army, the Kaminoans already knows about someone suitable…
I’m not saying I think that’s the route they’re going, just pointing out that the official timeline of events we think we know is full of potential loopholes. Accelerated growth is more likely, but there are plenty of other possibilities (including time travel shenanigans).
Unless Jango lied. He wasn’t exactly up front with the whole truth and nothing but the truth in that scene.
Aren’t we all!
At that point we just have to throw everything we didn’t see with our own eyes completely out of canon and assume the story can be whatever they want it to be at any given time because they have no respect for anything that existed prior.
Maybe not that extreme, but yeah. It’s not like it would be unprecedented.
…
cough, cough palapatine’s alive cough, cough
What I’m saying, don’t rule out that there’s context we haven’t seen yet that would make her statement make sense. Hopefully it’s less egregious than ep.9, but lets just say I’m once bitten twice shy…
Fair. Harsh, but fair. XD
1 Like
Wait, that was it?
That was the end of the season?
I get the idea of a cliff-hanger, but this felt less like a cliff-hanger and more like shutting a book two-thirds of the way through.
That makes me even more suspicious that Tech didn’t die and is going to be revealed sometime next season, which is quite unfortunate as I would appreciate Tech actually sacrificing himself.
It feels like we’re one or two episodes short of a complete season/story, based on how stories usually arc. I checked the show page today expecting to see a new episode and was surprised to see that the last episode was episode 16.
Considering that next season is the last season, it makes some sense I think.
The “two-thirds” comment is in reference to the currently-ongoing story arc, not the overarching story of the show.
A story arc usually goes through a general pattern, and about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through, it hits “the dark night of the soul” (or whatever it’s called) which is where we are now. However, this essentially “ends” there, rather than completing the arc. In my opinion, a “season” of a show should be a contained story (or stories) that ties into the season(s) that come before and after. Cutting off in the middle like this just feels … weird. More than a cliff-hanger or a hook, it’s abrupt and unfinished.
1 Like
I appreciate that, but I think this is “it”. In a limited way, this is similar to ESB, sort of.
Makes me wonder if they are planning another animation series to build off of this show.
Regardless, it’ll be fun to see what they come up with next.
1 Like
I’m sick to death of series that overstay their welcome. Few, if any, shows make it past five seasons without jumping the shark and most don’t even manage that. The Clone Wars did a pretty good job as it had quite a sprawling cast and wasn’t afraid to leave some, or all, of the main characters out for a few episodes to follow someone completely different. Bad Batch has been excellent so far, and I hope it quits while its’ ahead.
Shorter, more focused shows that don’t overstay their welcome is what I want to see. By all means, continue the story in a new series with a different focus and bring old characters on as guest stars, much like the CW characters who popped up in Bad Batch and Rebels. Maybe something that ties into Fallen Order?
2 Likes