#Giant Stake Gun

[writingwithfolklore]

When Your Antagonist Isn't a Person

Last time I talked about how to character create an antagonist (check it out here if you missed it!) but what happens when your antagonist isn’t a person?

                Antagonists don’t necessarily have to be another character (or even one singular character). Rather, an antagonist is anything that raises the stakes and creates conflict for your protagonist. You will likely find this antagonist in your worldbuilding.

1. What your world may say about your antagonist

                In a survival story, your protagonist will likely be out in the wilderness alone—thus, their antagonist may be creatures, starvation, dehydration, exposure (freezing, sunburn). Or something like a giant storm, or other natural phenomenon/disaster.

                In an urban setting, the antagonist may be the ‘system’ itself; politics, institutions, a way they’ve been disadvantaged or otherwise put down by their world. (Often these systems can be represented by a person, if you so choose).

                And a futuristic world opens up to technology being an antagonist; things aren’t working as they’re meant to, AI has gone wrong, or it’s gone too right—the technology is taking away from what the protagonist wants.

2. Goals and Motivations

Your non-human antagonist may not have goals or motivations, or very basic ones. Does a nasty storm exist to destroy humans? Probably not, it just is as it is. A creature’s goal may be to eat, it’s motivation being that it’s hungry.

However, a system or institution may have deeper goals/motivations. For example, Amazon is a company built to make Jeff Bezos money. Your institution may have a goal it presents to the public, and a true goal (usually monetary, but could also be religiously or politically motivated).

3. Additional sources of conflict

Sometimes non-human antagonists need some extra support to make your character’s life suck. A dangerous storm brewing in the distance is great, but you may also need some additional sources of conflict to keep your character moving until it reaches them.

If your character is taking down Amazon, they may be targeted by police, or drones with guns, or people who live off an Amazon salary, or require the convenience of it.

Often stories without one human antagonist tend to have multiple little antagonists. Survival stories are great for the amount of different conflicts you can throw at a character. You may even introduce small conflicts between other characters, even if those characters aren’t fully antagonists.

Next time I’ll talk about character vs. self, what do you do when your antagonist is also your protagonist?

[trainsinanime]

How various Miraculous Ladybug characters murder you (mostly assuming you deserve it)

I had insomnia last night, probably due to allergies (forgot to take my meds), and somehow I ended up writing this.

The basic assumption for this: You’ve been mortal enemies for half the movie, and now it’s the big action scene where you are about to die. This assumes you're the main henchman, perhaps even the main antagonist, but it can be a 009 type good guy character who dies at the start of the movie as well.

Marinette: She spent the last five minutes of the fight transforming the space into a giant set of traps, full of broken light bulbs, wire and pulley systems and so on that have killed all of your subordinates. You come face to face with her, convinced that you will be the one to finally take her down. But just as you raise your gun, you notice that you have already tripped a tiny wire. For a fraction of a millisecond, you see her grim, determined smile, before you blow up.

Roland: Still has a sub-machine gun from the time he was in the French resistance in World War 2 and knows how to use it.

Kagami: In an honourable duel, you thought you’d won. She’s battered and bruised, lying on the floor, blood coming out of her mouth. So you say “it’s over” and start your final attack. But then she remembers all her friends. Remembers them real hard. And with the renewed strength, she gets up, and runs you through with her sabre. Afterwards she respectfully closes your eyes and tells your family that you loved them.

Chloé: She’s wearing an expensive gold evening gown, and she says, “fine, I’ll do it myself”. Then she grabs a shotgun and starts blasting. There is no warmth in her eyes, no remaining bit of empathy, no warrior’s understanding. She looks at you with the exact same disdain she has for delivery people who got her order wrong. She has no remorse, but killing you will still make her unhappy.

Nino: You get trapped in the cables of his DJ equipment that have been strewn all over the room by the preceding fight. With his last strength, Nino reconnects a plug, creating a sick dub-step sound and also electrocuting you. He’s sad it had to come to this, but it was definitely your own fault.

Tikki: [Removed for being too graphic]

Luka: He bores you to death by talking about your “heart music” and replacing every other sentence with three chords on his guitar.

Lila: You didn’t even know you were fighting. You just take a sip from your drink, and you feel a bit funny. And a bit weird. Maybe you need to sit down. Or lay down. As your vision gets blurry, Lila takes off her mask and wig, and you realise your fatal mistake of letting your guard down. She is the last thing you see as you die in agony.

Sabrina: She’s smiling. She’s got you in a corner, with the knife in her hand, and she’s smiling. She keeps stabbing you, and your screams only make her smile more. There’s blood on her face, and she’s still smiling. Chloé is going to be so pleased with her.

Zoé: You follow her into the dark alley, getting ready to suck her blood and kill her. But then she turns around, and she’s confident, and you realise your fatal mistake: She is this generation’s chosen one, who stands against the vampires and demons and forces of darkness. She is— and then she drives a wooden stake through your heart.

(If your favourite character isn't on here, it's because I eventually managed to fall asleep.)

[sardonic-the-writer]

—a stakeout

SUMMARY | a late night steakout with tangerine has you questioning how you really feel for him

PAIRING | tangerine x reader

REQUESTED | no

WARNING | mentions of guns, hit men, murder, some angst, etc

WORD COUNT | 2k+

AUTHORS NOTES | no spoilers for bullet train! and as much as i love the rivals/enemies to lovers troupe with tange, here's some softer stuff. happy holidays!

🍊 Masterlist 🍊 Navigation 🍊 Rules 🍊

Lemon had done this on purpose.

He had always had the ability to read people well when he wasn't busy talking about that train show of his. You swore he could tell what you were feeling before you did most times—instantly there with a handful of tissues or some reaffirming words before you even knew it. Most times it was real a help.

Most times.

That was all you could think as you stared out a tinted window into the cold night. The leather of the car seat underneath you was warm from hours of constant body heat, your legs surely numb from blood loss by this point.

From next to you sat a tall figure, dressed to the nines per usual. Soft ringlets of messy brown hair fell in his eyes, only ever moving as he let out a big sigh on occasion.

Tangerine rested his head in one hand, the other drumming his fingertips across the steering wheel as he clutched it. Flashes of moonlight would steadily dance over your vision as the luminescence caught sight of the metal rings decorating his fingers.

His rings. Seperate pages in one giant book it often seemed. Each one of them told an individual story throughout his life. The pitch black ring on his pinky? The first time he'd ever gotten into a fist fight on the job, that one had left a mark deep enough in the other guys face to shed buckets of blood. A lucky hit. Tangerine often told that story with pride, boasting that you would still be able to see the scar he left behind to this day.

The chunky gold one situated snugly on his pointer? Lemon had snatched that off a random bloke that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time a few years ago. It had been right when they had first gotten into the business, presenting it to his twin afterward with a clap on the back as a job well done. A sick gift of sorts, but it still managed to make each of them smile when they looked at it.

And that smooth, rose gold band hanging around his chest—dangling loosely on a silver chain? Well that was the reason you were currently sitting in a car in the dead of night.

Lemon was no fool. The moment he had seen you pull out that small gift box for his brother last week, he had recognized that love sick smile on your face. The way your eyes shone with excitement as you practically bounced on the balls of your feet when he went to open it. Lemon should be able to recognize it after all. It was the same look Tangerine got anytime you entered the room.

It was antagonizing for him really. Watching the both of you harbor crushes for each other in your own ways. (Tangerine; constantly checking for texts from you when he was away, using more than enough loving nicknames for you just to see your ears grow red. You; buying anything and everything that reminded you of him, doodling little drawings of the man on the corner of your loose leaf nktebooks at briefings before quickly erasing them.)

Finally he had had enough, pulling you off to the side last night. He had been a bit too rough about it for his liking, but it didn't matter now.

"Here's the plan." He didn't even stop to acknowledge your confused expression, questions surely bubbling on the tip of your tongue. "I'm sick. Very sick. You're not. Tha' stake out tomorrow night? You're goin' on it mate."

"The fuck Lemon?"

"Mate, just trust me. I know you fancy m' brother. Just take th' opportunity."

He had taken your stunned silence as a yes, giving you his best smile before moving on like nothing had happened.

So far, that was the only thing you had been able to focus on the entire time you'd been sitting idle on this hill. Not your target or his friends' late night activity you were supposed to be monitoring. Just re-running things over and over in your mind until you were dizzy with the effort.

All the times you had tried to be subtle with the longing looks and sporadic gifts. All the nights you had lay wide awake staring at the ceiling. Wondering if it would even be possible for someone like him to love you back. How did Lemon know? Were you really that obvious? Did anyone else know?

More importantly, did Tangerine know?

"Alright. S' going on in that lil head of yours (Y/n). Been quiet all night. Not like you."

Tangerine was now facing you. Arm draped around the back of your seat as if preparing to back out of a parking space. Heat from his hand radiated mere inches from your neck, but you pushed your shiver down with a forceful swallow.

"The mission." You shrugged, not moving your gaze from its spot on the window. Hoping that your response would be the end of this conversation.

"Yeah right." Tangerine just snorted. "You've never cared for these kinds of jobs love."

You forced the butterfly in your stomach to be killed off one by one. Refusing to be affected by the nickname.

"Guess I do now." Your shoulders moved with the effort of another shrug.

Tangerines mouths dipped down into a slight frown. He had been looking forward to a night alone with you. Maybe even going to get some food afterwards, even if just under the guise of two friends having a meal together. He would take it. He would take anything involving you at that point if he was being truthful.

Calloused fingers gently cradled your chin, softly gripping it as Tangerine turned your head to face him. You finally got a proper look at him, seeing the way his baby blue eyes rippled with concern as they traced unseeable patterns on your face. You were so focused on his intense stare that you forgot to remind yourself not to lean into his hand.

"You alright love?"

It would be so easy to kiss him. Just a little stretch of your neck and—

"I'm fine." His hand fell away from your face as you jerked yourself away. You almost immediately regretted it, wanting nothing more to feel him against you for a moment more.

"(Y/n)—"

"I'm just peachy Tan." You snapped, suddenly feeling angry. "Can we get back to our jobs now? You know. The thing we came here to do?"

Tangerine felt his own face flare up with anger. A rare feeling when it came directed at you.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He frowned with a bit more bite to his tone than he intented. The sound of it made a flicker of regret cross your face before it was replaced with a scowl. "Seriously, who fucken pissed in your oatmeal this mornin?"

"Oh like you don't fucking know." Your own teeth grit against each other as you glared at him. The both of you now locked in a heated staring match. It wouldn't be a suprise if the windows started to fog up. The car certainly seemed like it was a lot hotter than it had been a few minutes ago.

"What, so I can fucken read your mind now?" He ran a hand through his hair in a jerky movement. The way your heart fluttered at his disheviled state drove another molten spike of rage into your heart, frustrated with yourself for finding him attractive even in the middle of an argument.

"Sometimes I really hate you Tan." You hissed. How it had gotten to this point you had no idea. But each word was like a nail to the heart for you.

"Yeah? Well, you're not exactly a joy ta be around all the time either, sunshine."

"And that's another thing!" You were full on yelling now, probably looking like a crazy person to any passing cars as you threw your hands in the air. "Stop fucking calling me those names! I bet you think you can just charm your way into anyone's pants with that huh?"

"When the fuck did I ever say anything like that!? And I thought you liked the nicknames for fucks sake!"

"I do!" You hissed with clenched fists. "The problem is I like them too fucking much! I like you too fucking much Tan! And it's killing me knowing I can't do a single goddamn thing about it!"

It was only after it was already out there did you realize what you had really said.

"Fuck. Listen—"

You didn't get any farther than that before Tangerine slammed his lips into your own. A sound of muffled suprise made it past your lips before it was quickly swallowed by him, along with the rest of your breath. The faint feeling of something prickly ticking your upper lip sang in your head as you realized it was his mustache, resulting in a silent sort of laughter. Teeth clicked against each other harshly before you reached up to rest a hand on his jaw and the other in his hair, steadying his pace to a softer, more tender one.

He only broke away in time for you to notice how fuzzy your head was becoming at the lack of oxygen. Gasping for breath, you brushed a hand over your lips. As if checking to make sure that had really just happened. Or maybe to keep the moment bottled up forever, solidifying it with the graze of your fingers.

Both of you took a moment, panting for breath as a way to fill the silence.

"Did you just—?"

"Yeah."

"Did we just—?"

"Sure did."

"And that means you're—?"

"If you ask anymore questions I might have to kiss you again (Y/n)."

The smile in his voice shone through. You allowed yourself one as well, eyes watering.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that for." The englishman sighed, resting his elbows on his thighs as he watched you stare star struck at him. "Please tell me I didn't seriously misread the situation there." He added on as an afterthought with a chuckle, already knowing the answer as he looked deep into your eyes.

"I'm sorry Tangerine." The sudden apology left you with a breathy quality. Tears were threatening to fall at a rapid pace now, one or two escaping. You couldn't tell if they were from remorse or joy. "I didn't mean that. Any of it."

"What about th' part where you confessed your undying love for me?"

He laughed as you went to hit him in the chest playfully, noting how the tears in the corner of your eyes began to disappear.

"You know what I meant. And I did no such thing." Your efforts to conceal a smile were fruitless for once. "You just got lucky this time."

"This time?" He reached a hand out to brush the pad of his thumb across your cheek with a sudden fondness. "Nah. Been plenty lucky for a while now, love."

"Sap." You mummbled, closing your eyes with a sigh as he continued to leave soft strokes against your skin.

"Just for you darling."

You really would have to thank Lemon when you got back home.

[therobotmonster]

In honor of he who died and rose after three days in the grave and now grants life ever lasting to his followers I thought it only right I got into the spirit once. So Dracula, this one's for you:

Just look at it.

You have what appears to be (and is) an accountant being menaced by boobalicious vampire women twice his size, so he's got Ethan Winters beaten to the punch by 34 years. But don't be fooled. One glance into his 30-yard stare and its obvious why only Mr. Weems can stop these sinister She-Vampires:

Weems is dead on the inside yet still living, where the she-vampires are animated from within with life, while dead.

He is their antithesis.

So yeah, a pile of jank with a fun name crossed my path, and now you all have to hear about it. If you're not hitting 'J', you have no one to blame but yourself.

Released on a scad of systems, but mostly the ZX Spectrum and the C64, The Astonishing Adventures of Mr. Weems & the She-Vampires is a sort of 'Gauntroidvania'. It's also trying to push the limits of how titillating a pre-NES era game could be, though the C64 port's interface missed that memo.

The hacked c64 version was the one I played, but giantbomb had a lot of gifs from the ZX verison that I've upscaled for demonstration purposes.

The only bit of story is from the back package. Weems wants to feel something, so he's decided to take on the Great She-Vampire or die in her buxom grasp. Fair.

This game is not recommended for people with epilepsy, dignity, or in general.

Mr. Weems has a garlic gun to defend his ever-dropping blood supply (vampire hunter is an odd professon with anemia) and destroy the baddies...

All three of them, which are all introduced on the first screen!

You've got bats, they pop out of pots and attack you.

The manual says these guys are Frankenstein's' monsters, but they're clearly the giant from Twin Peaks trying to warn you that you've bought a dud.

On the C64, the lesser she-vampires are clearly based on Dracula's brides, whereas on the ZX, they're more like ghosts with big naturals.

Which means that to get both kinds of vampire babe from the secondary cover, you'd have to buy a cassette for your c64, and and for your ZX. And I don't mean a cartridge, I mean a, Cassette tape.

If you manage to stalk your way all the way to the end and find the gear you need to destroy her, the Great She-Vampire awaits:

There's no boss fight, but there is a 1 pixel nip, at least on the ZX spectrum.

From there you book it back the way you came, only every screen now has a she-vampire chasing you in a murderous rage. Make it out, and you win. Or maybe you didn't, because just like the Dungeon of Fear and Hunger, you can never really escape Mr. Weems & the She-Vampires.

Only Weems increases the immersion by truamatizing you, the player. Mr. Weems is fine. You don't have to worry about the Weems.

So...

Is it a good game?

Not remotely, but that isn't the point in the slightest.

It's temping to say this is the Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies of video games, but that's not quite right. Weems has promise and ISCWSLaBMUZ doesn't make promises. It issues threats.

Mr. Weems has the charm of a concept that's all potential and zero execution. A dead-eyed accountant gunning his way in a Gauntlet-esq blitz through a vampire-babe infested castle is a fun idea, more-so with all the secret passages and 'gather items and backtrack to the boss' aspect. It's just everything else that goes wrong.

I mean, who doesn't want to hunt the Great She-Vampire to her penthouse for a good staking, I ask you?

[pennysperfectpolls]

Symphogear adoption poll round 2

Hibiki Tachibana, Chris Yukine

Shirabe Tsukuyomi, Kirika Akatsuki

Miku kohinata, Elfnein

Some propaganda and spoilers under the cut

Hibiki: the protagonist. She doesn’t fight with a weapon because she needs to hold girls hands. Her only ambition in life is to save people and go on dates with her girlfriend Miku. She was god once, it was bad. Her dad left after she almost died once. At least He’s trying to be better now but come on dude.

Chris: the Tsundere/ Lancer of the group. Fights with oh so many guns and surfs on missiles. Her backstory is so fucked up. Her parents performed charity concerts in War torn countries. They died when she was like ten and she was captured by bad guys. Eventually she ended up with a very abusive woman who made her be evil for a while. Eventually she did joy the found family and regained her love for singing. That’s all just season one. She’s grumpy and easily embarrassed but tries to be a good “big sister” for Shirabe and Kirika. Definitely has a crush on Hibiki and Miku.

Shirabe: the Yo-yo Master. Cuts monsters with giant buzz saw chain saws and exclusively fights on rollerblades. Practically inseparable from Kirika to the point she has trouble working with anyone else. They were part of the same “turn orphans into magical girl weapons” experiment along with Maria. She briefly had a heart to heart with a man I’m pretty sure was her grandfather but she never realized. She’s pretty quiet.

Kirika: Shirabe’s golden retriever girlfriend. Self proclaimed “happy go lucky girl from the depths of hell.” Meaning she’s cheerful and goth. She fights with a scythe and loves shouting the word “Death” all the time. Part of the same “Turn Orphans into magical girl weapons” experiment as Shirabe and Maria. She took longer to join the good guys because she thought she was being possessed by an immortal ghost lady.

Miku: the token normal girl for most of the story, unless she was being brainwashed by the bad guys. Has “my girlfriend is a superhero” traumas. She was also god for a little bit, it was also bad. Maybe the real god was these lesbians we found along the way. She and Hibiki call each other “my sunshine” or “my sunflower” and every time my heart melts.

Elfnein: a doll created by and with the memories of a several hundred year old witch who wants to destroy the planet after her dad was burned at the stake. Elfnein helped stop her and got adopted by the hero’s support staff. She acts as the guy in the chair for the latter seasons. She’s very sweet and polite.

[catholic-paladin]

Normal camping list:

Rosary, gun, firewood, giant iron cross, tent, holy water, s'mores stuff, wolfsbane, iron caltrops, sleeping bag, first aid, sharpened stake, electrolytes, iron nails, toothbrush, silver bullets, bug spray, holy hand grenade, iron....

[popculturebuffet]

Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Retrospective: Rememberance Day (Issues 12-16) (Patreon review for Brotoman.Exe)

Hello all you happy autobots! And welcome back to my long retrospective of Transformers More than Meets The Eye: The greatest comic about robuts in the known universe.

After a long road, a beetle themed detour and tons of tie ins, one shots and other needed stuff, we're FINALLY almost at the end of Season 1 and to help speed things along, Brotoman gave me some extra money to get through Dark Cybertron. That also means we have a pretty baked in schedule through april so here it is: After this review i'll be covering Remain in Light, the season 1 finale, next week. January is a recap of MTMTE's sister series Robot's in disguise. I volunteered for this one as I felt with Dark Cybertron relying heavily on RiD's history, I should reaquaint myself with it.

We'll then take another break for a Fizzarolli retrospective in Feburary, and then begin dark cybertron in may, with the plan to have it in two or three parts. After that barring any other side trips or what not, it's SEASON 2 BABY, the series best. It also means easing up a bit on the sidetrips: there's still two whole minis to go into and a christmas special but both are shorter and with our two issue schedule the pacing won't be as nettled.

As for the present these two arcs represent MTMTE hitting it's stride: The books always been good and these reviews have been almost two years of gushing. I have ocasional gripes but overal the series is just pure excellence. This is simply the best of the best: all the character and plot setup for the season paying off in the most awesome, heartbreaking and horrifying ways possible. These arcs are great, but I dreaded getting to them as they will rip your heart out of your chest guaranteed.

See while John Roberts built up an impressive cast of characters, almost all from characters' whose history before this could best be described "That one guy over there in the background" or "That transfomer you got at a yard sale that was a bitch to identify", he wasn't afraid to say goodbye to his creations, even the main characters, and got that this story.. needed life and death stakes.

It's how death SHOULD be handled in comic books: not a publicity stunt done half assed and undone in months, not a massacre to "raise stakes", simply when the story calls for someone to die.

So the question to those of you who haven't read it is simple: who dies tonight? Well i'll tell ya'll under the cut.

Before and After

Admitely these first two issues are less an arc and more two more standalones. As usual for MTMTE these are ripe for setup and Before and After feels like an out and out prelude to Reemergence Day, so the bundling fits.

Before and After has a unique structure, flashing both to the Autobots preparing for a strike on a Decepticon fortress on Sensenica. It's the first real Autbots Vs Decepticon battle we've seen: while there was one in Ratchet's arc, it was more a smokescreen for Pharma and Fort Max took them down quickly and messily.

Here it's an actual battle: a bunch of decepticons who shall remain nameless and largely unimportant to the overall scheme of things have been bleeding organic's dry for energy, so our heroes go down to stop it. For the sake of clarity i'm not going ot be covering the issue as structured as it's a lot.

The good news: our heroes are able to take the fortress, free the organics, save the day. The bad.. is there is a lot of injuries in the process, and that's the real intresting part of this issue: while the battle is neat, I often forget it and it really just kinda comes and goes: what's important.. is the after effect: Swerve, Rewind and Cyclonus were all horribly injured and we don't find out why till the tailend of the issue for the latter two.

For swerve.. he shot himself in the face while trying to figure out his gun while Chromedone and SKids fought a giant dinosaur. This guy is snapdragon and yes I looked him up on the grounds he fought two characters while transformed and apparently bathes in the blood of his enemies when he can't find sludge as he has a senstive butt.

So while this goes on it's down to Rewind and Tailgate. Tailgate is, allegedlys, a bomb disposal expert, and thus has to take out a bomb hooked to the organics with Rewind's help. Also of note is that Rewind and Chromedome are fighting.

Rewind is PISSSEEED Chromedome keeps hacking heads, while Chromedome is mad Rewind won't stay out of action. So naturally it's the perfect time for Rewind to go boom as the two little guys simply can't stop it. Rewind stays to mitigate the blast... and Cyclonus tosses Tailgate out taking the blast himself.

The prognosis for both.. isn't good. Rewind is a tiny bot.. and that means it's harder for him to bounce back from this, with Red Alert floating his Spark Jumping idea from his intro arc, a nice call back I honestly forgot about. Of course it'd crop up again and naturally, Chromedome is a spark type match for Rewind.

While Chromedome recovers from it as the process.. isn't exactly plesant. So while he recovers he talks to Tailgate. Chromedome admits when he's told Cyclonus still survivied that it's a shame... though what I like is when Tailgate asks him fi he really meant that.. he admits it.. but also admits he shouldn't of said it to Tailgate and apologizes, admitting thigns are just stressful. Tailgate calls rewind Chromedome's best friend

That flub aside, Chromedome admits that he's not #1 in his boyfriend's heart.. there's someone else, just above him.

So we get Rewind's backstory which as usual is important for later: Rewind was a member of what was called at the time "The disposable class". There aren't many left and it's easy to see why as the disposables were basically slaves, with Chromedome flat out admitting that's what they'd call them now. It makes him one of the oldest and is why he has a memory stick of all alt modes: he was made for just one purpose and that purpose was being a comically large usb drive.

This changed when Rewind met Dominus Ambus, Scientest, Doctor, Author Explorer and that one ex of your partners you can never live up to. Tailgate for his part says he hates the guy. That's a good friend tailgate.

Anyways Ambus used Rewind as a memory drive but treated him kindly, giving him premium energon instead of the cheap stuff and realizing in the process that the disposables were just autbots and just as sentient as any other, and started campaiging for their rights. He seemed to succeed but trying to find a cure for Cybercocis he and Rewind left to find Luna 1, Cybertron's missing moon because like any missing thing of legend, you just gotta assume it has the cure for anything.

They failed, and what's worse they came back to a planet at war. All hell had broken loose and the two underwent the right of the autobrand.

So cut to years later in the war and Chromedome, already not having the best mental health for his years in psi ops and other traumas, has decided to unalive himself. Which is harder than it sounds for a transformer: their bodies are built to be nigh on indestructable and Chromedome can't really try sucicide by comabat as it'd put others in whatever unit he was in at risk. So instead he went to a relinquishment clinic, with what clinics left offering assisted suicide.

This ends up saving Chromedomes life as he hears a scream.. and it turns out to be Rewind who was checking the bodies. And that, dear readers is the main reason Rewind's on the lost light, the reason for the snuff film footage he got earlier: he's been looking for Dominus anywhere there's bodies in hopes of getting closure with Chromedome along for the ride. Dome assumes that's why he goes into battle.. but Tailgate has a more optimstic take: Rewind loves him and simply wants to be there to support him.

Either way things aren't looking good as it turns out chromedome's spark has a low yield. As he stated earlier he was born dry and thus dosen't hae a lot of ennermost energon. Ennermost energon is a brilliant concept: it's the energon closest to a bot's casing, their essence. Being robots, Cybertronians naturally run into a ship of thesus paradox oftne with most of their original parts long gone. The innermost energon is the part of them that's always there, the one part that, along with the spark itself, will always be then

So as a gesture of love when someone is dying, possibly may survivie may likely not, a bot puts a portion by them. Tailgate hearing this.. decides to do the same for Cyclonus. This being Cyclonus he's not only not quite dead, but an asshole about it, saying he dosen't care about tailgate they don't have a bond, etc... but in a touching moment instead of keeping up his abuse of the poor guy after smashing the jar.. he goes to help him pick it up. Despite trying to distance himself, despite trying to push Tailgate away.. they have a bond. And he can't deny that.. I mean he will, it's Cyclonus, he has the emotoinal maturity of a very angry stump, but he's at least TRYING to not be as closed off.

As for Chromedome he's not doin so hot and in his lowest moment a mysterious voice says something VERY prowl like: the decpitcons are still a threat and this proves it and there's something Chromedome can do to help. He wants to show him something in the basement.

Thankfully Rewind's alive, and of all people it was whirl who donated.. and whose uncharcatristically nice. It's almost as if he's hiding something and.. yup as we find out in the final pages turns out he locked the door to attempted murder cyclonus and Rewind got caught in it.

Cybertronian Homesick Blues

CHB is a fun issue, what SEEMS to just be some fun shenanigans and an excuse to make human forms for the cast.

So Mags is wound tighter than usual, having thrown several people, Swereve included in the brig for general nonsense.. which as Rodimus notes is all kinds of fucked up. I mean it'd usually just be two or three kinds, but they have dangerous criminals down there now along with Fort Max, who is dangerous but isn't out to hurt anybody anymore, so he's not exactly going to prison shank anyone.

Rodimus can see a problem coming and decides to help: the Lost Light's approaching Hedonia, a vacation planet ala Risa from Star Trek, but saying the quiet part loud. He asks Swerve to take him to relax, threatning the bar if he dosen't, and Swerve to his credit genuinely tries to bond with Ultra Magnus, bringing most of his close friends to help with the task: Rewind, Rung, Skids, Tailgate and Whirl. Whirl isn't exactly a close friend but you try telling Whirl he can't come and see how many limbs you have left.

Due to anti robot prejudice , our heroes can't enter EVERY section so they set up Holomatter Avatars to go into those sections and drink it up, having disabled Mags DiD chip. Said chip keeps fuel from hitting transformers at full impact, i.e. keeping them from getting plastered unless they WANT to get plastered.

Naturally as you can imagine Mags is going through something and is thus a pretty depressed/angry drunk and has a full on breakdown

It's very obvious that Ultra Magnus.. is having a crisis of faith. His whole point is to be unflinching unchanging and as seen in the Annual the idea of NOT being that is propsterous to him.. and now we see that even with his acceptance in that story.. ti's not easy. Change.. often involves a lot of backsliding first. Personal growth is not easy, take it from me, so naturally the idea of being more than the tight ass he's SUPPOSED to be is tearing the poor bot apart. He also takes it out on swerve saying people like him because he's funny and that he's shirking his responsibliteis iwth the bar plan, not beliving Swerve's half hearted defense of it... causing the little guy to open up.

It's a deeply painful sentence.. and one that's all too damn relatable. I often feel this way wondering if people like me for anlysizing shit and being mildly amusing or for me.

MOst of the rest of the issue is holomatter hyjinks, as our heroes are forced to cary Magnus, who accidently drank something REALLY strong across a human section in their disguises. The disguises.. are really neat, with special note to Tailgate as a baby, Rung's neat hat, Whirl as a murder child and my faviorite, Magnus.. using Verity's likeness. A nice little nod, make sme hope the two do actually meet again.

At any rate our heroes succeed, but we have some important story stuff before we move on to the main event: first I forgot how the story really started.. with Drift busting in to stop Cyclonus from.. singing. Turns out no one was in danger, it was just ancient cybertronian and beautiful, with Rewind recording it.. only to be hastily shouted to get out.

While this seems lke Standard cyclonus.. he was covering. Turns out Tailgate's stories about being in the primal vanguard, being important, all his big puffed up stories are a lie. He wasn't even bomb disposal, he's WASTE disposal, he was just able to bluff himself through the bomb just enough. It's all a lie. Yet it wasn't to feel special or anything.. it's for much more tragic, entirely understandable reasons.

It's a painful moment.. and an understandable one. He should've been found easily.. but got lost for CENTURIES.. and no one cared. No one noticed. It's not hard to see why the little guy didn't want to admit that. While cyclonus is right Tailgate can't keep lying forever.. he sees why he started it and sees that Tailgate might be the ONLY person who understands his pain, the only person who knows what it's like to wake up in a world that just left you behind and dosen't seem to have a place for you. So he teaches Tailgate how to sing cybertronian.

And from that heartwearming moment.. more depression as this issue was Swerve trying to commuincate with Blur.. only it turns out like Tailgate that was a lie. The two never knew each other, swerve only met him once with a plan and the bar is sipmly.. trying to fill the space with something. He also offers Ultra Mags to be roomy.. but Mags coldly shoots him down, saying their not friends. It's a pretty solemn ending to what SEEMED to be a wacky one off... and it's only going to get worse from here.

Rememberance Day:

We begin wtih the story of Overlord's birth. Two hapless minors find his, call it in and their superior calls for someone to come down. That someone is Three of Twelve, one of the functionist council, a loose council that preached functionism, aka alt mode dictates class, the kind of prick Dominus Ambus was rallying against. These guys will be important next season but for now he's just here to point out how important that is, give the guy who called it in an award and tell the miners they have 6 hours to live from the radation.

Overlord is a point one percenter. A point one percenter is a green spark found in the tiniest fraction of the cybertronian population. Said sparks are treasured and their wielders are often the toughest, most nigh unstoppable bots out there. It's why Overlord is such a juggernaught and why it took so much to bring him down on Garrus 9, as well as a retroactive reason why the deceiptcons he had under his boot didn't just revolt. Other phase sixers for scale include Fortress Maximus, Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime, Megatron, Scorponok, Shockwave, Tarn, Roller and of course, He, Grimlock, with Megatron weaponziing this fact, hence why so much of this list is purple.

We then cut to the finale of Last Stand of the Wreckers, just before overlord went boom.. and find an univitied guest; Chromedome. Turns out he's been going into Overlord's mind looking for something, and makes the fatal mistake of telling him about it, mostly becaues he needs to rummage. Overlord is a Phase Sixer, what Megatron would call in to finish off a planet along with most of those guys mentioned. As a result the only person whose really easlily pummled overlord.. is Megatron himself.

After a few more cups of punch to the face we find what Chromedome's after: the memory of Overlord's true birth. He was put in Megatron's fucked up super solider program, using a very unstable very rare Ununtrium, the same stuff used to make Sixshot. While Rossum, the tech and likely the person responsible for naming Rossum's trinity, pumps him full of goo. Megatron isn't AS suicidal as he sounds doing this sort of supervillian origin story, having had SHockwave throw in a killswitch. Overlord awakens.. and takes after his new dad, smashing Rossum's head as his first act of new life.

This seems to be the end: Rossum warned during the procedure the heat could kill him and the substance itself could kill Megatron: While he's currently assumed dead by the crew, Chromedome is sure he'll come back.. and is right as he returned towards the end of RiD season 1 and plays a key part in both Dark Cybertron and this series from Season 2 onward.

Then.. things take a turn. Overlord remembers where he met Chromedome before: the New Institute. Turns out Chromedome was a brainwasher, with Zeta Prime redubbing the insittute.. but not really changing it and using it for the same brainwashing. Overlord broke in in the early days of the decepticons and stole Trepan, who we met in Shadowplay.

And that theft is WHY Overlord now has taken control of the situation and is going into Chromedome's memories instead: turns out Overlord tried to dabble in mnemosurgery, thinking he could use it against shockwave and undue the killswitches. Megatron isn't stupid though and the second he got wind of what was going on killed Trepan. So while Overlord can't hack int oa mind, he learned enough to take it over, not helped by the fact that Chromedome is scared shitless of the guy , as anyone would be and despite his attempts to hide it, overlord easily picked it up.

So we instead go back to the day of loading.. and a conversation we hadn't seen. In a twist i'd honestly forgot but is entirley brilliant.. Prowl had already MET with Chromedome... and it was about Overlord. As for why he's in tact, Bumblebee has mercy and didn't want to abuse POW's, so he rebuilt the body.

Prowl's intrest is in making their OWN phase sixers: while most Autobots, Chromedome included, assumed they were just freak accidents of nature, Prowl is right about something for once: there's so many that are decipticon, WHY is that. So he wants to find out why, and wnats Chromedome to do it despite being a MASSIVE risk.

Chromedome, as you'd expect tells Prowl to go fuck himself in the poltest manner possible: the war's over, this really isn't necessary, and Rewind really woudlnt' want him doing this. Prowl then enters peak dickhead.. and for once actually suffers for it.

It's a horrible act that has legit consequences over in RID, leaving Prowl free to be brainwashed. Yet.. it's hard to feel too bad as Prowl was trying to blackmail his ex to do something highly shady and ENTIRELY not approved by the rest of Autobot High Command, something that would've likely destroyed Cromedome's relationship anyway. So it's a bad act.. but it's on a deserving victim and seeing Prowl crying no as he's abotu to be brainjacked is just.. so satisfying.

We then finally get the face behind this conspiracy: Drift. The last person you'd expect as he takes Chromedome to talk to Brainstorm. Brainstorm made the cell and is in on it.. but unlike Drift knows what a stupid idea this was, calling it project: total insanity and project :end in tears. Both accurate. The only people who know about this , as far as Drift says, are in this room as Shock and Ore did the loading but as we know both died horribly. Drift is the one who suggested the idea nd brings up the slow cell, Overlord's prison that slows down time for the user.. and that despite his best efforts to stop it, Chromedome's memory shows Overlord how to unlock.

Overlord locks Chromedome in and since, as Overlord figures out, Chromedome did this without anyone else knowing, Overlord now has a lead to go kill people. As he chillingly puts it "Run as fast as you can Chromedome, your already too late".

Under Cold Blue Stars:

Before we get to the tragedy above.. we have to get to the tragedy bellow: Chromedome escapes.. but thanks to the slow field it's been half an hour... and what he finds...

Yeah our heroes.. aren't doing so good. It's something that, despite reading this comic twice before this... had never registered; Overlord.. is strong enough to take on the ENTIRE lost light and WIN. It's taking EVERYONE they have just to hold him BACK. It does make perfect sense: not only is overlord a literal monster, able to tank hits he's spent his career wiping out planets and autobots and his last experince before this was months as the horrifiying dark god of his own planet, most of which was a game of "how many ways can I have my minons creatively murder and torture autobots?". Our heroes, despite their ragtag nature on paper, are GOOD, but their in tight quarters trying not to hit each other while overlord would gladly use one of them to smash through the others omniman style if he had a way to. He wants to kill EVERY , LAST, BOT simply as a warmup. He COULD leave to go find megatron, maybe by killing everyone on cybertron and using the bodies to spell out "HI DAD". But he just can't resisit the torture it'd put chromedome through. He's a sadist... while his main motive may be

He has hobbies.

So you may say to yourself: well, how did we get here, so we go back 30 minutes to the start of this rampage. We see Pipes again, who I honestly forgot existed and whose asking blaster if commuincations are back with Cybertron yet, and since Pipes intended recipient is a friend of Blasters, Blaster goes ahead and forwards it while Whirl, whose naturally there to blow shit up, mocks him.

I didn't think much of this... till Pipes runs into someone.. overlord, who gladly squishes him under his boots with Pipes getting a fairly effective and horrifying death: bleeding out, scrunched to hell.. he uses what little spark he has left for one last push to do the one thing he CAN do to warn everyone else

It makes me tear up.. and again, I FORGOT THIS GUY EXISTED. Roberts is just that good a writer, taking a character whose last major part in things was back in issues 3 and 4 and then NOTHING, and making you feel gutted the poor guy is dead... using what he had left to warn everybody.

So we then rewind again to where everyone was when the emergency alarm went off:

We start naturally with Rewind, whose worried about Chromedome and came to Brainstorm's lab to talk to him. Swerve's just here to accidently activate a meta bomb that gives him forth wall powers. Or make him thinks he has them, like with Deadpool it's left vauge. Rewind is wondering where his boyfriend is and is suspcious of Brainstorm since CHromey keeps saying Brainstorm's name.. though not in a sexy way but in a screaming it as he wakes up way. Brainstorm for his part, while very good at subterfuge to a point. .blabs about a secret project, wtih Swerve distracting them before the alarm goes off.

Rodimus is having Perciptor, the less fun genius aboard look at the map to the knights of cybertron and after having him dumb it down a few shades we get to the point: the thing can't be copied. This setup with the finale is interupted and we go to Rung, whose gone to Visit Fort Max. Max invited him down.. to apologize, planning to give a speech but realizing that was more for him and admitting the shock, waking up after garrus 9, he was in bad shape and genuinely asks if Rung can forgive him. And Rung.. instantly does. Not only has Rung been around for eons.. but he's a therapist. He spent the whole hostage situation trying to talk max down best he could. He can forgive.

Finally we have Skids wondering why Cyclonus is on the warpath.. thankfully JUST a metaphor, otherwise there'd be more than two corpses today, but he's mad Tailgate is hosting movie night at their place.

We end this catchup with Ratchet, whose pissed off Rodimus is being caviler about this, both because these don't go off for some reason.. and he made a joke about Ratchet's hands. Come on rodders.. that's way too easy. You can do better.

Drift is out and about to investigate.. and happens to benearbye as both bots see Overlord. We also get a really nice moment of bonding with the two, showing tha tbeneath their constant bickering.. they care about each other. More over time but we'll get to that. When Drift tries to get Ratchet to barricade himself in.. he refuses. He'll lock down the clinic.. but they fight and if needed die together. Ratchet calls Rodimus to get EVERYONE down there and tells him if he dosen't make it.. tell first aid he's ready and tell all his patients they'll have to make new apointments.

Thankfully one of the best characters in this comic dosen't go down swinging as everyone arrives to throw down. They do their best, but naturally their best bet is the only other .1%er they have... Magnus. And while he SEEMS to do well, pounding Overlord's face in as he heavily regrets not being there on G9 when everything went to shit.. only for that classic reveal that always means your fucked.

IT's a shocking, horrific moment as one of the main cast, one of their leaders and seemingly their best hope.. is down. Magnus hoped to make up for Garrus 9.

It's also why I feel last stand is necessary to read these books after this read througH: while you CAN without it, Overlord's appearnce just dosen't have the same impact till AFTER this.. and just how badly Magnus falls here dosen't. After feeling he was slipping more and more.. he once again fails.. this time in a way he simply can't cope with. And the consequences.. will not be great.

And not suprisingly "Sword through the chest" seems incuriable: his spark is detaached and while First Aid can slow it down.. he can't stop it, and while everyone else is trying their best.. they can't do much. So drift has Swerve give him the com to call for backup.. the one person whose NOT here.

So just as Overlord has Rodimus by the throat he makes the mistake of asking for last words.. as the natural "Till All Are One" you'd expect... sends him panicking .. and leaves him wide open for..

God that felt good. It's not remotely over though as we find out why Fort Max had this opening: turns out Domey , while recklessly charging into a known mass murderer's brain, was still JUST smart enough to leave a trigger in there in case Overlord got out, something that would make him feel he was loosing which , since Overlord is deathly afraid of defeat, would send him spiraling. And in one of the best uses of a gag as a chekov's gun i've seen, only topped by something in next season's finale, he made it till all are one because Rodimus won't stop saying it.

As Rewind lays in shock,w ondering what the helld omey's been up to, Chromedome inacts plan b, asking Fort Max to drag overlord over yonder back to his cell. While Prowl is many things, most of them varations of rat bastard motherfucker, he IS prepared and made Overlord's cell detachable for if, or if your smart like Brainstorm WHEN this stupid plan backfired. Problem is there's a sword jammed in the way of the hatch... someone has to go pull it out.. and rewind is small enoguh, brave enough, and sad enough to pull it off, saying a tearful goodbye to cromedome as the pod detaches. To make matters even worse... Cromedome then has to blow the fucker up as he'd rather not leave the love of his life who was just about to leave him anyway with a sadistic murderer. And all that's left.. is

IT's one of the saddest moment sin the whole comic, and trust me there will be more and one of the best character death's i've seen. A big as screwup as bringing overlord aboard, a bigger one of him getting out.. it needed weight. LIke I said, Roberts knows it's best to kill a character when it's NECESSARy.. and Rewind going out lik ea hero sacrifcing himself so his friends and lover can escape, sadly bidding farewell knowing he's about to go through hell? It's a lot. It's a perfect sendoff to a great character, and a truly painful moment. Also if your wondering about the blood, Rewind took Chromedome's arm along with his heart.

The Gloaming

The gloaming starts with foreshadowing for the next arc: we see a bunch of ops with Ultra Magnus from the war.. but two things are off. The first is that he looks slightly diffrent each time.. and the second is he looks very dead at the end of each one.

This will make sense later but for now we're in the aftermath of overlord's attack: Drift is being repaired, and Ratchet is TRYING to repair mags.. but it dosen't look good. Using a death clock, a device that predicts how long a bot has left, he only has ten days at best and poor Tailgate breaks down over how unfair it all is: one friend is dead, another close to it...

And there aren't easy answers for everyone else either: Chromedome responds a little to Skids but it's very clear he's not remotely okay, while Rodimus has torn up his office. Rung tries to help.. but he's held back by the fact he dosen't know why Rodimus is REALLY upset: Rodimus thinks it's magnus, Rung thinks it's because he lost.. which is a good guess.. but it's not the right one. We'll find out why next time but for now with Rodimus launching an investigation into the incident.. he and Drift need to have a talk.

After that we get the funeral: Rodimus gives a wonderful speech as he's returned to the stars spock style pointing out how EVERYONE he met was better for having known him. Except Prowl, nothing can make that guy better> it's a sweet earnest speech.. which makes it odd that Rewind's actual partner.. can barely say a sentence.

Brainstorm notices.. and goes to confront dome. Not about the speech, most bots would likely chuck that up to bottling up his grief. But it turns out these two go back a ways.. and as a result we find out just WHY Chromedome has so little innermost energon and I really wish I could share the full scene as it's powerful and shows a more emotional side of the usually flippant Brainstorm we haven't seen till now: He knows what Chromedome's abotu to do and to prove it rattles off a bunch of names. All ones Chromedome dosen't recognize.. because they were all former Conjux Endura's. And after they died he wiped his memory of them to not deal with the pain. It's a hard reveal, and a well done one and throughly proves Rewind right about mnemosurgery being an addiction for him: After all grief is hard, loosing someone even harder.. if you had the option to just make that pain temporary it'd be incredibly tempting, near impossible to turn down. You loose the person.. but you also loose the knife in your gut every time you think of them and realize their gone. Sure you could say "Well i'd want to rmemeber them i'd want the pain" and the strongest among us probably could turn that down.. but it's harder when you have that option. It's why i'ts such a comeplling hook here and why the next part hurts so damn much

It fleshes out their friendship and Brainstorm a lot: he's had to watch his friend erase those he loved again, and again and again, tried and failed to talk him out of it time and again. All because he KNOWS what it's like to loose someone.. and that while the pain never goes away, it's better to have them with you. We'll get into how he knows that pain next time. For now the slug is the only reason history may not repeat itself.

So we get two scenes intercut: One is Rodimus before the rest of the crew.. as Drift takes full responsiblity for what happened and is stripped of his autobrand, banished and boo. It's a loss that hit harder this time as i'd gotten more attached to the guy, seen him nearly sacrifice himself, his deep faith, his argument flirting with ratchet.. it's hard to see him go even if he damn well deserves it after all this cost. There's no.. joy in this.. no catharsis. he screwed up, sure.. but it dosen't bring Rewind or Pipes back. It dosen't undue the pain and grief everyone has or fix anything. It's simply assining blame. I'm not saying Drift or a certain someone else we'll get to next time shoudln't be held acountable, but it dosen't make it easy to see him go.. or see Ratchet be the only one to comfort him showing that despite arguging constantly.. they ultimately were close as anyone could be. With this... Rodimus is alone, his command staff gone and it's not going to be easier to wear the crown going into the finale.

The other is a touching moment I can't really share in full here, two page spread and all, btu Rewind pieced together a message for Chromedome, knowing what he'd do if he was gone. He begs his partner to go on without him, that injecting will kill him.. and that he deserves to be happy. The New Institute isn't him anymore. And as one last note because he dosen't say it enough

It's a scene that's now become one of my faviorite: while it's hard to follow because of the various footage, when you put it all together.. it's a message of courage. Despite the guilt, despite the pain, despite al lthey went through.. rewind loved chromedome, as he was, for who he was.. and wants him to stay that way. To keep him with him. And so .. Chromedome , for the first time, sheethes his claws.. and chooses to live with the pain.

We then end on a cliffhanger: Ultra Magnus.. is missing. Someone stole him, he's just gone.. and if that wasn't enough.. Tailgate goes under the death clock light.. and dosen't have much time left.

If it wasn't obvious by now I love these issues: their heartbreaking, well done and read even better this time around: It's a tragic loss that's expertly crafted, and used entirely to push the characters forward, to really push them with one forced to leave, one seemingly kidnapped and one facing his own crippling issues.. .and finding the courage to live

Next Time: We finish season 1! If you thoguht things coudln't get worse for the lost light.. your wrong as they face an attempted genocide , a character we've seen named a lot but not actually met till now, an old foe and a cool as hell new one. Until then thanks for reading

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1117 Review and Analysis

And so ends the Broadcast Era (any Three Body readers here?) after a long few months. The breaks were certainly not kind to this sequence, but I think it will be remembered fondly. One Piece’s biggest strength is how populated and alive its world feels, and emphasising that all these supporting characters are still relevant and it’s all their lives at stake is going to pay dividends when things get apocalyptic in the endgame.

Anyway, to review the manga instead of the fanbase, it’s sweet to see Neko on the cover page felt comfortable dropping the gun from his stump arm. Even as an apparent yakuza, things are at peace enough that he doesn’t need to be packing. Also the way Yamato’s backpack fits right between their belt loop thingies is a cute detail.

Nice to see Drake still kicking. I’d have been willing to believe he was dead after Wano. I wonder if the broadcast is going to start influencing SWORD to go finally rogue and move all the less-evil Marines into their own, easier to root for faction.

You have to wonder what Stussy’s exit plan is if she isn’t rushing to rejoin the group on the Sunny. Or if she is, no one’s snailed in to tell them hold tight.

The attention to detail with the giants’ ship’s figurehead being tied back on after being cut a couple of chapters ago is great. The giants as a whole give us some really fun, evocative pages this week as they lay into the Marine fleet. And while we’re obviously not getting a full set of one on ones for this arc, Oda gives some solid moments to Bluegrass and Doll, perhaps to set them up to be bigger opponents in the future. I certainly didn’t expect Kashii to take such a big beatdown right in the middle of his triumphant return to the story.

It feels likely that it was trying to reach Luffy at the cost of all else, but then why does it only sometimes react to Gear Five, and why only at the end was it activated enough to start moving?

And how about Mars seemingly recognising the robot? Definitely gives us a hint that the Elders are older than they appear, despite previous evidence suggesting they don’t go all the way back to the Void Century.

There is one reoccurring complaint I do agree with, as this marathon segment wraps up: it’s kinda weird there was no visual content in the broadcast, after the emphasis placed on it with the 10 minute lead time. Maybe we take it as part of Vegapunk’s perfectionism – it just wouldn’t feel right to him if he wasn’t being seen, which would track with an artificial devil fruit not feeling right because of its colour, something on one else would care about – but that’s still a little weak. I’m sure Oda wrote out the whole speech in advance and chunked it out chapter by chapter with the cameos and action beats he wanted to accompany it, and he found he decided the preamble was necessary to get everyone where they needed. The arrival of the Elders wouldn’t have had the focus that made it so great if Vegapunk was already dropping lore bombs. Buuuut I’m sure there could have been a better in-universe justification for it. Maybe just saying he wants people to set up recording devices to preserve and repeat the message could have made it easier to swallow.

I think we can all let out a breath with the broadcast over. While I’m sure there’s still some cooldown to go, especially if the Iron Giant means to retaliate, things seem poised to wrap up here. There are multiple calls to get the ships moving throughout the chapter, from Zoro, Luffy and the giants, with the stragglers close enough to jump aboard as they go. And with Vegapunk dead and the broadcast over there’s nothing left on Egghead I can see the crew getting invested in fighting for. It’s kind of a loss for the Strawhats, not being able to protect everything they promised they would and having to retreat from foes they have no idea how to fight, albeit not as devastating a one as Sabaody. Elbaf could end up being a chance to regroup, power up one last time, and make ready to stop these unstoppable monsters in the true final battle. And setting that up is a very exciting prospect.

[queercodedvillains]

If you can I’d love to hear the outline/tldr of your Claire’s AU because the posts under that tag are always so funny to me

So the claires au tag started because I wanted to collect all my modern au inspo posts in one place. Since it all gravitates around my beloved little terrorist Deidara, and I think he'd do great at a dead end low effort retail job with a bonus perk of bullying giving piercings to tweens and a sick employee discount, the claire's au was born. In hindsight, I wish I had called it the mallrats au, but since the fics came after the tag, we're stuck with the consequences of my choices smh.

It's expanded significantly, to the point that its sooo hard to summarize, but I'm gonna try my best here!!

My general goal is to transcribe everything we know from canon as closely/creatively as I can to a modern/90s setting. Tbh this started because I just was not emotionally prepared to handle canon!akatsuki levels of fucked up war criminals and I just wanted to put them in low stakes shenanigans that keeps the core of their characters without all the murder and angst and action (I hate writing action. Horror is fun and dandy, but spin kicks and explosions and puppets are beyond me for now).

So in the claires au/mallrats cinematic universe, the Akatsuki are just a gang of queers doing your run of the mill criminal activity. Drug dealing, car stealing, chop shopping, gun running, book cooking, you name it. They all ended up kicked out of society for one reason or another, banded together, and became mundane villains of polite society.

For example, Sasori is always depicted as tinkering with his puppets. So I decided that tendency to methodically pull someone apart and back together, that special calculating mindset that it takes to look at a body and come up with twelve different secret weapons to hide in their limbs, would make the perfect fodder for a chop shop mechanic. Stolen cars instead of stolen corpses. He seems like he got the obsessing-over-cars brand of autism and I love him for it. He's weird and reclusive and pretentious and insufferable and genius.

Deidara likes explosives, duh, but guns are so boring imo so I wanted to dig deeper into his love of temporary beauty, and how that meshes perfectly with drugs. They're ephemeral, transient experiences that fade quickly but leave a lasting impact on a person, changing their life, etc. He's also. Super fucking pretentious about it. Don't let him corner you at a party. Sasori might be the chemist but Deidara is the real brains behind the operation, and also the very willing test subject. I see him as a club kid, always on one in the middle of the crowd, and entirely responsible for the Akatsuki's branding. He designed the clouds and the patented pressed pills (we got blue teslas, they got white owls, etc) and also is solely responsible for word of mouth advertising. He's always got a can of spray paint and/or a black business card with nothing but a phone number and a red cloud. He's always bright and loud and shiny and looking for attention in seedy places, always in the middle of the mosh pit or the dance floor or some sketchy back alley or the skate park (skating is kinda like riding a giant flying bird, right?) Either way, everyone wants whatever the fuck he's on.

Together they're a power couple. Absolutely nasty, insufferable to talk to, impossible to be around unless you're just as pretentious as them about their very specific interests AND willing to listen to them bicker endlessly about their arts. Naturally, they only have two friends. Kakuzu and Hidan.

I want to dig into their backstories and relationships later, narratively, but the barest bones of it is that Hidan is Deidara's childhood friend and professional pain in the ass. Class clowns in detention together, bullying the local nerds, weirdo queer kids with serious mental issues from broken homes, a scrappy sort of friendship born out of desperation for someone Like Them etc. I mean Hidan's got a nasty sadomasochistic streak, a propensity for self harm, and an obsession with the occult so don't get me started on him as your local satanic bad influence. Their whole thing could be its own post tbh.

Kakuzu and Sasori are like crotchety old men on the porch. They like to sit in some booth at the club talking shit and looking menacing while Deidara and Hidan are busy 'advertising'. I also see Kakuzu as a bit of a mentor to Sasori, being a bit older and wiser and seeing Sasori get dragged into the Akatsuki after dropping out of med school and being disowned by his grandmother (a whole other post as well) and spiraling into shitty coping mechanisms (alcohol, mostly). Kakuzu smacked some sense into him and got him sobered up because he loves that sad pathetic wet cat of a man they got money to make!!

If and when Sasori and Deidara split up to work, I see them pairing up with Kakuzu and Hidan, respectively. Every artsy twink needs their burly body guard, yknow?

I'm maintaining their age differences to some degree, although pinched closer. At the time Mallrats is set, Deidara is 25, Hidan is 26, Sasori is 32, Kakuzu is 40. Itachi and Kisame are also mid 20s, Konan and Pain and Zetsu and Tobi are in their 30s.

Deidara centric timeline wise (and trying to stick to canon as closely as realistically possible) he gets kicked out of his house for being fruity at 14, ends up couch surfing with Hidan (having 'sleep overs', or sneaking into his room when Hidan's mom said no but didn't care enough think to look under his bed/the closet/that pile of laundry) and when he can't pull that off, staying in the mall til after closing and posting up in there all night. After a while, someone in the Akatsuki notices him kicking rocks in a parking lot and realizes they need some scrappy kid to run a backpack from one end of town to the other without getting noticed. One thing leads to another and he ends up catching Konan's attention. She (30s, forgery and embezzling specialist, dyke and mother of the house) shuffles some papers, gets him his own apartment on the condition that he works for her and the money goes from their business associates to him to her to his landlord.

I have a soft spot for Konan doing this for anyone she can. Queer kids in the 80s and 90s didn't exactly have resources, and she did what she could with what she had, handing them a way to earn their own money and a safe place to live, even if its seedy and illegal. Beats the streets! Most of them were runners for a few years and aged out, she signed their SRO apartments off to them at 18 and they moved on with their lives. There's a whole host of people who only know her as Lady Angel (winknod to canon again) because she did what she could to save em. Deidara just happened to be too good at his job and got pulled higher and higher, until he landed in Sasori's shop.

That's about caught up to what I've gotten so far in Mallrats and The Waiting Room (with so much more to go. My muse is wildly overactive for the amount of time and attention span I got). I got head canons on like all the main characters from Konoha/Suna, all the Akatsuki, and the Sanin. Where they work, how they interact, how their relationships translate to mallrat/clubrat shenanigans, etc.

Every detail Sasori and Deidara falling in love? DUH. But also........... A complete dossier on everyone's kinks? Hidan and Deidara's gay awakening? Sasori's history with Orochimaru? The absolute fuckery that is any of their home life before the Akatsuki? Brazilian Kakuzu? Jashinism in a neopagan satanic context? Kakuzu and Hidan's perfectly vicious relationship? Konan as Lady Angel? Itachi darling son of the police chief working for the mob to spite his homophobic dad? Kisame... well, idk about Kisame, but if you care enough to develop it with me I could be convinced to!! The list goes ON.

I could go into heavier detail about so much more but this is already so long T^T. If you read this far thank u ilysm and I would be so delighted to get into more if you're interested!! The ask box is always open and I am foaming at the mouth over them at the drop of a hat <3

[captain-mj]

there's a lot of really good new ideas happening right now but I'm still hoping that graves as a swanmay gets continued, please can I get a little more of hyper-specific shapeshifter angst?

Hey, so I will be honest, I don't like the swan maiden au. I tried, but I don't know if it was how I went about it or just the quality of the writing, but I'm not going to continue it. But! Consider this blanket permission for anyone who wants to use the ideas in it! The only thing I ask is you make Price a different species as I made Alpies up myself and use them original stuff not tied to COD.

Now, to the fun stuff. I do still like Alpie Price and I thought about it and... well. I can deliver this. Graves is just a different kind of shifter! The shifter angst is a lot more Price based as well.

Price sharpened his nails quietly. SpecGru and KorTac were currently in a training exercise with each other. A simple take the flag exercise. He was currently sniping quietly. It was really just a laser gun, but he had picked off quite a few people already.

He didn't like working with KorTac, even in something as low stakes as this, for several reasons. The main one being Graves and Valeria. Also Mace. He didn't like the way Ghost and him stared at each other like they were going to tear each other to shreds.

Mostly, it was Graves. Price bristled at the man no matter how casual the encounter. Something about him got under his skin.

With Farah talking with him, Graves had been around more and more. Ghost, Soap and the Vaqueros were still angry, understandably. But they had found a tense... agreement. Mostly they all ignored it and Graves made himself scarce when possible.

He heard the soft creak of the ground and yanked around, switching to his shotgun. The gun stayed aimed at the doorway carefully.

Some more movement before a small nose poked through the door. It sniffed gently before pulling back. A paw gently pressed in, scrambling at the floor. Price stood up and kept a gun right at them.

A small coyote poked their head in. Giant eyes blinked at him before closing as they sniffed the air.

Price was fairly certain there were shifters other than the bear one. He hesitated and continued to stare at it. The little coyote quickly darted back behind the door.

Price waited for a few minutes before glancing at the window for only a moment.

His sensor went off and he swung back around, seeing Graves confidently staring back at him.

Price immediately felt his ears press flat against his head and snarled. "Dirty trick."

"Got you didn't it?" Graves spun his gun around his finger. "You keep your tufts up so I assumed that's what we were doing."

"Can't exactly get rid of them." Price pointed out.

"Can't change that I'm a shifter then." He grinned, flashing white teeth.

Price growled and hit the sensor, hearing the countdown. "Right. Well, I'll go and find a new spot. Supposed to practice right?" His countdown hit 0 and he "revived".

Graves shot him again.

Price paused, staring at him. He hit the sensor. "Funny." He stood up, stretching. Ignoring Graves, he brushed past him and went down the stairs. As soon as his timer hit zero, Graves hit him again.

Graves then followed him. "So. Your main thing is a sniper?"

"Yep." Price stared at him and right as his own timer went to zero, he shot Graves. "Now, we're even."

Graves laughed. It was... nice. Most shifters had features of their creatures afterwards. Big bulk for Bears. Mocking laughing for Hyenas. But with Graves, there was nothing obvious. His eyes were completely different. Maybe the way his hair stuck up was similar to coyote ears, but it was tenuous at best. "Damn. You shot me."

Price's lip twitched but he mostly ignored him.

They went back and forth, every time the timer hit zero, they'd rush to shoot each other.

Price mistakenly smiled with his teeth, flashing a mouthful of sharp fangs.

Graves looked and paused, his smile dropping.

Price closed his mouth with a click.

"Can you not... put those away?" Graves was being careful. His choice of words and softened tone made Price bristle, even though it was clearly genuine.

"No. They're stuck." Price clicked his teeth and closed his mouth again. "Always there."

Graves nodded. "Must get annoying."

"Bite my tongue a lot." Price joked.

"I meant people like me looking." Graves looked in his eyes and the air heated up. Price could hear his heartbeat. See the warmth of his body. He blinked rapidly to get rid of it.

Price shrugged. "You're not too bad. i'm more than used to people staring."

"I think you have better things to stare at."

Before Price could ask what that possibly meant, there was a whistle indicating it was over and Graves shifted and ran off. His tail stuck straight up to draw attention to himself in case Mila or Oz saw him.

Price stared at him, feeling something funny in his chest.

[paperstarwriters]

asdfghjkl I was busy earlier today and I found out about Chayanne & Philza's little incident through tumblr and then watched the vod so I feel like I'm gonna throw my cooldown analysis about the whole thing onto the tag as well lol

fyi these are all headcannons tbh, I don't have enough time to go through everyone else's videos to try and make any accurate claims so yeah. Not Theories just headcannons lol

Ok so lets start this off strong; Chayanne met his (big brother? uncle?) Technoblade in the realm of death and that's were he got the glock. Forget about the other gods, or whoever, or whatever, gave the guns to the other eggs, Chayanne got his gun from Techno.

also, also, I know that "canonically" it was all just a bad dream, but I can't help but imagine the situation as a scenario where they genuinely did die, but they were all brought back to life by that federation of gods everyone keeps talking about, and while externally they're all going "hmmm yeah scary, scary awful nightmare" they, like everyone else on the island are growing highly suspicious about what's going on behind the scenes

From a literary standpoint, I find this fantastic because Phil has kinda been mostly out of the loop when it comes to major encounters with those in power. Like the others have gotten jobs from the gods and got their guns that way while Phil has just been minding his own beeswax and guarding Chayanne (and now Tallulah) with his life. Now he's been forcibly looped into this whole mess, and I'm eager to see him move forward into the environment and eventually kill god again with much more knowledge and intent. Like if it doesn't happen in game, I HOPE someone writes a fic about it lol

Anyways also, I like to imagine that the gods that be are maybe just a little weary of Phil. Like they let him use the maximum defenses for his home and were very, very quick to resurrect his eggs after their death lol I know it's mostly because of circumstance but I am all for Phil slowly and accidentally becoming a sleeping giant on the server lol.

Like, tying this into the the death did actually happen but they were resurrected headcannon from before, Phil's dying comment was that the powers that be want the eggs dead—I haven't checked this up on many others' streams or anything but I feel like if ever the other players have commented on about how the environment wants the eggs dead, the eggs don't seem to process it 100% like they make up some excuse or another that gives them reason to wander into trouble, and I know it's done in order to raise the stakes, but I feel like maybe the eggs aren't supposed to know either. Maybe the eggs are especially meant to be kept in the dark about all of this. Idk I am just trying to cope with the stress of the events lol.

[greatwyrmgold]

There are two reasons traditional RPGs gravitate towards combat. The first is, of course, that D&D (originally a wargame with proto-RPG mechanics tacked on) has been the Mount Fuji of the TRPG space for its entire existence—the first TRPG most people play, the TRPG others are compared to (implicitly or otherwise), the TRPG whose name is synecdoche for the entire medium.

The second is, I think, more interesting. Combat is relatively easy to generalize.

From rocks to guns, from magic to laser swords, from predatory microbes to atomic bombs, combat is trying to hurt something badly enough that it can't hurt you back, before something does the same to you.

There are a lot of differences, of course. Dying from blood loss is different from dying of decapitation, or burns, or getting crushed by boulders, or having your soul sucked from your body. Heck, dying from getting cut by a sword is different than dying from being impaled by a sword. Plenty of games simulate the differences between different kinds of injury...but they don't have to. It's easy to make a moderately deep combat system that feels about right for rocks and guns and magic and lasers and bombs.

Contrast that with, for instance, social situations.

You could design a debate system similar to stereotypical RPG combat, where you win an argument through sheer attrition—exhausting the opponent's will to continue arguing. This fits some social conflicts quite well; political arguments at Thanksgiving, criminal negotiations at the edge of violence, certain debate club a-holes.

But there are obviously also social conflicts where it's completely inappropriate. Deceiving a guard, mediating conflict between rivals, flirting with a potential informant. Trying to win a debate club match with facts and logic instead of brute force, for that matter. Or trying to win the match with emotional appeals, or by focusing on weaknesses in your opponent's arguments.

Swords, lasers, and fireballs are all different, but they have the same methodology: To hurt something badly enough that it can't hurt you back. Representing them all within the same mechanical system is simple. Different debate club strategies, not so much. A rational argument, an emotional appeal, and an argument of attrition are only doing the same thing in the abstract sense that they both want to win the argument...but they're doing that with completely different methods.

Representing different attacks with the same mechanics is simple. Systems like FATE literally use the exact same rules for all attacks, and it works well enough. GURPS and D&D and Shadowrun and so forth add more detail, but fundamentally, magic and swords and guns and giant rocks and fire deplete the same hit points the same way. None of this is realistic, but it's all verisimilitudinous—a plausible simulation of reality.

Representing different debate strategies is harder. Maybe you have mechanics that represent building up various kinds of arguments, putting together logical connections between premise and conclusion or questioning your opponent's connections. Maybe building an emotional argument with the same mechanics could feel right. But what about the a-hole who's trying to tread rhetorical water and grind down his opponent's patience?

And the framing of "debate club" is pretty narrow. The goals of each participant are consistent; they want to win the debate, which involves convincing an external panel of judges that they made their argument better. Factors outside the debate club are mostly irrelevant, unless you're in the kind of high-stakes dystopian high school where threats, bribes, and references to the other party's emotional trauma are a normal part of club activities.

Some social situations are overcome by following the rules, others by breaking them. Sometimes success is determined by whether you sway the person you're arguing with, sometimes by whether you sway a third party. Sometimes the social situation is a direct conflict, sometimes you're trying to find a solution that benefits everyone. Factors outside the immediate situation can play a role in all sorts of ways. And so on, and so forth. And none of these factors are binary—there are mixed bags and shades of gray everywhere.

Practically speaking, you can either have social mechanics that are shallow and unverisimilitudinous, or you can have social mechanics that fit a relatively narrow range of possible social situations. And that can work very well! If you have a clear, specific idea of what kinds of characters your system is designed for and the kinds of conflicts they'll get involved in, that's great.

But a social system designed to work for cultists acting as a duke's servants, which centers around maintaining propriety and arguing that whatever weird stuff they're doing is actually what they're supposed to do, is not going to work if those cultists decide to go hire a thug to kill the duke and start haggling over prices. What does a criminal like that care about propriety?

TRPG designers traditionally value player freedom. If the players want to hire someone to assassinate the duke, the GM should let them try, and the rules should include some kind of guidance for it. At the very least, it should tell them what die to roll. That's easy if you can draw a clean line between the "real" mechanics and the roll-a-die mechanics.

But if your core mechanics are a certain set of social situations, it can be tricky to define the place where the core ends and roll-a-die begins. If your cultists try to convince some peasants that they need the chickens in their bag for normal reasons, but don't have any reason to maintain social propriety, half of the social mechanics seem like they should apply, but half don't matter. And there's an endless spectrum of possibilities where some of the mechanics may or may not matter.

Focusing on social mechanics requires either superhumanly flexible design, sticking to a very specific set of circumstances (even if it restricts player choice), or just using roll-a-die mechanics for everything.

In my opinion, the middle option is best. Look at txttletale's underside, for instance. If everyone is onboard with playing a cape game in a setting whose superheroes and villains act in a certain way. But if you want to play more idealistic heroes or chummier villains or something, the mechanics won't really support that.

The cost of having good social mechanics is very specific social mechanics. And that's something I think is fine, but it goes against TRPG design wisdom.

[merylstryfestan]

Trigun Maximum Vol 6 Ch 1&2

Hey friends! I found this volume so interesting I actually decided to contribute to the bookclub conversation for once! Except that there's so much to talk about that I have to split this into multiple parts lol

I'm going to start with chapters 1 & 2, since I think they pair together well, but this is going to get super long so buckle in!

Poor Meryl :( she is very clearly still trying to process everything that happened at Dragon's Nest, and this is the first evidence we see of how that's affecting her.

She goes and has a chat with Wolfwood, evidently trying to gauge his thoughts on the matter.

Except that it seems he's also trying to figure out how much she knows, without revealing anything himself. Also, he's such a bad liar, like how has he made it this far?? And this is also when he tells her the she and Milly should leave, specifically stating that Vash himself is too dangerous for them to be traveling with, hinting at Wolfwood's own fear of Vash which is addressed in chapter 2.

I found these panels interesting for two reasons: first, the injury to Vash's hand. I assume this must be from when Elendira shot a giant nail through his angel arm, so it's interesting to see that injuries sustained in that state persist when his arm goes back to normal. Also, this is the first we see of Vash participating in self-destructive behavior in this volume, and don't worry, there's more later :')))

But moving on to the fight at the bank. There's a lot I find interesting about this fight. First, Vash's approach here is... something, and I can't say I fully understand his reasoning. Rather than his more typical "Haha I'm just a silly little guy, don't fight, let's just talk this out!" routine, it's more similar to that time in Trimax Vol 1 where he's intentionally acting deranged, presumably in an attempt to intimidate his opponents into giving up. I don't know, I feel like it was a weird choice in this situation.

But another thing to note, is even after it's made clear that the act isn't really working, we see a couple more panels of Vash looking, well, scary tbh. And it's not that we haven't seen him looking frightening before, but in the context of this relatively low-stakes fight, it's pretty odd. And also in volume 1, once the intimidation tactic ultimately failed, he gave it up. so what's going on?

But then we have to remember that we're pretty much watching this fight from Meryl's pov, which is important. In the moment, Meryl's conscious thoughts tell us that she's scared for Vash. Will he have the determination to fight, to pull the trigger, etc. However, based on how we (and presumably she) are seeing him in this fight, as well as some events later in chapter 5, subconsciously she's very much afraid of Vash too, and she just doesn't want to admit that to herself.

There's even a moment right before the fight ends, where as far as we can see, Vash isn't really in immediate danger anymore, and he even gets his own gun back, but we still get a whole page with a frightening looking Vash with Meryl screaming and collapsing in the background. It's been made clear by now that he's able to fight just fine, so that can't be the reason for Meryl's reaction here.

Still, by the end of the chapter, Meryl hasn't put this together herself, and instead admires how he's strong enough to keep fighting despite his regrets. Don't worry, there's more on this in chapter 5 :))

And on to chapter 2!

This chapter also starts with a nightmare (you seeing why I paired these chapters together? :3 ). This one is Wolfwood's, except instead of it directly being about Vash himself, it's about Knives, but we'll see how Wolfwood struggles to separate the two in his mind.

Wolfwood draws the connection between these two events, identifying the power the twins have to literally exude fear in a way that physically affects others nearby. This solidifies to him how the twins really are the same species, completely different from humans, despite Vash's very human tendencies. And that makes them terrifying! But then we get one of the most iconic panels in all of Trigun.

The juxtaposition here is top tier! Vash, our lovely protagonist, smiling and relaxed, happy to see his friend. Contrasted with the direct evidence of his power to destroy, Wolfwood having just called him a monster in his thoughts. Wolfwood is also caught off guard by this stark irony, and then we get another of the most iconic panels in all of Trigun.

The themes and motifs!! Now Wolfwood is the one looking down on Vash, now he's the one framed by destruction. His expression is hard to read but it could be anger? fear? By the next page, Wolfwood has put his gun away, Vash (supposedly) unaware of what's happened. But the fact is, Wolfwood's experiencing almost a kind of cognitive dissonance here. Knives is a monster, who Wolfwood wants dead -> Vash is Knives' brother -> Vash is also a monster, and Wolfwood should want him dead.

Except it's not that simple is it? Because the chapter goes on, and we see how Wolfwood doesn't just protect Vash during the fight, but they fight together in perfect tandem, back to back, a well oiled machine, hardly even exchanging words.

And when it's all over, Vash turns his back to Wolfwood without a second thought, completely trusting him now the same way he does when they fight together. And Wolfwood has the thought, "Man, everything's different when I'm back to back with him." Wolfwood also trusts Vash and is able to turn his back to him, despite everything. And even to himself that hardly makes sense, but it's true.

And so yeah, these two chapters very much complement each other, showing two of Vash's closest friends and their fear towards him and how they react to it. Meryl, at this point, is trying to ignore her fear of Vash, and instead focuses on her fear for Vash and his safety. Wolfwood very much acknowledges how scared he is of Vash and what he can do, but at the same time must admit that he trusts him anyway. Which is all some great setup for what happens in chapter 5!

Anyway, thanks for reading all this! Posts analyzing the rest of the chapters to follow :3

[tumblingxelian]

I gotta give CRWBY/RWBY credit,

In one year they have introduced 3 concepts I normally hate and yet made me like all of them.

Cos normally, I don't like creator god figures in any story because they undermine the stakes by being able to end the story whenever. I normally hate time travel because its a giant can of worms to open as once its established it feels like only so long before everything unravels or revolves around it. And generally I am not a fan of crossovers cos universe jumping being easy and consequence free again goes back to the can of worms problem.

Yes those sons of guns pulled it off!

I love the Tree/Blacksmith and she works because she's not passive by choice, so much as by nature, the Tree is akin to the primordial deities of Greek Mythology, a big and broad concept combined with being more a location than a person. This seems very deliberate, cos while the Blacksmith has agency, she creates a certain dividing and connecting line between herself, the Tree and the Ever After, they are one being but also not quite. While also making it obvious that while she can create things she doesn't get a say in how they behave, she can be involved to speak, she can open doorways and make new things, but she can't just snap a swig and solve the story. Time travel meanwhile is great, cos rather than it just being "Time travel is possible" its a case of needing to travel to an entirely other realm a functionally primordial fae realm with more limber rules of reality for it to even stand a chance of working. This neatly solves a lot of the issues of, "And then X invented a time machine!" And that's without addressing the complexities of said time travel, IE no real way to experiment with it, needing to access the Ever After, find it, find a way out, get the timing right and so on, its present but its not game breaking.

Meanwhile, they made the crossover with DC operate under such rules that simply hopping between universe simply cannot be viable. People from one universe infect one another, they de-stabilize things, its almost eldrich in a sense, these things from another reality create instability simply by existing where they aren't meant to. It creates a plot, a chance for characters to meet and play off one another, but there are consequences and reasons to keep it from ever happening again.

[romancomicsnews]

Marvel's Secret Invasion wastes potential & fantastic actors - REVIEW

I'll be honest, the announcement of Secret Invasion being adapted into a Marvel television series was somewhat disappointing. After seeing this story successfully adapted through Avenger's Earth Mightiest Heroes, and with the MCU's ever growing roster of heroes, it felt like a story well suited for the big screen.

None the less, when it was revealed to be an espionage thriller centered around Nick Fury, with the feel of Captain America the Winter Soldier, I was very excited.

As the cast grew, Ben Mendelson, Emilia Clarke, Cobie Smulders, Don Cheadle, Olivia Coleman, Kingsley Ben-Adir, I thought this show was going to be something very special.

Unfortunately, while most MCU shows have been a mixed bag, none have been more mixed baggier than Secret Invasion.

Before I get anymore deep into this rant, I must say:

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ALL OF SECRET INVASION.

I will say a few nice things to start.

Excellent Actors

Although I think many of these actors were wasted as far as how much screen time they had, and their role within their show, the show is ridiculously stacked with talent and it's a delight to watch.

Olivia Colman, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Don Cheadle and Ben Mendelson are highlights to me, but Samuel L Jackson, Emilia Clarke, and others are also fantastic.

Colman as Sonya I think will leave this show as a fan favorite, and possible eventual successor to Fury. She has a good mix of fun energy and intimidation, and clearly is having a ball.

Don Cheadle's "Rhodey" is for once doing something interesting in this show. As a secondary antagonist, Cheadle is able to chew up scenery as a Skrull and be a sinister rival to Samuel L Jackson, for once using Cheadle's fantastic acting skills properly.

While Gravik is an ordinary Marvel villain by all means, Ben-Adir gives him an anger and viewpoint that feels fresh. His monologue facing Fury in the final episode really brings the pain out for me. I don't know if he'll work as a character for others, but for me, due to the performance, Gravik is a step above many others.

Solid Ending

Secret Invasion ends on some very interesting notes, and I think overall sticks the landing where other MCU shows fail.

Wrapping up the story of Gravik with a giant Super-Skrull fight (which was a lot of fun), it leaves the MCU in a very interesting place, with the President calling on all aliens to be considered enemies.

This leaves assassinations running rampant, Skrulls on the run, and people anxious and scared.

This leaves Sonya and a new super G'iah as uneasy allies to protect the Skrulls and mankind.

This also pushes Fury to keep his promise and go up to Saber to continue his mission with his wife.

Overall, I like this ending. It sets up good stakes for earth that aren't just multiversal stakes. We can feel the ramifications of this show for years to come, and seeing what Fury, Sonya, and G'iah do next does excite me.

Plus, who doesn't love a Super Skrull fight?

Excellent Complicated Love Story

I think often where reviews and reviewers fall short is complaining about what a show isn't as opposed to examining a show for what it is.

While part of me thinks this isn't the time for a Nick Fury love story, I also have to point out that this is a great love story.

Charlayne Woodard as Nick Fury's wife Varra/Priscilla Davis adds an excellent layer to Fury's character.

While the chemistry is there, the acting performance between these two were captivating. There is an excellent scene where you have no idea what each character might do, guns on the table, talking about their past mistakes.

This was by far my favorite scene of the show.

It also brings to light many of Fury's flaws and possible prejudices, and gives you a firsthand look at what Skrulls go through on a daily basis.

Overall, I loved the inclusion of Varra, and would love to see her pop up more often.

But now on to my problems with the show. Starting with:

Meaningless Deaths

While a story like this definitely needs death to carry weight, I'd argue two characters die for absolutely no reason.

First I'll talk about is Talos. This fan favorite character dies in my opinion the saddest death. At the end of Talos' life, he has lost his wife, his daughter has lost faith in him, he has been stripped of his seat at the table of the Council, he has lost the faith of his people, and he just dies.

Now, a death like that you think would impact our main characters in any sort of significant way. But Fury, like with most deaths, has no reaction. It does not change or effect Fury's view of himself, he does not reflect on his regrets. You'd assume he was a nothing soldier, not a brother in arms.

But at the very least we got more Talos this season before his fatal end.

Maria Hill and Cobie Smulders deserved so much more.

Besides her death being used as leverage for the world to be after Nick Fury, which truly doesn't affect him at all, Hill's role is simply to die to imply stakes.

Using Maria just to die in such an unheroic way is really insulting to the character. When they killed Coulson, at the very least they did it with him trying to protect one of our heroes. Here, she is tricked by Gravik, and dies doing nothing of importance in the series.

I think having another character to provide a view point between Talos and Fury's argument of the Skrulls could have been beneficial. And having a larger group of agents would've added to the drama of who you could trust, who is really a skrull.

Instead they wasted not one but two of Marvel's most underrated characters.

Twists we see Coming

Rhodey being a skrull, G'iah not being dead, even G'iah being Fury in the final battle were all rather predictable twists. While there were genuine moments of suspense and shock, none of these worked for me.

Perhaps if they hinted strongly The President was a Skrull, and it was revealed it was actually Rhodey, that might've worked more for me, or hiding G'iah is alive for a few episodes. But instead none of them felt particularly hard to figure out.

Easy to figure out who you could trust

The point of a Secret Invasion storyline with many characters is to not trust anyone.

With the exception of Rhodey, Ross and Fury (ONE TIME), we don't get anyone impersonating our heroes. No one pretends to be Talos, or other MCU heroes, and Fury's crew is easy to trust throughout the entire show.

They do a half-hearted reason as to why Fury can't call other Avengers but really the best reason was right under their noses: he doesn't know who is real. That should've been the driving force of the show. Fury putting all his best mates to the test trying to figure out who he can trust and undo this invasion.

That's what a Secret Invasion story is.

All in all, Secret Invasion has just enough weight and great performances to warrant a watch and maybe even a future. It surprisingly sets up a second season very well, even with two protagonists who aren't Fury.

If this were to continue, it definitely needs to push the stakes, the conflict, and more than anything, the suspense. We should all be like Agent Prescod wondering desperately as it goes on, who do we trust?

If not, I'm afraid this show is destined to be forgotten in the middle of the road of the MCU.

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[becauseplot]

I just finished Episode 0 of Ordem Paranormal: Calamidade! I've decided I'm going to do post-episode "journal entry" posts as I watch this season just like i did when I watched OSNF because it's fun and it's a nice record of my thoughts as I work my way through this series. Helps me process stuff too because the lore in this series can get fucking DENSE. I'm sad I didn't do this for OPD (partially because I was instead liveblogging to a discord, which I didn't do for OSNF), so we're changing that this time around.

Gonna preface the first of these journal entries with the fact that I speak little to no Portuguese. Thus, I have to rely on YouTube auto-translated subs (which suffered a lot in this episode, audio was lower quality) and a combo of some Portuguese I've picked up with a tangential understanding of Portuguese via my mediocre grasp on Spanish. This combined with the fact that I am very slow with the mystery and not a puzzle-doer by any means means I might get things horribly wrong or miss details entirely. Shoutout to the discord people for answering my fifty fuckmillion questions about the lore. Anyway journal entry time yippee!

IN-PERSON ORDEM SESSION LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOO

First of all, the fact that Cellbit opened this season saying that even he doesn't know how this season of Ordem is going to end is. Very concerning. But so interesting! Nothing is set in stone, which raises the stakes for this series---the fate of this story is truly in the hands of the players, as there's no longer the GM's guard rails. Or, as strong of guard rails. You get what I mean.

I'll go over story stuff first. My main goal is to at minimum follow the story. Again, I'm really not a mystery head, I'm not too good at theorizing, and the connections between the lore points and plot points tends to become a bowl of spaghetti in this series. If I can at least follow what's going on, I'll be happy.

So it's been a bit under a year since the events of OPD. Things are...strangely quiet. As Agatha points out, for all of Kian's promises for the bloody murder of thousands of innocents, there's been a distinct lack of blood, and murder, and dead innocents. All the better for the Order, which has steadily been growing its own forces in preparation for the oncoming war.

War. We're at war-levels of conflict now. Such an escalation from the days of AOP. It's interesting to see exactly how much more formidable both the Order and the paranormal threats have become. I remember the days of AOP where for a majority of the story, there was a singular gun with a singular magazine (we didn't even have bullet-counting mechanics yet!) and a blood zombie was still a genuine cause for alarm! Now we have Arthur with his giant sniper rifle that he carries around on his back in a guitar case, Dante with his Echo Dolor ritual that lets him bend time and "repeat" previous characters' attacks, and Carina's sick-ass nun chucks and throwing knives against whatever THIS thing is:

And yeah there was a blood zombie too, I guess. But the blood zombies are now just tutorial creatures, used to get players used to the fighting mechanics. (I mean.... I suppose AOP technically had a Degolified in its first session, but there was no way they were gonna kill it, you know? They barely even escaped it.)

The point is that we have come a long way from the days of AOP, and the scale of this world and its conflicts has been steadily ramping up and expanding since that fateful day in January, 2020. The "arms race" between the Order members and the paranormal continues to escalate, and escalate, and escalate.

I mean just look at their health!! Look at it!!! And Jesus Christ that blood zombie they fought at the beginning could've breathed on OSNF!Arthur and he would've died!!

ANYWAY. From what I understand: Veríssimo has found that Arnaldo Fritz's grimoire on the Relics is less promising that he initially thought it would be, and he's concluded that all of the relevant information has been lost. It's up to Arthur and Dante---with some new and returning recruits---to find as much lost information as possible. The video of the "devil" posted online seems to echo a case from over 20 years ago that Arnaldo was on, so it's as close to a lead as they're gonna get.

So they go and investigate! A woman named Elsa was harassed by a voice of a child ("mommy?"), sculpted a bunch of things to try to appease it, and died in the house. She turned into a blood zombie and her organs were gone, likely a result of the organ-sucking that the child-monster does. The gang has a peak around and find out there was some cursed shit with a devil child happening 20 something years ago which was likely terrorizing the more recent woman. Arnaldo had handled whatever came of it and locked it in the basement, and poor Eusábio was never the same, listening to static on TVs and radios believing they spoke "the truth," whatever that means. Could be an Energy thing? Not sure.

In any case, they head back to the house, basement has more blood and weird shit in it surrounding this "devil" and this mother and her child, things happen, and BAM big ol' monster in the house. And it's also the same child that Dante killed in that gone-wrong ritual where he unintentionally aided Kian (among other things)! And it has a weird dice effect to those who are "responsible for a pregnancy"! That one felt awfully targeted, by far the wildest fucked up thing to come out of pregnant Dante lore sorry dude.

Anyway onto the thing I really wanna ramble about CHARACTERS!! THE CHARACTERS!!! The energy in this session was off the charts, the group was so animated and into it and it was so much fun holy shit.

This is definitely in part thanks to Balu, who is the number one defender of the Sillies and Cellbit's number one enemy in regards to the atmosphere of his horrormurderdeath TTRPG. The captions especially hate it whenever people are being giggly so I don't think I caught more than 10% of Balu's shenanigans but the sheer energy of it crosses language barriers, man. This is such a 180 from reserved and socially-anxious Cesar/Kaiser, who was still silly and goofy, yes, but was much less loud about it. Also interesting to have him be a member returning upon Veríssimo's request! I wonder why he retired.....

Next, Rubens! Back from Episode 7 of OPD, letsgo!! (Head in hands. Where is Johnny. Please tell me he's okay.) Jumpy guy! I love how Felps clarifies at every opportunity that Rubens is doing what he's doing, scared. His under-socialized ass is walking around with nothing but a flashlight, a gun, a resting heartrate of 110BPM. And he might be scared literally every second he's alive, but he's not a coward. You never see him run from fights, he always runs into them, just like his friends. And he's not pathetic or blubbery either! He's extremely capable despite the fact that he looks like he's one loud sneeze away from fainting on the spot! When he uses his ghosting ritual to run away from the creature, it's specifically to drag Balu out of the way of a hit that likely could have killed him. Do it scared, or so they say, and by god, is my mans doing it scared!

Carina! Similar to Balu, not too many deep character thoughts about her yet, which sucks :( But her taking out the nun chucks in the middle of the fight had me oh so pleasantly surprised! (Look at her she's kicking ass.) One thing that sticks out to me is the scene where the group is handling Eusábio. That scene was such an incredible display of teamwork, everyone working together to assist each other in the infiltration: Balu and eventually Arthur serving as distraction as Rubens helps Dante slip into the bedroom. Meanwhile, Carina was smart enough to not make her presence known at all so she could freely explore the garage without arousing suspicion! So even if the guys' cover was blown in the house, she could've kept snooping around in the garage. She comes from a famous family of paranormal investigators and is highly praised by her father, the leader of this family business, so I'm very excited to see more of her shine. Also Gabi is just incredible at puzzles. Liz's lore notebook from OSNF beloved <3

Okay, onto the remaining OPD boys. Starting with Dante---what the FUCK is up with his vision. Sometimes mans can see the paranormal, and sometimes mans can straight up SEE things. He "opened his eyes" to read a document and to see the creature, which uh, rip dude bad timing to decide to have vision lol. Have a confronting-the-horrors Rakin/Dante moodboard:

Dante is his same non-plussed self. Still very mellow, not very silly-goofy like a lot of the others here, but not exactly opposed to the silly-goofy. Arthur definitely joke-flirts with him on at least one occasion. Very endeared to the fact that he just recognizes Arthur by his footsteps alone. I always imagine that whenever Cellbit is giving a new-location base description of the party's surroundings, Arthur is quietly relaying all of this information to Dante.

Another fun detail happens when Felipe gets downed by the creature. Dante practically throws himself at Felipe, doing everything he can to save him. And yeah, that's definitely a swirling combo of Felipe being an ally and Dante himself being fueled by guilt over this creature, but... Thiago and Gonzales, right? Rakin (and the other players) remembering Gonzales and letting that bleed into Dante's actions as he desperately tries to save him only furhter reinforces the fact that the Marcados are connected to their "other lives" via the players who played said characters. Love love love toying with the idea that OUR reality is the Other Side to Ordem's reality, like with the special 50% NEX transcending question Cellbit poses to the players. That deserves its own post, I think.

And finally, Arthur. Oh, Arthur, my boy. You've grown so much in the past, what, year and a half since your world got flipped upside down, turned inside out? There's just. A lot going on here. The first impression we get from Arthur is that he's a lot more...serious? He seems older (the white streaks definitely help in that regard), and more mature. He still has his charm and his goofiness, yes, his personality is still there, it's just... All of the people, family, he's lost compounding with his new duty to lead means that his personality has been damped a bit. The constant loss is taking a toll on him, and he's definitely feeling the pressure placed on him, considering he's basically Veríssimo's right hand and has now been explicitly appointed leader of a team.

And circling back to what I was talking about with the "war" theme going on here---Ordem teams have never had an explicit leader. The "leader" role, however, has slowly started to emerge. I think it's because OSNF had such a strong team-as-family dynamic going for it, and AOP was just a gaggle of fresh-faced, severely underqualified and inexperience individuals who were forced to either get your collective shit together or die and bonded into team-as-(dysfunctional)-family as a result. OPD was when the first murmurings of a "leader" came up: Dante encouraged Joui to take a stronger leadership role in order to hold the team together. This mantle was passed onto Kaiser, which was then passed onto Arthur, the last remaining Vulture, the last remaining member of Equipe E, and Veríssimo's right hand. And now Veríssimo has explicitly stated him leader of the team when before, that wasn't seen as necessary. The emergence of the leadership role within the teams no doubt coincides with the fact that they have been approaching and are now involved in a "war;" the situation is grave and the pressure is on, and we need to make sure that there is someone on the team holding everyone together and making sure they stay focused on the mission.

Though, thinking about it, I don't think team dynamics themselves will shift too much as a result. Just because Arthur is technically "leader" doesn't mean that he has to lord it over the group, and so far, he hasn't. He's barely even mentioned that Veríssimo has technically appointed him leader. It's brought up with the others like, maybe once? So far it hasn't played into the characters' dynamics at all, even if Arthur is clearly feeling the pressure. At the end of the day, I do believe in Ordem's strong power-of-friendship theme, and this session has given me hope that this team of characters will feel a little less disjointed than OPD's.

Running through a few extra details: Agatha is beloved and now has at least two (2) friends!! Ivete is still here and I love her, and Veríssimo needs at minimum a glass of water and to take a thirty minute nap in the infirmary. (The base is still sorely lacking in couches and beanbag chairs and overall crash-after-shitty-mission spots. Sad.) But man, the fact that Veríssimo is described as being "nervous" when Arthur n co. walk in for the meeting...

In any case, that's all I got for now. I'm very excited for what comes next :D