#Gregor also got blown up and was FINE

[heyclickadee]

So. I’m. Haunted by the lighting and posing on the CX-2 poster, haunted by the fact that no one will straight up say that Tech is dead or that he wasn’t CX-2, wondering if the CX-Tech plot wasn’t dropped after all, and hoping against hope that they’re putting this man through the wringer so they can pull him out and give him the happiest possible ending. CX-2 had BETTER be in the next series and he had better be Tech, because I need this to make sense. I mean, I’ll buy that the spear symbolically killed the CX-2 persona. I’ll buy, “Oh, he had to be Crosshair’s shadow in the last third of this series but we had to foreshadow him being Tech in the next one.” “The damage you sustained on Skako Minor all of your behavioral modifications,” coming back around. I’ll buy someone surviving that in the GFFA because they can in the real world (warning for a picture of a real life injury in the link). I’ll even buy that the electricity didn’t kill him because the boulders and the waterfall definitely should have (and it’s Star Wars). I really do not care about plausible survivability. I just want the story to make sense and for Tech to get back to his family.

Anyway all I’m saying is why release a poster that’s going to fuel speculation about a guy whose face we never see after the series is done and out? If you actually dropped that plot, why not change the poster? Or just not release it? Why do this? What is the purpose of this?? Because if the purpose was to drive me, specifically, insane, then congratulations, Lucasfilm! Mission accomplished.

[captainrexs]

head trauma seems to change the effect the chips have on the clones

first we have rex in shattered, he’s clearly struggling with the effects of his chip,

but then he hits his head

and is executing orders just fine.

next we see wrecker who’s at first unaffected, because the bad batch seems to be immune, but then he keeps hitting his head

and he follows orders and tries to kill his friends.

then we find out about gregor whose chips seems to not be working at all, which imo could be cause he got blown up.

and I wanna talk about howzer, the impression i got after the bad batch episodes he was in was that people were wondering if his chip didn’t work or if it never got activated. i was wondering about that too, but now i think his chip doesn’t work because, like fives said the chips are “built into [their] genetic code to make [them] do whatever someone wants”. so howzer may not have been involved in order 66, but not using his chip to get him to follow ramparts orders seems like a missed opportunity. also he has scars on his face

which is probably just a design choice to make him look different or more interesting but it could also be because he had a head injury that stopped his chip from working, like gregors.

[little-cereal-draws]

Everybody said ofmd-wwdits au but nobody said wwdits-ofmd au

Laszlo as Stede: ok these two characters are very different in a lot of ways but they’re also surprisingly similar. For starters, they are both upperclass Englishmen in the 1600/1700s who gave everything up for the love of their life. Laszlo never mentions anything abt having a wife/family before Nadja, but since he was already a middle aged adult when he got turned, it’s probably a safe assumption that he had an arranged marriage similar to Stede’s before that. He was extremely unhappy with his life and “never smiled” before he met Nadja, just like Stede “uncomfortable in a married state” Bonnet. He also was a ship captain for a while, and I may be remembering this wrong, but I think all the pictures they showed were of him out on the deck with all the passengers during the day? (With the exception of the Titanic) So that means it must’ve been before he was turned, and why would an upperclassman gentleman be captioning a ship unless he was trying to spend as little time at home, trapped in his monotonous life as possible

Nadja as Ed: both grew up dirt poor but now have made a name for themselves and are highly respected among their communities, gets very angry very easily, first go-to for a problem is violence and murder, badass, looks good in black, lost a parent around 13/14 years old, realized first that they were in love with the character above. And I’m sure Nadja definitely “fancies a fine fabric” and would jump at the chance to go to a fancy French party.

Guillermo as Jim: both are Hispanic, badasses, can and will kick your butt, the most competent member of the team, sometimes go off on their own side adventures, frighteningly good at sharp projectile weapons (knives, stakes), raised Catholic? (I’m not sure what religion Nana the Revenge Nun is; probably some weird Catholic-murder hybrid), and have past family drama that heavily effects their decisions.

Nandor as Oluwande: there aren’t a lot of similarities here besides the fact that they’re hopelessly in love with the character above and get really sad when they’re off on their own adventures. But if I’m making Guillermo Jim, Nandor has to be Oluwande.

Colin Robinson as Buttons: this is a strange pair up but they’re both bald, are just always kindve there, follow Laszlo/Stede around a lot, mostly just say random garbage but occasionally will say something really helpful. I also feel like they’re both really powerful but are often underestimated by the other characters. I think energy vampires are the most powerful kind; they can clone themselves, are immune to a lot of things that would kill a regular vampire, and can easily kill another vampire. Buttons looks like a crazy old man but is actually a skilled fighter with metal man-eating fangs and hexed Calico Jack to get hit in the face with a canon ball.

Speaking of Calico Jack… bonus:

Gregor/Jeff as Calico Jack: both are annoying, obnoxious past flames of Nadja/Ed, Laszlo/Stede hates them, come back to stir up trouble in an otherwise pretty peaceful domestic life, idk their vibes are just the same. Oh and Gregor always gets beheaded and Calico Jack got his face blown off by a canon ball. Mostly I just want to see Laszlo say “Get. Off. My. Ship.” in a very menacing voice

Idk who anyone else would be like Izzy or Spanish Jackie but I think it works really well anyway

[aniviacryophoenix-blog]

OK, so What If She’s Huge.

// I’ve been dodging this question for quite a while because it somehow felt like some sort of weird betrayal of character to admit to the change. But I’m starting to realize that doesn’t mean anything. Creativity isn’t stored up over time - it grows with use. So indulge me.

My supposition is that based on recent artworks and a curious trend in League of Legends champions, they’re going to turn Anivia from a human-scale ~7 foot standing bird 

into some kind of 400 foot behemoth of the Freljordian Ice.

I’ve talked about the size problem before, so if you’re curious about why I’d ever imagine Anivia as a 400 foot monstrosity, you can go check that out. Here I’d like to talk about what that might mean to the lore.

1: Ashe’s first meeting and ‘befriending’ of this force of nature would have been horrifying.

Everyone’s used to seeing birds around. They’re gonna be showing up and well-adapted in every habitat in the world, because they got the fast travel thing down. So if you run into a bird that’s as tall as you it’s not really a stretch to think, “Woah, that’s a freaking huge bird, but I can probably talk to and hang out with it.” People ride ostriches after all (albeit at great risk of injury to themselves). In Runeterra, you have magics seeping out of everything, so seeing that the giant bird is made out of ice is just one more notch on your ‘unexpected and exceedingly rare, but I got this’ belt. So if Anivia’s just a big ice bird, Ashe might happen upon her a few times, bond over some True Ice, and call it a friendship.

The story changes dramatically when Anivia is standing 400 feet tall. We’re talking about Ashe climbing a glacier one day while scouting, feeling the ice shift under her feet, and slowly realizing that the chasm twice her own size that’s opening up in front of her is an eye. She can’t tell it’s a bird. She doesn’t even have the perspective to grasp how big this thing is. She just spent the last hour or so climbing up the body of a freaking monster, and then it woke up. She can’t draw a weapon against this thing. She can’t even run away, she’s on it’s face. Just the prospect of managing to collect yourself enough to consider talking to the thing speaks volumes to Ashe’s character, let alone doing it enough to consider her an ally. Whatever stance you might have on the changes to her characterization with her update (4 years ago), you’ve got to have some respect for that kind of initiative.

2: Lissandra’s got something to fear.

The big old bird is one thing. Kinda powerful. Probably has a lot of magic to throw around. But with all the trolls and black magic and shit Lissandra’s been stockpiling for so long, you’d think she’d eventually just muster up and solve the problem. Considering just how spectacular a big-bad they’ve made her, I sort of feel like she should be able to make decently short work of a human-sized Anivia, no matter how great her mastery over ice might be. And why bother trying to corrupt her if you can just trap her in some cavern or big old pile of black ice or something.

Again, a behemoth makes this a very different story. Trundle’s big enough to stomp on humans,

but Anivia could be big enough to swallow Trundle whole. A bunch of them might be able to… I don’t know, chip at her toes a little bit before she flattens the lot of them. Conventional strength has no rules for that kind of mismatch. 

Likewise, trapping her is pretty much a no-go. Lissandra has the power to trap herself in a Black Ice prison sure. And she can probably even make some examples out of the trolls as a demonstration. But that’s not going to do shit if she’s trying to go head-to-head with a monstrosity that’s already made of ice. Maybe cover one of her eyes?

Suddenly, we have some legitimacy to trying to chip away at Anivia’s identity through subterfuge. Poisoning the land and trying to work a slow game through the centuries, because a head-on fight is suicide. Whatever Anivia’s sacrifice Gregor mentions on the Howling Abyss might have been, chances are she smothered huge swathes of Iceborn forces to give Avarosa her chance, and Lissandra is afraid of that possibility arising again. She can’t open herself up to the option of physical retaliation until the bird is dealt with.

3: Just talking to Anivia is no small feat.

So you want to go say ‘hi’ to Anivia. What’s the plan, Sam? This old bird is never going to be in any village or town - she’d level it by accident just stretching her wings. Say you spot her in the distance (not terribly hard if the nearby mountain just grew a quarter of its size again). You could spend all day trying to make your way through treacherous mountain passes only to be blown off to your death when she decides to flit over to the next mountain. Ok, you finally made it to her feet - how loud can you yell? If you’ve ever been to a decently sized mountain’s summit, you’ll know that between the wind and lack of surfaces for sound to bounce off of, it’s incredibly quiet. When you yell into a mountain, it’ll echo back to you, but if you yell into the wind, it’s gone. And Anivia’s head is probably several hundred feet above you.

Alright, fine. Against all odds, you’re standing on Anivia’s face, and she’ll be able to hear what you’re saying. Great! But I hope you didn’t want your conversation to be private, because she has to talk for you to hear as well. Which means anyone who came with you will be hearing all of her responses to your question, even if they waited at her feet. Hell, any nearby towns might hear it too. Whispering at that size is like trying to perform surgery with a baseball bat, and she has literally no reason to respect your conversation as somehow private. Go ahead: ask her to keep it down after you’ve climbed on her face.

4: It’s a lonely life - Anivia needs some kind of direction.

Taking into account all the above considerations, I’m a little bit at a loss for what it is that Anivia does. She’s not gathering allies - she hardly even knows what she’s fighting. She’s not giving much in the way of advice on account of being inaccessible. She’s not directly trying to root out Lissandra, because she still has no idea who or what Lissandra is. National conflicts don’t really matter to her - she agrees with the Avarosan ideals, but I have a feeling that’s primarily because she suspects a lot of conflict in the future.

I feel like there will be a pretty decent chance that Anivia will be receiving the Galio treatment. Stationary or stagnant most of the time, and only awakened in ‘times of need.’ I’d be willing to posit that some sort of magical interaction between Anivia and Avarosa’s bow are going to jump-start her into action, she’ll spend some time wandering around the Freljord being upset at how there’s evil growing in the ice here and there, and then… Likely be left as a free agent in other characters’ stories.

Or it’s possible that she doesn’t even have a stable body: an elemental spirit of the ice could condense out of the glaciers and snowstorms when shit is going down, kind of the way Janna doesn’t really ‘exist’ per se outside of being called upon.

It gives Lissandra and Ashe some interesting roles to play trying to spread their various versions of the myths - Janna was weakened when people stopped believing in her strength, and so too might Anivia fall to darkness should enough curse and fear her name. This could also alleviate some of the interaction problems to some degree, and ties Anivia deeply into the magical mythos of Runeterra. However, it leaves her bound to a relatively select few who can actually deal with spirits (notably, Ashe and Udyr muck about), and so far as we’ve seen, the spirits of Runeterra tend to play an almost servile role.

There’s merit to any of these paths, and I think they each might be worth considering and building upon, but I find myself worried about being ‘wrong.’ The story has left the Freljord hanging, and I’m sure it’ll be back, but in the meantime my understanding of this character's’ place in the world has crumbled. And I feel bad about it. But I don’t want it to keep me from staying involved in lore discussions as the team keeps moving. Can’t promise I’m back in full force, but I’m a lot closer.

[roswellroamer]

Perito Moreno to El Chaltén, Argentina. 2/13/17.

[still no wifi sufficient for pictures so continued words only today…] The above itinerary was at least the original plan… Most riders were ready to go by 7 AM today since we have a 589 km day slated. A simple breakfast and we headed out of the small town under crystal blue skies. We have been ever so fortunate in the weather department and I expected rain at least half our days. We’ve only had one wet day so far. There is a lot of mining around here. Yesterday we stopped to look over a big coal mining operation in Chile. Now on the Argentinian side they are mining gold. The lush green we had in Chile and forests are now replaced by endless scrub. Amazingly this Argentinian “pampa” covers a huge portion of Argentina. It is not desert as it has steady vegetation, but hardly anything taller than 12-18" high. Andrés says much of the 4000 kilometers towards Buenos Aires is this type of terrain. Rain is uncommon but there is some and there are some lakes and creeks. Due to the very consistent strong winds and extreme cold in winter there are basically no trees at all. Occasionally in a protected dip we have seen a tree grow naturally while all others were nurtured through their fragile youth by an attentive rancher so as to later provide a wind break and shade for the few and far between houses out here. Mostly there is just scrub, popping up like warts defiantly from the earth, endlessly to the rolling scrub covered hills in the distance. What is new today is wildlife. Within 20 minutes of leaving Perito Moreno we encountered our first groups of guanaco. Pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. These lama like animals bound with ease over the sheep/cow fencing and graze wantonly along the road and in the pampa. We all must be careful as they can jump in front of a bike or the Jeep with little warning. They seem to congregate in family groups and are on the lookout for eagles who prey on the babies. We saw our first few pink flamingos today, just wading in a small pond on a ranch by the road. We also came across our first ñandu. The ñandu is some sort of close cousin to the ostrich, but only slightly smaller. One valley we crossed before Bajo Caracoles was so wide, it was like “Big Sky” country south! At the gas station/hotel/souvenir shop in Bajo Caracoles (which means low snail 🐌) we all stopped for a coffee and to admire the gas pumps plastered in stickers from around the world. The roads are in great shape and we hardly saw any cars all day long. We are told that from here southward traffic will be sparse except in the towns. We saw many more guanaco today than vehicles.

About 30 miles past the coffee break, we passed a lot more guanacos and a few families of ñandus when Andrés noticed the Jeep was steaming. The temperature gauge showed normal in the middle of the gauge but steam was bellowing out the drivers side of the hood. (Bonnet for those of you reading in Australia as I understand there are a few! 🇦🇺) I had watched him add water this morning to the radiator reserve tank. It turns out that this plastic tank had a leak two years ago and was patched on the outside with epoxy or J-B weld. Apparently that patch has given way under the barrage of chassis jolts we have encountered. As I am writing this (unusually) in real time we have been here for a bit over 2 ½ hours and gone through 3 different “welding” attempts with JB weld. Four motorists have stopped and donated water to the cause. After the second repair, it was much worse with water literally spraying all over Andrés face in second checking out the leak. Our mechanic, Rodrigo is very busy and we are hoping that this next patch will help. The steam which is escaping from about a 2" seam around the equatorial circumference of where this plastic tank was once joined in a factory is a difficult animal to cage. I suggested after the first failure to run a bead along the inside of the weld. An internal, oversized plug has a much better chance of success in a high pressure situation than a patch does on the outside of resisting steam that has already gained momentum and escaped the tank. I think that both have been done on this last repair effort but I now see the satellite phone in our leaders hands and the mention of a restaurant being 20 km’s away… The support vehicle has never failed this somewhat new outfit before (in its 7th year) and the backup plan is to get a replacement truck somewhere somehow if the tank isn’t able to be repaired… we’ll see and hopefully this patch holds! OK, so we made it about 8 km’s maybe (Cheryl says 6) and the oil light came on. Interestingly, the water gauge shows normal but a quick perusal under the bonnet shows continued water leak (oil is fine go figure) and now Andrés says we have big trouble. Murphy’s law is in full effect as this happens on our biggest day and about as far from anywhere as we could be. We are now on the satellite phone seeking assistance… I usually jot down the day’s highlights here as I am heading to la-la land, I have chosen an interesting day to ��live blog”. Of course we are a hundred miles from any cell service but I can at least write down in real time what is happening. As of now (3PM, 4 ½ hrs.) we are awaiting the arrival of a flatbed tow truck coming 100+ miles from Perito Moreno arranged by the hotel Americano. The Ride Adventure team is attempting repair #4 in the meantime having completely removed the radiator’s reserve tank and effected more “inside” epoxy work. It seems weird that the Jeep’s design includes a high pressure water tank as a reserve which is strangely (read cheaply) manufactured from two pieces of plastic instead of a one step molding. 😐 A few more folks have stopped and it seems we have garnered enough water to attempt to refill and test the latest repair effort. We are about 15 km’s from a parador/restaurant and I hear clamps tightening… We have had some chips and Cheryl has delved into the “bickies” and cheese. It seems I am picking up all sorts of Aussie terms. Bickies are biscuits down under.

Repair #4 did not work. 😐. It will be about 3 ½ hours since we called for a truck and nearly six since we first got stuck in 10 minutes time. Cheryl and I are planning to hitchhike to the parador where we can get food and baños and await the tow truck. It will be a first for her and some time since I have hitched. Much more emphasis on the Adventure then the Ride today. We tried once again to make it down the road by jumping the now near dead battery with my jumper (POD) battery I brought for just such an occasion. Didn’t get but a few more km’s and things started smoking and we pulled over again. No hitchhiking today for us since the tow truck pulled up just as we were still spraying water and steam out into the parched pampa. Now we are in the cab of a flatbed truck on the way about 130 km’s to Gobernador Gregores. We believe there is someone there who has the capability to fix the leaky water tank. 🙏 The adventure continues. So we have now arrived in Gobernador Gregores about 8 hours behind schedule. We found our way to a nice Hosteria and are currently awaiting the plan for the rest of the trip. If the radiator reserve is repairable we continue with the Jeep but it seems Andrés is working on a replacement vehicle for the remaining legs to Ushuaia. Not much except a few snacks today so we are anxiously awaiting the kitchen’s opening for dinner (cena)! Hopefully everyone ahead of us has had an uneventful day on their bikes. Nice to be inside and out of the constant wind here. Buenos noches.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chalt%C3%A9n As a postscript to yesterday we found one bike on the road. It had a flat tire and we loaded it up onto the trailer, now towed by a new truck (Toyota Hilux) driven by a new guy Fernando who joins us for a few days? We then stopped in Tres Lagos to see if Martin was OK. Turns out he was OK and had eventually left the bike as darkness fell and the support truck was nowhere to be found. In town (still no phone signal) the police let Andrés use their wifi and we found that one of the other guys (George) had fallen off and broke his clavicle and a rib. Apparently they had hidden the bike and gotten him to a hospital at the next day’s destination, El Calafate as there was a hospital there. So it ended up being quite the day, with Murphy’s law in effect as the riders needed the support truck which itself is now history. The Jeep engine is blown. What we thought was high pressure in the reserve water tank was only due to a “buggered” engine and the engine’s compression was being delivered through the water system due to blown seals and gaskets. Ugh. Andrés is working on a third vehicle to rent in a few days time for now we have the trailer hitched up to the Toyota. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz_Roy

[heyclickadee]

Massive fandom salt under the cut:

You know, if it were any other character besides Tech, if it was any other character in the exact same situation, I don’t think “he’s dead” would be the default conclusion. I really don’t.

And just to be clear, I’m not talking to people who related to or identified strongly with Tech. A lot of us feel like Star Wars kicked us in the face and we’re so used to autistic characters being disposable. I think Tech is alive*, sure, but I’m also sympathetic to the idea that hoping he might come back is just an ask too far—especially after the finale. I get it. We’ve got a reason to land at that conclusion.

The rest of the fandom, though?

I’ve seen people argue that Fives could be alive for years. Fives—a secondary character (yes, he’s a secondary character, I love him and yes he got his own arc in The Clone Wars because that show was an anthology and could take time to do that, but he was a secondary character) who got shot in the chest and breathed out his last on screen in Rex’s arms—is someone who comes up every time we go to a location clones could turn up. I’ve seen arguments that Mayday—who had an agonizing on screen death—could have been alive. People argue that Maul could come back. Ventress had a very unpopular on screen death and burial and DID come back. And I’m okay with that! I’d be cool with any of them coming back. But they all had far more definitive deaths than Tech did (Maul several times over).

So why

Exactly

Is the default position in the fandom

That the ONE main character

In the entire TBB show (in fact the only character in that show besides background stormtroopers) and most of Star Wars as a whole

Who supposedly dies off screen—remove everything else, take out the foreshadowing, take out every suspicious line, take out the total lack of confirmation and the lack of closure, remove ALL of that, we don’t even need to touch it all, let’s just look at the fall itself—in a long fall that we don’t see the end of because the camera cuts away while he’s still alive

Whose body neither we NOR THE PROTAGONISTS ever see

Is totally and irrevocably dead

In Star Wars?

You know, the franchise where Echo and Gregor both got blown up and were fine, and where Fennec got shot in the gut and then laid facedown in the sand and then in a bantha for hours, and was also fine? That Star Wars? The Star Wars franchise where people live just because? Why have we collectively decided that the rules of storytelling, let alone Star Wars, don’t apply to this one guy in particular?

And to be clear, I don’t think the default would be, “Oh he’s just alive and coming back in the next thing,” I think it would be, “He might be alive, he might be dead—we don’t know.”

But just—“he’s dead and always will be,” is such a wild conclusion for the fandom at large to come to about something this ambiguous.

*To be completely clear, when I say Tech is alive, I don’t mean he was supposed to come back and then got cut. I just think he’s alive, is still coming back, and was planned to do so.