#alts on the white saber series

[splitsabers]

The Charge on Nova Garon

Cal Kestis - Jedi: Survivor

[princess-of-purple-prose]

[ID copied from alt:

A digital illustration depicting a prehistoric creature from the precambrian period called a pikaia. It is an aquatic animal with a long slender body and pronged head with two protrusions at the end, resembling a slug. It floats gently in an ocean void, with a few small bubbles framing it. There is a small text bubble at the bottom corner of the illustration which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration of a table setting viewed from above. There is a plate being set out in front of the viewer by someone with dark skin and reddish arm hair. The plate contains two eggs and a few slices of fruit, placed in such a way that resembles a smiling face. There are two cups on the table, one with water, and another with coffee. There is an ash tray full of cigarette butts, a pair of glasses, three multicolored hair elastics and several notes and papers strewn across the table. The plate is being set on top of a children's illustration, drawn in crayon. It seems to depict a crude sketch of a saber toothed cat. There is text in the corner of the illustration which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration depicting an Albertaceretops and its young walking together in a grassy field. The larger animal is a darker brown with gradiants of cream on its underbelly, and striping on its back, face and tail. It has some facial scarring and is missing the end of one of its horns. It's young is about a third of its size, with a paler taupe color palette and less pronounced facial tusks and horns. There is a speech bubble at the bottom corner which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration depicting a little brown haired boy snugged up in bed with his grandmother. They are reading the children's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" together, while the dim light from an old fashioned lamp illuminates the corner of a bedroom. The little boy is holding a barbie doll in one hand as he looks down at the pages. His grandmother is a round-faced woman with golden hoop earrings, pink nailpolish and a distinct blueish facial tattoo on her lips and chin. (This is called a moko kauae, a traditional Māori tattoo for women) Both characters have a medium brown skin tone. There is text on the bottom corner of the image that reads "I love you."

A digital illustration of a beach scene. The sky is a sickly color of blue, tinged with smog. There is a blue orb in the sky which obscures the natural light. In the foreground there is a character from the locked tomb series - a six legged white dog named noodle. He is looking at the viewer playfully. There is text on the image which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration set in a dark glittering cave. There are strings of glow worm egg trails that glow an eerie turquoise. The foreground of the image depicts a lazily outstretched hand with a tiny glow worm on the end of the persons finger. The figure has a medium skin tone, chipped fingernails, and a rosary of bones wrapped around their wrist. They are wearing a sparkling white cloak that hangs off their forearm. There is text on the bottom corner of the illustration that reads "I love you."

A digital illustration depicting three jellyfish, floating in a blue void. The jellyfish are a combination of blues and pinks, surrounded by bubbles. There is text on the image which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration featuring a character from The Locked Tomb Series. Paul stands with their naked back to the viewer. Their eyes are obscured, and their body is smoking. There is text on the image which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration depicting a creature from the early Eocene called Archicebus achilles. It is a small primate with a hunched back, large round eyes and distinct, long digits on its hands and feet. It is coiled on a treebranch, shaded from a rainstorm. There is text on the image which reads "I love you."

A digital illustration depicting a scene described in The Locked Tomb Series. A little girl in skull facepaint looks down toward the viewer with an expression of shock. She is wearing a black robe adorned with fragments of bone. She is leaning over a stone slab, looking down. The image is framed as if the viewer is looking up from a resting position below her. There is blood under the little girls fingernails. There is a speech bubble in the corner of the drawing which reads "I love you."

A black image with the text "I..."

A digital illustration depicting two characters from The Locked Tomb Series. Kiriona, covered in blood, looks desperately at Ianthe who is feircly focused and looking down at the viewer. The image is distorted, as though the viewer is dizzy and unable to focus. There is text which reads the word "still"

A digital illustration depicting a hand reaching out to stroke the face of a woman. The hand is battered and bloody, and the thumb leaves a smear of blood on the woman lips. The woman's eyes are obscured, her face is pale and cracked, with ice dusting her features. She is haloed by a large swath of blonde hair. Her neck is manacled. The image is distorted like the one above it, as though the viewer can't focus well. There is text on the bottom corner which reads "love y-"

A black image.

A digital illustration depicting Nona from The Locked Tomb Series. She is standing against a background of pale pinks and oranges, illuminated by yellow light. She is turned toward the viewer with her braids billowing in the breeze. She is saying, "I love you." End ID]

"It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.”

- Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

💝 Thank you for 1k. Special thanks to my lovely friend @sessjudoodles for helping sketch the line work for the Albertaceretops :)

[pluralsword]

[[Image description: A custom mostly deep pink and white Arcee kitbashed from a War for Cybertron Nightbird toy stands on a shelf in front of a wall, holding yellow flaming energy sabers that most closely resemble the ones of her IDW1 depiction. The rest of her though is largely of course inspired by her Synergy & IDW2 look - two blue biolights each on the lower and upper torso, the knee caps, her shoulders, and facing forward on her back stacks. Swords and head are 3D prints from shapeways by The Primeinator and Autobot Quaternion respectively.]]

Hiya folks! I’m not really prepared to do the first worldbuilding post for my fanfic yet here because I’m busy and the next big fic needs to be done before I feel prepared to discuss the trans existential stuff and imagined alien robot aesthetic system history I will dig into among many other things. I want to have the prose for y’all to read for what I’m talking about. I need to edit my first fanfic of the Autosignet Cycle series, Day of Multiflame to be a bit more readable. But I thought I’d share stuff folks who aren’t on twitter might not have seen regarding back stacks from a xenogender perspective that you could TLDR as back stacks are cute in an alien way and can be done a lot of different ways with different bodies, genders, and aesthetics, that Arcee’s IDW iterations are really special literarily, and that alt-mode stuff is really cool and could inform gender. You can read the original twitter thread and see the chosen images and related alt text here: https://twitter.com/Gestalt_Robot/status/1518252361017225216 If you want the full thoughts which is easier for me to personally to write on tumblr including alien gender stuff and an intro to stuff in my fic so far keep reading.

Some related background info - I have also kitbashed Sterling from Studio Series Blurr, Nightbeat and Velocity from Titan Returns Blurr, and done Nautica from WfC Chromia, and have a TR Brainstorm and Arcee (Blurr retools), and a WfC Chromia and Nightbird, they’re all in a photo together in the twitter thread. The Blurr retools and kitbashes all have backpacks of a sort that form the front of their vehicle mode.

I think it says something that I have such a liking for the TR/Studio Blurr and WfC Chromia/Nightbird mold. I definitely want more car gals who are like Combiner Wars Jumpstream and Dust-Up (Aileron spaceplane retool of Smokescreen pls) but also these molds can do cool things in terms of kitbashing and alien actuation aspects that I will get to.

Important sidenote I’ve kitbashed Gauge from a Bumblebee, IDW1 Lancer from CW Swindle, am going to kitbash Vibes from FoC Sideswipe, want to do backpack-less Arcee from Smokescreen and Hound. I am very lucky to actually have Jumpstream, Dust Up, and Cybertron Override. I’m sure some of you have seen the Crabcee by blurrito that I commissioned. The body shape variety stuff generally is a whole topic in itself people other than me have covered plenty, so back to backpack/back stack robots.

Counting TR Nautica the portion of the transformer toy gender iceberg Blurr is part of is exceedingly obvious even with just the official toys, unlike the deep lore of motorcycle retools. There is in fact a CW retool of Rust Dust as Wreck-Gar, Groove, and an Adventure Override (he/him canonically). There is even a Prime Cyberverse Legion Class Groove retool from Arcee as well, and there’s going to be a Legacy Road Rocket from Legacy Arcee.

Rather transformative, you could say. XD

So - why talk about back stacks? - one of my grail kitbashes is to make a bulky Arcee who has back stacks. Why? Name a woman or any physically human entity who actually wants to have big wheeled metal towers that wiggle behind their back & isn't a robot/cyborg alterhuman, furry, plural, or kinnie. Xeno pretty y'know. To quote myself on discord from November last year: “listen I'm demiromantic but I can't unsee back stacks now so, no.” This is coming from a trans person who thinks that any person’s chosen or expressed aesthetic that isn’t hateful is cute because it is what they want to actuate or can, it’s the body and experience they live in.

It’s just that also - Arcee’s IDW1 story in Phase 2 and Phase 3, IDW2, and frankly the MLP crossover has been really powerful both in big and small ways and touched on a lot of notes that struck a chord with me so her chosen shapes are just - a good vibe to me. I’ll talk more about what I think of her in a literature sense sometime. Do not be misled by Spotlight: Arcee and how people reduce her IDW1 iteration to that to think that she doesn’t have a unique place in trans literature as a hierarchy-hating errant warrior-teacher trans woman who doesn’t want redemption for the hurt she’s caused, knows and speaks to love and understanding being one of the strongest things in the world, and deep down wants to raise kids with a similar gender partner- whoops I’m crying a little- (AVP Arcee was also wholesome).

So- you have the why I’m on this topic. Did you know that Cyberverse Dead End has back stacks too? They're cute. I can't help thinking about it because of Arcee. Back stacks for all the genders/many aesthetics and across the spectrum of body shapes would be a power move.

Because they are transforming robots, this dips into alt-mode more than a bit too. Gender/aesthetic and alt-form probably inform each other. Bots have talked A LOT about their alt-form over the decades. You have Smokescreen in Aligned trying to choose an Earth mode, Lightspeed really wants to be a spaceship in the old Sunbow G1 cartoon, Shadow Striker’s guards in Cyberverse talked about Megatron’s new guards spoilers and one said they were too flashy for their own taste, in IDW2 it’s an experiential thing in part for what work people want to do and they choose their alt-mode as part of growing up assuming they weren’t assigned warplane at forging by Nominus Prime for the War of the Threefold Spark or are a clone, and in the same series during the Transformers 2021 Annual the Lodestar-Lightbright Cityspeaker-Titan gestalt speak to what amounts to weapon retrofit dysphoria. IIRC Lodestar was equipped with a bunch of weapon systems to fight Vigilem who sided with the reactionary imperialist coup by the Decepticons.

To talk about the most prominent back-stack user again - Arcee in IDW1 took on five different shapes first reformat onwards of two stacks instead of the singular one she had in her forged form - and she well - wasn’t concerned with infiltrating on Earth for most of those. We have nothing to go on as to whether her IDW2 variation in shape is merely artistic or signifies bodily change - but it is noticeable in #38 onwards that she has gotten chonkier and her alt-form went from a convertible to an armored buggy sort of car.

I dunno when canon will address this and outright say there is a link between gender actuation and alt-mode. Be brave enough to show e.g. Smokescreen and Aileron connecting over having a ‘monoboob’ (they’d probably say rounded chest or something) shape but are different genders and not trans OR actuated/accepted that for their transness. But I do know we can talk about it and write it ourselves. Among the many comparable but not the same as woman specific named aesthetics I want to touch on in my own writing, there is one I introduced which is zoomdare - I’m saving the explanation for a full post on it, but suffice to say that the experiential component of this sparktion or hearth (what Cybertronians and Camiens call their aesthetic system respectively) is concerned with the euphoria of focus/movement - part of why ‘zoom’ is part of the word, as Greenlight puts it in her own internal thoughts in Chapter 1 of Day of Multiflame regarding herself and the three zoomdares she is in a relationship with Arcee’s back stacks wiggled, and watching her love express itself through her mighty wheel and light bearing shapes reminded me of the graceful rush the four of us narrated our lives through, exhibited, shared, and loved.

So yeah, part of why back stacks are very cool to me so I will just say I think it is based that Combiner Wars Brawl’s back stacks form his tank turret because that is a totally different take on the stacks (I even kitbashed one into Greenlight!). If we step away from the To Sell Toys motivation (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/To_sell_toys) to just - think about the robots on aesthetic journeys of accepting and realizing themselves, I think we are left with one of my favorite Optimus Prime quotes (from Cyberverse Battle for Cybertron Part I and Part IV) "Everything in the universe transforms.” And yeah, trans or gender expansive or not, everything and everyone does.

[unit-zero-two]

Fate/Stay Night and the Functions of Character Design Part 1

*Warning: includes Spoilers for Fate/Stay Night*

Part 1: Saber

For the first part of this series, I’m going to discuss the face character (sometimes a little too literally) of the Fate Franchise. Saber, the OG, the one given that name before all others, and still called as such just as often as her True Name. Now, why else am I starting with Saber? Because I love her design. I’m going to keep this discussion to her design in Fate/Stay night and not discuss any of the variations or alt outfits. Maybe at a different time. Just know that in Fate/Zero she wears a suit through most of the series and it’s amazing.

Now, what makes up Saber’s design?  Most importantly, and kind of unusually for female characters, armor. She has armored gauntlets, boots and a properly fitted breastplate (that completely avoided being molded around her boobs). Her arms are left mostly uncovered, but that’s not really an issue to me, everything else is doing great. She wears a beautiful long skirt adorned with several plates of armor, protecting the sides of her body and legs. The design has a great mix of blue, white, silver and gold. Her hair is tied back, so that it won’t get in her way in combat or get pulled. Her features show her to be young, teenage, but she has a strong, no nonsense look to her.

Saber has been the go-to example for a long time for warrior women in great armor. She could be more armored, but she’s not unarmored, and this is an acceptable amount, with the most vulnerable portions covered. As the viewer, you can tell from a glance that she’s ready for battle. The design of the armor, and the character in general, do well to convey to the audience that she’s not Japanese, but some type of foreigner. Plus, this design does a great job of accentuating that while she is a warrior, she’s still very feminine, and there’s a certain charm in that. It’s a useful bit of information to communicate to the audience (since her story conflict resolves around being a king/knight versus living for herself/living as a girl).

I love Saber’s design, but it is also bad. Saber has a bad design in Fate/Stay Night. This is a bold, and maybe confusing, statement after all the praise I had for the design but let me explain. Design in media doesn’t exist just to look good, it exists to convey information about a character in a story to the audience. In this regard, Saber’s design is a bad design. But how does this design fail?

To explain how this design is bad, we need to discuss Saber’s character in Fate/Stay Night and her true name. Quick explanation: Saber is a Servant, one of seven Heroic Spirits (heroes and legends) summoned into a specific Class (in this case the Saber Class) to fight in the Holy Grail War. Each Servant tends to go by their Class title as their name, to hide their True Names. Saber’s True Name is Arturia Pendragon, known in history and myth as Arthur Pendragon. Arturia pulled the sword from the stone and was the one to become King of Britain and live through the mythology that we’re familiar with. Arturia was believed to be male because she dressed like a man and pretended to be such throughout her lifetime. Normally, Arturia keeps Excalibur sheathed in magical wind that makes it invisible so that her True Name is more difficult for her enemies to discover. She fights several enemies before the big reveal of Excalibur and her True Name (except in Fate Zero, where she announces herself to her Master as soon as she is summoned).

But wait, “why does this information make the design bad?”, you may ask. Because none of that important information comes through in her design. Sure, she looks like a female knight, probably of European origin, but she is supposed to be a woman pretending to be a Male Knight/King. This means that the audience can’t infer who she may supposed to be based on all available information in her design. In a show based around familiar figures from mythology being summoned, the show is failing to give the audience a chance to work through the mystery. In all flashbacks, despite the lore of her dressing like a man, we always see her in her dress armor, so the lore and visuals we see contradict each other. A proper design to hint at her origin and her conflict of having been deprived of life/girlhood would be to have put her in a more traditional, masculine looking set of armor.

We also hit another problem in her design that doesn’t have to do with her armor; her looks. Like I said, she looks like a teenage girl. Characters in series back up this observation by stating that that’s how she’s supposed to look. Except, Arturia is not King Arthur summoned in her teenage prime; she is the actual Arthur summoned at the end of her life due to a special contract she made (unlike the other Servants who can be summoned from any portion of their lives, usually their prime). This is the Arturia after all her mythology, so why does she look like a teenage girl? This is because, in Fate Lore, pulling the sword from the stone halted her aging at the point she pulled it (roughly fifteen years old). [As an aside, they never state how old Arturia is at the end of her life, but bios and stuff pieced together hint at her being roughly 25, so 10 years to do all of the Arturian legends, which isn’t too bad, if rather young.]

Nothing in Arturia’s design hints at her being a seasoned warrior who ruled a kingdom for almost a decade and fought in many battle and campaigns. It’s fine in lore to say that it happened, but that isn’t reinforced by the design, which means the design is failing at something very important. The design should fit and back up the lore. The lore should look like it informed the design. But in this case, it doesn’t. [The design also does very little to hint that she’s a king, and not just a knight, which is another issue.]

So, all of this is why I say that despite this being a good-looking design that I love, it’s a bad design for the series it’s in. Saber’s design does not fit with the narrative base and the story being told. A gender flipped King Arthur is a totally doable, and interesting, concept, but this design does little to help that concept. Saber succeeds in spite of her design, not because of it.

[There’s also a weird scene where Saber reveals that she’s embarrassed by her muscly form, as she stands naked before Shirou, but the shot from behind makes her look like any other thin, young anime waif. Everything we see of her shows her thin and with no muscle. This is another good example of how the design and narrative don’t lineup properly. Her physical abilities as a warrior are explained as being due to skill and her Mana Burst ability, where she uses her vast magical energy to boost herself. If she does not do this, it is stated that she would be physically weaker than either Shirou or Rin. Somehow. That makes total sense for a skilled knight, right?]

Part 2: https://unit-zero-two.tumblr.com/post/186311459447/fatestay-night-and-the-functions-of-character

Part 3: https://unit-zero-two.tumblr.com/post/186311460467/fatestay-night-and-the-functions-of-character

[jennaschererwrites]

Clowns, Cults and Trump: Why New 'American Horror Story' Is a Missed Opportunity - Rolling Stone

There's nothing subtle about the historical moment we're living through. A man with no impulse control and a vicious disdain of anyone/anything who does not resemble him has ascended to the highest office in the land. Americans are wearing their political proclivities and hatreds on their sleeve (sometimes literally, often swastikas). It's a dumb, ugly, blunt time to be alive, and to it has come an often dumb, ugly, blunt TV show. It is called American Horror Story: Cult. And it's a major missed opportunity.

Unlike previous iterations Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck's anthology horror series, which rely on tweaked horror tropes in lieu of tackling contemporary issues head-on, the seventh season of AHS stridently and purposefully locates itself in an America reeling from the recent Presidential election; it isn't just the setting but also the substance of the horror. In its attempt to parody and comment upon the fear, cruelty and paranoia of Trump's America, however, it instead becomes an artifact of it. The show is reductive where it should be incisive, dull where it should be sharp, turning liberals and alt-righters alike into equally repulsive monsters – "on both sides," as someone once sneered.

AHS all-stars Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters feature as two Michiganites on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Ally Mayfair-Richards is a left-wing lesbian restaurateur with a loving nuclear family and a host of anxieties; Kai Anderson is a wild-eyed alt-right loner with a literal hard-on for other people's rage and fear. The show's first four episodes set the two on a collision course, starting the night of the 2016 election and spinning out from there like the aftermath of a 10-car pileup.

But here's the thing about these two, in addition to every other character on the show – they're not people. They're cartoons. And while the show's usual modus operandi is to go big and go broad, it's a bit of a death blow to anything resembling a satirical impulse. "What was wrong with CNN for not giving us a trigger warning before they announced the results?" Ally moans improbably into the arms of her long-suffering wife Ivy (Alison Pill), whose only character trait is that she is long-suffering. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Kai jubilates, "Fuck you, world! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" while dry-humping his television screen. Later, Ally will chew out her son for giving his pet guinea pig a cisgender name and feel deeply tortured about Jill Stein, while Kai will rub a slurry of ground Cheetos on his face and lob a condom full of urine at Latino workers. Nuance, thy name is not Ryan Murphy.

There are no human beings here – only walking, talking sound bites, straw men lifted from poorly researched headlines. "The proudest moment of my life when was Lena Dunham retweeted me," one character blurts out in a job interview, apropos of nothing. (Speaking of which, the Girls creator is slated to make a cameo later this season.) "I got almost 6,000 followers from that. Just not enough to elect the first woman president." In another scene, two "angry liberal" women tie up a would-be Trump voter in a basement on election night so that he can't cast his ballot. "People like you don't matter anymore," one of them spits, becoming the leftist bogeyman that right-wingers fear but who doesn't actually have a real-world counterpart.

And this being AHS, fear can't just be a feeling; it also has to take a shape – so cue a roving band of murder clowns sporting rubber masks and bloody knives. It's an easy phobia button to push, as well as a current boogeyman du jour and a callback to autumn 2016's bizarre series of creepy clown sightings along the East Coast, which felt like a symptom of the undiagnosed madness sweeping the country pre-election. A year down the line, however, those perma-grinned lurkers seem almost quaint in comparison to the very real monsters who have come out of the woodwork since. Clowns are scary. IRL Nazis are scarier.

Which brings us to the overall problem of attempting to make a TV series that limns the present moment: By the time it comes out, it's already the past. Cult feels like a show that was simultaneously made too soon and too late, poking at fresh wounds while also picking at old scabs. The free-floating anxiety that many Americans felt in the days after November 8th, 2016, is no longer free-floating, as embodied in Cult by Ally and her host of phobias; it has located itself in daily horrors like white-supremacist rallies, nuclear saber-rattling and the stripping of immigrant and minority rights. Kai may be an unhinged megalomaniac, but he perversely seems more reasonable than the 71-year-old manchild with his finger on the big red button.

Let's talk about Kai for a second. He's a classic genre villain in the vein of the Joker, with his thirst for power blended with charisma, intelligence and psychopathy. (And to Peters' credit, he totally sells it.) But as the metaphorical figure Murphy and Falchuck seem to want him to be, he's pretty muddled. "There is nothing more dangerous in the world than a humiliated man," he declares early on, a signal that he's a stand-in for Trump's red-meat supporters who felt disenfranchised by an increasingly diverse and progressive world seemingly leaving them behind. Yet the first people he recruits to his side are a Hillary Clinton supporter (Billie Lourd), a frustrated gay man (Billy Eichner) and an African-American news anchor (Adina Porter). Please call us if you ever see a real-world right-wing mob this diverse.

Perhaps the most insidious thing about Cult's sadistic parody of current politics is who it excludes. This is a show, by, for and about white people – and white people only. With the exception of Porter, the show's few minority characters are used as murder victims and/or punch lines to the show's mean jokes. When a Latino character is shot and killed, his death is parlayed into a winky parody of the Black Lives Matter movement. As for the consequences, Cult treats him less as a person than as a symbol that the show's white protagonists can feel or not feel a way about.

Maybe some people get a kick out of slumming in this fictional nasty world, in which every person – regardless of what side of the political fence they're on – always gives into their worst and basest instincts. But for the rest of us, it's a misaimed kick in the gut when we're already down on the ground, winded from the real gut punches of the latest headlines. In Trump's inauguration speech, the newly sworn-in president spoke of us living in an age of "American carnage." His grim diagnosis of our society rang false for many Americans, but perhaps not to the AHS creators. The country is sick, yes, but not in the way Trump – or Cult – seems to believe it is.

[princess-of-purple-prose]

[ID copied from alt: A four panel meme. In the first panel Ianthe Tridentarius from "the locked Tomb"-series - a tall, pale, blond woman - stands with one hand splayed on her hip, the other touching her neck. Her eyes are half-lidded and she says "Hello, Nanami Kiryuu, from Revolutionary Girl Utena". The words Revolutionary Girl Utena are from the title screen from the show.

In the second panel, Nanami Kiryuu - a blond girl in a school uniform, both hands on her hips, her legs in a wide stance - answers "Hello, Ianthe Tridentarius from" underneath that text a picture of the covers for the three published books in the locked Tomb series.

In the third panel Ianthe is now in her lyctorial form. She is dressed in a white uniform, her right arm is skeletal and golden. Her facial expression is more unsettling, her eyes slightly widened. She hold a rapier in her right skeleton hand. Behind her Nanami stands, her speech bubble reads "..."

In the forth panel Nanami is in her yellow duelists uniform, her expression is severe and she is holding her golden saber. Ianthe is next to her in slightly lowered opacity. End ID]

When you're a blond problem girl with sibling issues and you turn into a blond problem girl with sibling issues AND a sword.

[cielospeaks]

go 2017 wishes

-free servants: well they made jeanne (well jalter) and shishou so hoping for some free forms of altera and/or okita. free archimedes too pls.

-new servants: so like everyone on the leak list i was particularly invested in has already been out for the most part, save hecking ivan the terrible im so ready pls dont be 5* i must get u (would guess unless top tier waifu or “hot relevant” bishounen would be 4* or lower? but thats just my hope pls my natm team is starving its literally just lancelot and an altera support cries)

-like crazy improbable dream but classicaloid crossover. code for beto (like for lily) so he can have 3 outfits (first is sad deaf history beto from the flashback in ep 9, second is frustrated main outfit classicaloid gyoza beto, last is guitar wielding musik betto who has the hottest smile) but also free 4* classicaloid character (probably caster class. and np is musik with an insert art of whichever classicaloid in musik outfit). i need beto for at least 2 teams and bc i love music and historybeto and seriously even otogi and eiyuu beat ya to the punch on this go. and also i dont think i could find a better beto than classyloid beto (besides we need a go sugita voiced character to redeem us from the asshole that was reff)

-but yea. more historical figures (like from eiyuu senki, or natm, or batea since the mpathg team is pretty complete) pls i just want to see the designs and stuff pls. non series related histfigs? sakamoto pls (guess thats kinda kamen rider ghost lol) would like to see. non classicaloid composers motsu references haydn and salieri i would flip my shit if there were any composers added. or alternate mozarts (and sansons and deons to go w marie) already freaking out i could get his and cascus chocos at valentines my husbandos. and dr roman pls. puts on hipster glasses i cared about doctor roman before he was deemed attractive and dead by the western fanbase

-as far as the last yrs events, i think they were all pretty ok? saber wars was good to get lily but too hard for me, the star wars twist was certainly funny tho. valentines was grindalicious and a little frustrating but the mashu ce was so pretty and it was worth it to get everyones chocos~ (hope they make the boys’ chocos cheaper since u kno im grinding for all of em cries) knk was ridiculously fun well as much as it could be and i loved getting into the series. white day was short but kinda interesting, got almost all the ces besides robins cries, and mc was too hard but w/e. da vinci was neat for the ce’s but missed the end bc of computer crash. accel order was amazing both storywise and new stuff wise, got my first 5* there~ missed ibaraki as well due to underleveled, but did get shuten! journey to the west was fun bc i love saiyuki but would have rather got a free 4*, completely missed onigashima due to helltour ugh (hope they rerun it cries), summer event was i think overall a good time, prilya was suspenseful but fun, both halloween events were great, the rerun salter was a fking godsend (missed it last yr) and smallter is a bae. think thats all the events of the yr.

-so basically what im getting at is the best tier ones were either interesting/fun story (like saiyuki, but thats just my preference. jalter/bryn fans and mhx fans were probably more fans of da vinci and saber wars respectively), more interactions w servants (valentines), or free 4* (all of them). overall i’d say ones that dont have day unlocks a la braveliz and both santas are more nervewracking due to worry of a crash, but overall most of the time it works out? so hoping for more fun story and neat 4*s. overall out of the free servants i think my favs are probably shiki and maybe smalter? shiki for her badassness both in game and knk, and smallter is so cute (and also a jeanne right??) so i guess im kinda neutral about new/crossover character vs alt version of existing character? i rlly ended up liking knk and also like iri and kuro’s characters so didnt mind them (and u know if any of the composerbaes would show up i would be so happy) but yea as far as alt versions pls an altera. altera lily? altera alter? beach altera? heck yes. and okita (for honnouji rerun lol) idk nobu kinda dominates the black/red altery color scheme so a different sort of okita would be interesting to see! maybe okita lily but they could throw any weird twist on her and id see it (dude okita? i think the western fans would shit bricks due to hatred of genderbents and saberfaces)

-anyways i hope they just announce a new event (w free 4* pls) soon i kno ive got a recital and motsu and schuus birthdays to work on but fk that shit i need to have a new servant winks at grand order now would be a good time for that classicaloid crossover event lol

[conlasbasesllenas]

Roberto Pérez fue enviado a la lista de lesionados

Los Indios de Cleveland han sufrido una dura baja, ya que uno de sus receptores ha sido enviado a la lista de lesionados. #MLB #OurTribe #NuestraTribu Por: @erick_aguirreh

El receptor titular de los Indios de Cleveland, Roberto Pérez, fue enviado a la lista de lesionados tras el primer juego de la serie entre “La Tribu” y Chicago White Sox. El boricua se encuentra lesionado del hombro derecho y en los próximos días será examinado para saber la gravedad de su lesión.

¿Qué pasará con Roberto Pérez?

El boricuafue enviado a la lista de los lesionados y ya se encuentra…

[buzzdixonwriter]

Spoilericious Notes On THE LAST JEDI

That’s good… Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren, and Yoda (hey, I said this would be spoilericious!) are all in agreement that humanity (because humanity represents about 90% of the Star Wars universe; there’s a whole side issue on human privilege that could be explored but we won’t) has grossly misunderstood what The Force is all about, attributing moral / ethical values it lacks (The Force simply…is), and as such creating a huge mess with the whole Jedi / Sith dichotomy and so should be (literally) burned to the ground and something new built from the ashes.

That’s bad… Based on the amount of training Rey goes through to get to avalanche lifting levels of Force mastery, Rocky Balboa would be an omnipotent god if he could just get into the Star Wars universe.  Y’know how in Hong Kong action films and Japanese anime the characters say, “We need special training,” and they spend thirty seconds to a minute in a montage and come out ready to kick Bruce Lee’s ass?  Not as much training as that.

That’s good… For the first time the Star Wars universe acknowledges the dreadful compromise and complexity of any large scale society, in particular how the wealth of the Star Wars universe is generated through arms sales and as such there is absolutely no reason for anyone to stop fighting.

That’s bad… In his climactic showdown with Kylo Ren, Luke Skywalker (dammit, read the title of this post; I said there would be spoilers) promises him and the fans that ”the war is just beginning”.  Question: Are Disney and the filmmakers even aware that they are criticizing their own business model?  I mean, in a certain sense they’re trapped; by the very name Star WARS they are compelled to tell stories about a grandiose interstellar conflict, unlike Star Trek which is just about a long trip that visits distant planets (or at least used to be…).  But this means that despite the title of Episode IV, there is no hope! and the Star Wars universe is condemned to an eternity of horrific conflict and violent death.

That’s good… Everybody has agreed to forget all about that silly midi-chlorian nonsense.

That’s bad… After presenting a consistently godless universe in ten theatrical features, two TV movies, six TV series, and lord knows how many books / comics / games, the concept of God has been dropped into Star Wars (hell as a concept was introduced back in Empire Strikes Back).  I’m absolutely not saying that God has no place in popular entertainment, just that the universe of Star Wars -- both in concept and execution -- consistently portrayed a culture where the very idea of God had never been introduced (but this may be attributable to bad scripting; see below…).

That’s good… Snoke’s throne room is like something out of a 1950s MGM musical, and I mean that in a good sense:  It looks genuinely futuristic and other worldly.  There are some small edits and cutaway shots in the film that look like nothing else in the Star Wars universe (and not big special effects scenes but rather subtle little moments).  Now and then there are specific call outs to earlier films, in particular Luke Skywalker dying (Fnck you!  I told you there would be spoilers!) under twin suns echoing the moment in the original Star Wars when he stared off into the twin sunset of Tatooine and realized destiny was calling him elsewhere.  And the salt-encrusted mineral world of Crait is the closest thing to a genuinely alien world that we’ve ever seen in Star Wars.

That’s bad… As my son-in-law Bobby Dragulescu observed, the Star Wars universe is only visually consistent:  In no shape / fashion / form does it portray a uniform worldview (or rather, galactic-view) of a society that could actually function.  The political systems are a hot mess, and for all the endless talk about trade alliances in the prequels, there’s virtually no signs of actual large scale interstellar trade or commerce (with the possible exception of the bio-factory on Kamino cranking out endless copies of Temuera Morrison in Attack Of The Clones).  Mind you, virtually all space operas suffer from this flaw (Star Trek The Original Series hid it better than most by taking place so waaay far out there that commerce had not yet completely caught up with the Enterprise).  Star Wars looks pretty but makes no damn sense, and this problem only gets worse with each additional installment, building towers of cards on foundations of sand.

That’s good… Poe’s brief exchange with General Hux was Monty Python / Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy level hilarity, shockingly unexpected in a funny (not offensive) manner, and an absolute delight harkening back to the cheekiest lines in the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

That’s bad… The rest of the film has the worst dialog heard in a Star Wars movie written by anybody other than George Lucas.

That’s good… More (human) diversity in the roles, with females and non-whites / non-Europeans filling in a lot of supporting roles.

That’s bad… As much as I hate agreeing on anything with the fragile alt-right critics who decry said diversity, to this specifically limited degree they have a point:  The appearance of such characters was often shot / staged / edited in a way that instead of appearing naturalistic called undo attention to the casting.  “Hey, look!  We’ve got an Asian female doing stuff!”

That’s good… Gimme a moment…

That’s bad… I almost typed “There isn’t a single good performance in this film” but realized that isn’t true; there are several good performances but the bad ones are so bad they suck all memory of the good into a black hole of mediocrity.  Daisy Ridley as Rey does a good job, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux and Benicio del Toro as DJ both chew scenery with great gusto, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico struggles mightily to make a silk purse out of her sow’s ear and ends up with a nice imitation leather wallet, Andy Serkis draws ahead of Doug Jones as the best-actor-you-never-actually-see-onscreen race, but much to my delight Adam Driver as Kylo Ren goes so far over the emo top that I am capable of forgiving the film of all its grievous flaws.  That being said, The Last Jedi does Carrie Fisher no favors in her final portrayal of Leia Organa (flying through space like a Marvel superhero doesn’t help, either), Laura Dern is woefully miscast and seems to think she’s just doing a table read, and although serviceable as Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamil proves himself to be the least compelling performer to play a Jedi or Sith.  (He does shine as the voice of Dobbu Scay, a trollish alien who insists on shoving coins up BB-8’s nether regions.)

That’s good… ...lemme think…

That’s bad… When it’s good (see themes up above) the script is very good, but when it’s bad (50%+ of the remaining film) it sucks wet farts out of dead porgs.  Finn, Rose, and DJ have an incredibly convoluted / overly complicated hour long sub-plot that contributes absolutely nothing to the story’s final resolution.  They visit a gambling casino world that looks like a crappy swipe from a James Bond movie (tho the Gerry Anderson Supermarionation-looking alien was a nice touch), feature an alien critter race that’s a lift from Syd Mead, and chat incessantly via com-links while traveling through hyperspace despite the fact that tracking ships through hyperspace is repeatedly presented as a radical leap in technology!  And while it’s revealed the First Order has planted a homing device on Leia’s ship (something Darth Vader did in the original Star Wars with the Millennium Falcon) and has an agent on board, nothing is ever done with these ideas.

That’s good… Oh!  Snoke tells Kylo Ren to “get rid of that silly mask”.  That’s nice.

That’s bad… The Last Jedi drops the ball on several plot points in addition to the hyperspace tracking mentioned above.  Luke promises to teach Rey three lessons about the force, but only gets through two and the third one is never alluded to again.  They make a big deal about Rey’s parents being despicable drug addicts who sold her as an infant, completely lacking in Force pedigree which means (a) they are belaboring a non-crucial story point or (b) -- and we’ll give ‘em a benefit of a doubt here -- they’re planting a red herring in order to set up a big reveal for the next movie.  Snoke is demonstrated to be omniscient and capable of planning so far ahead and in so much detail that he can create a fake future in Kylo Ren’s mind for Rey to read, but conveniently leaves a live / fully charged light saber on the arm of his throne to get sliced in half by (and if he’s such a hot snot re Force abilities, why would getting whacked in half ala Darth Maul even slow him down?). 

That’s good… ...I got nuthin’…

That’s bad… Using a starship as a kamikaze by revving up to hyperjump speed and ramming it into the baddies’ ship is a cool idea but makes one wonder why didn’t anybody use it before in the Star Wars universe (c’mon, space torpedoes) and why did they wait to the very last minute to do so -- losing most of the supporting cast in the process -- instead of turning one of the other, smaller ships against Snoke’s flagship?  And nobody in the Star Wars universe has figured out that putting a sharp hairpin turn and/or baffles in an exhaust vent will keep people from dropping bombs / flying spaceships through it.

That’s good… Hey, no Death Star.  Finally.

 © Buzz Dixon