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suffering-and-happy-about-it · 4 years

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Nicole’s rambling: The Watch Dogs Problem

Hey, welcome to my TedX talk about one of the most ambitious games Ubisoft had ever released... And which, for most of the parts, flopped majestically - yet still has players who love it. One such player am I as well. (And I’m not coming back to the game because Raymond Kenney is my first VG crush, shut the hell up.)

I won't be dipping into the side activities (digital trips) and online mode, because I never clicked with it and I don't know much about these parts. And I don't wanna throw shit at the game because of something I don't know a single thing about. Here are my three biggest negatives in the game and the three biggest positives you should play it for.

Also: remember, this is my opinion and my opinion only. It's sure biased, non-professional, but I've played WD more than five times. FIVE. So it's not just blatant nitpicking, because, in its core, WD Is a game I love dearly.

@march-moon, here you go! :)

Let’s sort out the negatives first so we can later praise the game for what it did well:

1. Predictable and dull AI of enemies (aka going John Wick mode).

Sure, the variety of said enemies is impressive, but... When you get a grenade launcher and some good shotgun, which you can do in the first hour of gameplay if you already know your way with the ctOS bank account system (LOOP IS WHERE THE MONEY'S AT), you're more or less untouchable for the rest of the game. Most conveniently, you're starting with a silenced gun and when you know around your way with the stealth system and focus, which slows time big time for those who might not know, you can clear out Rossi Fremont under two minutes. Why? Because the AI is just dumb and stupid most of the time.

Like, sure, the big-armed guys can be a pain in the ass for the first few encounters, but when you realize all you have to do is throw two grenades at them and fire as many bullets as you have at your disposal, they are dead immediately. And the same goes for the car chases. Until you unlock the almighty power of raising the bridges and blowing up the steampipes, these are just pain in the ass.

The first few ctOS scans and police chases, as well as the enemy chases, are fun. But when ctOS finds you after ten minutes of driving around like a mad man to dodge the shit, sending you off on a ten-minutes lasting chase which simply repeats itself. Let alone that you kill half of the city's population because you fuck up to turn your car.

To close this point, it gets repetitive, especially with the gang hideouts fuckery.

2. Ubisoft lying not only about the game features, but also about the overall graphics.

This point kinda explains itself, doesn't it? It's a known fact that studios have tendencies to change their games/movies for marketing purposes - for example, Disney and Infinity War or Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us (Part 2)'. But this being a usual marketing tactic doesn't mean that the consumer should keep their mouth shut when they don't agree with it.

Most noticeable Watch Dogs' fuck-up was an overall graphic downgrade, which, sure, is completely understandable when you have such a huge open-world game, but... Ubisoft showed you a potato mash and all you got was the potato (The biggest point that is made fun of are the trees - those who played the games know what I'm talking about.).

Also, the enhanced graphics ARE coded in the game, but are not used due to something signed off as ‘playable compatibility’ as far as I can understand, so??

But... They did lie about the in-game features too. They promised a lot more than they delivered, like the bounty hunts and stuff... Where did that go, Ubisoft?

3. The side missions and the story.

Don't take it as such... In my opinion, some of the side missions are fun - at the start. We've talked about gang hideouts, but you have fixer-car-related gigs as well and the first ten of them is very immersive since you don't already know which type of the mission you're up to. Will you be pressured by the time limit? Will you have to race through the city in a car that you can't destroy too much, otherwise it can't be sold on the black market? Will you be a decoy for some other bad people doing bad things? But when you get through this phase... It's the same game system again and again, for 46 times, I think? And the villain convoys... Well. These are fun and refreshing each time, I have to say.

Every time, you can choose a different tactic to toy around with - will you catch up with the baddies sooner, turning this mission into an intense, tight chase experience? Or will you wait for them further on the road, toying around with explosives and guns? Sometimes, they slip past you, which leads to a chase around the city, sometimes you blow up all of the cars perfectly on time, A+. But... You mastered 1/3 types of side mission content.

As for the story, it's not the worst, but it isn't something super-memorable, lifechanging. I am not talking about the idea behind the story (the utopia of having the whole city lead by a system, which enables the corporation to control people's lives without them even knowing), I am talking about the Damien-Aiden-Lena revenge story. It's your daily revenge plot based on Aiden's niece dying in a car crashed after the car being shot at because of a failed job.

The first story mission is mind-blowing. You're thrown into the game and the first thing you have to do is to infiltrate a whole-ass stadium, which feels good, not gonna lie. And the 'prison-break sequence' is also memorable as well. But other than that, it gets real repetitive real fast. 'Follow this person', 'hack this thingy', 'kill this guy', 'tilly that person' and so on is present in every act of the story, which makes things kinda come across as boring after some time. It is what it is.

There are exciting in-game moments, like when Defalt is introduced to the bunch and hacks into the Bunker base, stealing all of your data. But sadly, these story masterpieces tend to be overlooked and not acted on, which takes off some of the immersion potentials. (I know that Defalt's story was saved for the DLC, so it's not the best proof.)

! BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THE STORY DOESN'T HAVE GOOD BEATS !

Now, the well-made things for which you should DEFINITELY play this game:

1. Chicago being a videogame city that is alive and the 'collectibles' are extra fun.

Okay, okay, let me explain. Sure, Watch Dogs' Chicago isn't the best area ever constructed in an open-world game. But... The city feels alive, it is changing around you, it never stops. You can find people making out, talking bad about their friend who is not there, you can look into their day-to-day life via something called 'privacy invasion', where you just hack into a camera and... You hear mommy calming down her kid who is crying, you can watch two girls playing Wii, presumably, and many other every day encounters.

NPCs are answering to you being into the city - asking questions on the range from 'Is that the guy from the news?' to straightaway call the cops because you are a mass murderer probably. When you stand in the middle of a road, they honk at you; when you accidentally bump into them, they call you names. It's amazing... And profiling them is even more fun. You can find profiles ranging from 'author of poetry' to 'clinically confirmed pyromaniac' and 'searches for 'feet' on the internet'. This shit is just ridiculous.

But... It's the smallest details you'll fall in love with. You can get on the "L" and it takes you on a ride. You can ride in it for the whole day, or you can get off on the next stop. When you're in the Wards or near Rossi Fremont, you can find dudes just listening to rap, chatting. Some guys force flyers into other people's hands. You can have coffee. The rain somehow feels real, and the nighttime just steals your breath away - and so do the sunsets. There's a part of the city called 'Hobotown', where the local hobos live, there are secret poker tournaments.

Chicago in Watch Dogs is a city with so many minor details that you cant find each of them in one gameplay. In each gameplay, you'll find something new, something that just makes you chuckle - but it's so thoughtful of the developers to even put it in their game. These small details are the ones that make you feel as if you were inside the game, convincing you that the Chicago you're looking at is, indeed, alive.

Then, there are the 'collectibles'. I didn't know how to call it other than that, so bear with me for a minute. There are minor 'side-missions' - for example, you're going after a killer, who is leaving you audios on the places he left one of his victims. There are QR coded which unlock audios that talk about the DedSec hacktivists. In the small 'hack 5 routers in a time limit' quests, you are unlocking one of the Blume's employees audios (Angela Balik's), talking about the files Raymond Kenney had hidden in the code back in the day, talking about the uprising of the Bellwether 'crime' prediction system.

The collectibles aren't everyone's thing, of course, and it won't take any of the Chicago experience when you don't listen to the voicemails or if you simply don't collect them. But, they can immerse you in the game world even more. And to be honest, this is one of the few games that had my ass shook about collecting the additional thingies.

2. The character cast.

Let's be honest, Aiden Pearce on his own isn't the best protagonist in the world. Don't get me bad, I like this game a lot, but he can come across as boring at times. And that's exactly when the character cast comes in to balance Aiden's character. Most of the cast has some sort of an attribute which compels to Aiden's personality very well, completes him in some way.

You have Raymond Kenney, who is a paranoid, rowdy, alcoholic genius who helped with creating ctOS - but has remorse about his history, because he caused the Northeast blackout 2003, killing eleven people. Which can show Aiden how bad can the power over the ctOS system be.

There's Jordi Chin, a prestigious assassin/fixer, who uses the game's darkest humor. Every fucking second Jordi is on screen, it's captivating, immersive and you'll find yourself chuckling at Jordi's jokes, which are definitely out of place. But he still keeps reminding you that he's in for the money, which, in the end, turns against Aiden in a way.

Clara Lille, otherwise known as BadBoy17, is a hacktivist working for the rebellious DedSec who are rebelling against Blume, the company behind ctOS. She seems to be innocent of the violence of getting revenge, but later in the game, Aiden discovers how deeply she was invested in the whole story about Lena.

Each of the characters has a personal connection to Aiden, widening his personality in various ways. Which is funny to watch throughout the story - and there's a ton of other characters I didn't even get into, like Lucky Quinn, Nicky, Jackson, Bed Bug... The characters are simply terrific.

3. The overall soundtrack.

Hear me out, this point is kinda tricky, yeah? I am not talking about the official soundtrack. The radio has some blasts I fell in love throughout playing the game - whether it introduced me to song 'Ms. Crumby' by the Audition, or made me fall in love with the Vampire Weekend, Kid Cudi, or The Vindictives. Yet, in the case of the radio, I tend to sort out a playlist consisting of 4-6 songs (YES? YOU CAN MAKE PLAYLIST INSIDE THE GAME???) which I play on repeat throughout the game.

There's also this masterful thing about the soundtrack sometimes 'forcing' itself into your gameplay, maybe more like 'self-inserting' into the game if you will. The two most memorable encounters of this are when: a) when you're helping Ray Kenney leave the junkyard and Pawnee behind and the 'ring ding piety pow' hardcore metal song plays throughout the final encounter (Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry) and b) when you enter Rossi Fremont, the whole time you're going through the building, the rap/hip-hop is playing, making you feel gangsta. (I think it's a song by Wu-Tang Clan, not sure tho).

But... Then it hits you. The in-game hidden soundtrack that sadly wasn't released. At least not officially. It has a reason, worry not - this in-game soundtrack reacts to the player's progress throughout the missions, so it basically plays on a loop. Which is understandable.

The most standing out instance I can talk about is when you enter the small island where the old Blume secret place is hidden on. You and Clara are on a mission searching for legendary sacred place (at least for the hackers) called 'The Bunker'. And my friends... This is when it hits you. The soundtrack feels familiar even when you're playing the game for the first time. This piece just hits differently than any other soundtrack I've heard. Not even Time by Hanz Zimmer has this effect on me, and I LOVE the Inception.

And there's more - the piece of the soundtrack which plays when you're going after Jackson is probably another great example.

BONUS ROUND: 4. The Bad Blood (DLC)

Okay, this had a lot to do with my love for Raymond Kenney and I am not worried to say it out loud. But this DLC is truly a DLC. It only uses the WD world, which was set up in the OG game, as its base - but it isn't its main focus at all. This DLC introduces us to new characters as well as to some we knew already we knew.

In the OG game, Tobias is the mad hobo who sells us cool thingies to play with - and in they managed to show Tobias' full potential, showing us how smart and hilarious, as well as paranoid, this guy is in reality. It deepened Ray's character, revealed Defalt's motivations and the history that tied both of them to the Northeast blackout.

There are also new areas to explore, new things to play with and even if the DLC doesn't do anything too revolutionary with the game's world, it's the best DLC I've played. And I may have enjoyed it more than Aiden's story. But again, I'm pro-Kenney biased, so that's kinda expected of me, ain't it?

PS: I hate Sitara or whatever her name is.

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lunchador · 4 years

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Don't mind me but I'm rambling. I'm gonna yell about this here cuz it is my fandom blog and that's what it's for.

Man, The Boys is the perfect example of seeing a comic, seeing the potential, and gutting it for something better. I used to be a fan of Garth Ennis, I used to say he was the kind of writer that could balance edgy in a fun way that wasn't too much, but after revisiting his work I'm like....very unimpressed. And I feel as he keeps releasing series they keep getting worse 😬 I can't say this on FB because some of my male friends hold it in high regards(lots of them read it as angry edgy teens) but Preacher? Kinda a super shit comic. I genuinely think the show was attempting something better by polishing up the core concept (also the casting? Chefs kiss). I liked The Boys. I own The Boys. But the show is a fantastic example of how a comic adaptation does not need to be faithful. I think they made the characters a lot more engaging, they kept the graphic violence but I'm not rolling my eyes at it, and made the overall plot more of an arc versus the previous baddie hero of the week style that made it feel disjointed. And it's nice not to be able to expect what is going to happen next, not like how some shows throw it in a new direction solely to fuck with you versus genuinely interesting. They still sprinkle tons of comic stuff nicely in the show (my friend and I screamed at love sausage). I think the timing of the show is excellent in both that there is a corporate superhero burnout with so many movies and shows being churned out (often playing it too safe where money > interesting) and also reflecting irl events in an eerie but clever way. The whole comic and show is assholes, and I'm thrilled to love to hate them. I couldn't even do much of a reread because it's just not that good to me anymore. Absolutely crazy that Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg read those two comics by Ennis and were like yeah, let's do this.

I feel the same way about Mark Millar though. I cannot stand his comics, I feel like he's pretty good with coming up with a concept but someone always executes it better on his behalf. Kingsman? Kick ass? Wanted? All superior to the comics. I think red son and jupiter's legacy are ones I did like, but I am very interested to see how netflix (?) Does jupiter's legacy in the wake of the boys. Not quite the same, but an edgy superhero series I highly expect people to make a comparison. It's about children of superheros that are struggling to live in their shadows. Drugs, sex, violence, drama.

On the other hand, I am screaming about the Invincible adaptation. IM SO FUCKING EXCITED. Invincible is in my top favorite comics, it got me INTO comics, and I always thought it was vastly superior to Kirkmans famous work Walking Dead. This I do hope sticks close to the comics (though maybe slightly better writing for women characters haha). I already know exactly what they're doing for the first arc and I really really hope we can get further than that because the series gets so fucking WILD. Insane all of the merch and now a show we are getting after the series ends. It's also super long for a western comic series at like 26 trades I think. I hope the show is a success for multiple reasons.

With the old guards success, I hope amazon finally does something with the rights they bought to Lazarus a few years ago. Greg Rucka is truly one of the best comic writers out there and that series is perfect for tv. Which reminds me I need to watch stumptown cuz I just bought the comic to reread and it's so good!!!!

And y the last man finally has its feet on the ground after being in development hell for like 10 years. Brian k vaughn writes the most human characters out there. And also paper girls is gonna be a series!!!! Fucking hell yeah!!! Hopefully it catches people attention as stranger things did. It's gonna be fun. And I hope saga never gets adapted. I truly think nothing will be able to capture it. Leave it as is.

And I'm still sad Chew ended up falling into development hell. Originally showtime wanted to use to to replace Dexter as that ended as their new bloody crime show, then it fell to an animated series which is better imo to pair with how weird it is and showcase the art style but I think the last I heard of it it was pretty much not happening. Especially since iZombie got surprising amount of traction and I guess they expected it to be too similar.

I'm also still bitter about Deadly Class's cancellation. I had a lot of potential. Great cast, good cinematography. It's such a fun tragic comic.

Locke&key was alright, it's such a good horror comic but I wouldn't be able to tell you what would have made the show better. Something didn't quite click for me.

I'm kinda really burnt out on marvel/dc. I don't think either is impressing me lately besides scattered things. I don't think I'm excited for any of the disney+ shows besides falcon+winter soldier and even then expectations are tentatively low. Maybe wandavision? I didn't give a shit about them in the movies but it's heavily based on a run of comics I did enjoy so I'm wary. I know only care about Hawkeye for Kate and she-hulk for the actress. Though I've been having a surprising amount of fun watching Doom Patrol and I enjoyed swamp thing. It's weird. It embraces that weird. There's something I feel like Umbrella Academy is missing it could learn from doom Patrol. Like ua still feels like it played it a bit safe. Idk. Haven't finished it because I'm not as motivated to.

And Faith?? Is gonna get a movie??? A plus size hero??? AHHHH. I have my first issue signed by the author I met at comic con a few years ago.

And watchmen of course.

And outcast, and happy, and powers! And I kill giants was turned into such a good movie!!! So many image comics!!

I just read nailbiter is gonna be a series so that's gonna be bloody and violent and full of serial killers lmao. The ending of that comic got a little ??? For me but I own the whole series so i guess that says something.

What a time to be a comics fan!!! We are so fucking spoiled lmao and there's still sooo many untapped series. I think Criminal would make a fantastic live action drama show. Who does like Intricate crimes and heists and overlapping stories And wic+div would make a stellar show especially if they really had fun with the music. And so many comics I like would make amazing animated series like pretty deadly, or chew, rocket girl. Haunt is another Kirkmans series that has potential to be a fun gritty superhero violent adaptation. Except the ectoplasma attacks haunt has looks like violent jizz sometimes. Idk. Like, URGHHHHHHH. Gimme gimme gimme more comic stuff.

And there's so many good things I'm not even aware it was a comic initially.

And there's so many things I hear good things I have yet to touch like black lightning, runaways ( I love the comics!!, Cloak and dagger (also great comics )

Old comic shit is good too. I've been rewatching the Spawn series. Adult animated superhero stuff is seriously underrated. The tank girl movie is FUN. ROCKETEEEEER!!!!! Disney was supposed to do a remake with a black girl. What happened to that?

I dislike all the cw shows though lmao too cheesy. Also why I can't get into agents of shield though I tried for Robbie.

So many THINGS

#hey i am a huge image fangirl if i havent screamed about that enough yet #ive been feeling emotional over comics #ever since invincible dropped the teaser #like legit tears smh #tumblr chabged how you do readmores i guess #i tried tk hide this so sorry if youre scrolling oast #i just #fuckjng love comics you guys

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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oldshrewsburyian replied to your post: mearcatsreturns: best picture, A+ Goran, A+...

…I now want a Spy Movie with Goran Višnjić and Lucy Liu.

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE.

CALL SIGN CHAOS

Starring Goran Višnjić and Lucy Liu

Crystal Chang (LUCY LIU) is an up-and-coming executive at one of the world’s most successful industrial conglomerates, based in Wichita, Kansas and owned by shadowy and reclusive billionaire Philip Mock (MICHAEL MCKEAN). (All similarities to successful industrial conglomerates based in Wichita and owned by evil shadowy and reclusive billionaires living or dead are completely coincidental). On a business trip to London, where the company is about to close yet another deal, she accidentally stumbles on a trove of deeply incriminating information about the company’s business practices and the campaign of terror they’ve waged against their last whistleblower, Molly Bly (REBEL WILSON). It’s as evil corporate bullshit as it gets, and it’s systematic and worldwide and implicates a lot of other billionaires (everyone look surprised). Crystal has a crisis of conscience and calls her brother, Eric (JOHN CHO) who tells her that she needs to get it out of there. But since Mock Industries now realizes that she has the information, they ain’t gonna stop at a little murder, and Crystal took exactly two years of karate as a kid… how?

Enter the sassy, hard-drinking former Soviet fighter pilot ace nicknamed “Chaos,” who goes by the clearly-fake name Ivan Ivanovich (GORAN VISNJIC). Once a darling of the Russian armed forces, now embittered and on the run himself for knowing a little too much about the attempted nerve-agent poisoning of an ex-colleague in the sleepy English cathedral town of Winchester. He inadvertently saves Crystal from an assassination attempt in her fancy London hotel room, and they bust out and only then stop to ask who the other is and what they are doing there. Crystal thinks he’s also trying to nail her, and/or take her to Moscow, but after a lot of arguing, they realize that they have information that could help each other… if she can trust Ivan. He doesn’t really seem like the most stable guy, and she can’t be sure that he’s not also a Russian double agent. But he’s large, smart-mouthed, good in a fight, and just threw three goons out a twentieth-story window. She could do worse.

However, if they’re going to report their information to anyone, they need to find Molly, who has gone into hiding in an undisclosed location and has the third piece to the puzzle, which ties together all this corporate cartoon supervillainy and Russian state meddling. (Can this movie get made without everyone on it mysteriously dying? The world may never know!) Cue extended spyjinks on their mad dash across Europe and Africa one step ahead of Mock Industries hitmen and Russian FSB goons alike. High-speed Vespa chases, jumping onto moving trains, dodging through crowded ferries, and slightly unrealistic action sequences abound. Crystal turns out to remember a lot more karate then she thought when Ivan is cornered by several baddies. We stan a battle couple and their angry, bantering flirtation, in which both of them clearly deeply regret their attraction but can’t help it. Crystal tells Ivan she has a boyfriend in America, which she sort of does. His name is Brad (MATT LANTER) and they’re kind of on a break, but never mind that. He also works for Mock Industries. Hmm. That seems important. But screw that guy, anyway.

Anyway, after much shenaniganry, Crystal and Ivan find Molly hiding out in Cape Town, South Africa, where they finally persuade her to come back with them and testify. She thinks they’ll all end up dead. She’s probably not wrong. That night, Crystal and Ivan finally give into their mutual attraction and have the requisite sex scene, which nobody in the audience minds because they’re all too busy drooling. Crystal asks Ivan what his real name is, and he claims that it actually is Ivan. She’s not entirely sure she believes him, but leaves it. Later, feeling guilty, she calls Brad and tells him that they’re coming back to America and she’s going to need help, and it’s really bad. He is understanding and promises that she can count on him to back her up with whatever’s going on.

Romantic angst hangs over us as Crystal, Ivan, and Molly fly to America, in a lot of disguises of varying and comic effectiveness. The three-way banter is Peak. When they land, Ivan and Molly make themselves scarce, while Crystal goes to meet Brad to prepare a strategy for going public. Except –

OH NO WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING. BRAD IS ACTUALLY EVIL AND HAS BEEN WORKING WITH MOCK INDUSTRIES TO SET THEM UP THIS WHOLE TIME. OH MATT LANTER, HOW COULD YOUR CHARACTER SECRETLY BE A TOTAL DOUCHEWAFFLE. AGONIES.

He’s planning to kill Crystal and has a Sad White Boy Villain Monologue. Halfway through, Molly bursts through a wall and hits him over the head, knocking him out. She says that she never trusted that guy when she worked there, and rescues Crystal, where they race out to find Ivan losing his goddamn mind on an innocent sprinkler salesman. Crystal restrains him from sprinklermancide. They’re shocked to see each other. They kiss. Awww.

Brad recovers consciousness (darn) and rushes to inform Mock Industries that they’re blown. Crystal, Ivan, and Molly can’t properly testify, so they once more have to scatter and prepare to transmit their information to journalists separately. It’s not clear whether or not they’ll ever see each other again. Crystal is picked up by her brother Eric and after a comic-poignant-romantic farewell to Ivan, they part.

Cut to: six months later. Mock Industries’ downfall and disgrace and multiple lawsuits is all over the news, so we can guess that Crystal and Molly succeeded. Brad is convicted and heading to jail along with most of its corporate leadership. We pan around to see Ivan reading about this in a Moscow apartment and looking pleased. A voice offscreen (we don’t see who) asks him in Russian if he knew anything about this. Ivan says, “Nyet.”

Was he a double agent until the last minute? Did he ever truly turn? Is this what he wanted all along? Did he actually fall for Crystal and call it off because of that?

WHO KNOWS.

THE END.

#oldshrewsburyian #replies #i will have you know this is among my finer works of art

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missladysky · 5 years

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BLESS ME WITH YOUR OTP!

I was not tagged but @tarberrymentats did it so I’m gonna do it. I don’t have any good fallout content rn so please accept these WIPs of my fave dnd girls, Aviyah and her wife Iesha, as tribute. (Maybe I’ll have time to actually finish my art someday lol)

Do they fight often? If so, what is their dynamic like?

The bicker more often than not, but it’s never mean-spirited. When they do fight though, it’s serious. Aviyah is prone to explosive bouts of anger, which immediately triggers Iesha’s flight response due to her past trauma. They’ve been actively working through this to get better over time and they refuse to go to sleep angry.

Who is the most skeptical of the two?

Aviyah has her ears and eyes wide open at all times and she trusts almost no one, save for her traveling companions and her wife.She spent the majority of her childhood watching her back and dealing with the skeeviest criminals Varisia had to offer so she knows what kind of things are out there. Iesha is almost too trusting of everyone and everything (which is part of what got her killed in the first place) so it seems only right that Aviyah has to watch out for her, too. You can never be too careful.

Who would be most likely to suggest a night of dancing?

Iesha grew up in a Varisian caravan, dancing every day of her life. She never passes up the opportunity to give praise and she drags Aviyah with her whenever she can. Aviyah has been learning her peoples’ traditional dances with her wife and she’s more open to it now than she’s ever been prior, but she would still prefer to admire Iesha’s more elegant steps under the pavilion than join in.

What would they do if the other was injured in battle?

Iesha is calm and collected in the field. They’ve encountered their fare share of creatures and ruffians on their travels through Varisia and Aviyah is injured more often than she isn’t. She keeps a cool head and carries an aid kit with her everywhere, just in case. She’s been dead before and she doesn’t worry too much about herself. The only time she ever panicked was when Aviyah was nearly killed too far from town for a cleric. She still applied her knowledge as best she could, speaking to Avi in a low, soothing voice, and they managed to keep her stabilized until she could be healed enough to walk.

Aviyah thought she’d be able to handle it. She’d been in countless fights before and she’d held her own in the blood and viscera that followed but when she saw Iesha’s eyes wide, the arrow dug into her chest above her heart, all of her resolve melted away to panic. She dropped everything to run to her side, hyperventilating, and forgot everything she’d ever known about healing and medicine. Ultimately, the group developed a more solid contingency plan after that so no one would be endangered again and they worked with Avi to develop her coping skills.

How do their fighting styles complement each other?

Iesha’s fighting style was definitely different from everything that Avi had ever seen before. She’s flashy and theatrical, fighting with a bladed scarf covered in bright embroidered patterns and trimmed with bells. At first glance, Aviyah thought it was absolutely ridiculous. That is, until she realized it made the perfect distraction in the field.

Aviyah is all cloak and dagger, sneaking up on unsuspecting enemies and rending them with precision damage. She carries three heirloom daggers on her hip (and about 11 more mundane ones in various hiding places) and she takes pride in using them. Iesha is the perfect partner for keeping her targets unaware of her presence and together they’ve taken down entire syndicates of baddies in the underbelly of Varisia.

Do they want children? Does it frighten them? How many do they want?

Aviyah had never given any thought to having children. She suffered a mid-term pregnancy loss when she was being kept at Merchant’s Fortune and vowed after that moment that she’d never let another man touch her as long as she lived.She is absolutely terrified of being a parent because she doesn’t want to fail her children or give them an opportunity to be as broken as she thinks she is.

She wasn’t counting on meeting Iesha, though. Iesha had always wanted to be a mother and have a family. She’d grown up with many siblings, in a caravan with many younger children and she married the first man who promised to give her a future. Of course, when that man murdered her in cold blood, plans changed. She lived for a while as a spectre and vowed that if she ever got her corporeal body back, she’d never let another man touch her as long as she lived.

No man ever did, obviously.

They’ve considered adopting children but have ultimately dedicated their lives and their fortunes to ending the slave trafficking trade that took Aviyah as a child and funding housing and food for the poor in Varisian cities.

What happened when they took them home to their families? If their families aren’t in the picture anymore, how do they feel about it?

Aviyah’s mother passed away when she was young and her father and brother were killed while she was being held at Merchant’s Fortune. She’d been 8 the last time she saw them and she wished very desperately for them to meet her. Iesha took her to the temple to commune with their shared deity and they received the blessing of knowing that Aviyah’s family had passed on from Pharasma’s Boneyard and into Desna’s domain together. It brought Aviyah great peace and she asked Iesha to marry her the same day.

Meeting Iesha’s family was very different. For one, she had left the caravan with her new husband in tow and returned with a woman they had never seen before and in that time she had died and been resurrected. They asked few questions, just happy to see her home and they immediately adopted Aviyah into their fold with open arms. It was uncomfortable at first because it made Avi miss her family terribly but she realized she was being given an opportunity to finally be a part of her culture and a part of a family as a whole.

How does each person show affection towards the other?

Iesha speaks every love language, loudly and clearly and constantly. She wears her heart on her sleeve for everyone to see and makes sure that Aviyah knows she is loved and cared for. It can be smothering to Avi sometimes in comparison to her own reserved nature, but even she can’t deny that to finally feel wanted and loved after so long without is nice.

Aviyah is less public about it. She loves to pick flowers while she’s walking and tuck them into secret places for Iesha to find later. She buys her wife’s favorite pastries when they are out for supplies to break out during dinner as a surprise. But by far her favorite thing is the quiet moments when the sun is just coming up and they share soft, tired kisses and just enjoy each other’s company.

Who cries the most? Who is better at comforting?

Iesha cries about nearly anything. Often, they’re happy tears but just as often they’re not. She never cries for long--she always says that time spent sad is time wasted and it never takes much to calm her down. She’s also better at comforting Aviyah when she cries than the other way around.

When Aviyah cries, it’s crushing. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, she can’t breathe and her knees buckle and she is overwhelmed with the sound of blood in her ears and the pressure in her chest. Iesha learned quickly to settle her on the floor where she could hold her and she guides her in breathing and regaining her control. They count floor tiles or trees together until she can think again.It’s a methodical process that Iesha is glad to help with. She doesn’t want to say how she learned.

Who is the bigger flirt?

Iesha is incorrigible. She’s constantly using innuendo and she loves to fluster her wife by any means necessary and she doesn’t care much who sees or hears.

Aviyah is more subtle. She likes to whisper in Iesha’s ear when no one is listening or stretch in just the right way when she knows she’s looking. It’s absolutely maddening.

Ultimately, these two are a weird match and the second greatest of my dnd stories and I love them dearly with all my heart and hopefully someday I’ll finish their novelization and everyone can meet them properly. <3

#aviyah #aviyahfaraji #heart of golduria #art #wip #otp asks

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pandoraimperatrix · 4 years

Text

Four Names for Love

Gotham | BatCat | BabyFic | Multi-chapter | Read on AO3

Summary: When Bruce parted ways with Gotham he was leaving behind more than he thought. Meanwhile Selina is trying to find a way to herself after being abandoned again and on top of that she finds out she was left with a lot more than a heartbreak.

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Philia part IX

That kind of work wasn’t her favourite, she liked stealing pretty things, but sometimes, if the offer was good enough, she did some corporate espionage too. She had refused first when offered that job, she usually didn’t know exactly who her clients were, it was all very hush hush to preserve everybody’s involvement identities, but she heard through the grapevine that it was someone working for Lexcorp and she really didn’t want to work for that bald creeper. But then they contacted her again offering a huge additional and since she wasn’t doing anything… It was also nice to have something to distract her from the mess that was her life since Bruce’s return. Selina never thought herself as a creature of routine, but boy she missed her old meek life.

So there she was, doing what she was good at and feeling amazing about it.

Until he came and ruined everything again. For heaven’s sake, was he following her? Couldn’t he just stay out of her business? It is Gotham, she is pretty sure there was a lot of crime happening elsewhere too!

‘Go away!’ She said annoyed but otherwise ignoring his dark looming shadow.

‘Do you even know who are you stealing for? What will they do with it?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t care, I just ask how much they gonna pay me.’

Ignoring him, she finished hacking the alarm she was working on. Bruce, in his ridiculous outfit, followed her.

‘That’s a great standard you’re are setting for Helena.’

Selina stopped in her tracks, turning in his direction with rage coursing through her body, her hand was on her bullwhip before she could stop herself.

‘Don’t you dare! Oh my god, you haven’t changed at all, you still think you are so much better than me, fuck you.’

‘I can’t let you do this, Selina.’ He grabbed her wrist.

Rotating her body, Catwoman freed herself and jumped kicking him on the abdomen, but Batman avoided the hit, nevertheless he had to put distance between them to do that which was the result she wanted.

‘I don’t need your fucking permission, fuck off!’

She ran and he went after her, they ended in a hallway that lead to a dead end, he tried to talk to her again, but Catwoman was having none of that, feeling cornered, she jumped again using his shoulders as support and at the same time digging her diamond sharp claws in his flash. Batman grunted with pain and reached for her again, this time grabbing her by the waist, Selina felt her back shock with his chest armour and was ready to scratch him again when they heard sounds of boots running in their direction.

‘Look what you’ve done, asshole!’

She head-butted him on the nose and used the distraction to get way from his arms and run away. Batman left the scene before being seen by the guards.

ooo

Bruce was in his office at Wayne Enterprises pretending to work when his cell phone stared to buzz.

It was Selina. He looked at the screen puzzled. He didn’t expect her to call, especially after their last encounter. Maybe she was calling to throw him a new string of insults after he ruined her plans the night before. No, she wouldn’t call for that. He felt blood drain from his body, maybe something happened to Helena?

‘Selina? What happened?’

‘Hi!’ A sweet young voice answered whispering. Bruce frowned. ‘Mr. Wayne, it’s Helena. Remember me?’

‘Yes… How can I help you, Helena?’

‘Mom said you couldn’t come this Saturday.’

She had actually sent him a very colourful text saying that she didn’t want to see his ugly face anytime soon and that he wouldn’t appear for breakfast Saturday if he knew what was good for him. Oh the woman of his dreams, the mother of his child. So mature and reasonable.

‘I’m sorry. Is everything okay? Why are you whispering?’

‘Everything is fine, I have to talk like this because I borrowed mom’s phone to call you since I’m not allowed to have one even though everyone in my class have theirs. Anyway, I have a play at school next week and Miss Jones said that I could invite anyone I wanted. Do you wanna come?’

Bruce clicked his pen, Selina would not like that. His nose was hurting like hell, he was using make up and still had to make up stories about hurting himself falling from stairs.

‘Yes. Will be a pleasure. Do I have to bring anything? What part are you playing?’

He smiled at her squeal of delight as she stared explaining to him everything.

ooo

To say that Selina was not happy was an understatement.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Helena invited me.’ He answered, dignified.

‘Are you meeting my daughter behind my back?’

‘She called me.’

‘She… That sneaky little…’

But she didn’t finish the sentence because the lights went down and the curtains opened. Selina sat beside Bruce.

‘I wonder where is Alfred’ he whispered ‘he drove me but disappeared when we arrived.’

‘He likes to record it.’ Bruce followed Selina’s gaze and found his butler in the first row with a camera shouldered by other dads and moms holding theirs. That was something he never imagined he would see again, but a buried flashback of he doing the same thing when he was a kid, before his parents died, played in his head.

A teacher appeared and explained what the play was about. It was a weird play. Aliens from the moon trying to destroy the peace on Earth or something. There was bad guy called Baddy and the hero was called Goody. Whomever wrote that was clearly good with names.

Helena played a tree that Baddy cut to show how evil he was, Helena gave such a dramatic performance of a dying tree that Bruce was very happy that Alfred was getting that on tape. But after she was offstage it was hard to pay attention to the kids instead of the woman fiddling with her hands beside him.

‘Why do you keep doing it?’ He whispered in her ear, her perfume making his slightly dizzy.

Even in the penumbra, he felt the sting of her mean glare.

‘What I do is nothing of your business.’

‘What if you get caught? What happen to Helena, then?’

‘Also nothing of your business.’

‘Not true. Everything related to Helena is my business.’

She snorted.

‘You just found out about her the other day. Don’t be flatter yourself.’

People around shushed them, Selina gave them angry looks.

‘You need to be responsible, Selina.’

‘Oh my god, will you stop? I lived my life and raised my kid for ten years without your advice I don’t need it now!’

A teacher approached them.

‘Miss Kyle, Mr. Wayne’ she blushed when she addressed Bruce, Selina wanted to puke. ‘I need you to leave, other parents are complaining.’

‘I’m very sorry Miss…?’

‘Jones, Andrea Jones.’

‘I’m sorry Andrea, can I call you that? It wasn’t our intention-‘

‘Oh, just come on!’

Selina pulled his arm and they went wait in the hallway, he looked at her hand grabbing him with an eyebrow raised, Selina let go of him like he was made of hot iron.

‘All I wanted was a nice evening with my daughter, why did you have to come ruin everything with your judging, noisiness and flirting with poor school teachers? Why don’t you just craw back from the hole you came from?’

‘Flirting? When did I-?’

‘Oh please! Don’t even try!’

‘I don’t know why you are so angry, I should be the angry one, you know you are putting her in danger, don’t you?’

‘And what you think will happen when people find about your strange little hobby? Pot, you’re black too!

‘Can you both just stop!’

‘Helena!’ Bruce and Selina called at the same time surprised with her sudden appearance, still in her tree costume.

‘What are you doing here, baby?’ Asked Selina.

‘I heard people talking about you fighting, you are embarrassing me!’ Said a very upset Helena, her little face all frowned and red.

‘I’m sorry Helena… I shouldn’t have come.’ Apologised Bruce, crouching to be at Helena’s level.

‘That’s an understatement.’ Muttered Selina bitterly.

‘No mom! Stop that. I know, alright? I know everything.’ She fisted her hands.

‘What?’ Asked Selina horrified.

‘I know you’re my dad, Mr. Wayne…’ She blurted softly.

‘How?’ Bruce whispered.

‘I kinda always did? I mean, why else would Alfie like me so much? And everybody was always talking about you behind mom’s back, how much I was like you. Then mom invited you for breakfast and just confirmed it to me.’

‘Helena…’

‘I don’t know why you left us. Why you didn’t want me back then. But now you’re back and I thought… I thought…’

Bruce fell in on knee.

‘Come here’ she hugged him, crying hard. ‘I’m sorry princess. I didn’t know. I would have never left if I did.’

Selina watched the scene before her weeping in silence, a hand over her mouth holding a sob. Bruce’s words cutting deep.

——————————————————————————

I think this is a good place to end this chapter and that means my math is wrong and that the new guy will only come next.

The Baddy play is actually real, it’s from the Japanese all female Musical Theatre troupe Takarazuka.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. See you soon. Sunday?

#batcat #baby batcat #gotham #selina kyle #bruce wayne #catwoman #batman #my fic #Four Names for Love

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years

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Interview Analysis

alright i’ve been sitting on this for FAR too long. let’s get s t a r t e d

Danny Homan: Yeah, so uh. The Calypso Twins have managed to create a cult called the Children of the Vault and in doing so they’ve kind of done something that people thought was impossible on Pandora. They unified the Bandit clans, y’know, You saw in Borderlands 2 the bandit clans were just a disparate group of maniacs who were mostly just killing each other if they weren’t being killed by you or by Hyperion. But the Calypso Twins have done the impossible and they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault and they’ve kind of organized them and made them kind of like follow their every beck and call. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon that we’ve never really seen in the Borderlands universe and, uh, as you maybe saw with the video there’s a lot of new fun to be had with a cult of bandits. They don’t always kind of obey, right?

Tell us something we don’t know, right? Mostly just wanna talk about “they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault”. Despite the fact we know there’s more than 1 Vault in bl3, he says ‘The’ Vault. I have talked about this before, but I’ll go over it quickly here. I think the Twins have knowledge about a Vault they really want- something called the “Great Vault”. I think it’s the red Vault we see in their stained glass portraits, the Vault we see on their black and white mural. I think they’ve basically formed a religion, not just around themselves, but this Vault as well. Probably by promising these bandits that the Vault will bring them back towards a more stable existence with a supply of food/money/guns. I imagine Tyreen has some bullshit excuse for not bringing them directly to the big boy, probably like ‘we need to harness the power of the other Vaults first before we can face that one’.

I personally thought that maybe the cult was formed after the twins had already opened the red Vault, but that wouldn’t make sense of them leading the cultists to it. Unless the Great Vault is not the red Vault we see in their art. Also possible...

Moving on

Danny Homan: I mean, Handsome Jack is amazing, y’know, what can you say? And I think the answer is that you don’t try to mimic something that got past success, you try to create something different and new and just as a writer, the Calypso Twins are a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, you have this sibling dynamic, which I don’t know if you have any brothers or sisters but like for those of us that do, you understand that kind of crazy close relationship that’s like, quasi-competitive, quasi-cooperative and, throughout the course of the game they just, their relationship and how it kind of changes and warps is I think just really exciting and really entertaining.

So, one of the main reasons I think Ty and Troy are gonna end up trying to kill each other. Besides the fact they’re also villains.

Idk, even in some of the trailer shots Troy doesn’t seem happy around Tyreen. (He might just have resting bitch anxiety face tho lmao.) Despite that, you can see that when they shake forearms when Lily lost her powers, Troy pulls away from her grip pretty roughly. And I know we all want them to have a strong sibling dynamic, especially with how the Hammerlock sibs are, but bottom line is that these guys are the villains. They’re competing against Handsome Jack in the eyes of the players- the guy who killed Bloodwing and Roland and made Tiny Tina cry. They’re gonna have to do some pretty despicable things, and betraying someone who trusted you like a sibling does would definitely do it for me. No forgiveness there.

I do think it’s interesting that he mentions competitiveness and being cooperative. From what we know rn I can see the whole cooperative thing being that Troy is the brains behind the whole operation while Tyreen is the muscle. Tyreen keeps Troy alive and Troy helps her run the cult. I have no idea what the competitiveness is but I’m really hoping it’s going to relate to being streamers with views and shit. “Hey, Ty, 13 bandits sacrificed themselves for me in the past hour alone.” [Ty looks up, covered in blood] “Oh, that’s cute. I’m at 48, nerd, get on my level.” “You killing them doesn’t count.” “... Nobody will know the difference, shut up.”

Danny Homan: Yeah, I mean. Again, you know it kind of all goes back to the fact that they don’t quite look like bandits, there’s something kind of strange going on there. I don’t want to spoil too much of it but no, when you head to Pandora there’s...the greatest underused resources are the bandits themselves, right? They’re an army that were prisoners that were left by the corporations, they’ve kind of become the worst versions of themselves, and the Calypso Twins are smart, they’re savvy, right? They saw this opportunity to maybe galvanize the bandits into a cult and create an army of their own, and the Livescreams, and Let’s Flays, and these kinds of things; they’re a way of amping up their followers and kind of creating this cult machine that kind of attracts more and more followers. It increases their strength.

holy shit okay there’s a lot here and y’all know what I’m about to say: “Holy fuck I hope this is hinting they’re related to Atlas somehow”

okay now that we’ve gotten that out of the way:

“They don’t quite look like bandits” With their coats and Troy’s super high-tech implants, yeah, they certainly look like corporate assholes sent to ‘masquerade’ as bandit leaders. I could see them ending up being Maliwan and/or getting ganked by Maliwan halfway through then Katagawa ends up being the big ol baddie, especially with his VA’s tweet. (But I’m still not letting the Atlas thing die. Not yet :3c)

They could also simply be from a richer family name, I guess? We know Typhon got a shitload of money from Atlas to give them the Vault key/Vault location, so it's possible they’re doing all this to continue/rekindle the family tradition of Vault hunting and then decided to be super efficient about it.

Related to that is the line “When you head to Pandora” which makes me think the Calypsos are off-worlders who came to Pandora specifically because they knew they’d be able to start their cult there. A planet where there have been 2 Vaults already opened? You’re saying there’s a Vault Key already on world? All the people there are crazed after their corporations left them to die? AND they were worshipping the Firehawk/Sirens for a while? This sounds like the perfect place!

Danny Homan: Sure. I mean, part of it is in the name, the Children of the Vault right? There’s this belief that the Vaults are inherently theirs. They own the Vaults, maybe that it’s their birthright for example. A lot of it really goes back to the fact that the bandits were mistreated, they were left by Dahl Corporation, and they’ve kind of been left ot their own devices on Pandora just to survive the best they can and so the Calypso Twins come along and they recognize that thing: people need a purpose, even if it’s a terrible, maniacal, murder-soaked purpose, people need something to believe in and they need people to believe in them and that’s kind of what the Calypsos have provided. They’ve kind of gone “oh bandits, everyone calls you animals, everyone calls you trash... but we see there’s something, there’s something in you, there’s something we can elevate your murder to. Murder in our name.”

hoooo this is a doozy

So the idea that the cultists are the true owners of the Vaults. I mean, it makes sense. The owner of Dahl didn’t come down and excavate and find all this shit by himself, the workers did. They’re the real owners of these Vaults. They were the ones who put in the work, not whatever big man stepped over them and took the rewards.

What I don’t understand is ‘it’s their birthright’ in reference to the bandits. I guess we could go metaphorical and say ‘birthright’ as in their new life as a bandit, but... that feels weird. I think this stuff is actually a reference to the twins just as much as its a reference to the Pandoran bandits. (coughAtlascough) I mean, if the twins have some sort of connections to the Vaults like everyone and their mother is theorizing (be it corporation, their ancestor being Typhon, them being Vault monsters/aliens/demons/whatever), then it makes sense that Vaults would be their ‘birthright’. Like, logically. “My dad/grandfather/whatever found the first Vault ever so, technically, they’re mine by blood!” “I’ve been looking for these Vaults for longer than you’ve been alive, human, they’re mine!” “I was created to find/open/help fight the monster inside these Vaults, so they’re mine!” etc etc.

The whole “people need a purpose, people need something to believe in, they need people to believe in them” uh, yeah, I think that’s about the twins just as much as it is about the bandits. I’m wondering if they’re telling the bandits they’re going to help save the universe by following the cult. By telling them, yeah, murder in our name, we’re gods, this is what the universe needs. This is going to bring justice to you for what the corporations did. etc

Danny Homan: Pandora is one of a kind. It’s this place where insanity seems to be kind of the de facto personality trait that someone needs to survive. Whether you’re a hero or a villain. When you take that aspect of Pandora, how do you bring it to the other planets in the borderlands, right? I think for me that comes down to the fact that the borderlands have kind of been this staging ground for different corporations, it’s like the wild west. It’s a gold rush kind of area. Every place you go has its kind of own different brand of insanity. Madness and insanity and this fact that this is kind of a dark galaxy, right? It’s a place where the governments have fallen, and corporations have kind of taken their place. They’re basically arms dealers with some new-yous and some other technology kind of thrown in so wherever you go in the Borderlands universe there’s that kind of unifying factor of: humanity hasn’t done so great, and there’s only a few people that are what you would call [decent].

Not really much I have to say here, although I do think it’s interesting he mentions New-Us considering they’re not canon and it’s been stated several times that they aren’t by both word of god and by some 'non-canon' posters in TPS. I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. God, I hope they don’t decide to make them canon this game. That would destroy literally all tension story-wise.

Danny Homan: Promethea is rad. It’s the home of Atlas Corporation, it was the site of some of the first Eridian discoveries, so Atlas Corporation discovered Eridian ruins and that was kind of what sparked the borderlands kind of wild west trip to Pandora. There’s just some fun stuff, we’ve never experienced this kind of city in the Borderlands franchise, we had an opportunity in Borderlands 2 but the city is rad, there’s so much fun humour with service bots that you might have seen from the videos. Playing in the city gives you that other side: you have Pandora, you have the wild west, and then you have “what’s insane about a city?” Pretty much everything.

Ah Promethea. Mostly stuff here we already know, tho I have a few questions.

First, lemme copy and paste something I posted in the dev questions and answers for the bl discord server: is that Eridium growing out of the ground on Promethea and if so does that confirm the Vault there was already opened? And if that is true then does that mean that Gortys was wrong when she said she was created as Atlas's last ditch attempt to open a Vault, or was the Vault on Promethea not opened by Atlas (she references Hyperion opening the 1st Pandoran Vault so we know she was in production still after "those Hyperion guys" open a Vault so it's not like her info is out of date regarding Promethea)? If that's so, did Typhon open it even though he said he sold the key/location to Atlas? Also why is nobody mining Promethea's purple rocks when Pandora was clearly very lucrative for Hyperion? Was Atlas keeping the Eridium secret on Promethea so they could do tests and shit like Hyperion did on Pandora a few years later? Tell me your secrets!!! And if the Vault did open on Promethea, why is there no Eridium scar??)

yeah, lots of questions for Promethea. And one more: are the swamp lands we see in the trailers apart of that planet? I was under the assumption they are because of the way Promethea is described in BL1, plus the outskirts of the city definitely have that swampy feel, but we don’t actually see any of that. Tho Typhon does say: “... Quazmarian Quarry and I fell through some brittle rock” so maybe the other bits of Promethea are more rocky than I originally believed. I do think we’re going to visit that area. I mean, that’s where the Vault supposedly is, according to ya boy Typhon, so...

u can see from orbit a significant portion of it definitely does have city lights around. though we can’t actually see which parts are land and which are water, so who’s to say for sure. And, to be fair, the lights seem to be changing/wavering so I would even so far to say that it’s some sort of shield (to keep the rocks in orbit from smashing into cities constantly and/or prevent Maliwan attacks)... but that’s just a guess.

Danny Homan: The siege moustache, yeah. Funny side story: part of the reason he has a moustache is because of me. I was going through a very strange social experiment and I was just curious how my co-workers would react if I grew a moustache, and it was a very fascinating week of people - when you grow a moustache people just come up to you and insult you, which is kind of a fascinating thing. When we were thinking about Promethea and Rhys, he’s besieged by Maliwan Corporation and he’s kind of been pushed back into one little area. We thought: “okay, well what is he gonna do to kind of rally his troops and make them believe him?” And it’s a siege moustache.

well at least he’s not the Calypso twins, rallying people and making them believe in their leader because of murder so he’s got that going for him. Excited to see just how many more people insult Rhys over the course of the game. I am fucking ecstatic to see what Fiona is going to say.

Danny Homan: Yeah, Handsome Jack is dead.

god bless Danny Homan

seriously, I hope they don’t bring back AI Jack as a way to subvert this. I really really hope they don’t. Let the character RIP. Bringing him back is only going to beat a dead gift horse in the mouth. or whatever

Danny Homan: I don’t want to spoil anything at this moment, you might learn a little more at E3. Man, Tales is such an amazing game, I don’t know, I just love it. Telltale did such an incredible job and all of those characters are just fascinating. Whether its Rhys or Vaughan or Fiona, and yeah, who knows.

I’m hoping it’s Vaughn. I love Vaughn. But confirmation that Fiona is okay and alive and everything would be great, too. Only a few more days, y’all. We can do it

Danny Homan: You know, you’ve gotta write for the person who’s never played the game before and doesn’t know what Pandora is, doesn’t know what a Claptrap is, right? We write for - we had to kind of straddle that line between people who have played every game in the franchise and people who are just experiencing it for the first time. What you quickly learn is that insanity is kind of the rule of law. Claptrap at the beginning of the first missions says, you blow something up and he goes, “Relax, on Pandora it’s really super weird if something's not exploding!” And that’s how we onboard players. Because when you hear that line and you go “okay, that’s a weird thing. Explosions are just par for the course on Pandora.”

this does make me a little worried that the storyline won’t be as in-depth as we’re all hoping it is. I mean i know I get a little crazy with the theories bc i live my life in the wiki, but people new to the series would be like “whu?? huh????”

and i mean, not that i’m saying you shouldn’t play the game if you don’t have at least a little bit of lore knowledge, but I’m really hoping BL3 will fill in the huge gaps we need and if they have to cut things because they won’t make sense to newcomers of the series, that’ll make me sad. i’m talking stuff like revisiting things from TPS, the Destroyer from BL1, etc, etc. I hope they at least have some cutscenes explaining previous events like the beginning of bl2. Although it’d be a lot more difficult cuz the story in bl1 is pretty fuckin simple lol and now they have to summarize 4 games for someone who’s never played them before. ouch.

Danny Homan: You work on - we have quite a few writers and we kind of work on all of the missions together. We kind of have missions that we start with, and characters that we shepherd, but it’s a pretty highly collaborative environment. We have a writers room, we punch up stuff, we play our missions. I’ve always loved Ellie, I just think Ellie is one of the most amazing characters and it’s been such a pleasure to be able to write for her. I’m a southerner at heart, so I’ve been able to sneak in a few: “squish squish Jellyfish” and “in a while crocodile” kind of stuff...

I’m happy Ellie is apparently having a bigger impact in this game than the previous one. Most of her side quests are great and tbh unlike most npcs I don’t get quite as annoyed when I’m going my 50th playthrough and have to do the Ellie stuff. I’m glad she was the one to inherit the Catch-A-Ride stations and not Janey. It seems right

>Would you say that there’s a favourite character [of yours] of the new ones that you have? Danny Homan: Well, we haven’t met all of them yet so it’s kind of hard to weigh in on that. >That’s fair. Danny Homan: I’m excited about the new characters. Borderlands is awesome because there’s so many characters from this franchise and they’re all really rad and fun to work with. As a writer, being able to create new characters is good.

Confirmed we’re going to be seeing more characters than the twins, Lorelei, and Nope girl. And you can bet your ass I’m trusting NONE of them until the game is over lmao

>Are we going to see the final unknown Siren in this story? Danny Homan: *sighs* You’re gonna have to wait and find out, man. >Are new Sirens created when old ones die? Danny Homan: These are all great questions. You might find out some of that in this game. Who knows? >Can existing people become Sirens? Danny Homan: Um, that’s an interesting question. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that someone can become a Siren. It’s not a de facto X-Men kind of thing. There’s some different conditions that kind of arise. Yeah, Sirens are unique and I feel like we like to keep it a little amorphous. What we like the most is when fans kind of create their own myths and stories about how this kind of stuff happens. As a writer we try not to definitively say one thing because there’s a lot possible.

Okaaay so there’s a lot here.

To start, when Danny is like “iunno man, wait and see” I wanna say that’s almost a guaranteed ‘yes’. I mean, like, if it were the case that it wasn’t going to happen, he could’ve just been like “no, sorry, that doesn’t happen”.

(proof, the next interaction is: >Are we going to see Scooper in this story? Danny Homan: I don’t think so.

Additionally:

>How many tea parties with Tina do we get in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: *laughs* You’re going to have to wait and see. >There’s a lot of wait and sees going on. Danny Homan: We don’t want to spoil anything!)

So theorizing for the 1st 2 questions?

Final Unknown Siren: we know Steele, Amara, Tyreen, Lilith, Maya, and Angel. Steele died 12 years ago, meaning the ‘final unknown siren’ has to be at most 12. Angel’s dead, too, but the other Siren would be 7, so I don’t think we’ll be meeting her. She’s most likely the mystery mask girl we see in the MoM, and we all have our theories regarding her.

are New Sirens created when Old Sirens die? Well... we kinda already knew that in general, but I get what the interviewer is actually trying to ask. Are Sirens we know going to die in this game? I’m gonna say yeah. I think either Lorelei or Nope girl (Little Blue) are going to get Siren powers one way or another. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maya/Lilith don’t make it through this one. I want to say Lilith will die, since she’s been in almost all the games, but Maya is apparently training some little girl, so she is in the path of d a n g e r. Maybe they’ll both die. Who knows!

As for the “can existing people become Sirens”. I’m gonna say yeah. I think Danny leaves his answer supre vague for a reason. We know Tyreen has the ability to steal Siren powers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she (or Troy) has the power to gift stolen powers. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the red Vault we see the twins at in their art gave them their ‘Siren’ powers. Maybe a corporation finally found a way to create artificial Sirens (Atlas, I wouldn’t be surprised w/ Troy’s red tattoos and Maliwan has an entire area called ‘Archives’ with a Vault symbol on the door and what look like Siren tattoos sprawled across a building. We also gotta consider Hyperion’s eridium testing... not that they could ever do it, but maybe another corporation could have built off that?)

In the comics it's shown Lilith gets her tattoos after an older Siren dies in front of her, but maybe Sirens are chosen when they are born and they get their tattoos later in life when their powers are unlocked (by another Siren dying/losing their powers/whatever). We do see a pic of Angel on Jack’s desk without tattoos, so that is plausible, tho people have also mentioned he could’ve photoshopped her tattoos out so nobody would question him.

Anyway. Yeah, there’s probably a lot of ways a person can become a Siren.

>How much time has passed between BL2 and BL3 narratively? Danny Homan: Roughly the time since BL2 launched, so it’s been about seven years. >So just chronologically accurate to the development time. Danny Homan: Yeah, absolutely.

Shoutout to that one person with the Odyssey theory about how the time between bl2 and bl3 would be 7 years to match development time. right on the mark, my man. People who quote Randy saying it’s about 5 years: claptrap confirms it’s 7 years during his Clapslist board quest activation.

>Is there one Vault Hunter in particular that’s returning that you’re excited for people to see - now that we’re kind of talking about how we can’t talk about a lot of the new ones, is there a returning one you’re particularly excited about? Danny Homan: For Borderlands 2 I played as Maya and we saw her on the ship. She was always my favorite, I love Sirens in general. She’s a great character.

Not much to say here, Maya looks fantastic in bl3 tho. God she looks badass as fuck. Hope she takes over if/when Lilith dies lmao

>Speaking of the ship, it’s interesting that we’re getting this homebase dynamic that’s a spaceship. Are there any pop culture properties that you kind of borrowed from when designing that? I got Firefly-esque vibes when I was watching the presentation. Danny Homan: Yeah, there’s similar kinds of franchises that kind of quasi-sci-fi-west. What I love about Sanctuary [3] is that it is a spaceship but it’s got band-aids on it, you know? It’s a Borderlands spaceship so it’s got broken parts of the ship and it’s kind of got its own charm. It feels very lived-in. So as you walk around you see stairs that have been broken, you see an exhaust pipe that someone has put tin foil over, right? It’s very kitbash put together.

More reasons I’m of the theory that Sanctuary-III has been in operation for longer than BL3. Unfortunately, probably not the case, but I want to believe! We do see those screenshots in the trailer of the ship being infested by rat-like aliens, so I’m sure there will be a quest or two to clean those out. My question is if that happens before we get the ship (we must clean out the ship in order for Ellie to work it and get it in orbit) or it happens while we’re already in-flight and the rats got in through a shuttle ship/fast travel/whatever. Or, alternatively, the infested one we see is a totally different ship and we’re going in for parts/some reason. Like a ship AI or something. that’d be cool. I wonder if Sanc-III has a ship AI... I miss Felicity...

>How much work went into designing the ship’s atmosphere? It feels like a lot of the NPCs had things to say. Is there a lot of writing that goes into that as well? Danny Homan: Yeah, we’ve got a lot of NPCs on board. Our goal as writers is to make it feel like a living breathing place, right? So we spend so much time traveling around the ship being like “what would I want to comment on? That exhaust pipe is leading to nowhere. Let’s comment on that.”

I would not be surprised if we end up collecting NPCs from every planet we visit. We already see Promethea Citizens on board during the Sanc-III demo (which let to me questioning the timeline of that demo, I stand by my theory that it happens after we go to Promethea and after we visit the Monastery planet- that’s why Tannis has the dino corpse (Promethea) and Maya is on-board (Monastery). But, then again, maybe the swamp planet isn’t Promethea. Kinda think it is though. We’ll find out and I’ll update things accordingly.)

>Any one specific narrative beat that you can talk about that you’re really excited for fans to experience in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: I really like the moment where we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-hologram. Tyreen says “you’re my most loyal follower you just don’t know it yet” and there’s a lot kind of packed into that line. The Calypso Twins have this kind of strange arrogance where they presume you’re just going to be another one of their followers. There’s some interesting ways that kind of plays out.

asefdrtadfs there’s so much here holy shit. Homan confirming “You’re my most loyal follower, Vault thief, you just don’t know it yet” is super important. I 100% believe the twins know exactly what they’re doing and have an inside man and are letting all this play out. I would also not be surprised if they have a way to see the future ala mystery masked girl’s siren power, but I may be reading into things too much there lol

I also think it's interesting he says “we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-Hologram”. I wonder what that says for my “the room after Shiv is somewhere we’re going to get info on the sun smashers stealing the key from the RC” theory. Might mean the twins are doing a broadcast on TV to all their cultists, or maybe Mouthpiece is broadcasting. Wouldn’t even be surprised if they’re livestreaming their murder of the HBC people (we find all those corpses, after all). Could explain why Ty says “did you come all this way just to see me? didn’t know you were such a super-fan. well, too bad, you missed the show!”

>Is that going to crop up in the narrative - them trying to kind of pull the player over? Danny Homan: That and also just that kind of sense that entertainers always kind of feel like everyone should be watching them. Everyone should be paying attention to them. >That’s an interesting beat. Danny Homan: Part of the fun of the Calypso Twins is that they are entertainers, right? They’re entertaining you and they’re entertaining the bandits. That’s why the cult exists. They’re kind of - they’re doing terrible things in the name of their cult.

I love this so much. It would be super interesting if we end up teaming up with them at some point to beat a badder enemy (Maliwan, Vault Monsters, Seraphs, Eridians) whatever it may be. Would be really cool if the Watcher pushes for us to join up with them (ALL the Vault Hunters we can get). I wonder if they’ll have quests like Jack (when he asks us to kill ourselves) but instead they ask us to do weird shit on camera for their ECHOnet channel. I’m sure Gearbox will find a way to make it all appear morally gray in the end anyway lol

Actually, where IS the Watcher..? I hope she doesn’t die in Commander Lilith... Maybe she went back to the Eridian homeworld. Oh that’d be interesting. she comes back later on in the game to lead us there/deliver news or smth...

#borderlands #bl3 #borderlands 3 #danny homan #interview analysis

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teveywonder-blog · 6 years

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Borderlands 3

So I figured I’d talk about the game play trailer for Borderlands 3 and talk about what I liked, what I didn’t, and what it got me thinking about. right off the bat it looks like they’ll be diving more into the Siren lore quite a bit more. This trailer revealed four sirens will be in the game. additionally I think the fact that they introduced a new child character with Maya makes it seem like she’ll be very plot relevant. If you missed it (like i did on the first watch through) the first shot of our new baddies, the Calypso shows that the white haired female (Tyreen) has siren markings on her arm but covers the markings that would be visible on the chest and neck. wait... white haired siren as the bad guy... let’s hope they get Commandant Steele right this time. It also looks like they’ll be giving Lilith a beatdown for a vault key, and I’m guessing this will be pretty early so they can show the new villains are in fact a threat. I get why they would do that but a part of me isn’t crazy about making past player characters look weak; after all, we have seen first hand what they could do. I don’t have much to say about the villains since its still early and motives are unclear, but I still have one thing I want to talk about. They are dressed like they could be Pandoran Natives. Series entries so far have usually used outsiders affiliated with corporations or military groups as the main antagonist (not to say that native forces are unimportant in the story). having a corporately unaffiliated main antagonist(s) would be a first for the series. That being said, it still looks like a hot topic puked on them

On to the player characters

The siren- I guess I’ll call her ability phase fists for now. I’m really interested in how she got involved with the story because like I said, I think this is the game where they start answering questions about sirens. There was one brief flash 1:05 in the version on the borderlands youtube channel that looked like she was doing something like a titan smash from destiny, but I have no idea if that is the main purpose of her ability. Also proving that not all sirens are pale with anime hair colors.

Timothy?- Is this dude Timothy AKA Jacks doppelganger. I thought the body double we killed in B2 was timothy but as far as I know that was never confirmed. it looks like he has a similar ability and he kind of has the look too. It is looking like the time skip was a long time. who knows? y’know...besides gearbox and 2k

The Beastmaster- I was wondering when we would see a player character with a pet skag. the various other critters that appear behind them in their flash introductions makes me think that the ability will be a bit more than send out skag.

Girl with mech- betting money that this is the next “soldier” class. I’m gonna guess the name will be either the mercenary, or combat mechanic. she seems to be the owner of the big mech (it also looks like other players can ride on top). She is also the only character I recall riding in the new “circle bike” so I wonder if that is actually part of her skill rather than a new vehicle. That might be a stretch though. a very small part of me wonders if this is fiona from Tales from the Borderlands I don’t really think this is the case but Rhys made a clear appearance but Fiona did not so I’m curious to where she is and am connecting dots that probably aren’t there.

Worlds plural

looks like we won’t just be on Pandora. Early teasers and easter eggs pointed to Promethea as a point of interest for B3 and I’m hyped at the idea of travelling between planets. At the same time I hope they don’t stretch themselves too thin. The story so far has been more a story of Pandora than a story of the characters. I really hope that wherever they send us can develop the same level of depth and I would hate to be sent to five new planets just for most to fall flat.

other things I like

Rhys and what appears to be the rebirth of Atlas. God I hope they aren’t evil but it would still be so cool if they were. also the fact that he’s with Zer0 who he totally respects and definitely doesn’t have a mancrush on.

all the mustaches

the music in the trailer + Brick’s sax solo

ITS NOT A BATTLE ROYALE!!!

Things I didn’t like (can’t have many complaints when all we have is a trailer)

I was really hoping this one would have more than 4 vault hunters on release. I’ve always thought that Borderlands made most of their DLC worth the cost, new characters included. But I thought that since this one has been so long in the making and it is the first one made for the current gen of consoles they would give us one or two extra characters without an extra transaction.

#borderlands #video games #mayhem #borderlands3 #b3

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saintheartwing · 7 years

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Fallout is the Bomb

I can't believe I've only brushed over this series before. There was a whole, beautiful, irradiated world to explore within its boundaries that I never knew of! Lemme explain. Fallout is, well, post-apocalyptic. That alone had me worried. I'm not a big fan of the post-apocalyptic setting because of how it essentially gets so misanthropic, and assumes everyone turns into the kinda scumbags you'd see in "Violence Jack". The good news is that Fallout actually has a sort of "out". You see, in all of the series...well, most of it, anyway...you play as a Vault Dweller, someone who was sealed away along with others in big, social experiments set up by the government before a great war between China and the USA over resources that ended in nuclear fire. The Vaults have everything you'd need to survive for decades, even centuries! But not for all of them. You need to leave your Vault eventually, either to get a much needed Water Chip that will ensure your people can survive, or to find the "Garden of Eden Creation Kit", or you're forced to leave because the head of your Vault is a big fat jerk, or you leave because your SON has left the vault long before you while you were essentially frozen in suspended animation, and you've gotta track them down. In New Vegas, it's different, but I'll get to that later. Fallout 1 and 2 introduced the factions that basically dominate the universe. The Brotherhood of Steel, who sealed themselves away and hoard technology, hoping to someday come back up and revive the best of mankind in better days. The Super Mutants, mutated humans infected by a virus made by a lunatic who thought that as long as there were differences of ANY kind in humans, we'd keep tearing each other apart. Hence, why not make a race where everyone looks and sounds basically the same, AND is super strong, AND can easily withstand the radiation-filled wastes that fill America? There's the Enclave, the remnants of the previous government, heads of corporations, the rich and powerful, who helped MAKE the Vaults, and who basically think any life that's out on the Earth at the moment isn't really human because their DNA isn't like the "old world" humans anymore. Even if it just means people just have an extra toe or the like, they think you're a subhuman mutant as bad as the two-headed, skinless cows that now walk around. There's Ghouls, people who are heavily bombed to s--t, their skin burned off, looking like they've been flayed alive and yet linger on, some who are very intelligent and still retain their personality, others who are feral and twisted and evil. And then there's the NCR, the New California Republic, founded by war heroes and remnants of the army who are trying to sort of rebuild America or at least, what it stood for, out primarily on the West Coast. Their leadership's too concerned with bureaucracy and the amount of red tape and incompetence can be a real issue, but you can clearly tell most of them, the soldiers included, are just trying to stick together and do as much good with as many people as possible. In the first two games, it's a sort of isometric perspective. In the third, it switched to a sort of first person shooter mechanic, and the series has kept it like that, with RPG elements throughout. You have "perks", abilities like being able to carry a ton more, being able to avoid fighting with wild animals because they all like you, having a random, mysterious, gun-toting stranger randomly pop up to help...and you can choose how you want your character to look and act, like in most open world games. Now, which one is the best? I'm not sure for everyone, but for me? New Vegas is the best blend of old school and new. You play a courier who's lived out in the Wasteland. It was your job to deliver a "Platinum Chip" to Las Vegas or, as it's now called, New Vegas. But you got caught by some fancy dressed mobsters, shot and left for dead. It didn't stick. Now you wanna find that Chip, find out WHY it's so important, who the hell killed you, and maybe...or rather, most LIKELY...get revenge. There's a problem, though. For one, you don't know where the mobsters went. And you've got to contend with raiders, the NCR who aren't sure if they can trust you, wild mutated animals, and everything in between. AND...a new, Roman-themed faction that's raping and pillaging every town they find, selling the women into slavery and following a mad lunatic named Caesar. And I do mean Roman-themed, they wear Roman armor, have centurions, the whole shebang. The Legion's boss, Caesar, actually gives a damning condemnation of Democracy in the game. After all, it was Democracy and electing the idiots that were in the govt that cared more about the Red Scare than people having fresh water to drink that led to the war. Might makes right. The good news is you can play someone who's both good and bad, someone who's a blend. There's not merely morality, but "reputation". You can have a good reputation with the Brotherood, but be HATED by the NCR. Or idolized by the NCR and despised by the Legion. If you're smart enough, or charming enough, or have the right perks, you can talk your way out of almost anything, or, if you've the skill, blow the beejbus outta anyone you want with a ROCKET LAUNCHER! HAHAHAHA! KIBBLES AND BITS! It's fun watching baddies explode. And there's a lot of funny moments too. Take, for example, a subquest at the Atomic Wrangler, as you try to earn money to gain access to New Vegas, for you need 2000 bottle caps to get in, and that means you need to either sell a lot of highly valuable stuff...which you probably don't have...or you've gotta get dirty and do things like be a pimp for a whorehouse. Which I had to. The boss says we need a ghoul cowboy, a charming older lover, and a sexbot. Then when you tell him you've got the sexbot, he's all giddy like a schoolkid, making it abundantly clear the sexbot was for HIM. Which he tries in vain to pretend isn't true. And of course, the guy who shot you has a talking droid. Because of course he does. His name is Yes Man. When you tell Yes Man you're the Courier his boss shot? Yes Man: Hahaha! I know that's not true, because you still have a head!

Courier: I'm serious.

Yes Man: Hahaha! That's... not funny... you getting shot in the head. I really shouldn't have taken so much pride in how I set that up, huh? ... I feel really bad right now. Yes Man has a lot of great lines. Oh, and did I mention Elvis Impersonators run a good chunk of the Strip? Because of COURSE they do. Of COURSE they do. Guess what they have to say about their HQ? "Near as I can tell, it was some sort of religious institution. Oh, I know it says "school" out front, but everything in here seems to be related to the worship of some guy from back in the day. People used to come here to learn about him, to dress like him, to move like him. To BE him. If that's not worship, I don't know what is." Hey, if you're gonna imitate ANYBODY, why NOT the King? And yes, in Camp Searchlight...deep breaths... THERE IS...a set of HOLY HAND GRENADES in the Church. The sign just reads, "Pull pin and count to 3." And the grenades will make a bigger boom when you count to 3. Don't believe me? Look for yourself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tZUFKe-uYw&feature=youtu.be It's too beautiful for words. ^_^

hbomberguy on Youtube did a really good analysis of the themes of Fallout. And as he said, “FO1's villain is 'the future', represented by mutations, evolution, technology and so on. The Master embodies this by being a mutated machine-man. The old world is gone, and the future is coming to get you.

FO2's villain is 'the past', in the sense that the largest threat to the world is the stuff that destroyed it the first time. People are trying to move on, inventing new money, but the real threat is that we haven't changed enough, and are still doomed to destroy each other. Hence the theme of newly-invented drugs, money troubles and so on. You're chasing an artifact of the past to survive, but that past killed the world. How much of the past is it good to dig up? The Enclave dream of a return to the prelapsarian america that already had its chance and got blown up.

Horrigan (the main villain) embodies this. He 'is' the ideology of the past, personified. He wants to kill you because mutants must die, and you must be a mutant because he's been ordered to kill you. Symbolically we're seeing that humans have a thirst for purity, and this thirst is itself our greatest flaw. You also HAVE to kill him with violence. It's not possible to talk him down, and the real challenge is how you deal with that fact. It's a nice final twist. Your first proper conversation allows you to claim you believe peace is always possible - and the last one is a counterpoint, saying - but the other person has to be willing to try this too.

The game criticisms mankind's inner violence, but then points out that to escape this, violence becomes necessary - it just has to be used differently from before. Being able to recruit some Enclave soldiers AGAINST the main Enclave soldier is a fun moment. The military industrial complex is bad but can be wielded against itself.All FO's main villains and central characters are rendered 'faceless' by masks or armor or mutations, because they represent something prevalent in humanity itself, more so than any one person. it makes them larger than life, like you're battling a concept. The Master is a monstrous creature-machine, Horrigan is always behind a mask, as is Lanius, and the burned man and Ulysses are similar too. This is one reason why making the villain of 3 just 'some guy in a jacket' really annoys me. Make me contend with the faceless monster that is the darkness in man. Don't make me shoot some southern-talkin' dude.Even then, I can see that being a really cool twist on the formula. But it's so badly done. Poor Autumn.”

Indeed. The main “villains” of New Vegas are sort of “faceless” and represent greater concepts. Mr. House is, in many ways, a refusal to let go of the past. He wants all of Las Vegas to be like his snowglobes: perfectly pristine and preserved under a glass bubble, unchanging. Caesar’s idea,, the LEGION’S idea of the “future” is a take from the past as well, a sick, dark past, the ROMAN heritage, embracing the past’s more cruel elements in the name of a greater organization and unity. Sort of similar to the Master’s Unity, but this time not coming from looking to the future, but to the past. The NCR is the present, and they are, in a way, a problem as well, something to contend with. Because people are suffering here and NOW, and they’re stretched so thin and so tied up with red tape that people slip through the cracks easily, or they just use outright violence instead of better, smarter solutions. They can’t see ahead properly, and aren’t learning from the mistakes of the past. Cassandra Moore, in particular, is a good example: every solution she has involves killing someone or a group of people. She refuses to open up to the idea of diplomacy. She’s as closeminded and narrowminded as the idiots who helped cause the bombs to fall to begin with. By only seeing other factions as enemies and never considering they could be allies or friends, or dealt with more kindly, you close yourself off to better, more moral, or smarter solutions.

The Brotherhood of Steel are similar: they want to preserve the elements of the Past, but they can’t see that their refusal to really help those in the present is dooming them. They’re well-meaning, they CARE, but...they’re wrong. They’ll just die out if they just stay inside their bunkers. They need to take a more active role in the world outside.

So what I'm saying is...play Fallout: New Vegas when you get the chance. Check out the Fallout series. There's a lot to love in there that might surprise you. I know it surprised ME.

#Fallout #Fallout 3 #Fallout 1 #Fallout 2 #fallout: new vegas #fallout 4 #philosophy

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2000admegablog · 7 years

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2000AD Prog 15: 4-Jun-1977

alright where the fuck were we

Invasion! #15

oh right this shit

So Savage and the rest of the Brits are getting ready to attack a nuclear research station. A couple of men try to bluff their way in in Volgon, but a guard calls out a command in English and they respond, blowing their cover. Once again, the only competent man is Savage, who steals a truck full of acid and plows it into the research station, somehow blowing it up.

I promised before my big hiatus I was gonna try and be more insightful. So here’s my insight--boring as it is to read, I’ve come around on the basic conceit. The idea of this working-class man’s-man great-man-of-historying himself all over the place with superior intelligence, brawn, and plain dumb luck, consistently besting people who’ve worked their whole lives to become competent military men...you could, hypothetically, make it work.

Waaaay back when I said “social commentary has never been a major selling point for me when it comes to stories”. I phrased it dumbly, but I think what I meant was social commentary can’t be all there is. You need something to sustain it. It can be narratively substantial: interesting characters, engaging storylines. It can be fun to read: witty prose, interesting visual style choices, exciting action scenes. But there’s gotta be something to latch onto besides a deep meaning and a nifty premise. And it just...doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen for Invasion! any time soon.

So for right now, I think, this and my piece on Prog 14 are my last words on Invasion! outside of plot summaries. I don’t want to keep repeating myself.

Flesh #15

The beasts’ war on mankind begins in earnest. Dinosaurs are driving cars! Spiders are knocking on doors! It’s a madhouse!

Reagan’s managed to secure control from...the Controller...but it’s too late. Corporate isn’t sending reinforcements --it’d be unprofitable. And Joe, the only one who realized what a mad, stupid world he lived in, gets eaten by spiders.

To its credit, the comic frames this as a tragedy. Joe didn’t meet the toxic masculine archetype seemingly required to survive in this world, and Carver claims it was his lack of masculinity that dooms him. But Reagan insists that Joe was worth ten Carvers--not that Joe was somehow tougher or more masculine, but had more worth as a person for not being the testosterone nightmare Carver and Reagan are.

It’s time now for the final showdown between Reagan and Ol’ One Eye. After that, it’s over year of issues before we get any more Flesh. I’m gonna miss it.

Harlem Heroes #15

In this brief installment, Zach, the Harlem team babyface, must best one of the Scots in a sudden-death round. Nothing else really happens.

Look, they’re not all gonna be dissertations.

Dan Dare #15

And I mean, that brevity leave more time for Dan Dare, which I know is the thing you all really care about. Dare, O’Malley, and Rok are the only survivors of a crash landing on Mekron’s hidden planet, and surrender in order to gather information.

The big thing to dig into is the sudden infodump about Rok’s culture. His species honors their dead by eating their corpses, and he’s never heard of surrender. While it’s nice that the strip is becoming more willing to extend alienness onto “good” characters, it’s unfortunate that this also makes him a generic Proud Warrior Race Guy. Also, he’s got a laser sword, because clearly someone was hype for Star Wars.

The other big thing is that Mekron doesn’t recognize Dare, because he’s no longer drawn the way he was the last time Mekron was relevant. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the strip is playing tug-of-war with itself, between the bizarro art piece it wants to be and the generic space opera mold old-time Dare fans expect. After all, Mekron and his generic world domination plans are a far cry from the intensely weird baddies we got last story arc. Making that tension an active part of the text is an interesting choice--or at least, it would be if either version of Dare was exciting to me.

M.A.C.H.1 #15

In “Bepal”, John Probe investigates the mysterious maulings of people who turned down the chance to get in on the opium trade. Though the victims claim their assailants were invisible, they were merely yetis, their white skin rendered invisible by the snowfall. Probe sics them on their master.

We’ve forsaken the Probe/brain computer buddy-cop act this week, which saps Probe of anything resembling human interest.

Obviously villainizing the “Bepal”ians for dealing opium, and South Asian people in general, is fucking awful, especially for a British comic.

Yeah.

Judge Dredd #14

Dredd combats Call-Me-Kenneth’s robot army by installing the “Old Law of Robotics” in his processing plant, creating an equal and opposite army of human-worshipers.

The comic continues to rely on Call-Me-Kenneth being a homicidal dictator to justify why robots might want humans to stay in power. Back in 2015, I rolled my eyes at the comic’s hamfisted attempt to weasel out of the implications of its pro-slavery storyline. But now I think I see what the story’s doing, giving us the first taste of the “better the fascism you know” ethos that’ll stifle any real change in the Dredd universe for generations. The comic at its best is about challenging the idea that a firm hand is needed to keep people in line by showing the logical endpoint of such a line of thought--Kenneth is simply another version of that.

Your mileage may vary as to whether that point is being made successfully. I’m with holding judgement for the moment.

#Judge Dredd #Harlem Heroes #Dan Dare #M.A.C.H.1 #2000AD #Prog 15 #Invasion!#Flesh

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