#like ?????? you cannot introduce such an important piece of worldbuilding so far into the story ??????

[vilevampire]

is it just me or was ch 304 utterly and completely illogical from beginning to end

[itsclydebitches]

Holy cow I recommend not listening to the RWBY commentaries. I did it as I was starting a large-scale fanfic project to see if there was any worldbuilding details they would mention and there's not a lot, but it did make it transparently obvious how little planning for payoff is done: in Volume 1 they say "keep an eye on cardin winchester in the future" as if his only appearances after that aren't getting beaten up by Pyrrha, showing up in a crowd in v3, and then just VANISHING FOREVER

Side comment: whenever I hear people talking nonsense about how no one would do anything ever if given the opportunity (like, for example, in conversations about universal basic income), I think of casual statements like yours. I just started watching large amounts of supplementary material for an idea or two in an equally large project that I will then gift to the world for free! Absolutely awesome, you funky little writer. 

Anyway, back to the actual topic lol. Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) I’m frustrated less with the problems in RWBY and more with how those problems are presented by both the writers and the fandom. Lots of stories drop ideas or characters depending on what the story needs moving forward. Sometimes the reason is fairly obvious to the audience (such as in Glynda’s case), other times not, but if the writers were to simply acknowledge that their focus changed... that’s okay. Audiences, on the whole, are more forgiving than certain corners of the internet might make one assume! But RT, from what I’ve personally observed, works very hard to present their story as this nearly flawless, carefully thought out piece. Rarely do we hear, “Oh yeah, we just forgot that detail, sorry” or “We’re not sure yet if Cardin will stick around, but we’re looking forward to finding out.” Everything has an explanation  — even if it doesn’t make sense. Everything is intentional and neatly planned  — even when it’s not. When problems in the story are acknowledged it’s because the animators did something, or the social media team did something. It’s definitely not because those creators are working off information the writers have provided about the characters and their world. The construction of the story itself is never at fault, only others’ interpretation of it. 

Similarly, many in the fandom push this idealized image of the writers as perfect masters of their craft who are incapable of messing up. If something seems badly written now, it’s only because we’re still waiting for payoff (and that wait is always extended up until RWBY ends. Even then, I suspect that many will begin insisting that RT deliberately saved material for the next book, next comic, an upcoming podcast, etc. The fact that they may have dropped an important plot thread is not a possibility). If something still doesn’t make sense, it’s because you’re too stupid to understand it. The narrative of the genius RT combined with RT’s own confidence makes for a series that’s much harder to enjoy. I was more forgiving of RWBY back in the early Volumes partly because the story and the company were presented as just having a fun, silly time. Which isn’t to say we can’t/shouldn’t still criticize that approach when the story is trying to tackle something like racism, but it’s still a far cry from what we’re dealing with now. Now, RT is no longer a tiny, independent company doing their best with few resources. Now, they make big claims about their planning and the expected quality of their work. Now, we’ve got a fandom pushing the idea that there’s deep, intricate meaning behind every choice. So when on both sides people are encouraging the audience to treat this show seriously... people will treat the show seriously. And the show comes out wanting. The writers and fandom cannot tell us that there are plans for these characters, that there’s meaning behind every detail... and then not weather the pushback when those things turn out to be false. On the flipside, you can’t continue to make those claims and then when someone criticizes the show’s execution, argue that we’re taking it too seriously. RWBY is a well thought out, deeply moving, innovative, progressive, intensely complex show... provided you ignore the endless inconsistencies, offensive content, and unclear messages. RWBY, in reality, is an incredibly flawed show, to the point where it would benefit massively by the writers not taking it too seriously, thus encouraging the fandom to do the same. It’s just wild fantasy kids fighting monsters! But they introduced incredibly sensitive subject matter, constantly talk up their work, and the community has spent years building this narrative of the epic, stunningly crafted story, to the point where people are outright attacked for saying, “Hey, I think they messed up here.” You can’t have all that and push back with, “It’s just a fantasy show, get a life and stop taking it so seriously!” 

I mean, Oscar and Cardin are the examples we’ve been discussing... but post-Volume 8 my mind keeps coming back to Penny. They gave us a character who functioned as a queer/neurodivergent/trans allegory, building off of a long history of that work in science fiction, only to erase her difference and then kill her off for a second time. She had an incredibly close relationship with the main protagonist in a show that is still in desperate need of queer rep. She was murdered the first time and died via an assisted suicide the second time around. Throughout all this, her themes were personal agency, others controlling her, criticism of military personnel, and the general concept of what it means to “really” be human. That’s a lot... and it’s a lot to mess up too. Forgetting about the generic, archetypal bully is fine. Messing up a main character to the extent that it hurts the title character too is a problem. But situations like Penny’s are on another level altogether. RWBY is far past the point of being a tiny indie show doing simple, silly things for the cool visuals. They had a contentious character slit the throat of a minority allegory begging to die so she can, supposedly, control one thing in her life. That’s not “rule of cool” content you just shrug and laugh off. RT wants us to take their content seriously. The fandom, when it suits them, wants us to take the content seriously. The flipside to this desire is that when people take your work seriously... they may come to the conclusion that it was poorly done. 

[galadrieljones]

11 and 14 for the fic writers meme, for TDS of course!

Thanks, beach!! I hope you’re having happy holidays!!

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

You can find my answer here. ^^

11. What do you like best about this fic?

I think I like how big it gets? Over time. It just gets so HUGE. And I don’t mean in word count (though it does get big in word count lol). I mean in the scope and depth of the story and the worldbuilding. Like the first 20 or so chapters are these small portraits, very localized to the Inquisition and Sene and Solas in their most immediate, surface bond. Even the really hard, scary things they go through, they don’t REALLY process, as a couple, until much later. It appears to be, as I often put it in the story, a season of love, and little more. To be honest, I was still writing Solas’s backstory at this point, and it was a tad murky, even to me. So that vague feeling that things are wonderful, but that this wonder cannot last forever, is organic to my own though process. I was like, “Well, the shit is going to hit the fan, at some point. I don’t know when that will be, but I do know that this is only the beginning.”

Because underneath the surface, in those first 20 chapters there is a slow burn happening. Solas is slowly coming apart. It becomes increasingly clear--to both Sene and the reader (though probably mostly Sene)--that he is repressing his past, and some terrible thing that’s happened to him. At first, whatever he’s keeping from her, it just seems like it’s a little dangerous. Like, in the vein of Thom Rainier. But that scope broadens rather quickly, and once we’re in Val Royeaux, it becomes clear that what we’re dealing with (and what Sene is dealing with) is just so much worse, and so much more. I often look back and think of the fancy Val Royeaux party that Sene and Solas go to in chapters 22 and 23 (the last two chapters in the Summer portion of the story) is the catalyst for real awareness on Solas’s part. It’s a rewrite and expansion of Thom Rainier’s personal quest, “Revelations,” and that party in Val Royeaux, and then Solas’s conversation with Thom in the jail, is what I had been writing toward for a long, long time. It’s at this point that the Inquisition goes back to Crestwood, and Abelas makes his first appearance, and Morrigan becomes an important piece to the puzzle, and the story gets very big, very fast. And I’m just really proud of how I got there. It’s imperfect, and it’s probably slow at times. But that I got to that conversation with Thom and then found the confidence to absolutely just wreck over canon and make my end-all choice about who Solas was and where the story was ultimately going (which is FAR FAR FAR from canon and FAR FAR FAR from any reality we understand)--that is what I like best about TDS.

And my favorite part about how I got there, other than the slow burn in the beginning, is the third section, called Winter, which is basically the Emprise du Lion 2.0, and everything that happens there. It’s where the action of the story REALLY starts. Before that, there are plenty of choices and, sure, action, but it’s still MOSTLY within the rules of the DA:I campaign, or else it’s almost purely for characterization (ie: Solas and the bandits in Crestwood). In the Emprise du Lion, that’s when I start my whole majorly canon divergent plot (because like, there is no Trespasser in TDS) and it IS plot, and for all my insecurity about writing plot, I do feel good about how I managed it and put it together, and for how I was able to cue up certain stuff, while also introducing a new main character (you know who) and making her very three-dimensional and very real, while also using her and her characterization as a way to push the story forward. Winter is where we learn the bulk of what we didn’t know during all of Summer and Fall. It’s where we learn all the bad stuff, all the stuff Solas was repressing. Those chapters have names like Assassins and Entropy and it’s probably because that was my state of mind at the time lol. I was making HUGE plot decisions, and that is uncommon for me as a writer. I’m really nervous about doing that, but I’m glad I did, because what it opened up for the Spring portion of TDS is just really weird and bizarre but fitting, as the Solas’s past collides with his present AND his future, both literally and figuratively.

And in Spring is where the story gets TRULY HUGE and truly ranges outside the realms of anything I’ve written before, and anything even resembling canon in terms of plot structure and development. And that is what I like best about TDS: is its hugeness in scope, because I’ve always wanted to write something like this, but I’ve never had the balls to do it before. But I guess I got the balls somehow, in writing this story, and I’m pretty proud of that.

Anyway, sorry that got so long!! Thank you for asking. @thevikingwoman and @noraspancakes, per your interest.

Fanfic Author’s Meme

[an-oger-in-the-wild]

Merfolk Massacre

This week, I’ll be sharing an encounter that can act as a stand-alone side quest or an ongoing mission, depending on how well it is received by your party or how inquisitive they are. The introductory encounter is appropriate for a 5th-level party; however, you can adjust it in either direction to fit your current group’s capabilities.

The initial inspiration for this was brought about by the combination of my campaign’s tempest cleric and pirate warlock, both of whom have close ties to the sea. The quest can be picked up in any point of interest with access to a large waterway; however, if you’re in the process of worldbuilding, feel welcome to use the city from my campaign’s world: the Lake District, a shopping district built on a wide mile-long bridge over top of the region’s largest lake, Loch Blióg, which flows into the Behir River.  (It’s important to note that the river opens into the ocean, but that is for a later point.)

Summary: the bodies of many of the lake’s freshwater merfolk near the Lake District have been found brutally mutilated and murdered by many of the fishermen and barge shipmen who travel the waterways between the Behir River and Loch Blióg. The party will need to do some investigating to discover the source of the massacres - a cloister of merrow. Extended interest in the reason behind these killings will lead into the greater story behind the introductory quest: the merrow are collecting components for their leaders, a coven of powerful and hideous sea hags, who want to transform into beautiful but even deadlier creatures...sirens.

Part I: Rumor Has It

There are a couple of different ways by which you can drop this quest into your party’s laps: if they are the type to immediately enter a town and ask for the hot gossip, that is obviously going to be your easiest and safest bet - allow bartenders, shopkeepers, and guards to be readily able to offer up this information upon request.  If your party isn’t the type to seek out side-quests on their own but perhaps could use a distraction while you scramble to assemble more pieces of your main story’s plot, then you could always leave small nuggets as they enter the POI: little things like:

As you enter [the city on the lake], you see something humanoid being dragged from the lake...squinting to get a closer look, you see that it appears to be of merfolk kind...

Entering the [temple], you hear an acolyte arguing with the high priest over whether or not it is important to provide a proper burial to “our aquatic neighbors.”

[The shady alchemist] looks around, making sure that no one else is watching you two, as they lean in to mention, “I have plenty of potions of Water Breathing downstairs if you’re interested...with all the merfolk turning up dead as of late, I’ve found a way to replicate the philter for a cheaper cost…”

Depending on the party’s ability to get information, any or all of these bits and pieces can be made available to them by way of your NPCs:

While none of the NPCs know WHAT the creatures are, those who do business near the water (fishermen, dockers, sailors) will be able to describe them as “larger, monstrous-looking versions of merfolk” - a decent Intelligence (Nature) check can allow a player to ascertain that the creatures are merrow.

There is a pod of freshwater merfolk who live in a cenote cavern on the far end of the lake; the merfolk are kindly towards land-dwellers and mostly keep to themselves.

Attacks seem to happen in the evening hours, as bodies are always found in the morning hours.

The mysterious creatures have been seen coming in and out of the canal’s lock system to attack their prey, but they always depart back towards the river after making a kill.

Part II: Planning an Attack

(Optional:) I’m a DM who rewards ingenuity, so I like to build in ways for my PCs to get stuff done without simply hacking and slashing their way through an encounter, should they be crafty enough to seek them out. This next bit introduces one of the ways by which they can try to ensnare the monstrosities: may I introduce to you the loch’s LOCK, a method used in canals to keep large water crafts from scraping along the bottom of a waterway by use of gates that empty or fill with water to lower or raise a boat. The basic mechanics of the lock (if you choose to add this as a method of entrapment in your encounter) are displayed visually HERE.

The top of the lock (the bollard) is brick-laid and lined in low decorative shrubs (good for quarter cover).

The lock canal is 50 feet deep and 50 feet wide:

The distance between the two gate locks in the canal is 60 feet.

The locks themselves are about 5 feet thick, 100 feet tall, and 50 feet long.

Running along the top of them would require a Dexterity check (DC 12) to keep from falling into the water.  Trying to stay balanced on them during their rise/fall would require another Dexterity check (DC 18) to keep from falling into the water.

Opening/closing the lock gates requires a Strength check (DC 10). No Strength check is needed to lift the ground (or "sluice") paddle that lets water flood into the space between the two gates.

It takes one person to close the front lock, one to lift the ground paddle to let the water fill up the lock, and two to open the double gate at the back lock.

If the group doesn’t catch onto this as an option for an ambush, don’t push it; but if they do, it should be markedly easier for them to capture and contain the creatures in case they want to question them and may even merit extra XP for creativity.

Part III: Encountering the Merrow

I ran this with a 5th-level party so that my warlock could purchase a spell book with the ritual spell Water Breathing since they opted to launch their attack in the water, but even a 3rd- or 4th-level party could handle a few merrow without risking a TPK. I used six merrow, which is rated a “hard” encounter per Kobold Fight Club.

If your party has put in the effort to utilize the lock, allow them to keep watch for the merrow (PC’s Perception versus the merrow’s Stealth). If your party opts to take the battle underwater like mine did, be prepared to research and run combat underwater (see Chapter 9 of the Player’s Handbook).  The six merrow will swim slowly and silently into the canal (which normally remains open at night) once it’s dark.

For being a Challenge Rating 2 creature, a merrow is a pretty cool monstrosity: it is classified as “large” and gets two attacks per turn (and one of them are ranged). To boot, their ranged attack - the harpoon - is able to pull a creature closer to them if they’re able to (a.) hit them with the attack and (b.) outroll a “huge” or smaller creature in a contested Strength check (a merrow has a whopping +4 Strength modifier...not half bad). Their AC is a mere 13, but they have what 99% of your PCs haven’t got: a swim speed of 40 feet. I’d recommend trying to focus on tethering any PC without a stellar Strength score since this will keep them from being able to escape if they fail their check against the merrow’s harpoon.

Once the encounter ends, the party can either loot the merrow or grill them for intel. It’s important to note that merrow cannot speak common (their canon languages are Aquan and Abyssal), so if your players want to question these creatures, someone is either going to need to know one of these languages or have a spell like Tongues prepared. If they are ready to loot the creatures, they’ll find satchels on each of the merrow containing a combined amount of:

16 freshwater pearls

4 lbs of merfolk scales

3 locks of merfolk hair

Additionally, you can opt to have a merperson act as a liaison for the colony if the party would like to speak with them: should they do so, allow the merfolk to offer a token of their gratitude based on the party’s level:

Candle of the Deep, a common item (levels 1-4)

Helm of Underwater Action, an uncommon item (levels 5-9)

Part IV: More Than Just a Side Quest

If the party chooses to follow this quest to completion, allow them to venture out into the rest of your world along the riverway, picking up various legends and lore from river and coastal dwellers about “a sea hag coven that terrorizes the waters of [one of your world’s oceans].”

Sea hags (CR 2), even in a coven (CR 4), are not all that powerful unless encountered at lower levels or with some additional help such as minions (like merrow, sahuagins, or sharks) or homebrewed lair effects (like undertows, kelp plants that ensnare, or random conjurations of tentacles as indicated in the 4th-level spell Black Tentacles).  Therefore, if you want to beef up this encounter for a higher-leveled party, consider keeping the sea hag’s Horrific Appearance and Death Glare abilities but using the stat block of a bheur hag (CR 7) for its AC, HP, and magic-casting features. Additionally, make time of the essence as the PCs battle the underwater witches and their minions since failure to defeat them swiftly will allow the coven time to complete their transformations into sirens. DnD Beyond’s Homebrew content has some really good ones, but my favorite was the CR 10 Classic Siren created by the user “ProbablyGood,” simply because (a.) they made the creature fey (which works with the sea hag origin in this context) and (b.) they gave the creature lots of appropriate spells for enticing and enchanting.

Depending on the level at which your party completes this quest, consider gifting them a massive treasure stash (perhaps stolen from sea merchants or pirates) as well as one of the following:

Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals, a rare item (levels 10-14)

Conch of Teleportation, a very rare item (levels 15-20, destination is set to a specific destination of your choice)

Hope you’ve enjoyed this read and perhaps find it useful in your own campaign or one-shot setting!  I’m always interested in other people’s homebrewed encounters and willing to help others build encounters if they’re stuck, so feel free to hit me up - you have but to ask.

[buttonpanels]

Road Trip with the Transformers is what happens when you take a guy who grew up with Transformers (well, Robots in Disguise and the Unicron Trilogy, anyway), who was mildly interested in IDW’s Transformers comics — but too scared to dip too far in — and give him a rebooted Transformers comics line. With this, I’ll be quickly reviewing and then commenting on IDW’s new Transformers comic universe that began in March of 2019! The review will be spoiler-free, while commentary will not. With this, I’ll be chronicling my experience as someone who is a lapsed fan of the franchise from childhood, who has only read a few of the previous IDW Transformers comics. Expect me to forget characters’ names, find it hard to tell them apart and have little to no understanding of references to previous continuities! Does that sound like fun? No? Well, you’re coming along anyway! It’s a road trip! Roll out!

This entry is super late because university eats my time and energy. The Transformers toy hunt is going well, however! I now know the good spots and the good sites, so my onslaught of Siege toys is shaping up nicely. It’s also a nice way to get some exercise into my life of comics and video games. The problem now is that I need a place to put these that isn’t the corner of my desk. Seriously, this is the most claustrophobic war zone ever!

This is getting harder with more toys.

Moving on, the last issue of Transformers was a sluggishly paced exposition dump. We learned more about this new version of Cybertron, but it was mostly limited to random jargon and factoids. However, we did meet Chromia, Prowl and Wheeljack, whose characterisation was fine as a reasonable authority figure, jerk cop and talkative scientist, respectively, and we caught a glimpse of Soundwave. The Ascenticon rally in Tarn, held by Megatron, was attacked by some unknown entity. We also know that Chromia’s security forces are spread thin, and that The Rise are the prime suspects in Brainstorm’s murder — Chromia has ordered the arrest of every member as a result, which can only turn out well! On the good end of worldbuilding, we know that The Rise want the same things as the Ascenticons, but are just more violent about it. Meanwhile, Bumblebee and Rubble were just kind of laying about. It doesn’t sound like much has happened, does it? That’s because it hasn’t. Hopefully things pick up and there’s less focus on disconnected world-building. Here is Transformers (2019) #3.

Transformers (2019) #3

Written by Brian Ruckley Art by Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman Colours by Joana Lafuente Letters by Tom B. Long Published by IDW Publishing Cover price:

The balance between narrative and world-building is a delicate one. Very rarely are they evenly balanced, but a skilled writer can intertwine the two in a seamless fashion, exploring the world as part of the narrative. Brian Ruckley has not done that beyond the first issue; instead, the plot seems like an obligation, one that feels like it will soon collapse under the weight of itself.

The issue’s most problematic aspect is the pacing. This is a low comic, filled with exposition, and the exposition feels begrudging that it needs to come from characters at all. This issue once again feels like Ruckley is more interested in world-building than actual characters. While the narrative has more focus this time around, the characters almost all feel like the same person, with only Windblade being given something of a unique voice. Everyone else feels like the same character. In contrast to, say, Brian Michael Bendis, who makes all his characters speak in a casual voice that detracts from the tension, Ruckley has all his characters (aside from Windblade) speak in stilted robotic dialogue that reads a bit awkwardly at times. Even if the characters are literally robots, they shouldn’t be talking this way. When he does try to break from this habit, it’s just awkward. It truly feels like this narrative would be better served as a Wikipedia entry, because it’s certainly not being told through compelling characters. Which is a shame, because there is some potential here, with the slow escalation of the Ascenticon/Rise/Autobot conflict about to burst and the vying for Energon, which is the core of the usual Autobot/Decepticon conflict. It’s well-established already, but Ruckley feels the need to move even more pieces around, and I don’t think it will be worth it.

Ironhide randomly changing the subject back to The Rise without telling anyone.

Angel Hernandez, who takes the helm on art this time, seems to have gained a firmer grasp on visual storytelling. Characters look less stilted, panels flow much more naturally and backgrounds have more depth. While there are some awkward moments here, it’s bearable. Cachet Whitman’s contributions, on the other hand, feel very weak this issue. Without the emphasis on wonderment and smaller character moments, Whitman isn’t given much to work with, and everything feels a little flat. There’s no vibrancy or warmth this time around, which is Whitman’s best strength as an artist.

Three issues in and it feels like this story should’ve had more happen. The story is a slog, no character feels engaging and the world-building is overriding everything else. It’s admirable to want to build up a multi-layered story, but there needs to be something to keep the audience’s interest as you do so. Ruckley hasn’t provided anything to engage the audience since issue 1.

2/5 – Below average

“The World in Your Eyes, Part Three”

Here comes the commentary, where I basically give you a much more detailed look at what I think about the issue while somewhat summarising it. Obviously, spoiler warning. And don’t take anything I say here too seriously, most of it is for my own benefit, though I do like to put focus on some moments here and there.

We open with Megatron giving a speech about the assassination attempts from last issue. It’s apparently a video or livestream, and Soundwave introduces the Ascenticon Guard that will protect future Ascenticons in the future: Elita-1, Skytread, Refraktor and Quake. We then get to have a ton of exposition on Quake, who is basically a bloodthirsty soldier who never took to the peace. It’s really not subtle about establishing him as an important player in this plot, despite the abundance of characters already. This is delivered by Froid, who is a therapist and yet another character to add to the pile. At least he has a discernible personality as someone worried about his patients, even if everyone ignores him because of larger concerns. We also get exposition about the Voin; a race of scavengers, and I think the floating head thing we saw in issue 1 before meeting Windblade.

Regarding the actual plot, where Prowl determines that the members of The Rise that were arrested don’t know anything about Brainstorm’s murder, as if they did, they’d have gone into hiding — which he says some members did, the ones involved enough to get a warning. Orion and Ironhide have some pointless dialogue that feels way too awkward, all to establish that Orion doesn’t like The Rise. That and he’s not too keen on his fellow Autobot senators, either.

We jump to Bumblebee and Rubble as Bumblebee shows off his alternate mode. Rubble doesn’t care, however, because he is distracted by the moon from last issue folding its wings. It seems he’s got a bit of an engineering itch, which is nice for making him less of a blank slate. Bee decides to show him Leviathan, a gigantic Transformer that harvests metal ore that Bee says goes into making new Cybertronians. Essentially, they are as much a part of Cybertron as it is a part of them, and change is the nature of everything, which is what Bee’s mentor told him.

No. That’s a foot.

As an aside, I like that Ruckley seems to be making a conscious effort to include more female Transformers. The important figures in his world have so far been largely female, which is nice given Transformers hasn’t been so great with female characters in the past. Plus, in addition to Leviathan and Termagax, we also have prominent characters like Windblade and Chromia, and even Bee’s mentor was a woman. Kudos for that.

Speaking of Windblade, she comes flying in and is established as being very casual. She annoys Bee a bit — and the timing of her entrance makes me think that maybe she was his mentor? Either way, she tells him that Chromia wants to speak to him. Bee tells Rubble to fiddle with his wrist until he figures out how to call him and drives off… but not before giving us a very… unique looking image.

Windblade and Rubble have the perfect expressions for what they’re seeing, and it’s not even intentional.

Windblade and Rubble go back to his quarters as he fiddles with his wrist. Rubble says he’s concerned that Bumblebee is disappointed in him (something that wasn’t even slightly hinted at before now, so show don’t tell please), which Windblade says is definitely not the case. Windblade mentions that “forgings” are extremely rare, and will remain so lest Ascenticons get their way — though there’s no disdain in her voice for them. In fact, now that I think about it… there’s not much disdain for them at all in the three issues released! That’s kind of neat.

So what I said in the review section, about awkward dialogue? I think, in the case of Windblade, that contractions are used to give her a distinct voice, to establish that she’s more casual than other characters. It’d definitely fit with her entrance. But it just doesn’t work given how awkward some of it is and it’s a jarring shift since she doesn’t talk that way most of the time. Plus, Rubble starts randomly using contractions (and not even common ones) when talking to Windblade… this is either to establish that his identity and behaviour is so malleable at this point that even brief encounters can heavily affect how he acts… or Ruckley wrote this scene like a day after the first two. I legitimately cannot tell you. That or they just act super formal around Chromia and Bumblebee but together they’re really chill, which would be weird for Rubble given that he’s met Windblade twice.

There’re reasons you don’t randomly start doing this in your dialogue.

Especially with a character who hasn’t used contractions like this before.

The two finally get back to Rubble’s apartment. Chromia is there waiting along with… ugh, yet another character! This guy is named Geomotus and seems to have some mental condition. He has some 3D shapes that he looks at when in unfamiliar locations and he can sometimes see patterns that no one else sees. Well, things to do with the planet anyway. He’s helping the police. Chromia says that Prowl and Barricade — future Decepticon — are tracking “Risers” (that is a dumb term) and Chromia doesn’t want to be alone with Geomotus so she wants Windblade to come along. Before they go, she gives Rubble a way to contact her if need be, and once they leave, Windblade realises that Chromia put spyware into the download! Chromia says she’s pretty sure Rubble has nothing to do with things, but doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. Also, Rubble thinks he sees a titan and I have no idea why that scene is there.

Finally, we follow Orion as he walks through a seemingly deserted road, filled with strange features like corpses embedded in walls. Finally, he reaches his destination: Codexa — yet another character — who is seemingly alive, yet being consumed by the planet. This is probably what was mentioned before, how some people choose become one with Cybertron and essentially die. And so ends the issue, with the story to be continued in two weeks!

This entry took a while to cram out. I actually started working on it the day the issue came out, but I was having some perceptual problems, plus recapping it was a slog because nothing happens. I genuinely considered putting it out without the recap, which I may still do with future issues, at least on occasion. But I powered through anyway, because there was some stuff I wanted to take a closer look at — especially the presence of more female characters. Which, again, I do appreciate. Anyway, that’s it for now. Hopefully next issue is an easier time.

I'm a bit late, but in this entry of Road Trip with the Transformers, I take a look at Transformers (2019) #3, with a brief review before some commentary. Road Trip with the Transformers is what happens when you take a guy who grew up with Transformers (well, …

[aion-rsa]

Raiders of the Lost Ark Has the Greatest Exposition Scene in Movie History

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“The people I brought are important and they’re waiting,” Indiana Jones is told early in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “[They’re] army intelligence and they knew you were coming before I did.” It’s a cryptic line of dialogue full of mystery, even for  a guy like Dr. Jones. Before this moment, Indy’s been revealed to be a man of many talents: grave robber, bullwhip master, even college professor. But a spy? The character, and more importantly his audience, cannot quite fathom what this is all about, but our interest is piqued to discover more. Especially, as we soon learn is forever his custom, Indy is going into this situation on the wrongfoot.

So begins one of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s most pivotal scenes. At its core, the scene where Harrison Ford’s Indy meets with two government stuffed shirts is an exposition dump, one intended to catch the viewer up on magical arks, occultist Nazis, and God’s wrath inside of five minutes. But it is written so elegantly, and staged so thoughtfully, that it elevates the most functional mechanics of Hollywood storytelling into something greater. Rarely has a scene tasked with the laborious duty of exposition appeared this lithe or engrossing. Hence why, in its own way, the moment where Indiana Jones excitedly runs to a chalkboard can be nearly as thrilling as watching him outpace a boulder.

The Hidden Perils in Exposition

Under normal circumstances, exposition is one of the most thankless aspects of a screenwriter’s job—and the worse they are at delivering it, the greater the burden becomes for actors, directors, and even audiences to make it work. Every conventional piece of narrative storytelling needs to establish its ground rules, of course. And exposition is nothing if not key pieces of information a viewer, reader, or gamer requires to follow along. But often the more high-concept the story, the harder it becomes for the narrative to organically share that information.

Hence as Hollywood has drifted toward big blockbuster spectacles that demand heavy-handed worldbuilding, exposition scenes have similarly become increasingly cumbersome. It’s what led to lazy choices like each Transformers movie starting with obligatory voiceover narration and table-setting flashbacks, or title cards for Every. Single. Character. in 2016’s Suicide Squad.

Of course Raiders of the Lost Ark, along with other early successes from director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas, helped usher in this modern age of blockbusters. But in the case of the first Indiana Jones movie, they did it with such effective wit and intelligence that even the narrative dump became one of the movie’s classic moments. 

Raiders of the Old Movie Tropes

The concept of Indiana Jones is rooted, at least in part, in the James Bond movies and their serialized, travelogue thrills. It certainly was the initial appeal to Spielberg, who famously came to the project after being passed over by Eon Productions for the next 007 flick. So he and Lucas modeled aspects of the Jones character on the Bond formula, including the usually pat expository scene near the beginning.

You know the type: 007 comes into MI6 headquarters and is informed, often with typical British understatement, about the severity of a situation by M; the unflappable Bond makes a dryly humorous observation about the mission; he annoys his superiors, flirts with Moneypenny, and is off. By the time For Your Eyes Only opened in the same month as Raiders of the Lost Ark 40 years ago, the convention was designed with the precision of clockwork, and often featured the same amount of excitement.

The scene where Indy meets Maj. Eaton (William Hootkins) and Col. Musgrove (Don Fellows) plays much the same way. Authority figures have come to demand the expertise of a talented man of action they’re about to send around the world. He impresses, if also aggravates, the white collar set, and then off he goes.  Yet from the moment Indy’s museum pal Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot) tells him Army intelligence is here, the actual presentation is ingeniously subversive. Before the scene is over, Spielberg’s version of 007 will be lecturing the proverbial M, instead of the other way around, about the mission and the implications of the MacGuffin. It is Indy and his intellectual equal in Marcus who understand what’s at stake, not the government.

This is of course by design. It’s even how the idea of the scene began when Spielberg and Lucas met with Empire Strikes Back screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan to break down what would become Raiders of the Lost Ark’s screenplay. In their famed story conference transcripts from 1978, Lucas suggested, “Our guy be the one who’s explaining it.”

Noting that it would obviously be the exposition scene of the movie, where the concept of the Ark of the Covenant is introduced to audiences who didn’t go to Sunday school, Lucas immediately won Kasdan over.

“I like that,” Kasdan said. “They’re telling him, but he knows more about it than they do.” Yet Lucas took it further, going so far as to call the moment a “a puzzle scene” where the protagonist is solving a small mystery—it’s almost happenstance he also reveals the Old Testament’s Ark of the Covenant as a source of power so great it could level mountains.

Said Lucas, “The other way to do it is to let [Indy] know about the Ark, and not them. Having the Army guy say that they found the lost city. Hitler is going after all these artifacts. He believes in all the supernatural stuff and everything. We don’t know what they found out there, but it’s awfully important because they’re sending for this professor. Our guy is the one who puts two and two together. Then he sort of explains it. They have all the pieces of the puzzle, and they want him to get whatever the Germans are after. He says, ‘I’ll tell you what they’re after. They’re after the lost Ark.’”

Indiana Jones Takes You to (Film) School

Thus from its outset, the basic idea of the scene was always rooted in the most fertile soil for storytelling: conflict. When the scene begins, suspicious and cagey authority figures have summoned a man they expect to be an ineffectual academic; they wind up with a guy who’s instantly several pages ahead of them in the script. The reversal makes the ominous dialogue about the Ark of the Covenant inherently exciting, but how it’s played by the actors, and staged by Spielberg, elevates this into something else entirely.

When Ford’s Jones and the indispensable Denholm Elliot enter the scene, the audience is already a little giddy from the disorienting effect of the previous sequences. After all, the film introduced Indiana Jones as a mysterious, even faintly dangerous presence. He disarms a traitor in his tomb raiding party with a whip before we even see his face and he seems more at home with tarantulas on his back than chatting with Alfred Molina’s Satipo. And before the scene’s done, Indy’s escaped a falling boulder, two betrayals, and has been chased by the early 20th century notion of “natives.”

And yet, once he gets to his escape plane, the coolest hero audiences have ever met is revealed to be flawed, and frankly a bit neurotic. He nearly sounds like a terrified child when he sees a snake and screams, “I hate snakes, Jock! I hate ‘em!”

Afterward, the rug is pulled again as audiences are whisked to Indy’s day job. Unlike 007, Dr. Jones’ life isn’t all international travel, fistfights, and seductions. In fact, he’s downright awkward, if ever still charming, as a university instructor swatting away advances from forward students. The movie thus quickly establishes that, unlike most matinee idols, this is a multifaceted action hero who’s just as comfortable in tweed and a bowtie as he is leather jackets and fedoras.

In its way, this all sets the stage for the exposition scene where Indy winds up as everybody’s favorite guest lecturer. When Indy and Marcus enter the lecture hall with the G-Men, Spielberg has notably toned down some of the camp elements Lucas pitched in the story meeting (among them that the characters should be surrounded by a hall of mummies). It looks like a regular 1930s New England institution, with the director relying on the awkward silence of the good old boys getting settled to underscore the severity of the situation. Character actors Hootkins and Fellows play it completely straight when they invoke the words “Adolf Hitler” and “Nazis,” which still would grab the complete attention of 1981 audiences whose parents or grandparents fought in World War II.

“You must understand this all strictly confidential,” Hootkins says while looking over his shoulder, as if the movie is about to share a forgotten secret from the greatest conflict of the century. Only then does Spielberg start to move his camera, slowly dollying in on the Army man. “Yesterday afternoon, our European sections intercepted a German communique that was sent from Cairo to Berlin.” With deft efficiency, Kasdan’s script now lays out what Lucas called “puzzle pieces,” with Hootkins demanding total attention by breathlessly shouting the Fuhrer’s name. “Hitler’s a nut on the subject! He’s crazy, he’s obsessed with the occult!”

This is the setup for Indiana Jones to prove he’s the smartest guy in the room. But the way Ford plays this scene is what causes you to lean forward in your seat. When he’s asked about “the lost ark,” he’s as incredulous as a schoolboy who’s offended you’ve never heard of his favorite band. He’s both the biggest alpha and biggest nerd in the scene.

“Yeah,” Ford enthuses so quickly his voice cracks, “the Ark of the Covenant, the chest the Hebrews used to carry around the Ten Commandments.” At this point, the government men are hopelessly lost and just repeat everything Indy says like it is an actual Sunday school’s call and response. “Yes, the Ten Commandments,” Indy continues,  “the original stone tablets Moses loses brought down out of Mt. Horeb and smashed—if you believe in that sort of thing.”

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At once we understand the key elements that will propel Indy through the rest of the movie: he has the impetuousness of an action hero, the passionate curiosity of an academic, and the total lack of God-fearing faith that might get him in trouble when trifling with the Hebrews’ prize.

It’s economical character development at its best, which leads to the image of Jones before a literal blackboard educating you. Most of the characters on screen look up in awe, but as a director to never miss a great reaction shot, the one that Spielberg lingers on is Marcus’ fatherly admiration for Indy’s excitement. And it’s Marcus who provides a countering sense of awe to Indy’s impatience. Beneath the surface, there is even a subtler, more significant conflict being laid here that extends beyond this scene and carries throughout the rest of the picture. Marcus is of course acting as Indy’s de facto wingman, reeling the U.S. government in to pay for the expedition. “The army that carries the Ark before it is invincible,” Marcus says like a salesman closing the deal.

But a moment earlier when he warns of how the city of Tanis was “wiped clean by the wrath of God,” there is in an uneasy sense of true believing fear in Elliot’s delivery. This warring juxtaposition between faith and curiosity will propel the movie from this point to the very end, right up until Indy learns to finally avert his eyes in the face of antiquity’s awesome legacy.

In fact, the only music in the whole sequence occurs when Indy opens a book of scripture to the spookiest image ever drawn of the Ark of the Covenant. Not coincidentally, this is also the exact moment we’re introduced to John Williams’ “Ark of the Covenant Theme,” which fills any scene it’s in with looming menace. And the way Indy dismisses it as “the power of God or something,” as he walks away from the camera? It only increases the movie’s sudden sense of doom. At last it dawns on the viewer that perhaps you’re seeing something you shouldn’t know—this is an adventure right into the heart of the forbidden.

The Stuff MacGuffin Dreams Are Made Of

All of which plays to how George Lucas famously differed from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, or for that matter most modern blockbuster filmmakers, when it came to creating MacGuffins (the plot device characters will live and die for but audiences allegedly shouldn’t care about).

“The audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen,” Lucas once told Vanity Fair.

Never did that prove more potent than in Raiders of the Lost Ark’s exposition scene, a moment where the film turned the most menial of tasks into something intriguing, entertaining, and ultimately a little unnerving. Whether you went to Sunday school or not, like Indy you couldn’t stop after this moment until you, too, peeked inside that Ark. Which is why, as a piece of filmmaking and storycraft, this sequence remains one of Raiders’ greatest treasures.

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[ghoultyrant]

FoZ Notes 18

Alright, we finally are having the plot start moving. Kinda. In any event a decent amount of stuff I felt like making notes of is happening.

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Saito literally glowing after him and Louise affirm their love. Neither of them notices. [You know, I’d forgotten about this because it doesn’t come back]

Fouquet giving money to Romalian orphans out of kindness. This is apparently just a thing with her. Oh, excuse me, to Albionese orphans in Romalia. So she's got loyalty to her country, I guess?

Also, Wardes is back. Apparently him and Fouquet have been hanging out in Romalia for... some reason... since Albion lost the war. He's been reading some secret Romalian book detailing historical events involving people revolting against Church power etc, among other books he's been reading in this period. Apparently Fouquet stole it for him.

Wardes mother was a researcher at the same facility Eleanore works at. She researched history (I guess she was an archeologist?) and 'earth history' (??), eventually went crazy, sexist commentary ensued because the author STILL cannot make up his goddamn mind. It's heavily hinted that the Wind Stone Catastrophe I've been spoiled on is her Go Mad From The Revelation moment, which she for some reason decided to not tell anyone about. Wardes is now trying to follow in her footsteps. Why? Because he semi-accidentally killed her when he was twelve by giving her a shove at the top of some stairs, so he's felt guilty ever since.

So. The fuck does that have to do with his original plot of wanting to become God-King of Halkeginia? [No, the story makes no attempt to explain what his original storyline was about]

Romalia knew Wardes and Fouquet were here the whole time, did nothing until just now because Reasons.

Josette has never felt happiness in her entire life. It takes her a bit to recognize it when she first experiences it. She's fully aware Julio is just using her, but loves him such that she's fine with that, which would be creepysweet except she's like the fifth such character at this point, so really it's just plain creepy. Especially since they're all women.

I am getting REAL damn tired of Romalia knowing everything everywhere all the time EXCEPT when they fail to know a thing that it would actually be plausible for them to guess at. (eg Joseph being the Gallion Void mage) The story almost never makes the slightest effort to justify it. It's ridiculous.

More generally, Julio is a goddamn Sue of the highest order. More so than Saito! That's nuts!

Isabella has a knife that talks. Unclear if it's a knife-person or just a knife-radio. Later narrative implies it's a radioknife.

Tabitha saying she isn't foolish enough to help a religious fanatic -to the Pope. Gutsy.

The Pope replacing Tabitha with Josette is intended as a plot to bait out Saito and company because of fucking course.

Guiche views stealthy action as un-noble. No wonder he's so shit at his attempts to court a zillion women without them knowing about each other.

Oh hey now WE are using 'Skillnir' to fool enemies. Skillnir apparently require blood from the person you're wanting them to imitate... which raises the question of how Romalia got a sample of Saito's blood without him knowing. This is a dumb plotpoint.

Kirche will fucking murder you if you kill Tabitha. No hesitation. That's pretty darn close, emotionally! It’s more emotion than she’s shown for, say, Colbert, who I’ve utterly failed to mention her having the hots for after his ridiculous non-death because it’s an idiot plotline.

Saito is fucking baffled by someone having seemingly changed their face with magic. Don't think too hard about how Louise told him about the bastard-hiding place with its face-changing magic, you know, last volume. That was a whole volume ago, how dare you expect the author to remember things from so far back!

Abruptly, we're told Earth Stones are a thing and are necessary for golem production. Okay, cool. Fuck you, you horrific piece of shit, this is either some of the worst planning I have ever seen or some of the most blatant, disrespectful retconning I have ever seen. We should've been hearing about this in Volume Fucking One. Volume Two at the latest, where we were introduced to Wind Stones. We should not be hearing this nonsense in VOLUME EIGHTEEN.

Abruptly we hear that the Pope, when traveling, has to stop and bless people, thank people, etc etc. Why has this never cropped up before, then?

Chikasui -the girl of face-changing and Isabella's right-hand woman as far as I can tell- showing up as a man. Is she a shaspeshifter?

You know, I only just realized the "Mountain of the Fire Dragon" is actually something we heard about back in Volume One. Holy Continuity, Batman!

Really annoyed that Tabitha being pulled from the Pope's carriage doesn't cause Vittorio's men to second-guess their loyalties. Their outrage seems to be over, essentially, casting aspersions upon a man who should be beyond reproach, and then the aspersion turns out to be true. They ought to be horrified and/or outraged to discover that Vittorio has abused the trust that everyone puts into him, NOT blithely, angrily fighting for him like nothing has changed. [Reader note: Saito and company accuse the Pope of kidnapping Tabitha, basically, the Paladins are all “His Holiness would NEVER and how dare you claim otherwise!” and then out comes Tabitha and they don’t acknowledge how this contradicts their belief in the man]

Also getting tired of Vittorio and Julio insisting people should trust them, as they totally have a good reason for it honest! Nope, don't care. Behave in a manner not worthy of mistrust before you demand trust, assholes.

I'd be thrilled to see Saito calling Julio on his manipulative womanizing bullshit if he wasn't a massive goddamn hypocrite. Also because it devolving into a fist fight while Tabitha, Kirche, and Louise stand by and watch is idiotic nonsense. Earthquake interrupt! Vittorio makes a comment that implies this is the Wind Stone Catastrophe. Specifically, Fire Dragon Mountain takes off. Julio claims this Wind Stone issue is why they need to retake the holy land... which explains fucking nothing.

Ugh.

Ridiculous claims that half the landmass of Halkeginia will rise up and this will cause a land war. Guys? You remember Albion? That place people live on right now? I know you do, because you're mentioning it in this conversation. In fact, this will INCREASE the amount of land available to Halkeginia! There will definitely be chaos and death, but you're all wrong ANYWAY.

Oh and we learn Brimir made a device that's in the holy land that requires four Void Mages to activate and which will somehow fix this. Dude. It's been 6000+ years. Even shaving it down to 5000 since Halkeginian years are shorter than Earth years, that's way the fuck too long. It's probably rust and dust, or at least buried. This should be obvious to everyone. Yes, I know, there’s those stupid preservation spells, but the plot itself seems to have entirely forgotten about them.

Why did all this stupid shit happen? Because! In true Shonen style, Julio wanted to fight Saito! Okay, so? What, Vittorio obligingly did a bunch of pointless bullshit to accommodate his familiar secretly being hijacked by an Entity? This is not an explanation that makes any kind of sense.

Of fucking course there's a spell for turning a wand's tip into a whip. And of course Eleanore knows it. As an aside, Malicorne is a masochist. It looked that way for several volumes, but A: I thought he was nobody important, a temporary character and B: it was ambiguous. Nope, he likes being whipped. sigh

Aaaand Louise saying she's "not a child anymore" seems to be taken by everyone as a shocking admission that she's had sex. Oh god she's had sex with Saito. I need brain bleach.

Naturally, Tristain digging into the Wind Stone issue causes them to agree to participate in the Crusade. This is stupid. The stupidity is unending. I'm having trouble making myself keep reading in the face of the biggest, most world-building-est plot twist of the series being such a crock of shit on every level.

Luctiana gets Ali to accept this mission he hates by virtue of refusing to marry him if he denies her the "greatest adventure" she can imagine. Because she wants to come along too, you see. Bidashal Just As Planned this, pretends innocence when Ali calls him on it. [Wait, did I mention Luctiana and Ali before? I don’t remember that being in my previous notes, did I lose the original notes or is this misplaced? In any event they’re both Elves. Luctiana has a fascination with ‘barbarians’, which is her entire character aside from being pedobait, while Ali has basically no character at all]

Oh fuck no. No, don't have Louise throw away her noble title to be with Saito. This is heinous bullshit. (Okay, it doesn't actually happen, but that Louise would consider it worth it horrifies me regardless)

Something I ought to have mentioned back on Volume One: magic lamps. Thing is? They've never been explained. Who makes them? Why are they in noble houses/institutions, but nowhere else? What powers them, given that magic is chant-based? They're just... present, and questionable worldbuilding.

Elves murdering bandits. Ali purports to dislike killing, but none of the Elves seem upset at the gruesome deaths they're inflicting. Wow, what pacifists. I am very convinced.

End volume 18.

------------------------- In which we finally learn about the Wind Stone Catastrophe and learn that Romalia's Crusade is not just fanatical religiousness. Oh and we finally see a bit of Elf culture/lands.

Alternative summary: Stupid Nonsense Pileup. Like a thirty-car pileup, but of stupid nonsense.