#mainly because i've had episodes where i thought i was a robot

[history-stan]

[transmutationisms]

ok off the last ask are there any tv shows you Do think are good or does the position of tv is bad kind of hold universally?

imo the reasons tv is on average bad are largely to do with production and not actually just coincidental

-because a tv show generates more profit the longer it runs, networks & showrunners are perversely incentivised to Make Stuff Happen & also to fail to deal with the narrative consequences of that stuff (nobody wants to watch 10 seasons of a show where the personal dysfunctions that the story is premised on are overcome and dealt with and the characters just calm down by season 3)

-advertisers have typically/traditionally gotten a large degree of control over the actual content onscreen (this is a pressure in any creative work made for profit -- but, eg, it's not unusual for tv advertisers and esp product-placers to get final review of actual scripts, to threaten to pull ads if a show discusses xyz or gets 'too political', &c)

-for numerous contingent reasons including some reaction to the above, tv has not typically been seen as a prestigious creative industry (even in the 'golden age', compare the reputation of tv to that of the cinéma or stage theatre), leading to a lot of writers and directors who don't really want to be there, are embarrassed, view their tv work as the pitch to launch their film or novelist career, &c &c

-all of this exerts downward pressure on the compensation rates for pretty much everyone who works on tv, from actors to crew members, which makes the industry less appealing and less prestigious and is used to justify even worse and cheaper labour practices &c &c -- meaning a lot of tv work goes to people who don't want to be there, couldn't qualify for better compensated roles, are mainly cast for being conventionally attractive, &c

i've watched and enjoyed plenty of tv and it's not like it's impossible to execute something well artistically even in these circumstances. for example, i think succession has some really stellar character writing, & that this is directly connected to the fact it had hbo money & a showrunner who always planned for it to have an endpoint & a limited number of seasons—but it's also connected to the fact that the story is framed around characters being constitutionally incapable of major change. for similar reasons, a miniseries or anthology series is imo usually a better format for a drama than the conventional constantly-renewed network series. alternatively you can go the seinfeld route and have your show genuinely be about trivia, with a hard reset every episode (like, compare how long seinfeld could keep beating the same three dead horses versus eg the immediate problems faced by a show like the good place where characters were supposed to be enduring meaningful personal growth incompatible with their roles in the actual narrative).

but imo very few people who work on tv are interested in thinking about what the medium can do well, because again they view themselves more as temporarily embarrassed artistes, and even those who do view television as its own medium with its own constraints and strengths are often kneecapped by the actual circumstances of production (like, a mini-room may well be full of really talented writers who want to do fascinating things with the medium -- i wouldn't know, because they get approximately 30 seconds per episode to throw shit at the wall that some exec can market to a cereal company).

i've liked plenty of shows enough to watch more than 5 minutes of them (succession, lots of medical soaps, the first 2 seasons of misfits, doctor who, thw twilight zone, parts of mad men, the thick of it, mr robot, community, i may destroy you, pushing daisies...) & i think it's fair to say if i liked something i probably thought some aspect of it was good, meaning, well executed in some way. but i would also say pretty much all of those are dogshit in other respects, are overall susceptible to the same problems tv in general is, &c.

[burr-ell]

My biggest problem with campaign 3 as someone who fell off around episode 80 is that none of the characters seem to want anything. None of them really have a goal they're working towards nor do they have any strong opinions about the MAIN PLOT of the campaign.

To be honest, the first thing I thought of when I read this ask was the C3 defenders who have been insisting that so much criticism of the finale comes from people who dropped off a while ago and therefore wouldn't know. But what you're saying here points to the actual problem behind why the final episodes of the campaign were such a mess. If it's episode 80 of 121 and there's only a perfunctory sense of motivation from the characters? That's a problem, and it's going to make it nearly impossible for the finale to stick the landing. To quote @wardensantoineandevka, it's an Act 2 problem, not an Act 3 problem.

I've heard more than once that "nuh-uh, Bell's Hells does have motivation, it's called altruism", and I'm going to take a detour to explain why that's not enough. If you've followed me long enough to know the deep lore, you know I used to be a fan of Voltron: Legendary Defender, whose final seasons were notoriously disastrous. Many fans hated it (for different reasons), while general audiences mainly thought it was mid. Deeper research into the production history nets inconsistent results; a lot of unsourced rumors and "common knowledge" got spread around Twitter and Tumblr about why the show fell off the rails so hard, and it's difficult to parse what feels true from what actually happened.

What I do know, however, is what I actually saw in the show, where the main cast feels as if their motivation to be there is "we're the protagonists". There's very little development of emotional connection between the characters beyond a surface level, and the characters don't have a personal investment in what they're doing. (And no, "they're just altruists" is not sufficient motivation. The altruism, like the characters, is pretend.) They're there because they got to the giant robots first. So at the end of the show, where they've escalated the stakes to "the whole MULTIVERSE is going to be destroyed", it lacks weight because none of the work has been done throughout the show to make it feel like that matters to the characters. Act 1 was promising if a bit shaky, but Act 2 is a mess, and it turned Act 3 into sludge.

To bring it back to better stories: why is it Vox Machina dealing with the Chroma Conclave? Because it's the right thing to do and because their city and home that they had invested themselves in got suddenly and violently attacked, and by a group associated with a dragon they previously killed, and they picked up more reasons along the way. Why is it the Mighty Nein dealing with Cognouza? Because it's the right thing to do and because the major player involved was piloting the body of their friend who died in an incredibly traumatic and game-changing moment, and they picked up more reasons along the way.

Why is it the Hells dealing with Ruidus? Because it's the right thing to do and...because Imogen had moon dreams and Orym's family was killed and everyone else is sort of there. Why is it Team Voltron dealing with the multiverse problem? Because it's the right thing to do and...because they're the ones with the giant robot. More than one person has described the vibe as "we met during freshman orientation and talking to anyone else would be scary".

The Hells are not played with the level of intentionality that this plot requires—but ultimately, as many people have pointed out, most of the burden of this falls not on the players but on Matt. Being so hands-off during character creation meant that he allowed the cast to make characters better suited to a completely different story than what he wanted, and was either unable or unwilling to pivot to accommodate. ("Pulpier and deadlier" is getting passed around and dunked on for a reason.) The cast was mainly trying to thread the needle of playing true to their characters while also trying to meet the needs of Matt's story when he was frequently keeping them in the dark about what he wanted for the sake of surprising them.

When the big setpiece moment of episode 51 came and went, the campaign became so focused on getting everybody through plot points that the only conversations they had were the seemingly endless circular god debates that went nowhere. It's not really a "nuanced morally gray story" as its defenders claim; it's the DM seeing the party go in a direction and then throwing something else at them to "complicate" things in a way that either gets forgotten about entirely (Hearthdell) or just grinds the story to a screeching halt for no payoff (Feywild trust exercises). These problems are most noticeable in the final arcs (particularly with the Arch Heart appearance—not giving Abu any direction and just letting him improv was a very poor decision), but the feeling that Bell's Hells are just a ping-pong ball bouncing from fetch quest to vaguely-related fetch quest, rather than active agents in their own story, was present well before that.

Campaign 3 probably won't be remembered as bad. At the end of the day, I think it's just mid. And honestly? That might be worse.

[thetinytonystark]

I don't understand what you see in Belinda, but I would really like to see it.

People say, or at least knew before this last episode, that she was different and that she didn't accept the Doctor's nonsense… which is not true.

She was like that in the first episode, maybe, but that's all it took.

I think she blamed the Doctor in a weird way, but it was valid, I understand her (I'll explain later why I thought it was weird). When she called the robots to a place where there were injured people, it was a terrible idea that the plot didn't become known as bad, which irritated me.

But that's okay, I liked her enough and was excited about the new relationship dynamic between her and the Doctor.

Well, it didn't happen.

Their dynamic is not different, not at all. The difference is in the plot, not in the dynamic.

She says she wants to go home, but she's willing to let him go get a haircut (?). While I understand that the connection to the barbershop means a lot to the Doctor and Belinda understands that, I don't know if it makes sense to someone who was shot and nearly died shortly before.

“I WANT TO GO HOME” said Belinda who nearly died days (?) before. “But go get your hair cut, I'll wait :)”

The Barbershop episode is my favorite, mainly because it has a lot of the Doctor, but for Belinda… it's fine.

Apart from the racial context, I think if they swapped her for any other company it would be the same.

My problem with her is probably a disappointment, I had high expectations.

She fooled me a lot in Lux, she was suspicious of the situation and left trusting the Doctor, which would be valid if the Doctor hadn't shown himself to be much more suspicious in Lux than in Robot Revolution.

I don't remember speaking for each other, but he said he was a destroyer of worlds and that he killed gods.

WHERE IS THAT RELIABLE????

The biggest problem is that in the first episode she wasn't declared naive, but in all the others she kind of was…

In Lux when she says she trusts the Doctor, it could have been better if it had sounded like "I trust you to get us out of this situation" and not "I trust you because you've earned my trust, you're a trustworthy person".

What made him trustworthy? The only explanation I could find is that it was the thing with the last Time Lords.

I thought it was her acting that bothered me, but everyone said she's a good actress and I've never seen her other work so it must be the character. Maybe it's because Ncuti acts so well that he overshadows her a little.

Now I believe that Belinda is kind of weird with emotions, maybe it's something in the plot like her secretly being the Master, I don't know.

The Doctor stopped to see the entity in The Well, which ended up causing Belinda to almost die. I don't think the Doctor caused it, but Belinda associated Sasha 55's death with the Doctor even though they were having a revolution and he didn't cause it, so I didn't think it made much sense for her to ignore it. But maybe I wanted some conflict between them and hallucinated this possible relationship between the situations.

What I don't like about Belinda is that I feel like her potential was wasted.

When I say I don't like her, I want to make it clear that it's not that I hate her or anything like that, I'm a basic person who likes all the companions, so I like her, just not as much as everyone else seems to like her.

Honestly, I wish I could better understand what you see in her that is so different and unique.

Please change my mind so I can enjoy the best episodes, I'm usually easy to convince.

[tigirl-and-co]

what was that abt Astro boy siblings au? 👀

The Astro Boy All Siblings AU, ready for action!!! also known as

I'm putting it under a readmore, bc it's gonna get long winded!!!

Most important stuff: it's something of a mix of all three major adaptations + Pluto, most emphasis on '63 and '80 though. And really, Pluto's very gently adapted, I really just want Gesicht and his wife in there. Pluto as a character is closer to his animated counterparts, especially the '80 version, where he's not so much 'aggressive' as he is just doing what he thinks he's supposed to be doing.

I should clarify- dub 1963, sub 2003 + 1980. Because that's what I watched.

This AU exists because I L O V E writing character interactions and developing characters with little to no screen time. So I've saved a bunch of characters who were supposed to die, and now they live with each other yaaaaay and also a bunch of one off characters who had good story potential haha

There are some characters whose names I sort of waffle on between the dub and Japanese versions, mainly Minute/Bill and Zero/Denkou.

Both 1980 and 2003 Atlas are here. I figured they were different enough for it. In this case, Daichi has a different name in his alt mode, I just haven't thought of it yet.

idk if Chi-Tan is gonna be here. I'll get back to you on that.

GRAPHIC 1: THE TIMELINE

This is a rough timeline and subject to change.

Marble is on this timeline, but she's not a 'sibling' so to speak, but she and Lucky Louie are kind of Astro's first friends. So Marble is Astro's sort of bestie in this and he takes a trip out to go visit her every so often. Louie, despite being in jail, is kind of an uncle figure to Astro. Astro can ask Louie for advice or opinions without being judged or worrying that it'll get back to anybody else.

The meeting with Atlas is very similar to how it goes in the anime, except I think I'm still going with 'sold his ass to the circus' backstory, so it's more likely he was on a cruise with Ochan, or maybe his parents. Maybe both?

Cobalt has always had middle sibling energy to me, so I switched him and Uran around. I'm working with something a bit closer to the manga backstory, but with the anime personality.

Uran is somewhere between her 1963 and 2003 self. She's more self-sufficient, can drive and did the whole fighting ring shebang (in fact I'm thinking of KEEPING her doing it part-time, for reasons I'll elaborate on later.) But like her 2003 self, she's still emotionally very young, and craves the approval of her older siblings, even if she thinks they're goody two-shoes.

Pook's dad goes to jail, and Ochan agrees to take him in until he's released. He's still very rowdy and kind of a prankster, but he's less actively malicious since his dad instructed him to be nice, and he'll be back.

Pluto! The events play out closer to '80 + '03, but Gesicht still gets to do his whole detective schtick and have ~trauma.~ I'm debating about Epsilon, bc him having the orphans would imply the war was a thing, and that's just not something I'm suited to tackle. On the other hand, Astro being the cool older cousin to a house full of orphans brings me great joy

ANYWAY Pluto is damaged and out of commission, but technically reparable. Ochan brings him to the ministry of science, and works on him in his spare time.

The events of Atlas' episode play out pretty much the same, except that Ochan and Ban have been tracking him down- after all, a robot that can stand toe-to-toe with Astro is a big deal! The whole operation is busted directly after Atlas discovers Livian's parts. Atlas agrees to go with them, but only after Ochan promises he can repair Livian with no problems.

Daichi/Atlas 2003 happens, but instead of building him to test Astro, Tenma does it to *spite* Astro. I'm keeping Tenma out of this au for the most part. I just want him where it would make for good angst.

Livian moves in with Ochan! She helps both as an assistant during research, and as a helping hand with Pook. Ochan is an older man with a busy schedule, and looking after a rambunctious child is not something he can do single-handedly. Livian also wants Atlas to grow as a person without using her as a crutch, and now that he has a family willing to help him she thinks he finally can.

Pluto's full body is restored and he is brought back online! His size means he's kind of relegated to the bigger rooms of the Ministry, outdoor activities, and Ochan's backyard, but he tries to make do. He and Astro get on well, but he's actually much closer with Uran! He and Livian also begin to become good friends, and have late-night chats about philosophy and junk.

Later on, Pluto finally asks to have a humanoid body. He wants to participate in society. He does have a few demands, though! He wants to be tall still, and he wants horns similar to what he has now. Ochan agrees, but says it will be difficult and take a while.

Daichi episode 2! I'm not entirely certain how I wanna play this, but blah blah stuff happens, and Daichi's dad makes a promise to try harder to be a good parent. Daichi moves back into the mansion. Things aren't perfect, but they're actively trying, so it's better than it was before.

Pluto's body is finished! I have some design ideas for him, but nothing I'm ready to talk about yet. He's tall as hell, and keeps his horns curled to the side a ram. I'm going for kind of a teen vibe. He's still got a lot to learn, and I wanted to reflect that in his design. He finds he actually enjoys being helpful, but he is also not afraid to throw punches when need be. It's really just that his standards for 'need be' have been raised. He and Daichi get along okay.

I'm going with the 1963 design for Denkou here. I know everybody likes the 2003 one but I'm not a huge fan. I'm also going to call him Zero just for ease of writing, but tag him as Denkou so he doesn't get mixed up with the other Zero I blog about haha.

His backstory plays out kinda like a mix between all three versions, with him willing and ready to sacrifice himself like in '63, but he lives like in '03. Daichi actually helps out, using himself as an example of how even if you do the wrong the thing, you don't have to be bad forever. Zero moves in with Daichi (after Daichi can convince his dad- it's not hard to convince a wealthy man to take in a very expensive, one-of-a-kind robot, it turns out), and they become very close, with Zero looking up to Daichi, and Daichi realizing that means he really needs to shape up.

I rewatched the ending of Mighty Minute/Humanoid Bill, but I need to take time to watch the whole thing again. I'm going with 'they create a suit with a suitable filtration system, which allows Minute to roam free.' He still needs a lot of rest, but it's better than nothing. He and Pook become GREAT friends. Inseparable. If you make a lot of noise while Minute is resting, Pook will absolutely tell you to shut up.

Eventually Pook and Minute move in with Higeoyaji. He's good with kids, Ochan just really doesn't have the energy to care for them, and they actually can help him out in detective cases! He doesn't bring them to anything he thinks might be dangerous, of course, but Minute's predictive abilities and Pook's strength and transformations are very helpful.

How does he pay for them, despite being a schoolteacher/detective and broke as balls? Why, a stipend from the ministry, of course! Both Pook and Minute are outstanding scientific achievements! It certainly doesn't have anything to do with Ochan being biased, why would you think that?

Last Day on Earth plays out, Bem survives and stays with Astro for a while, but 5 super kids is just kind of a lot. Astro and Ochan reach out to Gesicht, and ask if he and his wife are interested in trying to raise a child again. They've had time to process their grief, and are more than happy to welcome him into their home! Bem is a recurring character from this point, but mostly through video calls.

Then Future shows up! Yaaaaaay Future! He survives his ordeal but is badly damaged. Ochan rebuilds him to the best of his ability, but certain parts were so advanced that it's out of his wheelhouse. He still has predictive abilities, but they're nerfed somewhat. Instead of a picture perfect vision of what will happen, he moreso sees a few different possibilities of what COULD come to pass.

Eventually, Daichi and Zero move in with him. Daichi is still on decent terms with his father, but he feels the need to get out from under his thumb, and Zero goes where Daichi goes.

So, in essence

OTHER IMPORTANT BITS:

I was raised to see my cousins like siblings. Our parents would just kind of shuffle kids around between houses + my grandma's house as need be. That affects how I see characters interacting. So while I see Pook as more of a little cousin to astro, that really more means 'little sibling you only see sometimes'

Zero helps Ban on his detective cases! Zero genuinely REALLY likes using his powers to help people. He'll help put criminals away, sure, but he much prefers doing stuff like tracking down lost pets or items and returning them to their owners. He gets the warm fuzzies.

Idk if you remember those robots with like. sensitive stomachs? Who were escapees from a country or something. The kid's name was Piko. They eventually do actually move in as neighbors.

^these guys.

Atlas is still gruff, but he secretly very much enjoys being praised. He'll work a lot harder for people who are kind to him, but he does NOT express affection verbally, and only very rarely physically. He starts out very cold and aloof, but over time he gets ~*character development*~ and becomes incredibly protective of his siblings. He's also willing to throw down for ANYBODY he sees being taken advantage of. Astro prays he never learns about bosses being mean to their employees.

He's also somewhat misanthropic. Not to the degree he gets in canon, but his first life experiences were of him being abused and taken advantage of. If you can prove you actually care about robots, he'll drop from 'watching you like a hawk' to 'just kind of guarded' and after a LONG while he might consider you a friend. He's now at the point where he's just as protective of Marble as he is any of his siblings, especially once he learns about what went down with her and Astro.

Because of his distrust toward humans, the blue knight actually targets HIM and not astro. This will (hopefully) be a fic in its own right, so I won't get too into it here. Blue Knight is also NOT happy that Uran fights of her own free will

Pluto is completely genderblind. Like fully and completely. But bc he takes looking out for others VERY seriously now, a lot of the women who work at the ministry talk to him about their frustrations, and know he's the person to call out to when they feel unsafe. Icon.

Atlas can not be left alone with Tenma, Hamegg, or Skunk. He would turn their insides into outsides for what they did to Astro and Zero, respectively. Honestly they're lucky he has better things to do than track them all down.

Two other characters that show up from time to time after their introduction is Abra and Cadabra, the magician robots!

astro has free tickets for life.

Astro's school friends are still all here. They're kind of protective not only of Astro, but also Atlas, once they learned what he went through. Atlas and Shibugaki are especially vitriolic buddies. Atlas isn't so stupid that he can't see how similar they are, and also one time shibugaki bit some random guy spewing anti robot shit, and that impressed the hell out of Atlas.

because I'm mental I AM shoehorning black jack and pinoko into this au as reoccurring characters. Dr. Honma was an old friend of Ochan, and thus he and BJ are on good terms. Pinoko is basically a cousin from the other side of the family, since she's in a weird limbo area between biological human and artificial creation.

I think Future just ends up going by a super normal regular guy name, like Dennis or Adam. He, Daichi, and Zero move in together, for reasons that make sense in my brain I promise

I'm also bringing in a lot of one-off characters I like to be background roles, but this whole thing has taken so long to post and I'm tired. I'm NOT bringing back the scary buff horse man, you'll be glad to know.

so uh. Yeah. All Siblings AU. I'm sure there's guys I'm forgetting, and would likely want to add, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. And also once I read the manga

If you read this whole thing mwah mwah mwah thank you for being so gracious about my blatant insanity.

[ordinaryxtreme]

Technoroid: Overmind and Unison Heart thoughts

I've just watched the final episode of the Technoroid anime and I've put my thoughts together. May or may not be coherent. Spoilers for the anime and for the entirety of the game's story too because I will mainly be talking about how Overmind connects to Unison Heart

So I'm not going to lie, the SOLE REASON I got into Technoroid in the first place was because of Kite. Listen, he is beautiful (and voiced by Furukawa Makoto). Who could resist that? So I thought I would start by watching the anime because that's leagues easier than getting into a gacha game. I knew the premise of the game (robot idols, yay!), and was extremely surprised to find anime Kite was a human! After the whiplash of episode 1's post credits and a few episodes later, I was already downloading the game because I was curious what exactly the anime is a prologue to. The game starts with KNOCC in sleep mode, in a random storage room in Babel, where the player character (you!) find them and turn them back on. They have no memory of the past. Esora seems surprised to see them awake, but he doesn't ever mention knowing them prior.

Which makes the ending of the anime very confusing to me. I thought something fucked up would happen to them, but the heartwarming ending seems to contradict that. Something ELSE happened between that ending and the start of the game and I'm dying to know what it is.

As for Kite. Yeah I felt his fate at the end of the anime was a bit... anticlimactic. (From now on I will refer to human Kite as Kaito, for ease.) Anyway, because of those prior expectations for KNOCC, I also expected something fucked up to happen to Kaito. My head was swirling with theories as to what could've happened. I just refused to believe it was something so straightforward, I guess. From the way it's looking, it was the twins who suggested they all become robots, and had Esora do the memory download thing for them. (What I don't understand is WHY the twins became robots too when technically only Kaito needs to).

Another thing which is really striking. No one seems to remember who KNOCC is. I mean straight up, it seems that everything about their victory and the incident 10 years ago is being suppressed or covered up. The only people who remember are Esora and Nobel. Not even Bora remembers them.

On the topic of Nobel. Yeah, no I have no idea WHAT he is, still. It's revealed that he's doing (illegal) android research now, though the specifics of that research is still unknown. He says he's doing it for no particular reason, but it's definitely just him being mr. cryptid creachur.

And no, the Stand Alone trio are not aware of their human past, just as KNOCC weren't at the start of the anime. I don't know if robots made from human memories can even boot up while actively remembering all their memories. I guess it might be too shocking to be human and suddenly wake up a robot? Toward near the end of the main story, Kite and Bora get flashes of KNOCC's victory from 10 years ago. In Bora's case, it may be that there's something programmed into the robots to suppress memories from 10 years ago. Meanwhile Kite is starting to realize he has memories of a past Kaito had lived. There has also never been any mention of Kaito's sister in the game. I can only hope she lives a healthy life after that. (Kite's VA even said in an episode of the Technoroid radio that the anime is the first he heard about Nagi, which is hilarious.)

The story of the game so far revolves around a cult that is clearly backed by the robot exclusionists. The specifics aren't important, the most important thing is that they have somehow developed a way to destroy robots through music. They've developed an "android drug", called "Apple". Yes, cool, more religious symbolism. "Apple" basically hijacks into a robot's programming, giving them a feeling of euphoria and freedom (it even overrides their interlock mechanism!), eventually causing a dependency and "killing" the robot permanently. My current theory is, there is a weaker version of this music developed somewhere between Overmind and Unison Heart that erased all memory of KNOCC from every android (bar Nobel).

As you can see, there's a whole lot of unanswered questions, and I'm sorely hoping for a season 2 of the game story. There's a lot of strings to connect and tie, still. I have other (much more sentimental) thoughts on the human themes that Technoroid touches (and about Kaito/Kite), but that'll have to wait for some other time.