#may not necessarily apply to my RT but it could apply to others
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Acolyte: âMy Lord? I have a question.â
Lord Inquisitor Heinrix: *Sighs, having a feeling he knows what this is about* âYou may ask.â
Acolyte: âI was just curious andâŚ.please donât take this in the wrong way but why does the Rogue Trader call you âBabygirl?â
#warhammer 40k#warhammer#heinrix van calox#humor#rogue trader crpg#psyker#idk just a silly thought that entered my head the other day#may not necessarily apply to my RT but it could apply to others#no way in hell any acolyte would have the gonads to ask this#but it was funny to think of anyway
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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 âDivideâ
Hello, everyone, and welcome back! It feels good to be doing some normal RWBY-ing in this strange world of ours. First, some supplementary materials.
Number One: In response to any (valid) questions along the lines of, âHey Clyde, itâs now been a full year since Volume 7 was airing and you still havenât answered my ask about it. Or the ones about Volume 6⌠whatâs up with that?â Iâve created what I hope is an informative video detailing the problem:
vimeo
(I assure you, the Earth, Wind & Fire was a happy accident during the screen recording.)
Needless to say, thereâs a lot and Iâve known for some time now that I will LITERALLY never get through all my asks. Which doesnât mean I donât want you to send future thoughts in! Just know that as we head into Volume 8 territory Iâll most likely prioritize those, as well as any Volume 7 asks that arenât woefully out of date. But I do want everyone to know that I read all the asks I receive, appreciate them immensely, and think too much about hypothetical answers, even if I donât have time to actually write them out đ
Number Two: Thereâs a bingo board this year!
Juryâs out on whether Iâll remember to update it, but at the very least this serves as a decent glimpse into my â and othersâ â expectations going into this volume.
Number Three: Iâve collected a list of things Iâve heard about Volume 8 from what seem to be reputable sources. I did this because RT is developing a tendency to talk up certain points and then fail to deliver, either because something was taken out of a volume/moved to another, or because RT apparently has radically different ideas about what including something means. So this might be handy to keep on file and ask ourselves two months from now, âDid RT actually deliver on what they promised?â
Emphasis on Rubyâs leadership and how Summerâs death has impacted her
Insight into Ren and Noraâs flaws
May Merigold will supposedly have a larger part
More information about The Long Memory (Ozpinâs cane)
Theme of the volume is that you can respect someone but that doesnât necessarily mean you agree with them
Very short timeline (supposedly just two days)
Yang in particular is very suspicious and distrustful
I was also going to include a list of all the threads that need to be continued/wrapped up, but honestly that would have taken too large a chunk off my life. Letâs just throw out the highlights:
Are we really going to have Qrow gunning for Ironwood?
Clover is dead regardless. Press âFâ to pay respects
Oscar bb you got shot please acknowledge this
Ozpin bb you got done dirty please acknowledge this
Penny is a Maiden now. I feel like the fandom has been sleeping on this (myself included)
Queer baiting, queer baiting⌠youâre on thin ice at this point, RWBY. Just skate on over to the queer snack bar before you fall straight into the lake. Â
Ren spill your deep dark secret already and it had better be something more than just âOh no Nora might someday die :( â
Salem is here so how the actual fuck is the cast surviving this?
Will Ironwood likewise survive his descent into antagonism? Yes or please yes no?
I think thatâs all the biggies. I strive to keep lists like this in mind while analyzing, but honestly RWBY has a hundred moving parts that are abandoned or changed or simply retconned at the drop of a hat. So an attempt will be made.
Number Four (last one I promise!): Normal disclaimers and reminders for Recaps apply:
Please donât fill up the already full inbox with flames. Itâs still 2020. No one has time for that nonsense.
There will absolutely be typos and wonky parts because I try to get these out the same day an episode premieres. I have now been working on this for ten hours, nearly straight, and have no more energy for edits. Apologies in advance and RIP to my Saturdays.
I reserve the right to use stupid GIFs and memes at my discretion.
I strive to keep my focus on recapping/analyzing but salt tends to worm its way in⌠If youâre a die-hard RWBY fan with little patience for criticism, let alone (at times) snarky criticism, please proceed with caution.
No wait I lied, this is the last thing:
Okay, got that out of my system LETâS DO THIS!
We start not with the episode itself but rather Rooster Teethâs (RTâs) strange non-promotion of it. If you follow my blog you may have caught the post where I pointed out that there was nothing on RTâs website to suggest that one of their most popular showsâif not the most popular showâwas premiering today. Nothing on the main page. Nothing on the RWBY page either, not unless you count the Volume 8 poster background (easily mistaken for the Volume 7 poster) and the trailer buried all the way down past Episodes, past Merch, in the Bonus Features section along with videos like Live From Remnant and the volume intros. RT⌠the promotion of your feature show is not a bonus. This should be front and center! Honest to god, five minutes before the episode dropped I was checking the website for a Volume 8 section, a countdown, anything that would tell me the episode was imminent without relying on fans on tumblr to keep me in the loop. We got nada, zilch. Iâm not sure whether that speaks more to RTâs iffy management of the series or simply the websiteâs horrible designâRIP losing RWBY on Youtubeâbut I was surprised when I saw the episode a few minutes after 11:00am. At that point I honestly expected to hear about a dely.
So thatâs the mood I entered the premiere in, but truly? We start off strong. Things take a pretty severe nosedive later on, weâll get to that, but I was impressed with our beginning and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that we start with our villains.
We open on a Cinderella character, Cinder, and thus Iâm immediately pleased that weâre getting something about her backstory after all this time. Seven years! She appeared in episode one, folks! To say weâre overdue is an understatement. There isnât a whole lot to go on, just a younger Cinder sadly scrubbing the floor, poised under a spotlight. What we learn, or potentially learn, is based far more in cultural knowledge than this scene. We know Cinderellaâs story, which includes the abusive family, the longing for more, the eventual escape, and thus weâre able to read all of that in this image, despite the image itself not telling us any of this overtly. That means we could be wrong in our interpretation, but if weâre not itâs an easy shorthand in an already packed story.
What Iâm really impressed with is the sound bridge between the scrubbing and her nails on the back of Neoâs chair. Fantastic way to confirm that this is Cinder as well as showcasing just how far sheâs come. The sound of her labor has been replaced with the sound of her power and given that Cinderâs power is stolen, tied to a grimm arm, the property of a genocidal maniac⌠thatâs messed up. Itâs a Cinderella story gone wrong.
So yeah, Cinder tells Neo to head straight into the creepy, grimm infested blood cloud to see Salem and Neo is like, âUh⌠no thank you?â lol.
RT does a good job this episode with her expressions, ensuring we know exactly what sheâs thinking despite an unwillingness/inability to speak.
Poor Neo might be in too deep, but I quite like the overall atmosphere of this opening. Say what we will about Salemâs awful characterization, at least she has style. This woman knows how to make an entrance and, piggybacking off of the Apathy, RT knows how to infuse horror elements into their fantasy. The red and purple coloring of the clouds, spiked whale teeth peeking through, bright orange in the background looking like explosions⌠thatâs all đ Including the intro card.
The only thing I want to gripe about is this:
Iâm sorry, why does the whale grimm have landing pads? Or something like it?? The whale otherwise works because itâs poised between the natural and the fantasy synthetic. It looks like a real grimm whale on the outside, but is sporting a throne room, a control panel, and other unnatural elements on the inside. Itâs a visual indicator of Salemâs ability to control and change grimm. Now though, the additions are wrong, infringing on the line between organic and tech, the line between what helps the grimm individually (giving monkeys wings) and what just helps Salem. Every other aspect of the whale straddles that line wonderfully, adding to the creep factor, like a grimm version of the Uncanny Valley: itâs not quite a whale anymore⌠but landing pads? That looks ridiculous. Why does Salem even have that? How many ships are her people feasibly using? Why are there five?
Take it away, please.
Cinder waltzes in like this is a normal home visit, but Neo has an appropriate âWhat the actual fuck?â face going on.
They approach Salem on her throne where Cinder immediately kneels, greeting her with, âMy queen.â I mentioned during my trailer breakdown that I think Cinder is lying her ass off here, and I still think that based on a line weâll get in a minute, but now at least we have a sense of how she can pull this off. A woman who started out as a (presumed) servant is going to know how to mimic subservience, even if her heart isnât in it. Salem is very good at playing the girl who will still kneel and scrub the floor for you. She will scrub the floor, sheâll do everything you want, sheâll just be plotting her own rise to power while she does it.
Thereâs quite a bit of interesting cinematography in this episode, not all of it good, and I think one of the mistakes is here when we get a closeup on Salemâs mouth as she greets Cinder. A closeup like that should be reserved for more significant dialogueââRosebudââand yet we get this shot again when Cinder tells Emerald to be quiet. Itâs awkward and coupled with the numerous eye closeups we got in the trailer, I think RT is playing a little fast and loose with the camera. Each shot should add something to the scene, not distract from it. If you donât have a reason for including a technique like that then leave it be.
Back to the actual dialogue though. We knew that Salem knew Cinder was alive and now it seems that she just expected her to come back? Iâm slightly lost. It feels like weâre missing something here. Cinder goes off to secure the lamp, fails, nearly dies, wanders on her own for months, and then randomly shows back up on Salemâs whale doorstep, yet Salem isnât angry at all? Did she have faith that Cinder would return when she has something to offer? Did she just not care about Cinder, considering her return an unnecessary but otherwise welcome surprise? That would make the least sense given that she holds the key to accessing Beaconâs relic⌠but that circles right back around to why Salem is seemingly indifferent to Cinderâs comings and goings. Surely she canât actually believe that Cinder is loyal?
âSo I trust you wouldnât return to me empty handed,â she says. Yeah, trust means nothing in this show, Salem, didnât you watch Volumes 6 and 7? Again, I simply donât know. I suppose Iâll just chalk it up to confidence, that if Cinder did bail Salem knew she could track her down again. Deciphering her motivations and beliefs is a lost cause when the show continually gives us so little.
The important thing now is that Cinder does indeed have an offering and you can see that Salem is somewhat surprised at being handed the relic.
Cinder, of course, takes credit for the victory and weâre given another wonderful shot of Neo. âYOU took it?â
Oh, Neo. Best get out while you still can.
Tyrian appears having obviously made his way to Salemâs ship sometime between her arrival and now. The exchange is pretty standard for this group. He insults Cinder for failing and needing this victory to make amends, talks about how any win against Ironwood says more about his lack of intelligence than her skill, and Cinder⌠doesnât have a whole lot of comebacks, actually. Iâd say Tyrian won that verbal spar, enhanced by a better use of the camera when we get his tail looming menacingly towards Cinder and Neo.
He goes on to say that Watts was a ânecessary sacrificeâ so, uh⌠Iâm just going to toss out the ask I answered yesterday. Based on our intro Iâd say Watts is still significant to the volumeâhacking Penny is my guessâbut by the end? He could be in trouble.
(As a side note: I plan to analyze the intro next week. Itâs just easier when it comes first.)
Tyrian also calls Neo âlittle oneâ which I just found absolutely hilarious. In an on brand creepy manner, that is. Not that Neo couldnât kick his ass, but thereâs something wonderfully chilling about having the serial killer use an endearment towards a potential victim, one that comments on her size while heâs looming.
In contrast, Cinder refers to Neo as a âvaluable assetâ and we get our third mood of the episode.
Whoâs going to start a Neo reaction image collection?
Itâs true enough on the surfaceâwho wouldnât want an ally who can turn into anyone else?âbut weâre still bumping up against question of why Salem needs this. Sheâs immortal! She has an endless army! Magic! This scene works well with a villain who needs a skillset like Neoâs to succeed, but Salem doesnât. RT is doing a great job writing a story thus far, just not the story weâve previously been given. This isnât the story they set up.
This will come back up when we reach the RWBYJNOR group. Just wait.
Before that though, the gangâs all here as Emerald, Mercury, and Hazel show up, all in new outfits.
I think I like everything except for the weird Xs on Emeraldâs jacket��itâs way too distracting and frankly makes an otherwise good look uglyâand the fact that sheâs showing her midriff in Atlas. Hazel doesnât have any sleeves! Oh my god, why doesnât anyone dress for the weather in this show?
Frankly, I found their reunion to be kind of lackluster. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it. Emerald does sound briefly excited, she does run, and itâs in character for Cinder to cut her off⌠it just didnât resonate with me emotionally. I thought after two volumes of thinking sheâs dead, then working through the knowledge that sheâs alive, that I would feel Emeraldâs shock and relief more, but I didnât. And Iâm not entirely sure why. I donât want to level any accusations at the voice acting because frankly I know next to nothing about that skill (and from what Iâve seen itâs usually praised in the fandom), but I will say that throughout the premiere I was noticing it more than I ever have before. The lack of emotion here and some awkward deliveries later, like when Yang goes, âRuby, there is no way Ironwood will cooperate with usâ and I immediately thought, âWow, that came out stilted.â These observations stick with me because, as said, voice acting usually isnât on my radar. Itâs not something Iâve studied or had practice analyzing. If youâd never told me that Ren or Qrowâs VA changed then after a year hiatus I literally wouldnât notice⌠but thereâs something about this episode that didnât sit right. Anyone else get that sense, or was it just me?
Regardless, the arrival of our other three villains really doesnât amount to much, though Iâm happy for all the Emerald and Mercury fans who get to see them in new outfits. The focus is still on Cinder as she delivers a line indicative of her true motivations: âThat power will be mine.â Yeah, sheâs not loyal to Salem, sheâs just power hungry. Of course, Salem immediately takes note of this and raises her hand, in another nice use of the foreground, reminding her that she hasnât given that order.
Cinder is shocked, angry even, but quickly covers it up with her âWithout you I am nothingâ line. If I caught it right I think she also calls Salem âMaâamâ? Hilarious. Again, skilled at playing the servant.
Also, before I forget, itâs worth noting that almost everything from our trailer appeared in this episode. Yeah, there are a few details like Nora attacking some tech and the group on their bikes, but on the whole weâve already seen the majority of our promo material and will likely get most of the rest next week. It makes me both interested and nervous for what another twelve episodes are going to hold.
Salem opens her whale, or opens a portal type view in it, something that gives us a long-distance look at Atlas. I donât know what exactly is going on here, but itâs pretty so Iâll take it.
She also delivers the frankly badass line, âJust because youâre more valuable to me than a pawn does not make you a player.â
She waves them all away with perfect âYou mean nothing to meâ attitude and we sadly leave our villains.
Sad not because I donât love my farm boy, but because things are about to get a whole lot messier.
Oscar has made his way to a camp of civilian survivors⌠all of whom are just hanging out in the supposedly deadly cold. Yeah, thereâs a single fire, but at least four of them arenât anywhere near it. Three of them also arenât wearing gloves. What was that survival rate again?
A nice if gruff dude gives Oscar soupâwater?âwhile showing off his⌠badger claws? I donât know what kind of faunus heâs supposed to be, but he feels like the sort of two second, minor character who could easily become a meme lol.
Oscar thanks him (my polite son!) and hands the bowl back after a single sip. Which is impressive because I would have assumed the guy was giving me the whole bowl and just taken it. Hell, Iâve done that even when I didnât assume itâs all for me. A Starbucks barista once approached me with a tray and a plate of samples, I knew I was supposed to take just one, yet for some reason my hand went to take the whole goddamn plate. He had to tell me off, then I was trying to explain that I didnât actually want or think I should have eight shots of cappuccino all to myself, I donât even like coffee, he clearly didnât believe me⌠it was awkward. So good job, Oscar. Youâre less awkward than me (though thatâs not saying much).
Now a question, Oscar. Darling. Brilliant boy who has been through too much: why the fuck arenât you talking to Ozpin? This will be A Thing later when he presents a lack of time to talk as justification for keeping more secrets (weâll get to that tooâŚ) yet here is time! Youâre just sitting there for who knows how long, with plenty of privacy to hide a supposedly one-sided conversation so the Mantle citizens donât get weirded out or suspicious. Talk to Ozpin. Our headmaster gets two lines in this episode, utterly inconsequential lines like his airship scene, lines that feel like they exist to say, âSee? Heâs still included in the story!â even though he absolutely is not. Two volumes of mostly silence, a perfect setup to start the reconciliation process, but weâre going to put it off again?
Instead Ruby randomly and conveniently appears. I want to know how she found him. Oscar isnât wearing a tracker. He clearly didnât call them because heâs surprised when Ruby shows up. He fell alllllllll the way back down to Mantle and then wandered to a random part of the slums. Youâre telling me they flew over the entire cityâafter beginning this search thinking he was in Atlasâand somehow managed to spot him from up in the air? Câmon. I would have rather had a beginning where Oscar makes his way back to the group himself, giving him and Ozpin time to hash things out.
âNeed a lift?â Ruby says, eliminating that potential. Sigh.
Oscar immediately starts beating himself up when he gets onboard, saying that he âwas stupid to think the General would listen.â Nah, you were stupid to buy into Rubyâs nonsensical confidence and for telling Ironwood heâs as bad as Salem. Sorry, Oscar, but everyone is written badly these days. I will, however, say that I am THRILLED at the groupâs reaction to his return. Ruby says that sheâs âjust glad youâre alright.â Nora has a wonderfully tender moment where she hugs him gently rather than her usual glomp.
That? That added a year to my life. Everyone else seems relieved that heâs okay too, so kudos there. After four years of Oscar being an outsider in the group, this is one of the few moments that feel like heâs 100% accepted. Really glad to see it.
Now letâs see if it sticks after they learn Ozpin is back...
They fly to the Happy Huntressesâ base and I again feel like Iâve missed something crucial. When did they team up? I mean, RWBYJNOR was working directly under Ironwood up until the last hour and Robyn ran off to fight Tyrian/Clover in the last couple episodes. When did she have time to explain her (briefly) changed allegiance and why would the Happy Huntresses trust the group without that? Did Robyn share that Blake and Yang went behind Ironwoodâs back for her? Do the Huntresses instinctively trust them because theyâre now wanted by the military? How did they even run into each other?
Again, I think we would have been better served to have an episode before all this. Let Oscar make his way back and let the group struggle with the magnitude of their situation on the airship, before they find new allies. Transferring directly to, âThey have help and a secret base and a plan in the works!â makes me feel like I missed the real premiere last week. You know, the one where Salem unexpectedly arrived and we left the group like this.
This is where weâve ended up though. The group is cozy in this hideout, getting info from Joanna, and my only other thought is, âWhy is she giving all this exposition?â Â
Shouldnât it be May? I mean, we were told that she was going to play more of a role this volume, a promise thatâs pretty important imo given her status as a (so far off screen) trans character, so why not put her in the role of mediator between the Happy Huntresses and RWBYJNR? Giving her that setup as a leader among her people as well as lots of lines would be meaningful. A trans character just existing and being a part of this fight! May could obviously still fill that roleâIâm well aware that weâre only one episode inâbut it just seems like a missed opportunity to me. Out of all the undeveloped Happy Huntresses, our premiere focuses on the one who has the least importance to the fandom.
As said, Joanna talks a fair bit but what it basically boils down to is trying to get everyone to the crater below Atlas. Itâs apparently not safe, but itâs warm, which is what matters right now.
So⌠let me get this straight. You want to gather everyone into a not safe crater, by leading them through an army of grimm, so that they can wait there in case someone moves the Staff, thus dropping an entire city on top of their heads? Thatâs the plan? Which admittedly isnât Joannaâs fault. This is another instance of RWBYJNOR having information that a leader does not and they should really consider speaking up about it. But of course they donât.
Also, how long does everyone have in regards to the cold? Shouldnât there be dead civilians by now? The time it would take to find the Happy Huntresses, team up with them, get settled in the base, and find Oscar says that things should be pretty grim right now (pardon the pun), yet every non-aura user in this city seems content to just hang out in the snow. Either the cold is deadly enough to justify moving everyone to the crater, or itâs mild enough to let everyone survive this long, not both.
After hugs are given everyone obviously wants to know what happened to Oscar. His response?
âItâs a⌠long story. I get the feeling thereâs been a few of those tonight.â
Thatâs a check for the bingo card! Weâre halfway through the first episode and weâve already got another secret. Yes, this is a secret. Oscar actively chooses not to tell anyone that Ozpin is backâsomething Ozpin himself comments onâand then skillfully draws attention away from himself with âI get the feeling thereâs been a few of those tonight.â Indeed, all eyes go to Penny. Oscarâs plight is forgotten, which is what he wanted. His justification?
Ozpin: âYouâre not going to tell them?â
Oscar: âYou and I arenât done talking yet.â
Along with this look.
Oscar no. Thereâs so much wrong with this I donât even know where to begin. Letâs create a list.
As said, you had plenty of time to talk to Ozpin and chose not to. Miss me with this excuse.
You are now doing to your friends exactly what you and your friends did to Ironwood, which in turn is what Ozpin did to you! I canât believe weâve got Oscar critically side-eyeing him when they are stillâstillârepeating the behavior they drove Ozpin away for.
What is there to even talk about now? Oscar didnât punch himself/Ozpin (lol) but he did steal Jinnâs name from Ozpin in the first place. You got what you wanted, drove him away, and have been lying and keeping secrets ever since. The only thing they should be talking about involves apologizing. Any further criticismâwhich is what Oscarâs expression and curt reply suggestsâis beyond hypocritical.
Seriously, what needs to be discussed? Thereâs no reason not to tell the group unless Oscar wants to talk about whether they should tell them. Thereâs no good ending here...
Donât you think it would be nice to know that Ozpin is back and youâve got super magic powers while making plans to save the entire world?
This is all especially stupid given Oscarâs âSalem wants to divide usâ reminder to Ruby in a moment. Oscar, you are doing the most to divide the group right now. By not forgiving Ozpin. By refusing to work with him. By keeping him secret from everyone else.
This is bad, friends, I worry for what the rest of the volume will bringâŚ
The story is done with Ozpin for now so I guess I will be too. The group continues filling Oscar in and we get some shots of the base, including a rather prominent poster of what I assume are two Happy Huntresses. Did they die in battle perhaps?
Itâs a little strange.
Oscar: âWhereâs Qrow?â
Me: âLikely still making bad decisions.â
No one knows so they just drop it. Which I kind of get, only so much you can do to find him if heâs not out on the streets like Oscar, but it still reads as kind of iffy that two nieces look down at the ground for a hot second and then move on with their plans, content to leave Qrow to whatever fate befell him. In a minute weâll see Yang firmly take Renâs side regarding helping the people they can in Mantle, which frankly comes out of nowhere for her. I think an easy motivation would have been Qrow. Ruby wants to save the world, Yang wants to find and save their uncle, and that just happens to align with Renâs desire to save the civilians who need immediate grimm and cold help. Donât get me wrong, I like that thereâs finally some division between the sisters, I just wish it hadnât come about so abruptly. Ren had setup for standing up to Ruby. Yang did not.
But Iâm getting a little ahead of myself. Joanna lists the grimm horde and no heat as the major threats to everyone. The group agrees.
Me: What about Salem?
Joanna says that this is all doubly dangerous because thereâs âno more military protection.â
Me: Oh, so now you want the military?
This is all so disjointed. Even more-so when Joanna mentions that Ironwood has stopped all evacuations to Atlas, likely due to the âhard light shieldsâ that are the only thing standing between Salem and the city. Thing is, the show never makes this connection, I just did it myself based on this scene and the one that comes later. The show presents Joannaâs line as a pure condemnation. Ironwood wonât let more evacuees in because⌠heâs just evil, I guess. Yet there is a justification here, namely that continuing the evacuations even while heâs stuck without Penny leaves him wide open to a Salem attack, the death of everyone currently safe, but that argument is never presented to the viewer. I donât need people to agree with Ironwoodâs perspective, I just wish that perspective was offered as an option. The show is very good about acting like RWBYJNORâs opinion is the only justified opinion, or simply the only opinion at all.
After everything is laid out Weiss goes, âWeâre never going to sleep again, I just know it.â
I could make a crack about the lack of continuity and how the group should be collapsing right now⌠but that was a funny line. It can stay.
What is far more of a problem is the fact that no one is talking about Salem. Okay, thatâs a lie. They do talk about her, but in a roundabout way like her presence isnât impacting every decision they make. Thatâs the real issue. Theyâre acting as if Salem isnât here right now, like sheâs off far away, maybe approaching slowly, and theyâre arguing over how best to prep the world for her eventual attack. Thereâs no emotion hereâlet alone actionâto reflect that the seriesâ Big Bad has arrived and is poised to murder them all. Literally what is this? Ruby is yelling about warning the world and, ignoring the continued question of why thatâs a good thing when the world can do nothing to stop Salem and knowledge of her continually drives people to horrible acts, she has yet to acknowledge that⌠sheâs the world? Ruby is the world in this conflict. She, Mantle, and Atlas. Salem is here for you all. Right now. You are, this instant, in the situation you want to warn others about, so why donât you try to do something about it? Or at least acknowledge it. Ruby wants to warn the neighborhood about a potential fire while her house is actively ablaze, and the fire could have totally killed her by now but decided not to for⌠reasons.
âRubyâs right,â Nora says. They have to tell the world so âthey can prepare.â How? How are they supposed to prepare for this? The story cannot continue ignoring Salemâs immortality.
âRubyâs right,â is all Blake says and Iâm starting to thinks thatâs why her character exists now, to agree with Ruby. Itâs great that sheâs getting a little distance from Yang, but man.
As Ruby asks whether Pietro can get Amity up and running despite it not being finished (called it) we start an incredibly odd sequence of flashforwards to their individual missions. Iâve seen a lot of praise for this already and though I agree that, in theory, itâs a good way to save time, I found the actual execution to be jarring. Upon thinking back through our timeline, it became clear they were flashforwards, but while watching I thought they might be flashbacks (especially since thatâs more common).
Some of the shots, like Noraâs, just look awkward when youâve got the exact expression and pose transplanted from one scene to another, like sheâs a cardboard cutout behind a green screen. To say nothing of how the flashforwards ruin any suspense (I use that word loosely) in the conversation itself. If the question is, âWill they decide to go to the military compound?â then that question is answered when we see Ruby scoping out the compound, not when the group actually decides on the course of action.
It just made an already muddled scene worse for me, so I hope this trend doesnât continue.
And of course, Amity can be used despite all the info last volume claiming that it wasnât finished. Pietro suddenly acts like it is finished and the only thing standing in their way is Ironwood providing access. If that were the case, he would have used Amity weeks or days ago like he wanted to! When was it finished? Not after Watts commented on how incomplete it was. When did they get back the resources they needed from Robyn? Itâs as ridiculous and retcon-y as I thought it would be.
Yang points out that Ironwood will never listen to them and Ruby counters that âhe doesnât have to.â Theyâll just take the access from him. Because why wouldnât they in a series where theyâve already stolen two airships? Stealing from the super evil military that Joanna wishes were helping them right now is just the groupâs go-to plan nowadays.
Pietro isnât sold on this plan though. He lists at least three obstacles theyâd need to get through âand then⌠oh boy, I might need to think about this some more.â âAnd just to clarify,â Oscar says, âThis is the easy option?â Um...no itâs not? We also know thereâs an access point in Ironwoodâs office so⌠why not go there instead? They really think the Academy is less guarded than the military base? Thereâs a potential justification here along the lines of, âAfter Neo and Cinder broke into his office Ironwood will have the place on high alert,â but unless I missed it the group doesnât assume anything like that. They just listen to Pietro point out all the ways they canât get into the military base and jump straight to that being the best option. It feels like a transparent way to create conflict for the group. Weâll just have them taking the most dangerous route despite an easy route being offered alongside it. Why bother mentioning his office at all? Just have the access in the military base. Boom, done.
Itâs that conflict and the fact that Ruby tends to hear âYou canâtâ and digs in her heels. You canât go to Atlas. Iâll just steal a ship then. You canât defeat Salem. Watch me. You canât break into this base. Guess what Iâm doing! Sheâs dangerous in her fairy tale, meta-driven insistence that everything will turn out her way because she wants it to.
Speaking of, we finallyâFINALLYâget someone challenging Ruby. Sort of. Not actually but itâs the closest weâve ever gotten:
Yang: âRuby, when we came here we said weâd follow your lead⌠but things havenât exactly worked out.â
Now, there are two things to take away from this moment. The first is how utterly shocked Ruby and the others are. I mean, take a look at these expressions.
Ruby straight up canât believe what sheâs hearing. Weiss put her hand to her mouth like this is the most dramatic thing to ever happen to her. Oscar looks down in a âYeah, I agree but please donât look at me and make me admit thatâ way. And Nora looks indifferent in the screenshot but animated she goes sort of stern, likely pissed that Yang would dare say that given her own agreement with Ruby. This not only reiterates that Yangâs challenge came out of nowhereâseriously, how did we move from following Ruby no matter what to this? Last volume she asked a single question along the lines of, âYou sure?â and when Ruby said âYesâ Yang was entirely on boardâbut also demonstrates that no one has EVER said no to her before. Ruby is amazed that someone would challenge her. The act of challenging Ruby is, in and of itself, shocking. This group has gotten so used to following Ruby blindly that the teensiest little pushback is greeted with this.
Because it is teensy. This is the second takeaway: Yang barely challenges her and that challenge leads nowhere. She doesnât accuse Ruby of anything, she doesnât question her continued authority, she just broadly implies that things could be better. We followed you, now things are bad, take from that what you will. Itâs incredibly mild as far as criticism goes, making the shock all the more, well, shocking, but it also amounts toâwait for itânothing! Because Yang didnât truly challenge Rubyâs leadership. Sheâs still in charge, sheâs still calling the shots, and theyâre still listening to her. We might have gotten some change if this division had been allowed to play out, but instead Jaune comes in with a, âLetâs go for both!â solution. It letâs both groups get what they want which, in turn, releases them from the need to grapple with whether theyâll listen to Ruby when sheâs advocating for something they donât agree with. We have now lost the chance to see whether, when push comes to shove, Ren and Yang will cave to Rubyâs will or stick by their own beliefs.
Donât get me wrong, itâs more conflict than weâve gotten in years, but that doesnât mean itâs particularly compelling conflict. Itâs good by RWBYâs standards, which doesnât necessarily make it good. The actual issues at handâRubyâs dangerous arrogance, the groupâs loyalty, her choices up until nowâare just swept under the rug. For all the visuals we get insisting that thereâs this great divide in the group⌠thereâs really not. Not in any way that matters.
Also, Ruby is an idiot. Okay, that was mean, but she really is in this scene. Sheâs actually not an idiot overall because she was written as wonderfully intelligent in the early volumes, but now? Lately? She makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
âBut thatâs how Salem got this far,â she cries. âBy dividing us!â
Ruby⌠oh my god, Ruby. No one should have to explain to you that dividing people means turning them against each other, not literally dividing your team to complete separate tasks. This girl honestly thought that because there was this teensy disagreement and that half the team would complete Plan A while she and the other half completed Plan B, both of which notably work towards the goal of, âProtect people from Salem,â that this was somehow what Salem wanted. That is was dangerous. Honestly, itâs a scary look at her view of leadership too: If everyone doesnât 100% agree with me and do what I say, thatâs an objectively bad thing that the grimm queen wants, right? Does Ruby think that unification means following a single person (her) without question or variation? That would explain a lot...
The fact that Oscar needs to explain the difference to her is not good. It really doesnât say great things about this version of Ruby. Though he was comparing Ironwood to Salem last volume, so really they should all be wearing dunce hats.
Penny offers to take the relic directly to Salem in exchange for her leaving the kingdom alone. I honestly didnât expect that. If anyone took that risk I would have put my money on Ozpin (but of course, during all this talk of the women he knows best, heâs kept quiet). Oscar is again the voice of wisdom, pointing out that they have no reassurance that Salem will keep her word. At least Penny is thinking about Salem as a threat though, so kudos for that. When this plan is shot down she volunteers to get Ruby past the military security instead and, uh, sheâs a little intense about it.
Iâm not entirely sure what is going on with Penny. She disagreed with Winter but then seemed to come around to her point of view, enough to help anyway. They had another (stupid) disagreement about the value of individual lives, so that helps to explain why sheâs teaming up with RWBYJNOR (if you ignore that Ironwood is also trying to save individual lives...). Did watching Fria die shake her up? Is it being the Winter Maiden thatâs not sitting right? Does Penny have lingering feelings about the framing that havenât shown up until now? Her status as a âreal girlâ? Weâve got a lot of reasons that could definitely explain this sudden need to fight, but weâre not told whichâif any of theseâis the driving force. Â
Weâre then given a lot of little details. Someone points out that if Salem gets the staff and âcreate[s] anything elseâ then Atlas will fall (so yeah, letâs move the people underneath it). We still donât know what exactly the Staff does because âcreationâ is kind of broad and âpowering a city to floatâ doesnât seem to sit within that category at all. Pietro gives Yang the keys to his lab so they can get the bikes. We see the group dividing in the flashforwards, something I do like, especially since the show has gone out of its way to break up most of the usual duos. Nora in particular is pissed at Ren for his choice.
âOh, Iâm saving Mantle because I actually believe we can do this.â
#yikes. Well, I did say I wanted a conflict other than âOh no, one of us might dieâ and it looks like I got it. But Nora, the only reason you can do this is because the plot is in your corner: none of you are collapsing from two major fights, you didnât lose your aura so the cold isnât a danger, the military is barely a threat all of a sudden, Salem is helpfully hanging out in her whale instead of killing you, and the story decided that Amity can function so long as you all are the ones who get to use it. Thatâs why you can do this. Ren, who follows in-world logic and doesnât want to risk a whole kingdomâs worth of lives on a pipe dream, thinks differently, oddly enough.
As they leave though Penny gets a call from Ironwood. I know precisely what the fandom is going to say here: âThis evil man is just trying to use Penny to open the vault!â Of course he is. He needs it open to save everyone he can, Penny included. Plus the concept of âusingâ her is a double-edged sword. What do we think the group is doing right now? Using her to get past the security. Pennyâs power is a tool any way you slice it. Granted, Penny volunteers to help the group, but notably here Ruby speaks for her. Penny seems torn and Ruby takes the scroll away with, âSheâs not going anywhere until you change your mind about Mantle.â
Sorry, Ruby, but coming from you that sounds less like a reassurance for Penny and more like just an order for Ironwood. Remember Harriet? Weâll stop attacking you provided you do what we want. Ruby has yet to learn about compromises, let alone acknowledge that she might be wrong. How about you let Penny decide where she goes, especially since by all logic she should have a lot of loyalty to Ironwood. She knew him before she ever met you. Sheâs worked with him since she was rebuild post-Volume 3. Despite what Penny has said, if the story would just let her think about his actions for a hot secondâmaking her the protector of Mantle, sticking up for her after the framing, sending her to the party, teaming her up with Ruby, etc.âshe might realize that the âHe doesnât want me to have friendsâ and âHe just treats me like a toolâ assumptions are just that, unfounded assumptions. But no, Ruby speaks for them both because Ironwood is evil now.
âIf she makes it through our defenses,â Ironwood says, âeverything that follows will be on your hands.â
Thatâs true! Kind of like how itâs own Qrowâs hands that Clover died. When you insist on making a bad situation worse you hold responsibility when the shit hits the fan. You know though that Salem wonât get through their defenses now, somehow, so that thereâs no chance RWBYJNOR will be blamed for it. Or, by that point Ironwood will be so crazed that anything coming out of his mouth is dismissed, no matter how accurate it might be.
We then transfer to the Ace Ops who are, despite what the fandom theorized for many months, clearly upset about Clover. Also pissed. Which they have every right to be. Their friend and leader was killed. Imagine for a moment that Ruby had been murdered by Tyrian with an alliesâ help. Exactly what do you think the group would do? Swallow it quietly and get over it? Ha.
Iâve already seen some speculation that Clover survived due to details like showing us the bandage and his room being listed as for a âPatient,â but he looks pretty dead to me.
He got gutted through the chest and left out in the snow for who knows how long. We saw him slip away. Qrow screamed over his dead body. Heâs not breathing now. If RWBY suddenly claims he survived this, Iâm calling BS.
Most of the other visuals we get here were already dropped in the trailer. Winter is pretty injured from her encounter with Cinder, likely permanently based on her new outfit. Ironwood had to replace his armâand I am calling BS on that âLosing his arm is reflective of him losing his humanityâ commentary from RT. Please go read up on a couple decades worth of ableism in media and then get back to me.
We get Ironwoodâs line about the light shields and, notably, a whole lot of empathy. Regardless of what he might want Penny for, he still called her with compassion. Heâs watching the Ace Ops mourn their friend. Heâs talking about protecting his kingdom. The first thing he says to Winter is, âThank you, Winter. I donât know what I would do without you.â Ironwood has a heart! Itâs always on display, which makes this scene utterly ridiculous.
I literally donât know how to respond to this. The gunshot made me jump, both because itâs a gunshot and because, again, what the fuck? I know I said that next volume RT might just have Ironwood descend into full villainy, shooting whoever he pleases now that heâs shot Oscar, but I didnât actually expect them to do it. Because he never should have shot Oscar in the first place! I wanted the story to let Oscar grapple with it a bit and then quietly backtrack, acknowledging it as the mistake it was. The concept that Ironwood, empathetic Ironwood, rational Ironwood, always thinks before he acts Ironwood, letâs kids yell at him Ironwood, tried to team up with Robyn Ironwood, did everything Ruby wanted Ironwood, wonât kill Watts after he destroyed his arm Ironwood would shoot this guy just to shut him up is absurd. It was absurd then, itâs absurd now.
That being said, thereâs a possibility he didnât actually shoot the council member, but rather just (âjustâ) gave a warning shot down the hallway. I say this because the reactions to this are pretty tame. Everyone looks startled, yeah, but after the initial shot thereâs nothing that I would expect if there was now a guy bleeding out on the floor. The council woman doesnât scream. Winter doesnât seem overly shocked. No one is running to try and help him. Basically, if Ironwood had just killed a political figure in front of six witnesses, entirely unprovoked, I would expect a bit more of a reaction than this. This feels far more like a, âDamn heâs not joking around, letting off warning shots to get people to leave him aloneâ not âWOW, our general just killed someone in cold blood!â
What I really hate thoughâbeyond just assassinating his characterâis how many fans think my friends and I are delusional for calling it character assassination at all. I hopped onto the RWBY tag for five minutes this morning and was bombarded with posts about how Ironwood needs to be murdered horrifically, anyone who likes him is sick, the Ironwood stans are as bad as Adam stans, youâre an idiot if you want him redeemed⌠because apparently the concept of a story writing a character badly doesnât compute. Iâm not here to argue that Ironwood didnât do these awful things (regardless of whether he actually killed the guy or not). Iâm not here to argue that theyâre not awful. Iâm just here to say that we never should have gotten these scenes in the first place, or if we were going to get them, we deserved an actual descent into murder at the drop of a hat territory. Iâve already explained extensively on this blog how early Ironwood was not accurate foreshadowing for this, and Volume 7 certainly wasnât setup, but it looks like the majority of fans arenât interested in examining whether any of this adds up. Which makes my job, as someone trying to examine this series somewhat objectivelyâin as much as thatâs possible for any single viewerâas well as simply enjoy it as a show, really hard. Itâs bad enough when a story keeps taking the characters you love and villainizing them, and doing that badly, but then when you turn to the community and see them rallying around the idea that youâre awful for being dissatisfiedâyouâre the bootlicker, youâre the blind stan, you canât see whatâs âreallyâ going on here⌠that sucks. For those of you happy and satisfied with Ironwoodâs arc, thatâs great! Iâve also seen a lot of posts hyping up the complexity of his character now. Thereâs nothing wrong with enjoying what weâve been given and Iâd never want to imply that just because itâs not what I wanted itâs somehow wrong. Iâm honestly thrilled that after a year of worry so many people have adored our premiere, including this scene. I just wish that I could say RWBY had given me something I didnât want in a persuasive manner and that the fandom as a whole was a bit more welcoming of differing criticisms.
Not that I didnât already know the RWBY fandom had its flaws, but still lol.
Thatâs basically it for our premiere. Nice note to end on, huh? Our final scene is of Salem using the lamp to set her bloodhound grimm on the city. Why doesnât she just go herself? What was she planning to do here in Atlas in the first place, considering that getting the relic was a surprise? Who knows. Little about this holds together. But we do end with another awesome shot, so small favors.
Itâs always strange concluding a recap, but even more-so when itâs a premiere, during a historical moment in the U.S., amidst all the nonsense that is 2020. So for now Iâll just conclude with three quick things:
The updated bingo board will be listed at the end of each recap, provided I donât forget about it lol. Today Iâm checking off tone (not nearly enough freaking out about Salem), the team keeping secrets (Oscar), and major plot point dropped (Amity is suddenly finished). I could also probably check off the cold not killing civilians and getting Amity up and running, but weâll see if any changes with those.
Iâm including my Ko-Fi link at the end of recaps now. Not with any expectations. Not with anything resembling pressure. I thought long and hard over whether to include it at allâlet alone mention it hereâbecause I love doing these and never want anyone to feel like it comes with strings attached. But life is a little harder and weirder than it was last year, so I figure it canât hurt. Feel free to pass on by and I wonât be bringing it up past this note.
Far more importantly: thank you for reading! :D
(Bonus 4. Editing this was an absolute nightmare â damn you, tumblr! â so I apologize if anything is super wonky when I finally post.)
See you next week! đ
[Ko-Fi]
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*sigh* Okay...
Iâve been debating on whether or not to make this post. Not because it doesnât need to be made, but because Iâm not sure Iâm emotionally up for it. But at the end of the day, staying quiet is exactly what got us into this mess, and curling into a sad little ball isnât going to change what happened, and this particular shit needs to be called out and acknowledged.Â
I was asked to address something posted by Eddy Rivas, one of the writers of RWBY, on Reddit yesterday. It was a shortlived post because apparently he or someone who read it realized what a monumentally bad idea it was, but sadly for him, my fellow cockroach gays are pissed as hell and we have screenshot capabilities. I donât care that he removed/edited the post. This was still his instinctive response to the absolute pain caused by him and the rest of CRWBY as a result of volume 7 episode 12:
I am so damn tired and so hurt. But I am going to do my best to address this in a civil and reasonable way.Â
The Problem With Judgment Calls
First of all, to an extent, I understand the predicament Eddy describes. I really do. I get that being on the creative end of a popular web series is very different from being on the fandom end, and conventional wisdom dictates that creators should do their best to make sure the two donât mix past a certain point. That necessary separation probably does make these kinds of judgment calls difficult.Â
The problem is that several members of CRWBY (including writers, animators both former and current, social media managers, and the marketing team specifically) violated that boundary more than once long before episode 12 aired. There were so many things that factored into Fair Game gaining traction as quickly as it did, and many of those things came from the deliberate way that many members of CRWBY interacted with the fandom outside of the show itself. From the official RWBY Twitter account to the suggestive tweets made by a former animator, to the Twitter and Tumblr posts made by a current animator, this ship was heavily and unambiguously encouraged and leaned on multiple times over the course of this volume.Â
Sure, you can make the claim that you canât control the animators (especially if they no longer work for you), or that the creators and the marketing team are two separate entities and that the actions of one do not necessarily reflect the intentions of the other (both things also stated by Eddy Rivas in a series of Tweets). And perhaps some of that is accurate. It points towards a fundamental lack of oversight and cohesiveness in the organization that is Rooster Teeth, and that should absolutely be addressed moving forward, but quite frankly, in this case, it doesnât even matter.
The fact of the matter, Mr. Rivas, is that the boundary was violated. Multiple times. On your end. These types of judgment calls are not a one size fits all, and the moment active members of CRWBY took action to encourage something you knew was going to cause pain, it should have been addressed. Iâm not putting that on you personally, because as a writer I realize you probably donât have that type of authority, but someone there should have put a stop to it. There is the matter of the personal responsibility shirked by the two animators who contributed to this mess, and frankly, they should have known better, but this does not excuse CRWBYâs collective silence.
The fact of the matter is that due to the actions taken by CRWBY both in and outside of the show (including the things you could and could not control) you absolutely reached a point where that boundary should have been purposefully crossed in order to mitigate damage. It doesnât matter what got you or us there. It doesnât matter whether or not it was intentionally done (it was, letâs not kid ourselves). Things built up, hopes were raised as a direct result of your actions, and you all reached a point where you were morally obligated to say something. Do I suggest a single individual should have taken this on? No. I understand the legal ramifications of that. But CRWBY as a whole and RT as the production studio absolutely should have stepped forward. Would that have fully removed the pain and the disappointment? No. But you wouldnât be facing the backlash you are right now if you had.Â
The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All
Closely related to the previous point is the fact that you, Mr. Rivas, seem to be under the impression that a single judgment call policy should and can apply to all situations equally. Thatâs not the case. Weâre not talking about other ships here, hypothetical, canonical, realistic, unrealistic, or otherwise. Weâre talking about this ship.Â
The Fair Game ship was the first and only indication we had in seven volumes of RWBYÂ that a prominent mlm relationship might be coming in to play. You have no other relationships of this nature in the show. You donât even have other male characters who might be able to qualify as gay or bisexual who play major roles. Add on to that the fact that you planned to have one of these characters die in the most brutal and graphic death scene we have gotten to date in RWBY, and no. Iâm sorry. That flimsy defense doesnât stand. This ship was unique, it appealed to a very underserved segment of your fandom, and it should have been treated with the levity it deserved.Â
You make the argument that saying something about this ship but not others wasnât plausible. The issue with that, sir, is one of trust. Up to this point, I and a lot of people I know trusted you, which means you can get away with building up relationships without ever coming out to confirm or deny them offscreen. As long as you understand the narrative promises youâre making as a storyteller to your audience, and understand the importance of fulfilling them through narrative payoff at some point in the story, weâre usually pretty willing to follow you and watch it unfold. This is how writing works. You have to be aware of the promises youâre making and you have to be able to follow through on them in satisfying ways. This goes double if you plan to fulfill them in unexpected ways (note the word fulfilled still applies). If you donât do that, trust is broken and you have a problem.Â
Fair Game is unique in that you knew from the beginning that trust was going to not only be violated but brutally so. CRWBY made promises with Clover and Qrow that they never intended to keep, and that is one of the core issues here. If you want to cling to the excuse that it was all unintentional (again, one I do not buy), that only means you absolutely should have said something to that effect long before we ever got to this point. It would have given nothing about the plot away to let us know that wasnât the intended direction and it would have calmed down the excitement that built up so quickly around the ship. It certainly would have prevented a lot of people from being emotionally and psychologically damaged as a result of having that trust destroyed.Â
Not saying something about relationships that may or may not happen is VERY different from not saying something about a ship that you know is not going to happen because you plan to brutalize and murder one of the characters on screen in spite of the narrative promises made. Particularly when the ship in question would have offered rep to people who thus far in the show ( when weâre over halfway through the series) still have none.Â
No rep to be found here...
Iâm not sure I should even have to address this but apparently, it needs to be said. It will be short because itâs a pretty damn simple answer.
You want to know âhow well [saying no rep to be found here would] have gone over?â A hell of a lot better than the queerbaiting fest you have victimized us all to for the last three months. Would you still have had disappointed fans on your hands? Absolutely. But the psychological and emotional damage you all caused in episode 12 could have been so easily avoided, and that should have taken precedence over whatever tension you wanted to maintain between these characters in the show.Â
This should not have been a difficult decision, and quite frankly, the fact that you donât understand this is a little alarming.Â
We Are Not a Shopping Montage
Alright. Here is where my civility is going to deteriorate noticeably, so fair warning.
You had the audacity to compare the emotional trauma of hundreds of LGBTQ fans to the disappointment of not getting a fucking shopping montage??? You even acknowledge that on an emotional level these two things are nowhere near being the same thing, and you still tried to justify your actions and the actions of CRWBY with it? That emotional fallout is the thing that matters here.Â
But thereâs even more to it than that.
The hopes for a shopping montage came from a single Tweet from the official RWBY Twitter (if I remember right) about a montage scene being in volume 7. That was it. That was all fans had to go off of. This absolutely was a case of imaginations running wild and people hoping for a scene that, quite frankly, in light of the showâs trajectory since volume 3, wasnât a reasonable expectation to begin with. CRWBY was in no way complicit in or responsible for this expectation that I know of, and even if you were.... It. Was. A. Shopping. Montage.
And you dare to compare that with the intentional queer coding of Qrow and Cloverâs relationship in the writing, the animation choices, the character design for Clover, and the behavior of CRWBY on social media, only for Clover to die horrifically and for Qrow to be absolutely destroyed emotionally and mentally on-screen??? You dare to relate the disappointment of people who didnât get a pointless shopping scene with the trauma of watching a loved characterâs murder and another loved characterâs emotional/mental destruction??? Really? That seemed like an appropriate thing to say?
I donât even know what else to say to this except absolute world-shattering shame on you, sir. How dare you?
And then to top all of this off, instead of apologizing, instead of showing some contrition, you tried to delete this post and pretend you never said it. Did you hope we wouldnât notice? That we wouldnât react if you tried to take it down? Were you even the one who realized what you said or did you need it pointed out to you?
You should not be a writer, sir. You sure as hell should not be a creator of content that engages with people on an emotional level because you clearly have no respect for it and no understanding of the responsibility you bear because of it.Â
What is wrong with you?
Tagging @fairgame-is-endgameâ who asked me to say something on this absolute bullshit.Â
#fair game#crwby#wtf crwby#rwby#rwby7#rwby7 spoilers#rwby spoilers#qrow branwen#clover ebi#eddy rivas
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9/13/2019 âBuilding a Literacy Community: The Role of Literacy and Social Practice in Early Childhood Programs.âand . âToward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning: Twenty Years of Inquiry.â
For this assignment I first read an article titled, âBuilding a Literacy Community: The Role of Literacy and Social Practices in Early Childhood Settingsâ. The overarching idea was that the interactions parents, teachers, and caregivers have with children supports childrenâs literacy development through collectively engaging in childrenâs literature, helping children problem solve through reasoning and scaffolding, and using oral language to help children build community and relate with peers. The second article entitled âToward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning: Twenty years of Inquiryâ was a more complex read for me. The overall take away was that a theory rightfully proved that the conditions of oral language development could be applied to literacy development with engagement of the student being the most influential in successful literacy learning. Through establishing engagement with students and the content students are then able to transform, apply, and evaluate the linguistic input to further understand the concept.
Although the articles both had very interesting points I found that  I appreciated in the article âBuilding a Literacy Community articleâ how the text mentioned that early education classrooms used questions and suggestions instead of giving explicit instructions to children (Britsch, 212). Working at an early childcare center this summer, was an amazing experience to see students engage with problem solving strategies as I provided prompting and encouragement. I am a firm believer that children need to have the ability to explore and engage with the world to make sense of it in their own terms.
Regarding the article âToward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning: Twenty years of Inquiryâ, I found that the set-up of the article to be quite interesting. I loved how he related the acquired and habitual process of language learning from a young age to that of literacy development and awareness. This connection is valid as the learning of a first language is a habitual process that a child is immersed into everyday. The child learns from constant engagement and exposure. This is essentially the same way that literacy development should be applied and taught as well. As the article articulated, while learning to read or to make phonetic awareness is important it is also necessary to consider the delivery of the content so that meaningful learning can occur through student engagement.Â
      I chose to complete the readerly habit of exploring relationships with other people through reading by using texts as a shared experience with another person/other people or to gain insight into the perspective of another person. I chose to complete this by providing an interpretation of the text through another course I have taken and am in the process of taking right now. I started by reading the headings and skimming the pages to try and see what course I could relate the topics of literacy development and language learning to. My mind immediately went to my favorite course and topic of ESL and TESOL. These classes discussed the process of learning a language versus the process of acquiring on and the struggles Els face when being immersed in a language that is not their own. The purpose of ESL education is not simply to teach the language as one would teach a language education course, but to teach them the academic and social language necessary for survival within this society. After establishing my lens, I read through the articles and found that the article âToward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learningâ was one that allowed me to make further more explicit connections between my ESL course and my current literacy course. I reflected upon my knowledge of  language acquisition from the ESL course and looked through my previous course book Essential Linguistics to familiarize myself with the content of TESOL again. I realized that learning the English language is much harder for Els as they already have competency in their first language which may cause for interference when learning English as their second language. Yet these children or adults, are essentially immersed within the culture and are surrounded by the language. In order to make sense of this language ESL teachers must help these students make connections that are tangible and most importantly engaging for the learner to comprehend. I found that the article related that engagement is of the utmost importance for literacy development amongst native English speakers, but I believe the same is true for an EL studentâs language development and simultaneously their literacy development. In one of the paragraphs, the article discussed how demonstration was a condition of learning that supported language development and thus literacy development (Cambourne, 185) . For Els, I believe it is so critical to make engaging demonstrations to learn the English language coherently alongside an Els literacy development. In the 200 level TESOL class, we are now engaging with the priority of ESL teachers to know grammar and know how to explain to Els the why and how behind the grammar concepts. In order to do this effectively, engagement must be done so information can be applied and Els can then evaluate their own progression in English and Literacy development for the sake of melding into an English-speaking society. The authorâs presentation of language learning at first as a linear process did not settle well as language especially for ELs is reliant upon not just the immersion, but consistent and differentiated demonstrations of language and literacy use, constant opportunities for ELs to employ and practice English in a safe setting, and opportunities to respond. Learning a second language is significantly different than the first language acquisition model the author has employed. Although their are similarities, there needs to be ample opportunity for EL students to have reinforcement of concepts and engagement geared toward honoring the complexities having a different first language can cause. The hardest part of utilizing this lens was understanding that the authorâs perception of literacy development did not necessarily account for Els and the challenges they may face. Overall, I appreciated through both of my readerly lenses that Engagement was highly honored, but it takes immense repetition, more critical demonstrations and attempts to become fluent and competent in English let alone being able to apply these skills fluidly to English literacy. Through looking at the article through this lens, I had gained a better appreciation for how the aspects of literacy development are critical to all learners, but all language learners and literacy learners engage with the content through a similar process. Here is a picture of my Essential Linguistics book that I looked through to help me recall and understand language acquisition a bit more as I read the article.
Britsch, Susan J., and Daniel R. Meier. âBuilding a Literacy Community: The Role of Literacy and Social Practice in Early Childhood Programs.â Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 26, no. 4, June 1999, pp. 209â215. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1023/A:1022955421017.
Cambourne, Brian. âToward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning: Twenty Years of Inquiry.â Reading Teacher, vol. 49, no. 3, Nov. 1995, p. 182. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1598/RT.49.3.1.
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Nvidia RTX 3070 review: AMDâs stopwatch just started ticking a lot louder
Talking about the RTX 3070, Nvidia's latest $499 GPU launching Thursday, October 29, is tricky in terms of the timing of today's review embargo. As of right now, the RTX 3070 is the finest GPU in this price sector by a large margin. In 24 hours, that could changeâperhaps drastically.
Ahead of AMD's big October 28 event, dedicated to its RDNA 2 GPU line, Nvidia gave us an RTX 3070 Founders Edition to test however we saw fit. This is the GPU Nvidia absolutely needed to reveal before AMD shows up in (expectedly) the same price and power range.
Inside of an Nvidia-only bubble, this new GPU is a sensation. Pretty much every major RTX 2000-series card overshot with proprietary promises instead of offering brute force worth its inflated costs. Yet without AMD nipping at its heels, Nvidia's annoying strategy seemed to be the right call: the company established the RTX series' exclusive bonus processing cores as a major industry option without opposition, then got to wait a full year before competing with significant power jumps and delectable price cuts.
Last month's RTX 3080 saw that strategy bear incredible fruitâeven if ordering that $699 GPU is still seemingly impossible. But what happens when Nvidia scales down the Ampere 7nm promise to a $499 product that more people can afford? And how will that compare to whatever AMD likely has to offer in the same range?
Future-proofing around the 1440p threshold
We can only answer some of those questions today. (Until Nvidia proves otherwise, we assume that availability will continue to be a massive asterisk for this and all other RTX 3000-series cards.) In good news, at least, the RTX 3070 gets off to a roaring start by rendering its 2019 sibling, the RTX 2070 Super, moot. Both debuted at $499, but the newer option typically approaches, and occasionally bests, the RTX 2080 Ti (whose $1,199 MSRP in 2018 sure feels like a kick in the ray-traced teeth nowadays).
But RTX 3070's price-to-performance ratio comes with one significant caveat: a not-so-future-proofed VRAM capacity of 8GB, shipping in the not-as-blistering category of GDDR6. That matches the best RTX 2000-series cards but is surpassed by higher-speed GDDR6x VRAM in pricier RTX 3000-series GPUs.
The thing is, "future-proofed" for PC gaming is relative. What's going to matter in 3D processing in the near future, both for the games you love and the systems you run them on? If you're set on having the crispest native 4K rendering for the foreseeable future, the RTX doesn't leapfrog over the 2080 Ti, particularly with a VRAM allotment that could stress any games that ship with 4K-specific texture packs.
But if you're favoring a lower-resolution panel, perhaps 1440p or a widescreen 1440p variantâand Steam's worldwide stats make that a safe assumptionâthen your version of future-proofing revolves more around processing power and ray-tracing potential. In those respects, the RTX 3070 currently looks like the tippy-top option for a "top-of-the-line" 1440p system... with the bonus of Nvidia's Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) for surprisingly competitive fidelity in 4K resolutions, should gamers upgrade their monitor between now and the next GPU generation. (Until AMD shows us otherwise, Nvidia's proprietary DLSS 2.0 pipeline remains the industry's leading upscaling option, and game studios have started embracing it in droves.)
In other words, if you're more interested in high frame rates on resolutions less than 4K, and you want GPU overkill for such a CPU-bound gaming scenario, the RTX 3070 is this year's best breathing-room option for the price... at least, unless AMD announces an even more compelling proposition on October 28.
Strong, but not the 2080 Ti topper we expected
The above collection of game benchmarks mostly mirrors the ones I used for my RTX 3080 review, and once again, these tests err on the side of graphical overkill. You may have zero interest in using an RTX 3070 with 4K resolutions or maximum graphical slider values, and that's understandable. Instead, these tests are designed to stress the GPU as much as possible to present the clearest comparisons between the listed cards. Look less at the FPS values and more at the relative percentages of difference. (The exception comes from "DLSS" tests, which I'll get to.)
Even though this year's $499 RTX 3070 clearly exceeds the power of last year's $699 RTX 2080 Super, I tested it against last year's $499 RTX 2070 Super as well to show exactly what a difference a year makes in terms of price-to-power proposition. The percentage differential between the 70-suffix GPUs varies based on what kind of software you're testing, but the most massive surge in performance can be found when ray-tracing effects are toggled at pure 4K resolution. Wolfenstein Youngblood, in particular, sees the 3070 double the 2070 Super's frame rates in its ray-tracing benchmarks.
While Nvidia has made benchmarking claims that put the RTX 3070 ahead of the RTX 2080 Ti, that doesn't necessarily bear out in my testingâbut this is because the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition shipped in 2018 with a remarkable capacity for safe overclocking. The 3070 FE, like its 2070 Super sibling, seriously lacks headroom for such safe overclocking for either its core or memory clocks, as managed by tests-at-every-step automation by programs such as EVGA X1. Testing was nearly identical on the 3070 with or without a scant EVGA X1 overclock applied, and as such, I've left its OC tests out of this roundup. Remember: as Nvidia's Founders Editions go, generally, so do other vendors' variants. So we're not sure other vendors will squeeze much more out of the same model.
Thus, the 2080 Ti still pulls ahead in most, but not all, of the above gaming benchmarks, whether ray tracing is or isn't enabled. When comparing both cards' specs, this difference checks out, since the newer 3070 cuts back on certain components for efficiency's sake (not to mention that dip in VRAM capacity). Categories like Tensor cores and RT cores are listed as "newer-generation" versions for the 3070, and the bigger 3000-series cards beat the 2080 Ti both in quantity and generation, so they get the clearer wins. The 3070 finally sees that efficiency trade fail to win out in certain testing scenariosânothing tragic, mind you, but worth noting in case you'd hoped for across-the-board wins against the 2080 Ti. That's 184 "third-generation" Tensor cores in the 3070, versus 544 older Tensor cores in the 2080 Ti, and 46 "second-generation" RT cores in the 3070, versus 68 older RT cores in the 2080 Ti.
Size, ports, noise
The RTX 3070's efficiency figures into its size reduction, down to 9.5 inches in length (242mm) from the RTX 2070 Super's 10.5 inches (but not quite as small as the original RTX 2070's 9-inch length). Like other 3000-series FEs, the RTX 3070 utilizes what Nvidia calls a "flow-through" design that pulls cool air from below and pushes hot air out in two directions: through its "blower," out the same side as its DisplayPort and HDMI connections, and upward in the same direction as your motherboard's other components. Basically, the size reduction may help you cram an RTX 3070 into a smaller case, but you'll still want to guarantee considerable airflow.
Speaking of connections, they're identical to what you'll find on the RTX 3080: three for DisplayPort, one for HDMI 2.1. (If you missed it, Nvidia quietly dumped the VR-friendly USB Type-C "VirtualLink" port found in most RTX 2000-series cards from this year's GPU generation, perhaps owing to how few VR headset manufacturers bothered supporting it.) Additionally, the 3070 continues the RTX 3000-series trend of employing a smaller 12-pin connector for power, though it ships with an adapter for today's common 8-pin PSU standard. In the 3070's case, it only requires one 8-pin connection to a PSU, not two (or a mix of 8-pin and 6-pin), even though it maxes out at a 220W power draw. (The 2070 Super requires one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector with a power-draw maximum of 215W.)
And when Nvidia brags that the RTX 3070 runs quieter, the company means it. While I lack solid decibel-measuring equipment to tell you exactly how much quieter this card runs than its competition, it's safe to say that its full-load mix of fan noise and operational hum probably won't be the loudest component in your system. And with my ear directly up to it, its noticeable noise certainly wasn't louder than, say, a PlayStation 4 Pro. (Nvidia has described its noise level as "up to 16dBA quieter" than the original RTX 2070 Founders Edition.)
Thoughts on 1440p, ray tracing, and DLSS
The above benchmarks make clear that 4K/60fps performance in newer PC games, with all settings maxed out, isn't a given on the RTX 3070. But it's important to note that many of these tests include overkill settings for things like anti-aliasing, shadow resolution, and even "maximum" ray-tracing effects, all meant to guarantee maximum GPU impact for the sake of accurate comparisons between the GPUs. In the real world, you can safely drop most of these from "ultra," "extreme," or "insane" while still exceeding most console ports' settings and barely looking discernible from their over-the-top maximums, and the results often land darned close to 4K/60.
Scale down to a resolution like 1440p and you'll hope for frame rates that take advantage of monitors rated for 144fps and above. One good indicator of the RTX 3070's capabilities is Borderlands 3, a particularly demanding (and arguably inefficient) game that doesn't leverage Nvidia-specific GPU perks while packing its scenes with dynamic lighting, alpha particle effects, cel-shaded detail, and massive draw distances. When put through its benchmark wringer at 1440p on my testing rig (i7-8700K OC'ed to 4.7GHz, 32GB DDR-3000 RAM), BL3 averages 99.5fps at the "high" settings preset or 88.0fps at "ultra." Not 144fps, mind you, but I think of BL3 as a good "floor" for performance, easily outdone by older and more efficient 3D games.
Without ray tracing turned on in 3D games from the past few years, RTX 3070's frame rates have easily surpassed 80fps with tons of bells and whistles enabled at 1440p resolution, and they've easily gone higher with every drop in settings from there. But what happens on the RTX 3070 with ray tracing turned on?
As of press time, there's an interesting combined trend for just about everything I've tested with some version of DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR): the harmonious pairing of Nvidia's latest "DLSS 2.0" standard. Should you run GPU-pounders like last year's Control or this month's Watch Dogs Legion at near-max settings and 1440p resolution, plus ray tracing enabled, you can expect frame rates at roughly 50 to 55fps on the RTX 3070. But a funny thing has happened with DLSS 2.0: much improved support for DLSS upscaling from 906p to 1440p. Last year, I would've told you that you were crazy to upscale from anything lower than 1440p, in terms of pixel smudginess.
When testing at 1440p, Control has seen its DLSS 2.0 translation of tiny details, particularly text on posters, improve compared to native rendering plus temporal anti-aliasing (TAA). Meanwhile, WDL's benchmark is keen on adding rain to its mix, which is clever on Ubisoft's part; this is the exact kind of detail that DLSS has struggled to render in games like Death Stranding, yet in this newer game, rain materializes almost identically when its 906p signal is upscaled with DLSS' machine-learning wizardry.
With both of these games' DLSS modes toggled at this 906p upscale, frame rates jump to the 78-84fps range... and that's with ray tracing enabled ("high" RT settings in Control, "medium" RT settings in WDL).
A masterful game of GPU dominoes
Nvidia really couldn't have set these dominoes up any better. Its RTX line of GPUs has separate components to handle the above fancy featuresâdedicated ray-tracing cores and dedicated "tensor" cores to handle ML-assisted computation. The way its ray-tracing cores work lines up neatly with industrywide standards like DXR, which means it's a drop in the programming budget to implement those in ways that will work on competitors' GPUs and on brand-new gaming consoles. And the tensor cores' upscaling methods line up neatly with TAA, a particularly common anti-aliasing standard that Nvidia's DLSS effectively piggybacks off. As of DLSS 2.0, the model does not require game-specific coding to work (though developers still have to partner with Nvidia to implement it). For Nvidia gamers, then, the ray-tracing proposition going forward is clear: if you want to turn it on, you'll almost certainly have the simultaneous option of toggling the efficiency of Nvidia's dedicated RT cores and the efficiency of their DLSS implementation. In terms of pixel fidelity, DLSS 2.0 has pretty much proven to be a wash, with games generally enjoying a mix of sharper and blurrier elements depending on the scene (with neither being egregious, with the notable exception of Death Stranding's peskiest, super-detailed moments like cut-scene details and screen-filling rain). And that's a wash visually, not computationally; the proof is in the frame-rate pudding.
We still don't know if AMD can possibly compete when its future cards have their ray-tracing modes turned on. Maybe we're in for a $500-ish scenario where AMD can beat Nvidia's rendering performance in a game like Borderlands 3 at a better price-to-performance ratio, only to lose out on the same performance gains with ray tracing turned on. Having tested Watch Dogs Legion over the past week, I can safely say its RT perksâas slathered over a massive, open-world city full of reflective surfaces and other handsome light-bounce effectsâare difficult to disable now that I have a midrange GPU that can reasonably handle said effects at "1440p."
Meaning, I could turn them off... but I no longer want to. It's hard to go back to plain ol' rasterization after seeing so many light sources realistically emerge no matter what time of day or scenario I'm in. As I pilot a drone past a shiny office building, or drive in a shiny, future-London car past a beautiful landmark, I see objects in WDL reflect or bounce light in ways that acknowledge objects or light sources that otherwise aren't on the screen. This is what ray tracing does: it accounts for every nearby light bounce, even if it's not on screen, to render the whole world whether you can see it directly or not.
Plus, if you have dreams of one day toggling ray-tracing power at 4K with this card, WDL on an RTX 3070 at "high" settings gets up to a 58fps average in 4K resolution with RT at "medium," so long as I use DLSS to upscale to 4K from... wait for it... 1440p native. Those upscaling results are convincingly crisp, as well.
Thus, as I said in the beginning, your definition of a "future-proofed" GPU will likely drive your interest in what the RTX 3070 has to offer for $499. We're about to see even more interesting ray tracing in gamesâincluding at least one we're not allowed to talk about yet. You'll have to take our word for it, in terms of how exciting it is to live inside of some games' ray-traced worlds.
If that's not your bag, due to visual preferences or budgetary reasons, I get it. But it remains to be seen whether a cheaper RTX card can deliver the same future-proofing in the 1080p range or whether AMD will arrive with a perfect amount of budget-minded power and ray tracingâor even a butt-kicker of a card that skips ray tracing altogether in favor of powerful, traditional 3D rendering for a damned good price. For now, in the 1440p range, Nvidia has the clear lead... for at least 24 hour
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herO, the evolution of Adept / Phoenix Transitions, and the difference between GuMiho and aLive.
At IEM Katowice I was pretty outspoken about the need for Protoss players to transition out of Adept/Phoenix play in PvT as the game became longer. herO's play in the group stage was a great example of the limitations of the Adept/Phoenix composition. In many of his games he would have what amounted to a decent lead and eventually get grinded down by remaining on the early/mid game composition for too long.
Some Protosses, most notably Stats, were attempting to transition out of Adept/Phoenix, but that transition was not yet fully vetted. In both games during which he opened with Adept/Phoenix strategies against TY in the finals of Katowice, Stats attempted to transition out. In both of these games (game 2 on Proxima Station and game 3 on Abyssal Reef), Stats followed up the opening with Blink and Psi Storm, and in both of these games TY defeated him. Stats hung up the strategy for the rest of the tournament, as TY was clearly more prepared for these situations than he was.
2 Weeks Later...
IEM Katowice ended on March 5th. Let's fast forward almost 2 weeks later to March 18th. On this day, herO and Stats both showed identical transitions from the strong Adept/Phoenix early/mid game into a full blown, teched out late game.
herO vs Bunny @ Abyssal Reef - SHOUTcraft Kings March - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aADlJZtuA5o&feature=youtu.be&t=612
Stats vs Ryung @ Abyssal Reef - GSL Code S ro4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDaXcaURBZA&feature=youtu.be&t=730
Stats vs Ryung @ Cactus Valley - GSL Code S ro4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDaXcaURBZA&feature=youtu.be&t=3322
Here is a brief outline of their important changes to the transition of Adept/Phoenix into the late game:(please note that for these rules to hold, Terran should have taken a 3rd base and not taken or inflicted critical damage, i.e, a "normal" game)
- The transition happens in the area of 70-80 Army Supply for Protoss (40ish on ground units - mostly Adepts, 20ish on Mothership Core / Oracle / 7-8 Phoenix / Prism). Around this time the game is shifting. Either you have done enough damage that Terran is scrambling, or Terran is turtling well enough on 3 bases that you will get diminished returns upon any further attacks.
- The transition itself is into a 2nd Robotics, Colossus Tech, and THEN a 4th base. The second Forge and Blink can come around this time as well.
3 Weeks Later...
Now, strategies do not stop evolving in a game like StarCraft 2. As shown above, Adept / Phoenix went from no transitions / bad transitions into a highly regular and strong follow-up strategy in under 2 weeks time. Protoss vs Terran and Terran vs Protoss are, of course, still evolving. Certain base concepts of RTS will always apply, and as people use them in different ways or with different emphasis-es the metagame will continue to evolve.
Let's fast forward again, from March 18th, where a completely solid transition was showcased for Phoenix Adept, to almost 3 weeks later during GSL Super Tournament. As you probably already know, herO won this tournament, mostly on the back of his outrageously strong PvT. The two matches that I want to talk about are the ones which he had in the ro8 and Finals, against GuMiho and aLive, respectively.Â
herO's Adept / Phoenix vs GuMiho - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhTGuHQGdto
Overall Score: 1-1
GuMiho's loss on Newkirk Precinct:
In this game, and overall in the series, GuMiho plays against herO's strong Pylon rush opener. Instead of the popular Gas before Barracks which is used to get your Factory and Reactor out right after your Reaper, GuMiho instead goes for a Barracks first. With this he skips the Reactor for a little bit and instead makes 3 Marines immediately, which do a fantastic job of shutting down the aggression.
GuMiho uses a "GuMiho moveout", as I call it in my head. He, like many other Terrans, will move out with a couple of Medivacs, some Marines, and 2-3 Widow Mines. Unlike many other Terrans, he won't engage with it. A key to understanding Adept/Phoenix is to understand that they WANT this fight. Adept/Phoenix is strong in small skirmishes, and especially strong against Marines. The lower the supplies, the stronger Adept/Phoenix becomes. GuMiho will not give you this fight. He will pretend that he is going to, often times baiting out an Overcharge. Then he will retreat over his Widow Mines, hoping that you will chase and lose a couple Phoenixes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The most important thing is that he makes it back home, not having donated his units towards a Protoss victory. Screen Shot below.
Behind this, GuMiho is just massing up on 2 bases. The push distance on Newkirk Precinct between GuMiho's natural and herO's 3rd is very short, which makes this a strong choice of strategy for the map. He is making sure to make Liberators, Marauders and Widow Mines. His push will begin around 110 Army Supply. The 110-130 Terran Army Supply range, generally speaking, is where Adept/Phoenix will start to deteriorate in value. Remember, Adepts are like Roaches. They can be scary, but the higher your supply, the less you have to worry about them. Here is a screen shot of the armies as GuMiho starts his push.
Now, I need to mention about herO's lack of transition here. GuMiho has forced this. As I mentioned above when talking about the transition into Colossus tech, it is used when Terran has 3 bases and has basically shut down harassment. In this game, GuMiho has remained on 2 bases, has lost very little so far, and feigned pressure multiple times. herO has been forced to remain on Adept/Phoenix. GuMiho would have some serious kill potential if he tried to skimp on units at any time in this game so far.
GuMiho sets up a pretty awesome looking push:
herO begins to push it back:
herO continues to chase but GuMiho rallies in and turns any time he feels advantaged (getting most units out of range of Adepts, over mines, etc.)
This approach from GuMiho is really quite brilliant. While he does eventually lose the game, he comes very close to defeating herO, and perhaps with a few different moves a bit later, does.
And just to cut off anyone who wants to say "oh, yeah, see! GuMiho played so awesomely and in a way you say is strategically sound, and Adept/Phoenix still beat him!" , I have this to say:GuMiho is a great player, but being upset that herO beat him with Adept/Phoenix is like being upset that Maru beat Trap with Marine/Marauder.
GuMiho's win on Echo:
GuMiho again, as he did on Newkirk Precinct, opens with Barracks - Gas, making sure to minimize damage from any Pylon rushes.
GuMiho again uses the "GuMiho moveout".
herO tagged the army in their encounter on Newkirk Precinct when the Mines were with it. This time GuMiho kept them behind and pre-burrowed:
He then waited around a bit longer and successfully baited herO into them. Remember, Protoss WANTS to fight right now. GuMiho uses this want against him.
Now even though these first two moves I bring up are similar to the other Adept / Phoenix game, the overall strategies of both players have changed. GuMiho decided to take a much faster 3rd CC, and herO had also taken a faster 3rd Nexus -- right after his Oracle, before adding additional Gateways. herO also grabbed an early Prism this game, and decided to try to kill GuMiho outright. GuMiho sat back defending, sending only a single Medivac onto the map to drop Mines while he was being harassed by the Phoenixes at his main base.
Now herO, taking a 4th base, is trying to kill a turtling GuMiho, who is taking a 3rd base.
What is wrong with this picture for Protoss? He has shaded in to a nice GuMiho arc. Many of his Adepts are not firing. Also, GuMiho has not actually lost basically any units this game. There is no real reason why a defensive GuMiho should die to herO's attack. What is herO trying to achieve? Even if he pushes the army to retreat, what is gained? There are no SCVs at the 3rd base yet, the best he can do is trade some units for units. Now, to be fair, he's lost some Probes to the Mine drop, and his initial Prism didn't work out. He could feel like he needs to take some risks to even up the game, which is reasonable. Still, Â GuMiho defends this push very well, targeting down as many Phoenixes as possible.
After defending the a bit longer, GuMiho, not having sent countless drops out to their own doom, not having wasted units in skirmishes that the Adept/Phoenix player wants to take, moves out once again around 110 supply.
This push rolls through herO. There are lots of different reasons that herO may have chosen to play extra aggressively on this map, and just because he lost doesn't necessarily mean that he was wrong in doing so. StarCraft is complicated like that. This game, though, is a perfect example of the need for Phoenix/Adept players to transition vs a well defended 3 base Terran who knows what he's doing.
herO's Adept / Phoenix vs aLive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds6ymGrIMMQ
Overall Score: 3-1
herO went 1-1 vs GuMiho with Adept/Phoenix play, and could have easily gone 0-2. So why, against a better Terran player in aLive, did he go 3-1? Let's take a look at the causes of aLive's losses.
aLive's loss on Echo:
aLive uses a different opening on Echo from anything we normally see in TvP right now. He opens with a Barracks first and skips making a Reaper, or any units. Instead he gets a fast Reactor while expanding, followed by a second Barracks and a Factory. This will allow aLive to have a much higher Marine count early on than most common builds in the matchup.
Next, at 3:25, aLive scouts a ridiculously fast Nexus. This Nexus is so fast that it's before the Oracle. This fast scout my account for what happens next, but there's no way to tell for sure.
aLive scans and sees a Stargate building an Oracle. It's actually the second Oracle. The first Oracle is almost to his base. He moves out at this point with a sizable Marine force, a Mine and a Medivac.
Of course with no units at home the Oracle flies in and does critical damage.
My guess is that aLive thought with how fast the Nexus was that herO maybe went 3rd base into a Stargate, which would maybe make him think that his scan reveal the first Oracle. Otherwise why would he leave his base completely unguarded vs an incoming Oracle? He just wouldn't.
aLive's push doesn't end up doing any damage. He splits up all of his units and then herO deals with them in two groups instead of fighting against them all at once. If aLive had kept them together its certain he would have at minimum killed the 3rd base. Regardless, he lost 10 SCVs to the first Oracle before 5 minutes into the game and did nothing of note with his initial push. This game isn't as much a loss to Adept / Phoenix as it is a loss to an undefended Oracle. If a Protoss loses 10 Probes to the first Mine Drop, normally it isn't the follow-up kill that gets complained about. It's the Mine Drop.
aLive's loss on Daybreak:
This game opens pretty well for aLive. herO expands quickly and immediately tries harassing with 2 Adepts, and an Oracle. He even brings a Phoenix across to tank Mine hits so the Oracle can get more damage. aLive deflects everything just about as perfectly as you can, taking minimal damage.
The next real action occurs as aLive is moving out. He goes across the map with a similar army to what GuMiho uses in the "GuMiho moveout". 3 Mines, 20 Marines, and 2 Medivacs. He's headed towards the 3rd base. On his way there, herO is harassing with his Phoenixes in aLive's natural. aLive sees this as an opportunity to get into an aggressive position.
herO doesn't see this incoming attack until the last second, but immediately brings all of his units and warps in on location. Note the army supplies right now: 52 vs 53.
Here is the engagement about to happen. Do 3 Mines, 20 Marines and 2 Medivacs beat 15 Adepts and 6 Phoenixes/1 Oracle? Even just comparing the supplies, or the army cost of these two armies... in no world does aLive's army ever win here.
At the pro level, Protoss wins this every single time. This particular time, aLive micros really well and herO is a bit off, even missing a pickup on a Mine. aLive actually ends up sniping off a few Phoenixes that make this fight not as bad as it could have been and often is.
Phoenix / Adept, as I've been saying throughout this article, is very strong in the early and mid game. We are all used to Terran being stronger in small skirmishes at small supplies than Protoss or Zerg, but Phoenix/Adept turns the tables on that. Attacks like this are, in my view, the primary reason that Terrans have a hard time against Adept/Phoenix.
This next drop happens right as aLive's previous attack was being cleaned up. 7 Marines, 2 Mines and 2 Medivacs are sent into herO's natural. I really like the fundamentals that aLive is showing here.
First, herO's Phoenixes are in aLive's natural, so aLive hits the 3rd. Then as all those units are getting cleaned up, aLive hits herO's natural to do damage while he's out of position. These are the types of moves that make aLive so damn good. This play shows aLive's multi-tasking prowess. I seriously think that the first attack at the 3rd base was a mistake, but based on the fact that he did that attack, this attack is a good idea. (for the record he ends up killing 8 Probes, 1 Oracle, costs a bit of lost mining time and unpowering 4 gates for slightly over the build time of a Pylon.)
OK, so now comes aLive's biggest mistake in this game, and what probably actually ended up costing him the game overall. aLive has traded ARMY for ECONOMY (and some tech units, i.e ~3 Phoenixes and an Oracle). When you trade ARMY for ECONOMY, that means that you now have LESS ARMY and your opponent has LESS ECONOMY. We can reword this to say that your opponent has a SUPERIOR ARMY.
As a StarCraft player, the moments after you trade your ARMY for ECONOMY are the moments during which you are most vulnerable. It inevitably means that your opponent should be looking to use this new ARMY ADVANTAGE. This is when you should be most fearful of a counter attack. herO knows that aLive just spent a lot of units to deal damage to him, but that herO didn't lose very many units at all. So here we have herO gathering his forces to see if he can punish aLive at all.
Here's what aLive is up to:
aLive, again, has a much smaller army. 24 Army Supply down. Not only that, but he has absolutely NO pressure on the map. Maybe if he had a Medivac in herO's main base or something, maybe then herO would be at home trying to clean stuff up. Instead we have aLive doing nothing but expanding after losing lots of units to injure herO's economy. This is the one time you can be certain of an incoming attack.
To aLive's credit, when he sees herO incoming, he wastes no time getting behind his Depot Wall and pulling SCVs to repair. Within seconds, though, aLive loses 15 workers and much of his bio force. aLive's economy advantage turns into a disadvantage, and the army supplies equalize:
This is a good spot for an Adept/Phoenix player. Adept/Phoenix wants to fight at lower supplies against Terran. Bigger economy = more production of Adept/Phoenix = easier to continually trade vs Terran. Continual aggressive trades with Adept/Phoenix is exactly what herO is going for.
The rest of this game is just wild. aLive does a great job fighting against herO, especially as his army becomes more technical. As his Maruader and Mine counts grow, aLive takes better and better fights. The game becomes an extremely down and dirty one, full of multitasking, harassment and micro -- with both players showing a great quality in skill.
aLive's loss on Cactus Valley:
This game starts out very different from the others. herO does a 66% chance of working Proxy Stargate and nails it, being very close to aLive's base. He sends the Mothership Core over and does a Pylon rush while flying in 2 Oracles. While he destroys the front Depots and Reactor, aLive's Reaper actually gets 5-6 Probe Kills over in herO's base.
herO takes a 3rd base while aLive defends his relentless harassment. With 2 Oracles and 3-4 Phoenixes, herO is able to pick off a a few units and SCVs, but then pulls back into a defensive arc around aLive's base, watching for any leaving harassment:
This is a great move to protect his economy back home. aLive has already invested heavily into tech units, so only a technical harassment threatens the almost unit-less (still on one gateway) herO. As herO adds on his tech and aLive becomes a bit too strong to contain so forwardly, herO pulls back into another arc around his home bases.
Now this game, aLive has been very much on top of his defense. He hasn't taken too much damage despite some really flashy harassment from herO. He's also gone up to 5 Barracks without a 3rd CC. The game is looking, strategically, a bit more like GuMiho's play on Newkirk Precinct.
As aLive's complexity grows, he begins to push out a bit and starts his 3rd CC. He is posturing though, and doesn't commit to an actual fight:
When herO scouts that aLive is making a 3rd CC and continues to turtle, giving away no units for free, herO decides to transition from Phoenix / Adept, knowing that the composition is doomed vs such play:
This is a very important moment in understanding the mind of herO while playing Phoenix/Adept. For a long time aLive was just sitting on 2 bases while building his army complexity. That is, for a long time, aLive was playing like GuMiho on Newkirk Precinct. herO was unable to do anything but continue making as strong an army as he could so that he could fight at the moment that aLive would come out. When herO sees that there is, in fact, a 3rd CC on the way, he sees that aLive is not going to be allin when he attacks. Thus, herO must transition. His main goal from here out is to not to fully engage until he has an army complex enough to fight against what aLive is making.
herO (I think accidentally) lets a shade finish at the wall-in, and aLive having a sufficiently large and complex army, in addition to seeing the Adepts close by and without their Shade cooldown active, takes the opportunity to move out. Notice the army supply once again for aLive:
Here is where it gets a bit messy. In this next screen shot, herO has just shaded the rest of his Adepts away, having some shaved off by aLive chasing. herO, knowing that he MUST buy time for this huge investment into Colossus, gathers all of his Phoenix together behind aLive's army which is in the center of the map:
Here is the moment that aLive turned back around to head towards herO again:
If aLive had not turned around, had he ignored the Phoenixes going back towards his base, he would be entering the 3rd base at this moment, with the Colossi half way done, the Phoenixes across the map, and the Adepts in the natural.
Now when aLive gets there, the Colossi are out and the Phoenixes are back. Another Warp-in round is occurring. Most importantly, perhaps, is that herO has jumped up a whole level of complexity. aLive's army right now is perfectly suited to fight against Adept/Phoenix, but has nothing to really deal with the Colossi:
They do a lot of trading in this battle, but aLive does not kill the base. So was chasing the Phoenixes back and regrouping with some important Liberators and Widow Mines a mistake? This is where the complexity of the game makes me uncomfortable in saying a simple "yes". Â The further we get into a tight game of StarCraft, the harder it becomes to be critical of some of the more complicated moves the players make. On top of that, we are getting very few games right now that progress so well to this stage.
I do want to say that I think that this game, more than any other, is a testament to herO's skill and adaptability in the matchup and with the strategy in question.
In Closing
I do not think that this article has all the answers or clearly states exactly how you should or should not play against Phoenix / Adept as Terran, or even exactly how to play with Phoenix / Adept from the Protoss side.Â
I do however think that this article shows many of the concepts and ideas that are being misunderstood about the Phoenix / Adept matchup against Terran at the moment. I think overall the Protoss side of understanding of this strategy is a bit more advanced than the Terran side currently, but that will swing over time, as it always does. It also seems to me, at least from the many, many games which I watch and study, that Terrans sometimes misunderstand their roll as the defender in early/mid game when playing against the strategy (as throughout the history of SC2, Terran has almost always been the aggressor, this is certainly a strange feeling change for at least some players).
Balance-wise, my gut tells me that this strategy will not prove to be imbalanced as play advances in the coming weeks. I'm fine being wrong with that, but to find out for sure we will need some more time for Terrans to continue to adapt to the strategy.Â
As the old quote goes:Â âIf youâre having trouble with the balance of Starcraft, you should first try to bring balance to your own mind.â - Me, in feardragonâs dream.
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Vince Cable to STEP DOWN as Liberal Democrat leader in May
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable will step down in MayÂ
Vince Cable will step down as Liberal Democrat leader after local elections in May.
In an interview with the Mail today, the former business secretary reveals that he has decided to leave to pave the way for the ânext generationâ to lead the party through Brexit.
He admits he had presided over a âgradualâ rather than a âspectacularâ recovery of the party.
But he says he will continue as an MP and devote his spare time to advancing his literary career with another political thriller.
Sir Vince, 75, is making the announcement today to coincide with the Lib Dem spring conference in York, the city where he was born.
Explaining his decision, he said his wife wanted to spend more time with him, while he wanted to be able to do the things âI canât do nowâ.
The veteran MP had previously announced he would stand down after Brexit was âresolvedâ, but conceded: âIt now looks as if it will be a protracted process, and may never happen.â
He refused to name his preferred successor, but former coalition minister Jo Swinson, former coalition energy secretary Ed Davey and Layla Moran are believed to be keen.
Under Sir Vinceâs proposed party reforms, non-MP candidates might soon also be in the frame, including Gina Miller, the second referendum campaigner.Â
âWeâve got several very good internal candidates â you can work out who they are. The worst thing I can do is to start promoting them,â he said.
The veteran parliamentarian refused to name his preferred successor as leader, but MPs Jo Swinson, Ed Davey and Layla Moran are all believed to be considering it
He said he would not become a âbackseat driverâ and would let the next generation set the course for the party.
But he said that should Theresa Mayâs Brexit deal pass, the party would have to âthink from scratchâ about the second referendum issue, which he conceded was a âlast resortâ.
Sir Vince said he was announcing his departure now to pave the way for a leadership contest so a 12-week leadership contest can begin in May.
âI wanted to set it out so that thereâs an orderly process of succession and the next generation can come through rather than chaotic power struggles youâre seeing inside the Tory party and Labour party so I wanted us to do better than that,â he said.
His decision to step down will mean he is able to spend more time with his family, he said, adding: âMy wife Rachel has been very supportive [of my time as leader] and doesnât mind me doing it and has come round the country with me, but she would like to spend more time with me. I think she will see it as a bonus that she sees me more.â
He added: âIâll be continuing as an MP. I want to get back to writing books again in my spare time.â
Sir Vince said he was planning a follow-up to his political thriller Open Arms which was published in 2017, and a non-fiction book about politicians who have changed the way we look at economics, from the US founding father Alexander Hamilton to Margaret Thatcher.
The Rt. Hon Vince Cable MP and Erin Boag competing on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010
He also plans to spend time building a parliamentary consensus on assisted dying and plans to table a private membersâ bill after changing his mind on the issue, which he revealed in a piece in the Mail.
He added: âMy other thing is to get my dancing back to a serious standardâ, though he said he had no plans to take on Strictly Come Dancing again.
The decision to make his announcement now was âpartly sentimentalâ as the Lib Dem spring conference is being held in York, he said/
âYorkâs where I was born and brought up. I met my [first] wife Olympia there while we were both working in a mental health hospital. I stood in York in â83 and â87.
âSo I have all kinds of sentimental and personal attachment, so it seems an obvious place to do this.â
Asked if he was proud of his time in office, he said: âYes, I think weâve achieved quite a lot. I inherited the legacy of two very difficult general elections. They were very bad.
âWeâve rebuilt [the party] significantly. There arenât any electoral events to test it but weâre doing well locally. We think we could do well in May. Thereâs recovery on that level.
âWeâve got record levels of membership despite all the difficulties, and morale is high and people are positive and feel weâre achieving something.â
Asked if he had any regrets about his time, he said: âI would obviously like to have presided over a spectacular recovery [of the Lib Dems], rather than a gradual recovery, but events were beyond my control.
âThe fact that the issue of no Brexit and peoples vote is still live, that Theresa May canât get her Brexit deal through, that weâve managed to scrub no deal is a tribute to the kind of campaigning that our partyâs done.
âI think it is a creditable performance, and Iâm very happy to let someone else take it on.â
He said he would step down in May, unless a general election or a second referendum was called, in which case heâd continue as leader.
Asked if he would miss being in charge while Brexit took its course, he said: âIâm not a power maniac, we operate as a team anyway. I delegate a lot of work to the team in any event.â
He said the partyâs policy of holding a second referendum was still possible, but admitted that it was a âlast resortâ that could only be triggered by the Prime Minister.
Sir Vince Cable hugs his wife Rachel Wenbin Smith after he was announced as the new leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2017. He is stepping down in May in order to spend some more time with her and plans to write another novelÂ
âI think itâs possible, and itâs more likely than it was before this week, but it is a last resort,â he said.
He also conceded that the Lib Dems had not gained electorally from their position on Brexit.
âWe appear not to have benefited enormously [from our Brexit position] because itâs seen as a separate issue to party politics.
âI think weâll get some benefit from it but it doesnât necessarily feed into peopleâs voting preferences.â
On the partyâs overtures to the Independent Group of former Tory and Labour MPs, he said he had held meetings with many of them about working together in the future.
He said the Lib Dems and so-called TIGgers were both beyond the point of being subsumed by each other and would instead form an alliance.
Asked if it would be a wrench to leave as leader, he added: âNot particularly. No, Iâm looking forward to all the things I can do which I canât do at the moment, politically and personally.â
He revealed that the Independent Group MP Anna Soubry will attend the Lib Dem conference today and hold a joint fringe event with his deputy Jo Swinson.
Her attendance is a key signal that the grouping will work with the party in the future on Brexit policy and other issues.
Almost all of the TIGâs âmanifestoâ commitments had been proposed by the Lib Dems, he added.
Asked whether more MPs would leave their parties, he said that Tom Watson had stemmed Labour departures for now, but said his announcement of a social democratic group within the party was âlike applying a tourniquet to a woundâ.
(Back row left to right) Independent Group (TIG) members, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Chuka Umunna and Mike Gapes, (middle row, left to right) Angela Smith, Luciana Berger and Ann Coffey, (front row, left to right) Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Joan Ryan. Sir Vince claimed almost all of the groupâs âmanifestoâ commitments were proposed by Lib Dems
He said he was most proud of his record in government as business secretary and said there was a âlong listâ of things he had achieved in his time there.
âObviously there were some uncomfortable experiences in the coalition government, and it didnât do us great favours with the electorate in 2015, [but] I think there were a lot of real accomplishments and some of them have survived.â
He also mounted a staunch defence of the decision to increase student loans, suggesting it wasnât the policy itself that was to blame, but the Lib Dems breaking their pledge, which was bound up with issues of trust in politicians.
He said he did not believe he had lost his Twickenham seat in 2015 solely because of his partyâs time in the coalition and said the main problem was a swing to the Tories for fear of Labour and the SNP.
He said the impact of the Lib Demsâ time in coalition was âgrossly overplayedâ at the time, adding: âIt did damage us politically, and that damage persisted until 2017. I think itâs fading away.â
LIB DEM RUNNERS AND RIDERSÂ
Vince Cable refused to name his preferred successor yesterday, but said he expected the position to be contested.
Liberal Democrat Deputy leader Jo Swinson
Former coalition minister Jo Swinson, former coalition energy secretary Ed Davey and possibly Layla Moran are believed to be keen.
Following his reforms to the partyâs structure, non-MP candidates could also be in the frame, including Gina Miller, the second referendum campaigner.
Jo Swinson, 39, is the partyâs deputy leader and has been rumoured to want the top job for some time.
Former environment secretary Ed Davey
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran
The former business minister under the Coalition government is even believed to have already assembled a campaign team, with fellow Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine expected to runas her deputy.
James McGrory, former head of press for the Remain campaign during the EU referendum, is said to be lined up as the East Dunbartonshire MPâs chief of staff.
Former environment secretary Ed Davey, 53, is also expected to run for leader in May. The MP for Kingston and Surbiton is said to have come up with a power point presentation when he announces his candidacy.
Anti-Brexit Campaigner Gina Miller
He is currently the partyâs spokesman on home affairs.
Layla Moran only joined Parliament at the snap General Election in 2017, but has been touted as a future leader.
The former teacher, 36, is said to be considering running, and would be the only candidate who would be free of the taint of being in coalition with the Tories.
The MP for Oxford West and Abingdon is still deciding what to do, according to party sources.
Campaigner for a second referendum Gina Miller has already ruled out standing as Lib Dem leader.
But there are rumours that the 53-year-old, who won against the Government in court over Parliament having a meaningful vote on Brexit, will sign up as a party member.
It might soon be possible for non-MPs to stand as Lib Dem leader, she would have to win over the party.
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Microsoftâs mixed message was confusing, but shows brilliant strategy
Microsoft put on an interesting show last week at its #MicrosoftEDU conference last week. Along with the announcement of Windows 10 S came a brand spankinâ new Surface laptop. This is really great news for those who want to see a Surface phone, because frankly, Microsoft is running out of form factors. In the process of that announcement, Microsoft may have sent out some mixed messages, so I wanted to take a moment to set the record straight. Or at least how I saw it.
Chromebooks beware
Listening to the latest Pocketnow Weekly podcast, there was some confusion as to how a $1,000 laptop could possibly compete with a schoolâs laptop of choice â the Chromebook. Chromebooks are famously pretty cheap, so asking a grammar school for $1,000 a pop for new laptops seems counterintuitive. Indeed it is exactly that. Because the Surface Laptop is not meant to compete with Chromebooks â Windows S is. Weâll get to the Surface Laptop in a little bit.
Windows S is basically Windows RT 2.0. Itâs a stripped-down version of Windows 10 that is fast and light-weight. It only allows installation of apps from the Windows store; EXE files need not apply. Windows 10 S is made to be fast and easy to install and manage remotely, potentially along with InTune â Microsoftâs Mobile Device Management solution. Windows 10 S can be installed from a thumb drive quickly, allowing school IT admins to blow through 300 laptops in under a day.
This is my jam
My wife is a teacher, so Iâm a little familiar with schools and how theyâre managed from an IT standpoint. There are some lucky schools which have a small IT staff. There are many other schools with a âcomputer teacher who can also install Windows when neededâ. Schools are one place where easy and familiar have to be in the conversation. And the fact of the matter is, everybody knows Windows. Which is what makes Windows 10 S so powerful â it combined simplicity with speed.
Plus, Windows 10 S can be run on lighter-weight hardware, such as the stack of netbooks that Terry Myerson pulled out during his demonstration. Windows 10 S doesnât require high-end software, which brings me to the Surface Laptop and the confusion surrounding Microsoftâs message last week. The Surface Laptop isnât supposed to compete with Chromebooks â thatâs Windows 10 Sâs job. The Surface 10 laptop competes with Macbook Airs.
Remember, this was an EDU a.k.a. education event, and grammar schools arenât the only aspect of education where laptops are relevant. College kids also need hardware, and probably more durable hardware to get their work done. Thatâs where the Surface Laptop comes into play.
College bound!
Sure, the Surface laptop comes with Windows 10 S already installed, but for an extra $50, you can get the full version of Windows 10 Pro. That includes EXE files and everything. The Surface laptop is a Macbook Air competitor through and through as the comparisons showed throughout the hardware portion of Microsoftâs show. So, itâs not necessarily Chromebooks that the Surface Laptop is targeting, unless you count the Chromebook Pixel.
Because, like the Chromebook Pixel, the Surface Laptop is reference hardware for Windows 10 S â the best it can be. Itâs really a relief that Microsoft decided to keep pushing the high-end design envelope when it comes to the Surface Laptop. Personally, I would hate to see a Surface device that was the equivalent of a Chromebook or netbook. Microsoft tried that with the Surface, Surface 2, and Surface 3 with predictable results. I donât mind seeing the Surface laptop ship with Windows 10 S â thereâs a lot to be said for it. Iâd pay the extra $50, but thatâs me.
Covering the whole spectrum
So, in some ways, Microsoftâs message last week was confusing, but put into context, I think itâs clear that Microsoft has a great strategy to go after the education sector from first grade through college. This is important because technology is becoming more and more important in education. Just ask my fourth grader son with the Google Drive account. As technology becomes more important in our daily lives, it will change how we learn and how we grow.
Microsoft basically put on two shows last week â one for teachers and administrators and one for college kids. It made for a confusing message to be sure. But Microsoft has a great plan to put itself right in the center of the education experience at all levels. I for one applaud it, even if the message was a little confusing at times.
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