#this is not my first time shipping 2 organic beings with a robot whos evil or morially dubious

[kr0w13y]

Went into ao3 the find any Ted/Ellen fics that may exist and came out shipping am/ellen/ted after reading the only two fics of them that exist, but honestly I considered it before going in because ot3's including ones where one of three are evil or at least morally dubious is a favorite of mine.

Anyway, maybe Im embarrassing myself but If you're interested I highly recommend:

And especially

Maybe I'll post my am/ellen/ted playlist later.

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 48: Benign alien visitors 

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! My last two updates focused on the evil aliens who gave Sonic (and Shadow) grief, but now it’s time to turn our attention to the nicer ones.

Episode 48: Benign alien visitors 

Well first of all let’s get the obvious ones out of the way. The Wisps had limited appearances in the ArchieSonic comics, unlike in IDWSonic where they’ve shown up quite frequently. Their first appearance in the comics was in ArchieSonic #219, which featured an adaptation of the opening of Sonic Colours. This story was classified as, “Another Time, Another Place,” meaning it wasn’t canon to the ongoing storyline of the comic. ArchieSonic did this from time to time when new Sonic games came out, essentially just making them glorified 5 page advertisements. It wasn’t as satisfying as getting a full adaptation like what was done with Sonic Adventure, but at least this way it didn’t completely disrupt the ongoing plot in the comics. Let us not forget that at the time they had to squeeze in the Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation that Knuckles was green and Tails was a doppleganger. 

…actually, in hindsight? Having those storylines interrupted for six months would have been quite welcome. 😛

Aside from the Dark Arms hybrids that Eclipse created, the Wisps didn’t really show up following the reboot of the comic either. However, Tails did mention that the events of Sonic Colours had already happened in the new timeline and that Silver had been involved, suggesting that it may have followed the DS version of the game that included appearances from many of Sonic’s friends.

But do the Wisps really count as benign alien visitors, considering that Dr. Eggman dragged them kicking and screaming into orbit around Sonic’s homeworld? Possibly not. So let’s at long last talk about an alien race who actually showed up of their own free will: the Bem.

The first appearance of the Bem was in Sonic #118, not long after the nuking of Robotropolis by Station Square. Eggman and Snively, having made several attempts in previous issues to download themselves into new robotic bodies only to be foiled by Sonic, finally succeeded only to be confronted by the Freedom Fighters again. After confirming that Eggman was no longer able to roboticise people by touching them, Sonic and Tails immediately leapt into battle. But the four of them were rudely interrupted as an alien race called the Bem teleported them aboard their ship and into a prison pod.

The Bem wanted to run an experiment to see if organic or robotic beings were superior, so to test this they roboticised Sonic and Tails and de-roboticised Eggman and Snively. Setting the two teams against each other, the Bem announced that the winning team of this duel would be reverted to their previous state, while the losing team would remain stuck as what the Bem had just changed them to. Setting the four of them loose in a holographically projected battlefield, the Bem watched their experiment play out.

It was over pretty quickly, which is one of the things I hated the most about the stories from this era of the comics. They always felt so rushed because a chunk of the book was being taken up by stupid Ken Penders’ stupid green Knuckles story. But anyway, the Bem kept their word and returned the four of them to Mobius, all of them now flesh and blood again, and with Eggman ranting about how this just proved that robotic life was superior.

Pin in that.

Not long after that in Sonic #123, a strange phenomenon occurred across the entire planet.

All the people who had been roboticised, whether they’d had their free wills restored or were still mindless drones serving Eggman, disappeared without a trace. This included Antoine’s father, Mina’s mother, and Sonic’s entire family - his parents, Uncle Chuck, and pet dog Muttski.

But several weeks later they all started reappearing again, now deroboticised and with no memory of how they’d been changed back to normal. The one exception was Sonic’s father Jules, who was eventually returned but still as a robot.

Sonic thought that this must have been a cruel prank by Eggman, but Eggman denied having anything to do with the mass deroboticisation phenomenon, leaving Sonic and his family to wonder who was really behind it. I mean, surely it couldn’t have been that group of weirdos that had abducted Sonic recently and proved themselves able to roboticise and deroboticise people almost effortlessly, right? Right?!

Well if readers at the time didn’t already suspect that the Bem were involved, the confirmation that their ship was in orbit around Mobius in the very next issue should have told them everything they needed to know. This was when the Xorda showed up to raze the planet, and the Bem dropped off Super Shadow to defend them while they escaped.

…honestly, I think Shadow needs to get slapped in the face like this occasionally to keep him humble. 

The Bem’s involvement in the mass deroboticisation of Mobius was finally confirmed in Sonic #129, when Sonic arrived on the planet Argentium as the final stop on his Tossed in Space tour. Having been told that the key to his getting back home was on this planet, Sonic tried to land but was told he was only permitted to visit if he was attending the trial of Ceneca-9009.

Sonic decided to play things straight and headed for the courthouse, where it turned out the trial (or if you prefer, exposition dump) taking place had a surprising amount of relevance to him. 

Thousands of years ago Ceneca-9009 had been part of a scientific exploration crew that discovered Biotex, a planet of robotic beings, and had petitioned the high council to allow them to create a machine that would transform the robots into organic creatures. They were given permission to do so, but they hadn’t realised that the species in question had become robots as an evolutionary defense mechanism to protect them from a toxic environment. So when the Bem deroboticised the Biotexans they all immediately died, and the Bem outlawed deroboticising technology from that day forward to prevent another disaster like that from happening. 

Thousands of years later Ceneca-9009’s ship would discover Mobius and observe the beginning of Robotnik’s coup of the Acorn Kingdom, including the roboticisation of Tails’ father, General Amadeus Prower. When his wife Rosemary was also captured, Ceneca-9009 decided to intervene and teleported both Rosemary and Amadeus onto her ship, also deroboticising Amadeus. Having witnessed the devastation that Robotnik was wreaking on Mobius, Ceneca-9009 took the Prowers back to her homeworld of Argentium and once again went before the High Council, requesting permission to deroboticise all of Robotnik’s victims. However this time her request was denied, and she was thrown in prison for using the forbidden deroboticisation technology. Sonic was outraged at this revelation and called the court out on it, alerting the Prowers, who had also been witnessing the trial, to his unexpected presence on the planet.

But their reunion had to be delayed so that the trial could continue.

Travel to Mobius had been forbidden following Ceneca-9009’s imprisonment, and so the Prowers had been unable to return home. They were however offered asylum on Argentium. Twelve years later Ceneca-9009 had been released from prison after serving her sentence, and she had once again asked the council for permission to deroboticise the victims of Robotnik’s takeover of Mobius. As she had actually asked permission this time the council were more open to her request, but wanted to ensure another disaster like what had happened to Biotex wouldn’t happen again. Unfortunately their idea of doing the best thing for the planet was to arrange an experimental duel to see if robots would overpower organics or vice versa, hence what happened to Sonic, Tails, Eggman and Snively in issue #118. The end result of this experiment had been the council agreeing with Eggman’s complaint that robotic life had been proven superior, and so they had ordered Ceneca-9009 to roboticise the entire population immediately.

Ceneca-9009 had gone against their wishes though and instead deroboticised everyone (with one rather glaring exception), as shown in issue #123. 

Having gone over all the facts, the council found Ceneca-9009 guilty and sentenced her to be executed at dawn the following day. Sonic refused to accept this and planned to break Ceneca-9009 out of prison, but found himself without a means of escape when his spaceship was ordered to be dismantled due to the ongoing war between Mobius and the Xorda, which the Bem wanted no part in.

However the head magistrate also disagreed with Ceneca-9009’s sentence and approached Sonic with an offer to provide another spacecraft for him and the Prowers to escape in with Ceneca-9009, if he could bust her out of prison. Sonic easily accomplished this task, but unfortunately on such short notice the only ship that the magistrate had been able to obtain was so small that only one person could fit in it.

Considering that Ceneca-9009 was marked for death Sonic told her she should be the one to take the ship, but she insisted that one of them should take it instead, rationalising that as long as her pursuers thought she was onboard the escaping ship that they would not look for her on Argentium. Sonic also offered the ship to the Prowers, but they refused to leave each other and sent Sonic on his way with a gift for their son. 

When Sonic finally crashed back down on Mobius, the first thing he did was…

okay, well the first thing he actually did was get pulled back into the fight against Eggman immediately. Seriously, he’d touched down for maybe ten seconds when he spotted trouble and raced to the rescue. But after he’d stopped Eggman from launching a pair of nuclear warheads and gotten settled back at home...

...and come to terms with the fact that he could now understand canine speech patterns, Sonic was finally able to answer a question that had been hounding his family for a year.

After that, he linked back up with Tails to tell him some news that would shock him to his core:

Tails wouldn’t be able to do anything with this information for awhile, but eventually his uncle Merlin helped him get to Argentium to rescue his parents.

Just in the nick of time too, because they probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer with the Black Arms and the Xorda waging war in the skies above.

The Bem did not appear in the comics again after that, but their impact was felt for a long time afterwards. When Ceneca-9009 had deroboticised all the victims of the roboticiser, she had also been able to nullify roboticiser technology across the entire planet. Eggman could no longer turn anyone into robots after that, and he had to make do with equipping his living forces with cybernetic body parts instead, a process he called “Legionising,” in honour of the Dark Legion, who were among the first of his forces to undergo this process. However he was eventually able to at least partially work around that when he got his hands on a Chaos Emerald and used it to rewrite reality with the Genesis Wave.

Those who had been deroboticised personally by the Bem, such as Sonic and even Eggman himself, were still immune to the effects of the roboticiser. Everyone else though…

Grim. 

So here’s a thought. If Eggman created the Genesis Wave in response to his robotic slaves being permanently transformed back to normal, then that means that everything that happened afterwards, such as Sally’s roboticisation, the disbanding of the Freedom Fighters, the second Genesis Wave rewriting reality again (creating the reboot era of the comic), and the shattering of the planet - that can all be traced back to Ceneca-9009’s actions in the back-up story of a single issue. Who could have possibly known that the effects of that single story would still be felt when the comic ended, over 165 issues later?

That’s all from me for today. Were there any other benign alien races that visited Sonic’s homeworld in the Archie comics that I missed? Be sure to let me know in the comments! Next time will be another instance where I struggle to come up with good examples from ArchieSonic: “Hero becomes blind. Magoo jokes aplenty. Ableism ages episode horribly.” How will I tackle this head-scratcher? Tune in next time to find out!

[francescatelford]

I was thinking how Evil Gideon can create both robots and clones based on human DNA and that if she really wants to win over the Legends she may need to build someone that could encapsulate the main qualities of the captains in order to take them down..(Maybe even the other parings 😏)

I love this season so far it’s one of the best and most organic of the Legends with an actual plot so whatever direction they are taking I’m pretty excited about it, it’s a perfect balance of humor and darkness, I think after 7 seasons they finally found a perfect formula for this crazy little show, it won’t surprise me if the keep going for 2-3 more season honestly, the writing is getting fresher instead of stale like many other CW superhero show…

I also think it would be cool for Gideon(maybe as cliffhanger end of season 7or later on) to create a Avalance human teenagers (maybe with fake memories and stuff) make her kinda evil in order to eliminate the legends and eventually the clone/human/avalance kid learning the truth, having an existential crisis and coming to terms with who she is and eventually join the legends and stuff.

It could be cool to have a teenager in the WaveRider and having each legends help her (yeah for sure a girl btw) growing up and learning from them the good, the bad and the crazy fun

Can you imagine a mix of assassine chaotic vibe from Sara and the OCD history nerd of Ava? I’d love to see it (babies usually ruin a show so I’d rather see a grow up avalance kid)

Also the perfect actress to be their teenage kid is Taylor Hickson imo

Leaving this here, I really think it would be cool and hoping for it

First of all thanks for this ask, my inbox is literally dead and i love this.

Yes i think this is their best season yet and im absolutely loving it, i don't want it to end either ): I think with these ratings we can easily get a season 8 and a 9, lets hope!

Like you i think babies ruin shows and so i don't want a pregnancy storyline and toddlers ect.. I would actually be a little sad bc i dont want them to have kids yet but it would be super cool if their kid from the future made an appearance! it would be funny because i think after a while they would catch on because they'd see some qualities of Ava and Sara in them for sure, plus i really want to see Sara's reaction too. it would be hilarious if Sara is like "she reminds me of my younger self- wait a damn minute".

This reminds me of another show that ended recently, i don't wanna mention it because its a huge spoiler ig. I ended up loving this character from the future and she was the perfect mix of her parents too. I would actually love it if we would see Avalance try and bond with her too. Probably would spend some quality time with Ava doing binders and rules lmao. Imagine if Evil Gideon's fake memories consists of being abandoned by her mums, maybe like they never have time for her or something and thats why shes rebellious and such, so then when Avalance connect the dots they're like "we would never abandon her, how is this possible??" and this is further confirmed as they bond. They eventually grow to love her. Plus how funny would it be to see Ava stress about two people now not just Sara cause Sara goes along with her shenanigans lmao. I kinda see her running around the ship twirling knives lmao.

Bonus: she flirts with other people her age (lowkey see her as a raging queer but-) from different time periods on missions like older seasons Sara and Sara is like "thats my girl!!" meanwhile Ava is like "stOP THAT1!!11!!! YOU WILL RUIN HISTORY!!1!!1 SARA DONT ENCOURAGE HER OH MY GOD"

YOOO YESSS I CAN TOTALLY SEE HER AS TAYLOR, SAME HAIR AND ALL AS EVIL SARA

[moonlayl]

Thoughts on ScarletVision?

You mean WendySiri? Just kidding, just kidding. (sorry for the late reply). I assume you’re talking about the show ‘WandaVision’ but since I’m not sure I’ll also share my thoughts on the actual ship. 

 (long and negative rant)

Okay so throughout the entire show, I was kind of conflicted. Marvel did a really good job with all the clues and the suspense, and also the whole sitcom-through -the-decades kind of thing, and I applaud them for that. it honestly was really good and interesting and I really loved it. The show had so much potential, but that’s where things went wrong. 

A part of it is on me for assuming, or more accurately, wanting, but I was waiting for the reveal that Wanda was being controlled or manipulated. Obviously that didn’t happen, and it just ruined the character for me. This show literally took everything that I liked about Wanda, and everything that made me sympathize with her or even defend her, and then changed it for the worst. I was a fan but not anymore. Wanda’s character through the other movies was someone who tried to do better. Like she joined the avengers to fix her mistakes and to help people. She hurt people in civil war and was guilty over it. She killed Vision to try and save the world and stop Thanos. WandaVision took a big dump on all of that. 

I know many will use the “she’s grieving” card, and while it’s important to note, does it really excuse torturing and mindcontrolling a whole town? “But it was an accident. She didn’t mean to.” Yeah, at first. She discovered what she’d done way back in episodes 2/3 and decided to keep it. “She didn’t know she was hurting them.” But she knew she was violating them and keeping them captive. She knew they were actual people. And she still went with it. She didn’t care.

Fake Pietro says he admires what she’s done and she goes “you don’t think it’s wrong” Like she is literally self-aware. Vision, the man she loves is literally scared and confused and she goes “can’t I?” when he says she can’t control him. Broooooo. Wtf was that? Like she literally admitted to wanting to control him, or at least doing it, and wasn’t even ashamed? And in one of the episodes, despite literally dying and being in pain, he still tries to escape Westview so that he could fix her problems. So that he cold get away from her. So she brought him back, and had children, and just decided that she gets to control them along with the whole town??? I’m sorry but the show literally made her a terrible partner, mom, and avenger. And here’s the thing. I don’t think she’s evil, and I sympathized a lot with her. But she just got worse. 

So not only did she willingly keep a whole town hostage (where everyone was suffering and separated from their families and children literally stayed asleep which means they were in a constant state of seeing her nightmares) but this woman got scared and angry when Agatha freed them. She’s like “I kept you safe.” Wanda literally would’ve kept them in that prison if Aatha had never arrived. She wouldn’t have cared about them. Like Agnes said, heroes don’t do that. 

And then there’s her treatment of Monica. Wanda literally tried to kill her multiple times, and Monica only tried to help. Then she doesn’t even apologize in the end. I hated how this show wrote Monica or how they included her. From the Wanda only starts to use her powers when she sees Monica (when literally everyone else is pointing a gun) to how she automatically grabs her and tries to kill her, and then later has the audacity to say “don’t make me hurt you.” And Monica basically being ignored and used just to defend Wanda and prop her up. Like it was just bullshit. The way they treated their only black character. They even had her say she’d do the same. wtf? Even Jimmy Woo, their asian character, was more of a sidekick to Darcy in those episodes and ended up not contributing much. It sucks. 

And as a person who criticizes Tony Stark, it’s really weird how a lot of his haters use the same arguments as his stans when they try to defend Wanda. ‘She has mental illness” “she paid for her mistakes.” No, giving up her family that only existed because of the torture of innocent people doesn’t win you any points. It’s the least she SHOULD’VE done.  

And the thing that bothered me the most is that she never even learned her lesson? Like she took the darkhold and is trying to find a way to bring her kids back. mf, didn’t the entire show and mess start because she accidentally brought back vision? She literally didn’t learn a thing. What grief did she process if she’s just going to go and try to use dark magic to bring them again? 

And then there’s all of Sword. First Maria was killed off, and then Sword was introduced as this thing that’s always existed, yet we’ve never heard of it??

And there’s also Agatha. “Agatha All Along” umm. What exactly did Agatha do all along? The show set her up to be this big bad and then Wanda took her down it was not satisfying at all. Wanda, who doesn’t know how to cast spells, managed to learn a spell and use it without Agatha knowing in 5 seconds? As Agatha was taking her powers? BS. And then I hated Wanda’s plan. She decided to take her back to the past for what? Agatha’s own family to kill her? And then  later she traps Agatha into her nosy neighbor counterpart? And I’m supposed to go, “what a hero’? 

Obviously Agatha isn’t a good person, but the entire mess happened because of Wanda. It felt wrong for her to use the same prison on innocent people on another person and it be celebrated. And then there’s the whole “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them line” i literally lost all sympathy for that character after that. 

And I still don’t understand the romance between Wanda and Vision. I can’t get over the fact that he’s a robot. All in all, there are many aspects of the show that I didn’t like, but the number one reason is that it completely ruined her character. There was so much potential. But no. First they changed her age. “it was never said that she was a teenager.” Hawkeye literally said “if you want to go to high school.” no one says that to a 27 year old. Maybe he meant it as something else but in aou, he was the one to form the closest bonds with her and Pietro and it was the same movie that showed us that he had kids. it would make sense if it was supposed to be like a “he wants to help them because they’re young and he’s a dad so he knows how to deal with young people. And everyone referred to her as kid, so it just all fit. (also the actress looked  a lot younger in aou than in her other works before that movie so the make up department probably tried to make her seem young.) And the way she dressed and acted. 

second, apparently even though aou had us believe that they thought they were signing up to save their country, wandavision literally just went “yeah Wanda knew it was a terrorist organization’ and she didn’t even seem to regret it? 

The show went about the entire situation the wrong way, and really ruined her character. 

[juvellita]

Genshin Impact theory

So this topic kind of digresses from what I usually post, but I felt the urge to make this post bcs i am too lazy to do my assignments rn.  Jokes aside, I wanted to make this post on tumbler bcs not many ppl posted genshin theory on tumblr ( from what i seen). 

While everyone has been shipping different characters and fangirling/fanboying over them, my friend and I talk way more about the story line and make guesses/theories about what might happen in the future stories. Yes, I have read several theory posts online, and a lot of character related things to come up with my own theory (mixed with what I have read of course).

Spoiler warnings under cut. If you are under AR 29, I suggest you to scroll through unless you want to be spoiled.

Long post below.

Okay this is going to be a hella of messy post. I have made so many theories about the game itself and I am going to organize as I go. 

MC

First things first, lets first talk about twins origin. 

From what has been told so far, it is rather hard to guess what really happened after unknown god (sustainer of heavens) separated them. Who are twins exactly? Well, we don’t know for sure but we can theorize from what we know so far. Let’s list out things that we already know about the twins.

1. Your twin is the ruler of abyss order

2. Your character (MC) possess special power, where you can basically change any element you want 

3. There is a BIG time gap after you got separated from your twin, and before you fish Paimon out of water.

4. MC does not remember what happened during that time gap

Don’t these information raise any questions? 

How did your twin fall “bad” and what is his/her goal? Is she just playing along to achieve whatever her/his goal is or did she/he actually fall bad? 

Why can your character change element? Who is your character exactly?

What happened during those timeframe? 

Another big question is, do you think your character is going to stay “good” until the end? I actually have not thought too much about this until I came across this one vid:

(watch it with captions) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0pkwZVL_GQ

If this vid is really referring to the the twins, maybe it is foreshadowing the future route for our mc. It hints that our mc might turn bad like the other twin (does that mean, the other twin is being brainwashed like what they did with Dvalin?). Was our mc evil before she/he lost memory? or are we just being toyed with?

Characters /Storyline (so far)

There are several character I want to talk about.

1. Paimon

Theres SOOOOO many discussion posts about Paimon and theories about her. The most theory thinks that Paimon is actually that unknown goddess (whom we meet in the beginning) in its weakest form. If this is true, big chances are she is just fooling mc and waiting for the right moment to take over the world. Another theory I read was that maybe she actually forgot all her memories too and she doesn’t know who she is. 

While I think all of these are very convincing theories, I want to put my own version of theory out there: what if Paimon is the Pearl from the video, the one who is trying to make mc walk in the path, believing she is the queen/king of darkness?

Paimon might actually turn out to be good, but who knows? She might be our biggest plot twist. 

2. Childe

Not much of a theory for this guy, but do you guys think this guy can be trusted? After ar 29 story, I started believing this guy has ulterior motive.

There weren’t that many theory about this dude so I will come up with my own:

Theory 1: In lvl 23 story, Childe helps you because he wants you to believe him. It would be way easier for him if there were someone he can “use” , especially when the entire city suspects you (bcs he is a Fatui). He urges you to go tell your version of story to 3 guardian mtn birds (idk what to call them) so that they will listen to your story, before Qixing members got to explain their version (If they believed in Qixing’s story, it would trouble fatui so much). 

Skip to lvl 29, Childe’s actual goal is to take Geo Archon’s Vision (how La Signora took Venti’s). Knowing this, Ningguang and Geo Archon related ppl (adepti) or maybe ever geo god himself, plan to fake death- so that Childe/fatui will give up 

Theory 2. Childe is actually a double spy- he got into Fatui to find their ulterior motives and their goal. 

3. Ningguang (Geo mage)

At first, I thought Ning was a bad person. However, reading about herself, she is just a big business person. I think she is working closely with adepti from Liyue (in secret of course). She knows too well about how letting things out in public is not always good. 

4. Zhong Li

Geo Archon yet to be revealed. Do I need to say more? 

5. Katheryne (Adventure Guild Receptionist)

Theory: she is actually a robot:

*Mondstat and Liyue has exactly same looking Katheryne 

*If you chill out in front of her for long, she murmurs “error” or “rebooting”.

Is someone spying on MC using Katheryn? or are we in a “virtual world” within the virtual world? Is everything in this game “fake”?

Fatui and Abyss Order

My biggest question rn is... Who are fatui?? What are their goals? What do they want to achieve? Are they related Abyss Order? 

One theory is that, Fatui and Abyss Order ARE related (fatui working under Abyss Order). Thats probably why La Signora left MC unharmed, while she attacked Venti. Either mc is/was someone important to Abyss Order (eventually), or maybe the other twin ordered them NOT to harm his/her twin in any way. 

But then this is JUST a theory. 

Conclusion

Well, this is pretty much it. We could go on about different characters too, but that would take forever lol

But what are YOUR thoughts? 

[pleasureryland]

here is my track by track explanation of why I believe that while the city sleeps is about a space cyborg resistance who is based in a strip club.

1. being from jersey: this is the prologue. it features the figurehead cyborg dying bc he was caught by the space anti-cyborg people. probably took a risk and died for a cause or smth

2. send my love...: the mourning for the above cyber leader. they celebrate his life in the dance hall that he owned as a front for his resistance. Probably suggests that the death of this leader made the situation “real” for people and so this is the final night something like a dance party can happen. (These two first songs conclude the story/ show you what’s to come)

3.church of hot addiction: recruiting people into the resistance. either people who are cyborgs and being hunted or people who want to be cyborgs. gabe is leader. He has electric eyes.

4.the kids are all fucked up: the OG members talk about their time in the resistance. Reminising on those they’ve lost, mostly about the organization works tho (at night)

5. It’s warmer in the basement: Maybe an interlude about those taken by the anti-cyber people? reveal that some aren’t killed but used for propaganda...

6. Keep it simple: a flashback to recruiting the OG members showing that the dance pulled them in originally and then they got hooked for the resistance. Early days of resistance

7.it’s amateur night: maybe a contrast to keep it simple: about how recruitment works now? Resistance is an immediate hook, portrayed as freedom. Also the resistance movement is called the Apollo Creed. Unrelated to the guy from rocky (Apollo comes from moon missions)

8.snakes on a plane; plan is fabricated! Plot! Some sort of plan to take down anti cyborg system- the OG’s unite to carry out this plan. snake probably stands for like. slithery robots they put on the evil spaceship HQ and they get into the engines to crash the ship. Victory!

9. Ballad of Big...: hm. maybe a love song TO the Apollo Creed? from the OG’s

10. Pop-Punk is Sooo: oh nooo a traitor!! the traitor got caught by the Creed and are being chewed out. basically bravado by the Creed in the face of fear, it’s unclear whether they snitched or not

11. You can’t be missed: mourning for those they’ve lost but promising to remember them through the Creed. This is told from the perspective of one of the OG’s about the leader.

12. there is only 11 songs but this is around where 1 and 2 fit chronologically. the traitor DID snitch and the leader dies, etc.

[huntsman-ash]

RWBY V8E5 LiveThoughts

And now for the last episode before the HUGE break they’re taking. Seriously, February? Damn, whats going on at RT?

It matters not. Lets see what this weeks episode has for us.

And here we see Aminety Colloseum, the place that Atlas SHOULD have weaponized the moment it rolled its way back here. Seriously look at it; floating free away from everything else...you could mount missile launchers and laser batteries and CIWS batteries on it, launch fighters from it, let dropships deploy through its base...a floating aircraft carrier of unprecidented size.

Or maybe turn it into a weapon...use its drive system to focus Dust energy into some kind of gravitational force...thats just me though.

Missed oppertunites...ah well.

You CAN see its been adjusted though, it looks less like the sports arena from its last apperance and more like a floating coms hub, with those dishes on the outside and the huge spire.

Intersetingly if you look in the upper right corner the moon is there but almost completely covered by the storm Salem summoned. Interesting.

Wait why is PEITRO out there? With like...no supports? Seems kinda dangerous to send the weak old dude out there...

...thats a bomb. A Dust bomb in pipe bomb style form but thats very much a bomb.  Yes, Penny, danger indeed.

Atmospheric orbit. Ahhh that must be the low-level orbit path that they need to ensure it doesnt loose power. The part where you coast along with almost no drag.  Like what the X-15 hit in our world, and punched through at least once.

WAIT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT. Thats some kind of loader mech. THATS A FUCKING UTILITY TITAN. WHEN DID ATLAS GET ONE OF THOSE?!

Also thats a jet engine.

And Maria’s piloting it. To quote Daimon Baird; I know wha thappens when you let an angry chick loose with a power loader.

Multiple bombs...wait. Thats the mine that RWBY fought in with the Aces, the one that almost blew the fuck up. They’re... Oh. I get it now. They’re gonna use the blast to fling Amneity into upper orbit and stabalize it. Clever. Not exactly SAFE, but clever. Just hope the mine doesnt go anywhere important. Those tunnels are going to turn into firestorms.

Cute, she thinks she can stay and help. Trust me, Penny. You’re better off running.

MARIA CASUALLY DOING THE MEXICAN GRANDMOTHER THING WITH HER MECH...THE HIP HAND. MY GOD.

Oh, and his chair has gravity restraints too. They...gonna handle the impact of the launch? I mean thats literally a fuel/air bomb under them. Dust/air...

Well Maria seems alright with it.

OH GOD DAMMIT. Its Cinder isnt it? Fucking bitch...

On the positive side if she DOES hitch a ride then they get a chance to give her the ol’ “Long fall special”.  Lets see your maiden powers save you from a fall from near orbit.

Well then, she burned right through the floor. Interesting. Maiden powers or her own, who knows...I do admit seeing her ride the ship in like that is kinda cool.

The eagerness in Cinders remaining eye interest me. Also, even when using maiden powers, her dead eye emits nothing. So that whole parts just gone. 

Secondary note, I think they’re standing on the...Shade emblem? Shade is the swords I think. Vale is the axes, Atlas is the staff, Havens the lamp. Doubt it means anything.

Ahhh, okay I was gonna say, that launch was...kinda lackluster. But the blast is being used as a BOOST on top of the four existing external thrusters. Like the yellow emergency turbines on the outside of the Pillar of Autumn in the end cutscene of Halo Reach

Dust explodes in its own individual colors. The blast under them looks like a Pride festival.

Also Penny just going WHAP like that amuses me, whereas Cinder just crouches. Guess she knew what was coming.

I dont see how the blast is helping through...maybe its the pressure wave and we cant see it right.

Now THAT is a command and control table!

Based on the image I can see, the map is showing “Atlas Mantle” in the middle in green, Aminety in red to the north, and the whale as its own red marker just off to the west a bit of Atlas/Mantle. So now we know where everything is stationed.

The scales all kindsa weird tho

Ah THERES the G-force. Emeralds literally stuck to the floor.

And because Cinders an unoriginal bitch, fire swords. Im not impressed ot say the least.  On a side note that DOES mean that radiobandit was right about her powers, so theres that. I’d wager this is a combination of her semblance and the maiden abilities.

For those who follow me, Cinder’s blades here are similar in look to what Ash Vulcan can summon, minus the fire. His are more of a cooled obsidian look.  They are, however, as sharp as these are, but much less sturdy. Ex; the one that pins itself to the wall by Penny’s head would have shattered on impact, which Ash uses as a secondary ability. Because no one likes a hundred glass shards in their eyes...

OH HELL YES. Maria with the mech. Now, Cinder...TASTE METAL FIST.

RT...I salute you. Angry mother figure piloting a giant robot screaming “get away from her you bitch”. ALMOST had it. Almost.

What smacked into her though. Neo?

Yes, Neo piloting their escape craft. Interseting.

Emerald looks completely useless and confused and Neo is suddenly very much in a realization shes inside a tin can and MARIA IS OPERATING A GIANT TIN CAN OPENER

Emeralds semblance works on Maria. Interseting, so it must bypass eyes. Effect the brain specifically. Note to self for Chrys on that...

WHY did Neo take Ruby’s form when shes fighting Maria? On that Maria seems very happy to brawl on the ground now. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Additional math note; “broadcasting range” is, by this numerical, 543.523 of...whatever Remnant uses as units. On Earth, the edge of outerspace is almost exactly 100 km, or 62 miles, straight up. So going by that measurement... (Doing the math here hang on)...1 km is equal to 5.43 of Remnants distance units. Lets just say 5.5. Assuming Remnants edge is the same (but everything we’ve seen so far hints that it is, or at least very close)

Alternatively, since we heard klicks used in V4, but miles used in After The Fall, we can assume this is one of those, meaning that either broadcast altitude on Remnant is ABSURDLY HIGH, because 500km is literally 5 times the edge of space on earth, and 540 miles is ALMOST 9 TIMES AS HIGH. Either way Im pretty sure this is the first measurement of Remnants units we’ve seen.

Alternatively alternatively, judging by the arrows we see, these might be required velocity to maintain orbit, which MAY make a bit more sense but it doesnt really fit. Low orbital velocity on earth for example is 17,000 KPH. Even with the math above, theres still a TITANIC difference.

And now we see the numvers going down again because CINDER BURNED A HOLE IN THROUGH ONE OF THE STABALIZERS. Bitch.

Again on th e weaponizing the colleseum; look at all this empty space. They didnt even remove it from when it was a consorse for the festival. You could put SO MANY weapon emplacements...the landing pads are still there!

Oh so now Cinders a Dawnblade from RWBY is she.

And exploding arrows too. Alright then, sure, why not.

Not sure what the point of this little bit was, aside from Penny trying to draw Cinder off and Cinder going back because...evil? Bait for Penny? Who knows. 

Oh yeah, Marias having a GOOD time. Also, Neos face when she gets kicked in it; “NO, NOT THE SANDEL!”

Also the disrespect from Maria. Yes. Suck it, Neo.

Also theres some timeskippage, as there is NOT a 2 minute gap between when we see the clock the first time and when we see it now. I dont think, anyway. Im sure theres math to be done but it serves the purpose its suppose to, for tension.

Uhhhh...Cinder, please. Your Salem’s most bottom of bitches right now. She favors Hazel and Tyrian over you.

Did Cinder really just try for a does not compute moment. Or is she just out of ideas.

Cinder stealing the maiden powers reminds me of the Grip of the Devourer perk from the Necromatic Grips in Destiny 2. Mainly the green energy flowing. I know thats Pennys aura stuff but it does remind me.

Ahhh they got a plan with Emerald then. Interesting. Also Neo taking advantage of a distraction sounds like her. 

And Penny ONESHOTS Neo. Lets be real here, without aura? She’d be LIQUID. Or maybe ash. Not sure how Penny’s funnels (THEYRE STILL FUCKING FUNNELS DAMMIT) works.

Annnnddd you forgot shes a robot and sees aura didn’t you.  Again, without aura, she’d be dead. Actually, she might legit be dead considering that scream. That sounds like the noise someone makes as their organs are fried by high intensity radiation. Not too mention the MASSIVE BURN MARK on the back wall there.

Either way; GET FUCKED BITCH.

Very dramatic, Emerald, but really, come on. Penny has lasers. You would get maybe one more shot (from a weapon that has, at best from my viewpoint) a caliber equal to MAYBE a 9mm pistol. That stuff doesnt have the penetration power required.

If Penny wasn’t nice and more interested in saving Peitro...you’d be dead. Ripped asunder and Cinder made even worse. 

A pity, really, Penny has a heart. But...hey. Real girl.

I feed upon Emeralds tears though. Mmm. Simpy.

What the HELL is hitting them. Grimm?

Oh boy here we go, more of this. Like...bruh. Just set down for a bit. Always gotta be dramatic dont ya

Aww. Touching. But pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Interesting note but she puts her gloved hand on his cheek, not the one with the glove burned off. For what thats worth again.

Holy shit, that map wasnt lying. That whale’s almost as big as Atlas is from this angle. Mind you, might just be a trick of the location but it would make sense if they were afraid of a Grimm THAT GOD DAMN BIG. I was just seeing it as like, about the size of a normal sperm whale, maybe as big as the Leviathan from the series of the same name, but even that was barely 150 feet long. This things HUGE.

Nope. Pretty sure its about the same size as Atlas is long.

Also the Moon seems smaller from this angle oddly enough.

Wait is she gonna superman this fucking thing?

Okay yes, the numbers were based on distance not velocity, as Penny is pushing the stadium UP, rather than accelerating it in proper stance.

The noises she makes...huh. Glad my sister didnt walk in on those. Sounds...not like someone straining.

Hey look, its clumsy shitface McGee. HES NOT DEAD!

Note about the message; whos the chick with the eye patch next to the faunus in the back left of Ruby.

Im going to assume the first place we see the message played is the Mistral Black Market. Seems fitting for how it is, and the design matches Havens ascetic. 

OH MY GOD THE LITTLE EARED FAUNUS GIRL IN THE HOLE. OH NO. SHES TOO CUTE.

Also in that same shot we see the old Karen from two episodes ago, a mouse girl, Fiona’s mole uncle, and someone new I think. Plus the huge eared girls mom who has a fox tail. And also one of the thirsty moms and her kid maybe?

Hey, Sun and Neptune! Out in the middle of nowhere in Vacuo. So this is the first time we’ve seen it in the show. 

And Ilia’s still alive too!

Hey and Goodwytch too. No voice, of course...she got fired ages ago.

Also hey, so this is where Ironwoods been. I love how Hare turns it off before Ruby finishes. 

I will note that technically Ruby’s not wrong. Ironwood cant be trusted. But then, he couldnt before because (gestures to Atlas’s pathetic, scraggy SOFT “military” instead of THE CHAD FORCES OF...uh...) (Rapid sounds of shuffling papers and files labeled “UNSC” “Coalition of Ordered Governments” “SRPA” “GAR” and “Yukon Confederacy” fly off the table)

Several others. Yes. Lets go with that. (Accidentally bumps paper labeled “Vanguard” off the desk)

Watts is back out I see too. 

Wait wait wait. Penny’s blades operate via chips...part of her, sure. So WHY does she need wires on them? AGAIN. WHY ARE THEY WIRE FUNNELS AND NOT SEPERATE ONES.

Interestingly the inside of the one Watts has resembles a Scroll...did Peitro commender that technology?

No focusing system for the laser. No chamber for acceleration or direction. Odd.

Salem looks oddly glad for this. Probably cause she thinks this is going to spread more fear. 

And Ruby gets to the heart of the deal. You dont beat something that cant be killed. You capture it. Hurt it. BREAK IT. A sentient being can only take so much punishment before it shatters into madness and controllable fragments. You just. Need. To. Hit. It. HARD. ENOUGH. 

Additionally Ruby’s got a point there too. Salem played the shadows until this moment when everything was going her way. So...whats she afraid of.

Annnnddd thats all it takes to hijack Penny? Seriously.

Fuckin god damn useless Atlas bullshit fucking...(LONG SUFFERING SIGH OF A TECH NERD)

Hey theres Taiyang. Where’s Raven?

Wait hold on a second. She catches fire literally two seconds after she falls? You gotta fall a bit more than that for shit to start happening. WHAT THE FUCK IS REMNANTS ATMOSPHERE?! Or is it just dramatic...

Also as a small note the way the coms between her and Peitro cut off like that is accurate to reentry; during the hottest part of a splashdown, a space craft creates such a huge trail of energy behind it, rattling and burning its way down, it creates a blackout with its own passage. So based on the massive Apollo style reentry fire cone shes already putting out shes most likely going to be out of coms until she slows down orrrrrr craters into Remnants surface with the force of a meteor. 

And no. I dont think shes dead. The fact that, DESPITE being surrounded by the kind of fireball that worked its way into the fueltank of the space shuttle Discovery and blew it and its crew to bits on reentry, she was still intact...shes probably going to be fine.

Hacked, certainly, but fine. It takes more than that to finish her. Besides now that shes hacked, she has to fight Ruby. We all want that right?

Ahh good to see Winter in full armor now. Or...close to it. Im sure some of its a support rig for her injuries but I like to think this is the start of Atlas’s Specialist Weaponization Program.

Ironwood makes a good call here. Same thought process as mine.

Salutes in this world are the same as ours. Interesting. Must change that for the HKs

Annnndd of course Watts steals the busted Scroll because IRONWOOD IS A FUCKING DUMBASS

...um.

Im...not even going to COMMENT on what the FUCK this thing is that Jaunes detachment found. 

Also why is there A TREE in the tundra?

Oh, caustic. Interesting.

Mmmm. (Pause. Fingers to lips)

Thats your plan, Salem? To literally leak liquid Grimm into Mantle.

More silence.

Ladies and gentlemen...Salem is, officially, THE WORST VILLAN. OF ALL TIME.

The level of incompetence and stupidity I have seen here today completely obliterates the LAST person to hold that title, President Snow from the Hunger Games.

The amount of unnececary back door work and seecret plotting here astounds me. Shes doing this because she can, Im SURE of it. Theres no other reason.

Unless...she kows in a straight out fight, she’d have Ironwoods metal arm up to her colon in seconds. Which I wouldnt be surprised about.

Either way uh...thats it. Thats the end of the episode. 

Nice fight, at least.

See you all in Febuary!

EDIT: NOT FEBUARY, the break is a few more episodes after this

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :( 

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous 

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane 

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it 

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’ 

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed 

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry 

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal 

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive 

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually 

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all 

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav 

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!! 

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD 

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic 

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that 

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

[exaltedviolinist]

tlok rewatch 2020 - book 4

this is it...

- 5/10. this book is the worst book of the four and it’s not even debatable to me. i think 5/10 is the fairest assessment i could give it: it has, at its very core, some really interesting concepts, like korra’s healing journey, humans abusing of the spirits in a post-harmonic convergence world, republic city being used as the final battlefield... but their execution always flops ultimately, and beyond that, some pretty evil things go down in this book (korra being completely devoid of her usual personality, korra being "cured” by her abuser, korra validating the pain and torture she endured in order to learn compassion which she already had before, tenzin calling book 1 korra selfish, tenzin validating korra justifying her abuse, etc.). as a whole, the book is not good. there were some interesting parts for sure, but most of them were visual delights. if you even care about korra you would recognize that she is sidelined and her personality is toned down for the sake of appearing as someone she isn’t. the pacing is pretty bad and the show struggles to find its footing in the grand story it wants to tell. i’m thankful to say at least that book 4 was a... better experience to me than i anticipated. i won’t be AS negative as i was for over 5 years about this book, but i will never actively defend it for anything. - artistically, i feel as though this book isn’t as memorable as the previous three. i simply can barely recall tracks or sceneries that shook me to my core: the ones that DO come to mind all come from the finale - mako’s sacrifice, goodbye, and that shot of the republic city skyscrapers being sliced from afar. i saw the whole book just a few days ago! it’s really not a bad book visually or sonically but i can recall book 1, book 2 and book 3 shots/soundtrack way easier than book 4. - let’s start with the positives.... korra’s journey to healing started out great. her visions are realistic, the way she goes around dealing with them and reacting to them is accurate and to me having korra fighting an evil within herself would’ve been a much more compelling story than what we got. they really started dropping the ball after korra extracted the remaining poison out of her. dark korra shows up one last time against kuvira (which i thought was excellent!) but then is never brought up again? what was that about? i didn’t think it was realistic korra miraculously was rid of visions, trauma and ptsd symptoms once ZAHEER (of all people........) helped her with her spiritual block? one can accept something happened to the one without making it completely disappear. it doesn’t go away so simply. and a toe-to-toe face off with dark korra is something i fully anticipated yet never got. on that note, korra alone is a great episode but i think this is what the standard should’ve been for book 4: korra at the center of the plot and diving into her trauma and healing process. all they needed to do is replicate that recipe, put in supporting characters like the rest of the krew and tenzin/lin/the air nation and we’d be golden. - they had a good idea in making kuvira use spirit vines for her gains - why wasn’t anybody reacting to this? the spirits who now share this world were never outraged that humans were being damaging to them. there was a lot of potential to make this a human vs. spirit conflict that korra could’ve been able to resolve in this modern world where the portals are permanently open. spirits and humans alike simply let kuvira take the vines and use them for a destructive weapon. the one time vines reacted in anger to that their qualms with kuvira/humans were never dealt with or appeased - korra only saved humans in this episode, nothing more. and it was never addressed again. - republic city being used as a battlefield WAS. AWESOME. i WISH they didn’t have this ugly robot ruining it all for me. imagine if korra was facing off against kuvira in a fast-paced intense battle in which they collided in buildings, sliced skyscrapers and blew up the city..... that would’ve been sick. - and... that’s about all i can credit book 4 for honestly. kuvira isn’t compelling as a villain (just a repurposed ozai with viewer sympathy thrown at the end for some reason, probably because they tried so hard yet failed to paint a parallel between her and korra), the 3 years time skip is absolutely fucking evil and i rejected it years ago, i still do and for all times, the krew only fully regroups in episode ELEVEN and their separation creates the same problems the first half of book 2 experienced, the krew reuniting in the reunion episode was so basic and disgustingly anticlimactic, the beifongs take way too much space again, toph made her epic comeback only for her to brutalize korra for a whole episode before being actually sort of helpful, varrick and zhu li are main characters now and i will never forgive that (how did zhu li get more lines than korra in some episodes is BEYOND me), prince wu (and meelo to that extent) is an abomination of a character and nothing can redeem that, korra is devoid of personality (or is exhibiting a washed out version of her personality), korra is antagonizing her old self and justifying the violence she suffered from, tenzin was a terrible mentor this season and not even remotely helpful in any way, hiroshi is only brought back to be sacrificial lamb at the end and not further develop asami’s lackluster character which gets NO justice this book either and stagnates lower than her character in the book before it and worst of all korra isn’t the protagonist of the show she is the titular character of anymore.

- i tried my best to like this book, i really did. i did not want to resent this book anymore - it’s tiring to have this awful book constantly remind me that korra never got the proper ending she deserved. the worst season had to be the departing one!! and i don’t know who is to blame for all this ugliness really: nickelodeon and their terrible promotion/scheduling of tlok? the writers who tried to appease to fans by rewriting korra and constantly torturing her from 3x13 to the end? the creators who had some anger to let out on a brown woman? what happened??

- i don’t even want to address this final episode but i shall. the first 10 minutes or so are good. as soon as the portal is created though, that’s when everything turns to shit. korra and kuvira talking is fine but i still don’t buy the “kuvira is like korra” argument they kept forcibly bring up because they couldn’t find a way for us to organically create potential similarities but the rest is trash. the westernized zhurrick wedding can kiss my ass, korra not having a final scene with bolin or the krew as a whole can kiss my ass, the final episode not being named avatar korra can kiss my ass, tenzin and korra celebrating her abuse and attempted murder can kiss my ass (and on that note, it makes me laugh thinking that they thought korra needed to be taught compassion through torture as if her saving kuvira, sparing her life and being selfless was more compassionate of her than surrendering herself to terrorists in order to save a nation she had just brought back from their ashes) and korra apologizing to asami can kiss my ass. korrasami itself being a thing was a surprise for me back then but let’s be honest: as much as we like to see it we can simply cannot avoid the fact that the pairing had no romantic buildup the entire season - korrasami was only somewhat pushed in book 3, particularly at the end of it. i don’t feel like makorra had that much more anyway so know that this isn’t an attempt to put one against the other either - but i will say that mako accompanying korra to the spirit wilds of republic city and to zaheer’s prison was meaningful to me and to korra, as well as mako’s desperate look to jinora when they were looking for korra’s body after the spirit blast. to sum up my thoughts on the pairings: i think bopal and kainora are cute, and i only actively shipped makorra and korrasami in book 3 where they were written well. that’s about it. i’ve made my peace with this book. it doesn’t poison me as much as it used to be but i’ll always be angry at it for being the way it is. it didn’t need to be, and there were very easy fixes. it boggles my mind. this will probably be the last time i rewatch book 4, at least in a very long time. my favorite episodes of this book: Korra Alone and Reunion. i actively disliked: The Coronation, Enemy at the Gates, The Battle of Zaofu, Remembrances and the second half the The Last Stand. 

in conclusion: book 1 > book 3 > book 2 > book 4. and korra’s bob isn’t as pretty as the pigtails/ponytail sorry not sorry.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

So... Doctor Who is having reruns here on National Television. I've ended up catching up with the series (Against my will mind you), so here's the thing:

Around Last Week, the "Capitalism in SPACE" episode happened, the one in the Moffatt Era, with the 12th doctor. Saw it, was pretty anti capital, ends with Capitalism and Corporation getting disbanded after a violent uprising of the Workers after a clamorous case of a board of directors trying to cut their losses by killing workers cause they consumed too much oxygen while working or some shit.

Anyway, this week we're in Season 11 proper, with the 13th Doctor. We have 2 episodes per day, the first was the one about the Partition of India and Pakistan ("Who is to blame?" BRITISH PEOPLE, THE BRITISH PEOPLE ARE TO BLAME YOU DUMBASSES), it was a good episode even if it only skims the role the British had in the thing, and introduces YET ANOTHER secret society of Time Travelers obsessed with going sonewhere where people die and look vaguely evil about it, but at least they weren't the main focus, thing was still pretty grounded in the true horror and shit...

A N Y W A Y

Second Episode was the Amazon Episode.

OH BOY THE AMAZON EPISODE.

So, far future, The Doctor receives a amazon drone with a fez in it and a request for help, like she does, and decides to investigate the Amazon Warehouse on a alien planet where they found it.

So...

1) due to automatization (IE Robots), Amazon tried to get rid of all "organic" workers, unemploying many of them.

2) This causes mass uprising over the sheer desire to work, so now policies are in pkay to mantain a 10% of Organic Workers in place.

3) Doctor and Co. Infiltrate the amazon warehouse as workers to see what's going on, and are costantly being monitired by the Amazon Drones.

4) The Director of the Place is incredibly dismissive toward workers, and belittles a female worker working the conveyor belt. Shifty guy all around, lording over the workers

5) Disturbing work conditions aside, typical of many a amazon warehouse, even with the 1 hour break in the local, internal park, thing seems to be pretty clean cut. As a reprise of Oxygen, the Board of Directors are killing his workers and replacing them with autonomous work or some shit, and a worker managed to ask for help...

6) Except, no. The one asking for help are the robots/System. That's a cool concept, it's not the robots killing the people, but they try to protect them from their superiors, developing cosciences and shit, not submitting to the tireless march of capitalism.

7) EXCEPT, NOPE! THE EVIL PLAN WAS MADE BY A TERRORIST. A LONE WOLF TERRORIST INFILTRATED THE PLACE, HACKED THE AMAZON DRONES, AND PLANNED TO HAVE THEM DELIVER BOMBS ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE.

8) Why? Cause that way he can vilify Autonation, who has forced 90% of humanity out of work ("the work nobilitates us, we need it to be fulfilled" says, unironically, the female worker from point 4), and return to human workers. Human worker he has being experimenting on for a whike too.

9) They stop his plan by blowing him up, as you do, and the director guy, who is actually a good person and was actually trying to investogate the disapearances GUYS, promises that ALL WORKERS HAVE BERN GIVEN 2 WEEKS OF PAID LEAVE, A FREE SHIP TO RETURN HOME, AND THAT THEY'LL TRY TO ADVOCATE FOR MORE HUMAN WORKERS FROM NOW ON.

10) THIS IS THE MOST CAPITALIST ENDING IN A EPISODE OF DOCTOR WHO I'VE EVER SEEN.

And you know why they did it? Cause otherwise Amazon would have thrown a fit and YOU KNOW IT, making such a Blatant Amazon setting with all the shit it entaols and do NOTHING to criticize it, presenting the only one advocating for change as deranged AND advocating for the WRONG THING.

Come on guys, this is WEAK! Yiu do not ask for work after society passes to automatization. You ask for a society where humanity doesn't have to work to survive anymore because THEY DON'T NEED TO DO IT ANYMORE.

A MOFFAT EPISODE MANAGES TO DO THAT.

A MOFFAT EPISODE.

[crqstalite]

15* day swtor challenge.

*didn’t take fifteen days. not even five.

the challenge <<<

anyways, decided to finally get around to this bad boy that i reblogged like a week ago or smth. our toon of choice for this one is our darling darth tri’ama amarillis-quinn.

1. PROLOGUE.  Where was your OC before the class story? How’d they end up on the starter planet?

Tri’ama was born pure Kaasian (or so she assumes) to two unknown humans. There’s evidence there was another child born to her parents, making Tri’ama a twin to someone but she isn’t aware who. Adopted by two Sith Pureblood Lords, Raegia and Yusaits Amarillis, Tri’ama was raised rather well at the height of power. She had always been destined for Korriban, and routinely trained with her parents.

2. FAMILY.  Is your OC’s family a large part of their story? Why or why not? Are they on good terms? Are any of your characters related?

Tri’ama’s parents have always been her biggest supporters, but were always very withdrawn with their loving. Often their childrearing would be considered extremely odd, from the violent training and the fact they’d continually push her past her physical boundaries. However, Raegia and Yusaits were careful to allow her to grow close to them, so they’re always on good terms. Tri’ama is aware that she has a twin, but assumes they were stillborn or abandoned, so doesn’t care much for it. They don’t appear much in story yet, but they will soon.

3. NAME.  How did you come up with their name? What is it in-game? What do people call them? What do *you* call them?

Tri’ama was because I was beginning to realize ‘holy crap you can use apostrophes?!!!!’ hence why at least a 1/3 of my characters have an apostrophe somewhere in their name. It’s the same in-game, Tri’ama Amarillis (though I don’t have money for my legacy name). Sometimes Vette calls her ‘sis’ when they’re alone (which she LIVES for), Malavai refers to her as ‘my lord’, ‘my love’ when he’s feeling particularily adventerous, and her name when they’re alone, Jaesa refers to her as Master, Pierce is always ‘my lord’ or ‘my greatness therefore our one and only savior’ if he’s feeling like being annoying (thankfully he has a so-so friendship with her, so he’s in no danger of dying), and half the time she can’t figure what Broonmark is saying. I, call her bitch boy because she’s an asshole to literally everyone else.

4. COMBAT.  What’s your character like in a fight? Is there anything you wish they could do in-game that isn’t an option? Favorite in-game moves? How did you decide their specialization?

Tri’ama is chaos and mayhem on wheels, but organized. Everyone has their position and what they have to do, and when things go according to plan, things are wonderful. I think force leap is my favorite thing for Sith Warrior’s and Jedi Knights to do because I love just leaping towards enemies and going to town. I decided her specialization because I really, really like double sabers and the abilities that come with them.

5. WARDROBE.  How many outfit slots are filled? Did their look change over the course of the game, or stay consistent?

1. Literally one because I can’t afford to buy anymore. Also because I do more functionality than looks, so it depended on the planet. Whatever a Warrior on Hoth wore, she wore on Hoth. However, fic wise she did, going from having her hair short and slicked back, to having her hair long and around her shoulders during the endgame.

6. HOME.  Where is home? A place? A person?

Home is Dromound Kaas, in her old family home. Home is with her parents, with the smell of good food and the quiet nights as the rain patters against the windows and she falls asleep.

7. PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS.  Who are their closest friends? Do they have a lot, or a few? Do they trust easily, or does it take time?

Her closest friend is easily Vette, being the first person who began following her. They have a sisterly relationship, and always has a joke for her when they return to the ship. She’s one of the two people that can get her to laugh (the other being Malavai). She doesn’t have too many friends, being not only a Sith but also being Darth Amarillis. It takes a lot of time for her to trust someone, after being betrayed by not only Baras, but Malavai as well. But, it’s easy to see that those she does trust, are there for her life.

8. ROMANCES.  A companion? An NPC? One of your OCs? Someone else’s? Nobody? Explain!

She’s married to Captain Malavai Quinn. Though it’s been a trying relationship (due to his betrayal and her inability to trust), Tri’ama loves him with her whole heart. They spend time together a little more sporadically than either would like, but what they do have, they treasure.

9. RIVALRIES.  Who do they hate most? What’s the fastest way for someone to earn their dislike?

Mierrio. Hands down they despise each other mutually and don’t even try to fight their corresponding lovers on it. For a reason that still has yet to be revealed in-universe >:)

10. SLEEP.  What are your OC’s sleeping habits like? Healthy? Terrible? With someone else?

Tri’ama actually sleeps rather well at night. She goes to bed when work is done, wakes up and then going back to work. In that way, she didn’t sleep with Malavai for nearly a year after his betrayal (she believes she’s most vulnerable while sleep), but now she can’t do so without him. Other than that, she’s the most well-rested Sith in the roster.

11. CANON DIVERGENCE.  Are there parts of their story that don’t line up with in-game information? Why? Where?

Yes. When Baras asks the Sith Warrior whether they know the Sith Code, it’s assumed the PC has no idea what’s going on, and has been rushed into the Sith lifestyle. Tri’ama has been part of the Sith lifestyle since she was adopted by her parents, and of course would know the Sith Code, and what it means to be Sith. She wouldn’t have been rushed to Korriban either, though she was heavily advanced compared to other students and would’ve had no problem murdering Vemrin out of sight of the overseers without the assistance of Baras or Tremel. Other than that, no.

12. AUs.  Do you have any alternate universes for them? What’s different? What’s the same?

One AU I have is the Faction Swap AU, where obviously, the characters switch their factions with the opposite class. Tri’ama became a Jedi Knight, which isn’t much different from her usual form, except that she murders less and doesn’t have an Imperial accent. Doc would’ve pissed her off, but she probably would’ve came around eventually, making it very clear that she was the one wearing pants in this relationship. The second AU I have is the Heritage AU, where she and Malavai have an unknown amount of children and...well it’s not written yet. Another AU is the lover swap AU (where I swap the companion lover and the PC’s roles), and Tri’ama would be the one stuck on Balmorra until Malavai arrives. She’s rather suave about how she enjoys her time spent with Baras’ apprentice and is extremely forward. Tri’ama, with her own trust issues, nearly refuses Baras before her life is threatened, and she purposely makes the robots much weaker than they should be.

13. ALIGNMENT.  Light-dark, or D&D style, or both, whatever suits you. Did you plan for them to be the way they are, or did your ideas change as you played?

Dark side, mostly. Of course, I didn’t intend for her to be merciful to some characters, but it ended up that way because Malavai was partially light-sided as well and Tri’ama wanted to please him. Her D&D Alignment is Lawful Evil.

14. POST-OSSUS. How have they changed over the course of the thirteen years? How do they feel about their past self? How would their past self feel about them now?

Assuming we’re following my very fractured ‘Made of Star Dust’ universe, Tri’ama has changed because being seperated from the one person that promised to never leave her again, and the person that she trusted most in the whole galaxy snapped something inside her. Some call her the Melancholical Murderer, because she kills due to her own sadness and straining sanity. Things don’t go right back to normal after Malavai and Vette return, and she struggles to trust those in the Alliance as well. While Ezridivia has tried to reach out to her, along with Lana, surprisingly her remaining trust in the Barsen’thor (Naji) and Mierrio. Tri’ama sees her past self as weak, for not being able to deal the killing blow when she should’ve. Her past self would’ve seen this version as insane, and downright scary.

15. FREE DAY.  Anything you’d like to talk about that wasn’t covered goes here. Fun facts? Not-fun facts? Go wild. I don’t own you.

Tri’ama loves, loves, LOVES, pets. She begged Malavai to adopt an akk dog (they didn’t, he made a remark that they already had Broonmark), and always checks out the wildlife on any planet that they land on. She also adores silk underclothes, and Malavai always complies. <3

@wolfboywarmachine !

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Meat ch 1-8 [Epilogue 1]

I’m eating so you get one more of these before I try to salvage a bit of work from today.

We’ve read through the whole of the ‘Candy’ branch of the story. It went places! Spoilers for it below.

Somehow Jane turned into a fascist dictator, Karkat became a heroic resistance leader, a whole lot of ships were made and broken, Dirk killed himself but somehow it was fake (???), John went through multiple existential crises and a failed marriage, Jade destroyed Dave and Karkat’s relationship but ultimately got with Dave, Gamzee was brought back to perform a ‘redemption arc’ and was generally awful but ultimately ended up getting sexually assaulted and then murdered by Vriska, let’s not forget that the cast had three entire fucking babies and one of them ran into her own namesake... and Obama was there. And that’s not even covering all of it...

But that was all in a universe that was ‘inconsequential’; it was in a bubble disconnected from ‘canon’, spread out on the event horizon.

Now we wind the clock back, and consider what happens if John chooses on that day to go forth, recruit a group of other selves from elsewhere in Paradox Space, and fight Lord English, as ‘canon’ dictates he eventually must...

Chapter 1

This one is in second person, and features narrative prompts, which was also true of the first chapter of Candy.

This time, John eats the meat in a really gross way, manages to not puke everywhere, says awkward goodbyes, writes a bunch of letters, and fucks off back into Canon(TM).

Not a lot to say about that! P much what we expected. Wonder where he’s gonna end up?

Chapter 2

I pretty much expected them to dive straight into Canon, but no, in fact similar plots as the first one seem to be abrew. We meet Dave and Karkat - no Jade here, this time - as Dave breaks the news of Jane’s presidential bid.

So, Dave proposes, Karkat should run against her. Which was a possibility floated in the other story... it does feel rather like, at this point, whatever V said, I might have read them in the wrong order.

Dave brings up Obama as a reason he’d want to see a good president - Obama who, in Dave’s timeline, got killed by meteors before he could ‘fix the economy’. Which I guess makes his appearance in the other branch a little less of a non-sequitur, though still fucking weird don’t get me wrong!

DAVE: or maybe not... maybe there was like an escape hatch in the white house that led to his own secret presidential session of sburb

DAVE: what if hes just chillin there now

KARKAT: DAVE, I THINK WE’VE COVERED YOUR “OBAMA’S SECRET SESSION OF SBURB” THEORY WELL ENOUGH ALREADY.

So the Obama chapter was all payoff for a very long term brick joke? This is not the revelation I expected to be having in Meat.

Anyway, Dave basically explains how scary it is to have the human government in charge of troll reproduction, echoing Karkat’s words back at him. Apparently the way the whole weird eugenic system got put in place was that, before Kanaya arrived with the Mother Grub, the government reproduced trolls exclusively ectobiologically.

The other issue is... The Economy. We get a little note that, indeed, this is an alchemy-based post-scarcity economy:

DAVE: ok if shit goes sideways i guess we arent gonna see like raggedy turtles and pauper chess men standing in bread lines or anything

DAVE: thats just the nature of alchemy-based post-scarcity economies the depressions tend to be pretty mild

DAVE: but it will still be bad

DAVE: a healthy economy is fuckin IMPORTANT

DAVE: if for no other reason than it protects the societal context for what it means to be fucking rich, like us

So uh what do they spend money on... I guess there’s services, those can’t be alchemised (except for the fact that ludicrously advanced robotics exists?). someone actually has to work the alchemizer...

Anyway most of this chapter is... electoral strategy.

DAVE: consorts overwhelm the other kingdoms in sheer numbers but due to unscrupulous gerrymandering, all kinds of fucked up voter suppression policies and some electoral “counterbalancing” measures to account for their ridiculous population growth rate their voting power per capita is kind of pathetic

DAVE: also its hard to drive turnout

DAVE: this may come as a shock but legions of easily distracted low information amphibians primarily concerned with eating bugs and farming god damned mushrooms arent the most politically motivated demographic

The chapter ends with Dirk calling Dave... to... cut off his head. Yeah. That joke again.

OK, this sure is a direction. Welcome to Homestuck Electoralism Edition I guess. They probably won’t have quite as many kids?

Chapter 3

John apparently has a specific list of retcon interventions, apopros of Rose. The first is to appear on the battleship during the three year journey in the non-canon, pre-retcon timeline, open a fridge containing Aradia and Gamzee (god I’ve forgotten so much), and take the ring that Aradia is holding (which ring is that again?). Then, John decides to shove Gamzee back in the fridge.

> Do everyone a favor and put an end to his preposterous narrative relevance.

You wisely decide that this clown will lend nothing valuable to the narrative whatsoever if he is allowed to remain outside of your childhood refrigerator. You put both hands on his chest and shove him into the fridge where he belongs. He goes easily, issuing only a pair of weak honks in protest. You slam the fridge shut and resolve to never think about Gamzee Makara again.

So... we’re going with that, huh.

I’ve said enough about the Gamzee Issue already perhaps. But I guess I thought they were going to do more than to bring Gamzee back mostly to mock the idea of ‘redemption arcs’, and ‘punish’ him some more for being a bad character.

Chapter 4

John interrupts two other retcon-Johns, one trying to cancel out the other, a Dave, and a grimbark Jade during some of the shit that happened when Jade got mind controlled or whatever... it’s been a long time...

Dave’s the first recruit, along with Jade. John gives him a rather half-assed explanation about why, after several years of ‘boring adult lives’, they need to go and fight Lord English now.

Chapter 5

Back to the real story: Dave and Karkat’s electoral bid.

Dirk has apparently been... playing the heel in televised rap battles to Jake’s face so that Jake’s endorsement of Jane’s political candidacy would be more effective. Yeah.

Also he disagrees with Dave on fiscal policy. The cad.

He has a rather weird conversation of alternately discouraging and encouraging Dave and Karkat’s opposition. Then, to round out the chapter, V and Cephied deliver... an entire stanza of Jake’s rap. Oh boy.

At the end, Dirk... tranquilizes Jake (????????) to take another call from Rose.

This is the ‘real’, ‘canon’ storyline now? Oh Homestuck.

Chapter 6

John’s assembled a group of god tier kids in his back garden. The alpha and beta kids are present, but there are no trolls.

There’s a rather uncomfortable moment (for the reader, as well as John) when young Roxy hits on adult John.

You weren’t prepared to get passively hit on by the Definitely Not Legal version of a girl you used to have a crush on at the age she was when you first met her, only a few hours after you watched the Actually Legal version of her engage in passionate hand-holding with her possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend.

‘Legal’, really!

Anyway, John feels rather strained watching this rather rushed rehash of the reunion scenes from the original comic. He wonders about the ethics of all this...

You wonder. Do you see these teen versions of your friends as “real”? Are you treating them, at Rose’s behest, as simple puppets? Doing your part to insist they fill friend-shaped recesses in an essential plan to stabilize all else that can be considered important, a distinction no longer applying to them? Do you care at all about whatever fate it may be that you are sentencing these children to? Are you becoming as complicit in the fatalistic evils of Paradox Space as Lord English himself? Are you becoming a monster, John Egbert?

foooof i mean he’s not wrong! let’s call them the ‘child soldiers’ from here on out...

Chapter 7

Time to catch up with Rose. We finally learn what’s wrong with her: she’s ‘ascending’, taking on the full burden of the ‘ultimate self’.

The same is also happening to Dirk, but he is somehow more resilient to it. So that’s what Obama did to Dave, huh.

Also this puts the prompt ‘Dirk: Ascend’ before his suicide in a rather different light.

The pieces are thus falling into place: this is why Dirk was building a Rosebot. Quite possibly the Dirk and Rose who were flying away from Earth C in the Candy timeline actually entered it out of this timeline, which would explain how Dirk was alive.

Chapter 8

Time to see the full events of Caliborn’s ‘Masterpiece’.

This is all Caliborn dropping an extremely corny buildup:

CALIBORN: BUT NOW. THE TIME HAS COME.

CALIBORN: FOR EVERYONE TO SHUT UP ABOUT HOW GREAT MY MASTERPIECE WAS.

CALIBORN: AND THE TIME IS NOW AT HAND...

His laughter turns into a low, cracked gurgle. It spikes towards you in waves, distorts and pitches low. He is beyond pleased with himself, and with the line he is about to deliver.

CALIBORN: FOR YOU ALL TO *BECOME* MY MASTERPIECE!

We need more organs to give that the proper level of scare chord...

End of Epilogue 1

Well that explained at least some of the wild horseshit we experienced in Candy, I guess.

So somehow this is all according to keikaku, which is to say Dirk’s design - he fancies himself as an engineer, putting each piece in its proper place. Rose isn’t entirely in on it, but she will be. We still don’t know why Dirk’s doing this, why he needs Jane to be president, why he’s ultimately going to need a new SBurb session...

As for themes and stuff... this just felt like ‘setting the board’. Rather hastily, even though it’s a full eight chapters. Compared to the emotional heft of some of the stuff that happened in Candy, anyway... this is all plot.

[majingojira]

Super Robot Wars US: A Broad Outline of Included Series

So, I had an idea. a “What if” if you will.  “What if a Super Robot Wars series was made for international (American) Markets and actually sprung for the license of U.S. Series and recognizable works?”

Here is what I came up with, in a basic outline. 

Phase 1: The Monsters

Before the story begins, the world has been under attack by monsters.  For generations, monsters called Kaiju have periodically appeared and threatened the world.  Many were killed or driven off, but some remain hidden across the world.  Their existence spurred many military advancements including the creation of many mobile weapons.  They could appear anywhere, and wreak all sorts of havoc, but some it seems could be reasoned with or were here for a reason.  Sometimes the result of man’s hubris, other times because of natural processes. (Series: Godzilla, mix, but mainly from Godzilla X Mecahgodzilla /Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.)

But then something happened.  11 years ago, a new type of Kaiju appeared.  these were more aggressive, more toxic, and glowed oddly.  These were dubbed “Blue Kaiju” and the old style of monsters called “Red Kaiju”.  Both were dangerous, but one odd thing seemed to hold true: Blue and Red Kaiju hated each other. 

Still, the new Blue Kaiju posed an unparalleled threat, as they attacked more regularly and more devastatingly.  Thus was born the Jaeger program.  The Jaegers dwarfed normal mobile weapons, and could more readily take down Kaiju, at first.  But they began coming faster than the Jaegers could be built and piloted. (Series: Pacific Rim)

Part 2: The Aliens

9 years ago, a mysterious alien vessel crashed to earth, landing on Macross Island. The three power blocks (The AEU, the Human Reform League, and the Union of Solar Energy) eventually decided to work together to restore the vessel and reap the benefits of its technology, in part for the Jaeger program, and in part as a backup.  As things with the Kaiju got worse, the idea of escaping into space seemed a more promising option. So, to prepare for the eventual exploration of interstellar space, the Galaxy Garrison was founded.  (Series: Super-Dimensional Fortress: Macross/Robotech series 1, Gundam OO, Voltron: The Legendary Defender)

But this was just the first incident.  2 years ago, another alien machine crashed on earth.  Dubbed EL-01, the being hid and prepared for its eventual conquest of the earth, but its arrival had been preceded.  First by a machine known as GaLeon from a distant world 5 years prior, warning some humans of his arrival and leaving a weapon to help fight it.  (Series: King of  Braves: GaoGaiGar)

Part 3: The Ancient Beings Revive

These disturbances have rippling effects across the solar system.  On earth, Cybertronians stranded here thousands of years ago, stir once more and begin their war in secret among the humans.  But with so many robots around, they do not remain so for long.  (Series: Transformers)

But worse still, lunar construction workers find a large canister in a crater.  Opening it, they unseal an ancient evil from prehistoric times who decides to celebrate her freedom by conquering the planet earth!  In a world of science, her sorcery stands almost completely unopposed!  Almost. (Series: Koyru Sentai Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)

Part 4: The World Refused To Change

Despite these threats, the world power blocks still vie with each other for power and armed military companies like the Organization of the Zodiac or OZ ruthlessly fulfill their contracts, many of which include suppressing the fermenting revolutions on the space colonies.  Behind the curtain, OZ and their allies in a sinister group dubbed AMALGAM work to take over the world for their own ends.  (Series: New Mobile Report: Gundam Wing, Full Metal Panic!)

They find themselves opposed by a group with two names: one for planetary operations called Mithril, and one for space-born operations known as Celestial Being.  Aside from countering the actions of OZ and AMALGAM, their overall goal is to bring about peace on earth.  But they too are mere pawns of the Innovades, who seek to prepare the world for proper first contact with alien life. 

Part 5: The Beginning

Despite their plans and schemes, they all fall short of the insights of the nefarious Doctor Hell.  He knows at least one of the species coming to earth, the Myceneans, and he plans to unite the world under his iron-fisted rule to prepare them for the monsters from space.  But he needs the secret of Photonic Power to truly have the edge. (Series: Shin Mazinger)

And at the same time, a guy from New Jersey managed to find a giant mech from the future in a junk pile.  He gave it a hotrod makeover and is looking for things to do with it.  (Series: MEGAS: XLR)

Series Notes: Godzilla is one of the last recruitable units in the game, but the player has access to Kiryu and later Mothra to help balance that.  Godzilla’s ultimate move is “King of the Monsters” where he roars and calls forth every native-born earth monster to tear up his foes along with him.  Yes, Godzilla can be used in Space, but his movement is severely curtailed.  His final boss?  King Ghidorah.

Pacific Rim allows players to save the older Jaeger pilots and may sneak into Pacific Rim II territory if the game can fit it in time-skip wise.   Final Boss: Slattern (or the amalgam Kaiju from the PR II Trailer).

The Macross is the main ‘base’ for at least half the game and allows for a route split between earth and space several times due to Macross’ plot.  Final Boss: Zentradi Home Base

Voltron recasts a lot of events to be in and around Earth as they come back to shore up earth’s defenses for the eventual Galra invasion. Second most durable unit in the game.  Final Boss: Galra Mothership/Fleet, + Lotor’s Personal Robot.  Thank goodness the Zendtadi and the Galra hate each other, and the other aliens are little better.

Gundam OO sets a lot of the human political movement along with Gundam Wing.  The Gundams will show up to fight Kaiju, or defend the Macross from attack, but it’s not until later that they truly join with the other heroes.  Amalgam and the Innovades HATE each other, as their purposes are diametrically opposed. It’s a silver lining in a bleak situation. Final Boss: Ribbons Almark, Tres Khushrenada (with Maybe Marimeia side story before later villains are taken down).

GaoGaiGar has the single most powerful attack in the game: The Goldion Crusher. Transformers initially don’t like the G-Stone based A.I.’s of the Green Planet, but most learn to accept them because they’re our heroes.  THey’re less accepting of the Macros since it was one of their ship’s that was shot down and ... it and the other Macross ships are sometimes viewed like hollowed out corpses.  It’s very dark. Final Boss are the 11 Sol Masters. 

Transformers is based in part on G-1 continuity with bits from Animated and Armada thrown in -- because Optimus needs some upgrades if he’s gonna be of use in the long term. The main transformers I would tap for this would be Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Ratchet, Arcee, Windblade, Grimlock, and maybe Omega Supreme and/or Metroplex.  Final Boss: Unicron.  Optimus gets the final attack of “The Light of the Matrix” because of course he does. 

Full Metal Panic is there to justify all sorts of high school shenanigans.  Every teenager in the group now goes to the same school and thus silliness ensues.  These are the nimblest units aside from the Transformers, and the Lambda Driver is a great asset.  Final Boss: Leonard Testarossa.

Power Rangers taps into the nostalgia but takes a more IDW Comic take on things, with the original’s light heart.  The Player has the option of launching the rangers themselves as super speedy low damage units who can summon their individual zords, launch as their zords, or just go as the Megazord from the start and save space on the team. Final Boss: Lord Zedd

MEGAS XLR is totally a great choice for ‘viewpoint’ series if there is no OC. One neat thing is, after the last MEGAS level, the leader of the Glorft becomes an ally unit.  Because between the grudging respect earned there, Lin Minmay’s voice, AND Innovation, the Glorft end their war on Humanity.  Final Boss is Mirror Coop. 

Shin Mazinger has been adapted multiple times by the games, so it’s an easy fit.  I’d go a bit more into the ending so we can have Shin Great Mazinger, and have the final battle be against the Great General of Darkness.

But that’s my take on it.

[spiritwatch]

05/07/2020 - Trapped on a cursed island with robots, aliens, and ghosts

[PART I/III]

It started with a group of us being shipped over to live on a haven-like island. We only knew half of what we were getting ourselves into but agreed anyway. I’m assuming it was because we really didn’t have any other choice.

The town we arrived in was quaint and a beautiful mix of traditional European architecture and modern designs. The roads were a mixture of cobblestone and gravel and small, round islands of parks and greenery spotted around the land. We were brought to a waiting area by the water where we were told to wait until someone came to assign us our houses. So we obediently waited on those wooden benches by the lake until night fell and the lampposts around us automatically illuminated at their designated times.

My eyes began to wander and I was the first to notice the strange lights and shapes in the clouds.

“Look there!” I whispered to the others. “Does anyone else see those?”

The shapes began to clarify within the clouds as massive UFO’s with their windows and light beams faintly glowing as to not attract too much attention. It was almost comical to me that they were exactly as the media stereotypically portrayed them. They whirled around the area, seemingly surveying, momentarily stopping every now and then to beam something upwards towards them. Instead of shock and terror, we all stared in awe and wonder, as if something we knew for years had just been confirmed.

Then a noise drew our attention back into the village.

Large, egg-shaped robots as large as a car were wheeling around, their four legs extending their bodies up and down as necessary to attend to the houses and buildings. Some were repainting the roofs; others were unscrewing the windows to a veranda to rearrange it.

“So that’s how they do it,” a girl whispered a few seats away from me. 

We were all aware that while living in his haven-like neighbourhood, we had a very strict curfew that must never be broken. We were free to do whatever we wanted within our homes afterwards, but it was absolutely mandatory that not a living soul was out on the streets past the assigned times. Seeing these robots, with their menacingly large sizes and hands transformable into several different tools, we were the first to visually confirm why.

But now what about us?

The realization that we were - although unintentionally - breaking curfew washed over us. Were we safe? What would happen if we got caught? It technically wasn’t even our fault.

Then the new realization that maybe we were purposefully being left out hit us like a rock.

Sensing that everyone was getting restless, I took over, apparently more than confident I knew what I was doing. Gesturing to another boy, I called out to him. “___, shine that flashlight you have onto ____’s glasses so we can lead them further away from us.” At least we’ll feel safer if they weren’t in our vicinity.

They did as they were told and the flight flashed brightly into the trees further down the waterfront, attracting the attention of the robot just at the top of the stairs from us and the other ones around that area too. When they manoeuvred away, the whole group breathed out a sigh of relief.

[PART II/III]

It had been a few days since our arrival and the same people were called back to that meeting point by the water again. This time, several people were looking wide-eyed and dazed despite all the others outside of our group appearing fine. The only people that weren’t losing (or haven’t already lost) their minds were me, a little girl who took a liking to me called Olivia, and a few other young adults, including two of my childhood friends, Thomas and David.

After a few moments of sitting, a group of townspeople wearing ceremonial robes surrounded us with smiles on their faces, singing a haunting song about sacrifices and life beyond the grave being a wondrous place. They handed each person a thick canvas book, bound together by string and leather. The inside pages were empty except for the first one which held a table of contents. There were four listed:

1. Entering the home. 2. Witnessing the beauty of Heaven. 3. Accepting the song and curse of ____. 4. The End.

Several cold realizations hit me upon reading these and I looked to my friends in fright. The song the group had been previously singing was the one titled in the book. Does that mean we’re already nearing “The End”? What does “The End” even mean? Either way, I knew it couldn’t be good for a whole chapter to be titled “The End”.

“Maybe it was just a typo,” Thomas suggested, shrugging. He wrapped his arms around me. “Don’t worry about it, babe, I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe it just means the end of our initiation.”

“I don’t know about that,” David said lowly. “Haven’t you realized how strangely everyone else is behaving?” He rubbed at his arms, his dark skin forming goosebumps despite the warm weather. “Something’s been weird about how they’ve been treating us since the day we got here.”

Olivia tugged at my skirt. “Do you think they put a curse on us?” She asked fearfully, edging closer to me.

“I really hope not,” I mumbled.

Thomas, being the usual, carefree boy that he was, lifted Olivia off the ground and over his shoulder. “Nah, don’t worry about it,” he chuckled while spinning Olivia around to her glee. “Let’s just enjoy the new life we have here! Firstly by,” he grabbed me around the waist, picking me up. “Enjoying the water!”

“W-wait, Thomas,” I laughed, a hint of panic in my voice as I realized his intentions. “D-Don’t you dare!”

Laughing his loudest, he jumped into the water with the two of us in his arms.

For a few minutes, it did feel like nothing was wrong. Maybe I was just imagining things or thinking too much. Little did I know that this was the last time we would ever see each other alive again.

Something stirring in the water caught our attention and I called for David to quickly take Olivia out of the water.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked.

I pointed at the shape forming in the water, just peaking its head above the surface. It was...a horse made of water? Whether it was harmless or not, I knew it wasn’t happy with us disturbing its peace in the water and wanted us out immediately. Sensing it rearing up for a charge, I yelled for Thomas to swim away.

“Swim!” Being too far from the ladder back up to the walkway, we swam as fast as we could away from the creature to find any way out of the water, eventually coming to a bridge and small platform hidden away from the water where we easily climbed onto and away from sight.

Strangely, we weren’t alone.

There was a pink Pegasus lying there, gravely injured with a huge gash on its side and blood pooling around it.

But I recognized her, happiness upon the recognition bubbling inside me. As she lifted her head weakly to see who it was that had joined her, I slowly approached her and gently placed my hands on her uninjured back. “Oh my god, it’s you,” I whispered in shock. “What are you doing here? What happened?” Looking up to meet her eyes, she stared at me, unwavering. Afraid that she wasn’t recognizing me, I raised my palm closer to her head for her to smell my scent. Maybe she would recognize me then?

To my joy she nuzzled her face into my palm. ‘Of course I remember you,’ I heard a voice echo in my head.

“Oh! Is this the Pegasus you told me about from before?” Thomas asked, making the connection. Apparently, I had told him about my previous encounter with the magical creature before arriving to the island.

Nodding my head, I searched around for a sharp object. “Man, why is it that whenever I need a knife, I can never find one? She needs my blood to heal faster.” But as I was about to send Thomas off to find one, the Pegasus motioned me over.

‘Here, I’ll do it,’ she offered, and I brought my arms closer to her. She gently bit at my skin, tearing a pinpoint wound on my arm so she could gently lap at the blood trickling out. Almost instantly, I could see the gash healing itself back up and the colour returning to her coat.

She thanked me warmly, warning me that something evil was watching over me and my friends and that if I wasn’t careful, I would lose everything.

[PART III/III]

I was in one of the large churches’ washrooms, the florescent lights above us flickering as I watched a snake strike a cat to death. I held Olivia close to me, holding her face to my stomach to prevent her from seeing. But instead of consuming it, it turned to me, hissed, and slithered away.

Then a gruesome scene flashed in and out in time with the flickering lights, showing me a large pool of blood on the floor and haunting words scrawled on the mirrors warning me of death. Trying to remain calm as not to scare Olivia, I calmly told her that we should give the cat a proper burial.

Wrapping up the body in my jacket, Olivia and walked down the hall towards the cemetery located in a giant courtyard within the church. But the sight of the courtyard terrified me and it wasn’t at all like I remembered it to be.

Instead of neatly mowed grass and organized gravestones, the ground had all been upturned and piled up unevenly, as if there were too many bodies to bury that they were overflowing. The gravestones were all askew and dirt-ridden, many more unmarked crosses overpopulating the area than those with names. The surrounding trees were decaying and brittle, the roots intertwining with the weeds and vines strewn all over.

“Do you want to help me find a open spot to bury the cat?” I asked Olivia, trying to hide the horror in my voice. Completely innocent and unaware of the scenery and what it means, she nodded excitedly, rushing off to find one. I called after her, suddenly afraid. “Wait, don’t run! You’ll fall!”

And fall she did.

I watched her foot get stuck in a particularly soft spot in the mud and her leg sank downwards. Unbalanced, she toppled over onto her back and I gasped in horror as a sharp twig stuck itself straight through her chest.

As if the pain hadn’t registered yet, Olivia blinked in shock, turning to me with a confused look on her face. “Uh...I think I’m hurt,” she coughed tearfully. I rushed over, abandoning the cat’s corpse to the side. Pulling her out, I took off my sweater to make a makeshift support around the object like I remembered in First Aid to keep it from moving. Cradling her in my arms, I screamed out into the empty hallways for help as Olivia fainted.

After some desperate attempts, David rushed down the hall with the girl who had used her glasses from the beginning of it all. “I figured it’s be helpful if I brought David. It looks like snakes don’t like to be around him.”

“Yeah, they seem to just run away from me whenever I walk towards them,” David affirmed, shrugging his shoulders.

“I figured he could protect you as you two find help for the girl.”

The last thing I remember afterwards is sitting in the hospital with a paling Olivia in my arms.

Additional Thoughts:

Oh my god this dream was so loaded that I’m surprised I remembered it all (although I did rush to record this the moment I woke up). Let’s go in order:

I’m not quite sure where the thought of aliens and UFOs came from but apparently they represent unfamiliarity and isolation in dealing with situations. Maybe the whole idea of being shipped to live on a dystopian island is about my feeling really alone these days when dealing with my stress and the insecurities I feel about myself.

The people that appeared in my dream don’t represent anyone in my life, so I’m not sure where they came from either. My suspicion is that they’re physical formations of what I want in my life: a young child that looks up to me and depends on me, a brother-like figure that I can depend on, and a love interest that deeply cares for me and my well-being.

The book I saw could mean my search for knowledge considering the only thing I’ve been doing these days is study for this test. And judging by the chapters in the book, I’m assuming its foretelling has to do with how this test is part of my future and it’s yet to be seen how it’s going to contribute.

I know the horse-shaped water is from what I’ve seen from Frozen 2 (lol) but the Pegasus is definitely new. What was interesting is that my dream me already met with this creature prior to this encounter. I know sometimes my separate dreams bleed into each other with the plot but I can’t remember ever dreaming about a Pegasus before...unless I have and just forgot. Either way, Pegasus apparently represents agility and swiftness, while a “talking horse” is supposed to represent a form of higher knowledge that is trying to convey some sort of message to me from my subconsciousness. Since the colour is supposed to represent something, I wonder if the fact that it was pink and required my blood to heal means something. Maybe it’s a part of me that I need to take care of more?

As for the darker half of my dream involving the snake and the cat’s death, the snake is supposed to mean a sense of fear and worry (which makes sense) and the symbol of a cat dying could represent a loss of individuality and lack of independence. With this combined together, I suppose this could, again, relay back to my test and my worries about it controlling my life and how I’m not able to do the things I want when it’s in my life. The blood everyone and my cries for help for Olivia are also symbols that apparently represent my emotional cry for help as I struggle. Watching her being impaled straight through the chest could mean a burst of emotion as well.

[stompsite]

Autopsy: Mass Effect Andromeda

Games are like dogs. You want to call all of them “good boy” and pat them on the head and tell them how wonderful they are all the time, because everyone’s a lot happier when you do, but some games are bad dogs, and you’ve got to take them out back behind the barn and shoot them in the head.

Games are difficult to make. Unlike a film, where you’re photographing what already exists, or a book, where you only have to use words to make things happen, a game requires loads of people to work extremely hard to build an entire reality. As a developer, you have to create spaces. You have to create physics. You have to control lighting. When two objects touch each other, you, the developer, have to ensure that they don’t simply clip through each other. As a developer, you might slave away for years of your life, working impossible hours alongside dozens, even hundreds, of other people, to ship an entire hand-crafted universe.

Games are places you get lost in, and places you call home. Only in games can you travel places, talk to people, and live the impossible. It’s why you mow lawns in the summer, saving up enough cash to buy that new graphics card so you can run the biggest hit. It’s why you wait, shivering in the midnight cold, outside a tacky GameStop to pick up the sequel you’ve been waiting years for. It’s why you draw fanart and write fan fiction of your favorite characters. It’s why you part with your hard-earned cash. You want to go there. You want to live that. You want to experience something new.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a bad dog, and I hate that I have to say that. Hundreds of people  put five years of their lives into Andromeda, but the end result was a disappointment. Due to a lot of complicating factors, they weren’t able to make the game they wanted to make. There’s a tendency among gamers to criticize bad games harshly--when you’re eating ramen every day in college, you want an escape. You save up. You budget. If the game is bad, you have no recourse. Good reviews don’t necessarily mean you’re happy with what you got; after all, there’s often a big disconnect between reviewer tastes and player interests.

So it makes sense to lash out. It makes sense to want to have some fun at the expense of the game that caused you so much trouble. It makes sense to want to joke and mock and scream about just how bad it is, and how mad you are that you wasted your time on a game that the publisher spent years promising you was amazing as fuck.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games. It was so good, I found myself swimming around the game’s oceans, just trying to lose myself in the world, performing every task, no matter how repetitive or mundane, so I wouldn’t have to leave. I didn’t want it to be over. With Andromeda, I finally gave up on the side quests, focused on the critical path, and installed as quickly as I could after the credits rolled.

Developers have a tendency to be defensive, and it’s completely understandable. No one wants to feel like their time was wasted. The secrecy of development mean a lot of myths arise. Sometimes leadership makes poor decision, technology doesn’t work like it ought to, pressures to hit deadlines lead to compromised work. You, the individual developer, do not have nearly as much power to make or break a game as players think you do. It’s a miracle any game gets made. Even something like “opening a door” is incredibly complex. And there’s no guidebook, no science behind it, no easy way to simply have an idea and make it work.

I say all this because I want set the ground rules. We’re here to talk about why a game didn’t work. We’re not here to vent our frustrations, as justifiable as that may be, and we’re not here to complain about the developers. It’s human nature to want to blame someone for something bad, and it’s just as human to want to avoid the blame. I’m going to avoid human nature, cut through the bullshit entirely, and try to diagnose the product.

Andromeda had a metascore of 72. It sold so poorly that it went on sale today for $15--that’s 75% off in less than six months after its release, something that only happens for games that sell poorly. If you’re one of the two people I know who loved the game, I’m not asking you to stop loving it, but I am asking you to acknowledge that the game didn’t work for most people. I think we ought to find out why.

This is not a review, this is an autopsy. I am not here to tell you whether or not you should buy the game. I’m here to explore why it failed. In order to be clear and informative, I’m working on the assumption you haven’t played the game, but I won’t be avoiding spoilers either.

So, now that we’ve set the stage, let’s look at the game.

1. Narrative

Mass Effect Andromeda is a clean break from the Mass Effect series. There’s some overlap in the lore--little references here and there--but for the most part, it’s completely its own thing. You, a human, and a bunch of aliens from the Milky Way have flown to the Andromeda galaxy in search of a new home. It took 600 years for your ships to get there.

Somehow, the Andromeda Initiative--that’s the organization running everything--had the ability to see what the Andromeda galaxy looked like at that point in time, despite the fact that light takes about two million years to travel between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. At some point between the time you set off and the time you got there, a catastrophe occurred, and some weird, uh… like… energy coral spread throughout space.

On one hand, it’s sci-fi, so we don’t need everything to be perfect. On the other hand, Mass Effect has always leaned a bit more towards hard sci-fi than most games. They acknowledge relativity frequently throughout the series--ships can’t travel between worlds without using these big ‘mass relays’ that were seeded throughout the galaxy millions of years before the story starts. Bioware created an element, Element Zero, to explain how how a lot of the tech in their universe functions. It was internally consistent.

Andromeda suddenly decides that ships can fly at something like 4200 times the speed of light, we can see a galaxy in real-time somehow (but only looked once), but we can’t use quantum entanglement to communicate with Earth any more, even though that’s a technology that’s been in the series since the first game. Andromeda breaks a lot of the series’ own rules to get to where it is.

This alone does not make Andromeda a bad game, but it does do a good job of illustrating a big problem: everything feels thoughtless. I’m not sure how a game spends five years in development and has a script that seems so… careless. Nothing in Andromeda feels logical or natural. In writing, there’s this idea called the ‘idiot ball.’ It comes from the writer’s room for The Simpsons, where one character would get to hold the ‘idiot ball’ one week, making bad choices that lead to the story’s drama. It works in a comedy. Not so much in a game that wants us to take its narrative seriously.

The idiot ball is why the crew of an Andromeda Initiative Ark, the Hyperion, wakes up next to a planet that wasn’t inhabited 600 years ago to discover that the planet is now uninhabitable and the aforementioned weird energy coral thing nearly destroys their ship.

Scientists are generally pretty careful. Don’t get me wrong, they take risks, and they occasionally do stupid things like licking test samples, but you’d think that the Andromeda Initiative might have done some recon first. Maybe, I don’t know, stopping just outside the galaxy, using their recon tech to see if anything had changed in six hundred years? Heck, why not stop outside the solar system to see if it had been colonized, or situations had changed? Of course they end up in a bad situation, because everyone in the game holds the idiot ball.

This isn’t a new problem for the series--remember when a giant robot attacked the Citadel and destroyed most of the Council fleet, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, on the Citadel saw it and the robots murder lots of people… and then pretended the giant robot threat wasn’t real? Mass Effect, starting with 2, has always had stupid people making stupid decisions that make no logical sense.

But--and this is incredibly important--they still worked, because they created dramatic moments.

Drama is the tension created by the conflict between a character, their goal, and the thing keeping them from attaining that goal. It’s difficult in the best of conditions to maintain the right amount of tension; a player who is constantly being told they’re the savior of the universe while only being tasked with hunting for wolf pelts is going to feel that the experience doesn’t match the premise. Great drama has stakes that feel important and make sense. Characters who constantly make poor decisions lose sympathy, which reduces dramatic tension, and we, the audience, stop caring.

The Council’s ignorance in Mass Effect 2 is awful writing, which isn’t surprising, since the entire game is a terribly-written mess. But at least it rings true! We can believe the government would ignore an imminent threat to our lives (see: global warming), and it makes us feel like we want to take action. Mass Effect 2’s “Oh yeah? You don’t believe in an alien menace? Well, I’m gonna prove it to you!” is exactly what makes a game work, even if the setup is poorly done. As long as it delivers its dramatic payload, it works.

Andromeda has nothing like that. Everything is twee. There’s some guy on one planet, named The Charlatan, and it’s obvious who he is as soon as you meet him, even though he plays it coy. This Charlatan fellow vies for control over a tiny little spaceport on an uninhabitable planet. He’s trying to wrest control away from a forgettable evil space pirate lady who spouts cliche lines in the vein of “guards! Seize them!” I don’t remember why I cared. I can remember every quest, every reason for doing anything in the first Mass Effect (Saren bad, Protheans cryptic, learn more about protheans, find Saren’s base, interrogate Saren’s sidekick), but in Andromeda, uh…

Yeah. I just finished the game and I’ve forgotten why I did anything. This is because the game never did a good job of making me care about things. Don’t get me wrong, it had situations that I ought to care about, but it made the Bioware Mistake.

What’s the Bioware Mistake? Okay, imagine that some guy walks up to you and says “hey, it’s me, your brother! I’m being chased by ninja assassins, and I need your help!” You wouldn’t believe him. It’s a case of someone telling you that they’re important, rather than the person actually being important to you. I felt nothing saving the Earth. I felt a lot more when I lost Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 3. Bioware makes this mistake frequently in its A-plots, but it usually makes its character interactions matter so much more in the B-plots that we can overlook the main plot shortcomings.

Andromeda does the A-plot thing: everyone’s lives are at risk unless you, the single most important human in the story, save them all. It just forgets to do the B-plot thing. There are nice little conversations between characters on the ship and in your party, as you might expect, but conversations with the characters are a drag.

It’s a problem with the game’s dialog on the whole. When you talk to anyone, they… well, they remind me a lot of that great liartownusa photoshop of a fake Netflix movie, “The Malediction Prophecy.”

“It's been 3,000 years since the Malediction, the spirit-plague created by The Order, a fabled army of immortals seeking to unravel the genome of the were-shaman Erasmus Nugent, who seeks to rebuild La Cienega, a bio-weapon capable of stopping Honcho, the deathless vampire king who sseeks to conquer the Fontanelle, the mythical fortress of demon hybrid Gary Shadowburn, who seeks to unleash angel-killer Larry Wendigo Jr., who seeks to release the Bloodfroth, a terrifying evil that seeks ot return the world to darkness.”

People don’t talk like people talk. They talk like fanfiction writers write. Have you ever seen one of those cringe-inducing tumblr story ideas that is just so bad, because everyone’s got these cutesy nicknames and the premise is super goofy and very “I’ve only ever read YA fiction in my entire life”?

Andromeda’s like that. People talk weird. They say things like “excuse me, my face is tired,” and make jokes without charisma. I have this urge to be really critical of the writing team, because they had, I presume, five full years on this game, and they work at a company that is literally built to make story-driven games, and the end result is an experience worse than Dragon Age 2, a game that was rushed through development in 18 months.

I don’t know how this script made it through editing.

This is the kind of writing we tore apart in our sophomore screenwriting classes back in the day. I can understand narratives not working on a larger, more plot-based level, because that requires a lot of coordination between a lot of teams. But basic dialog? How is it so bad?

Seriously, what is this? How did someone write this scene and go “yeah, yeah, this is good stuff.” How did this make it past animators and editors and marketing? How did this scene make it into the final game?

When your father sacrifices his life for you in the opening of the game, bestowing his role as Most Important Person to you, a character, apparently his friend, demands answers. She looks like Marge in that episode of the Simpsons where Homer uses a shotgun to apply makeup to her face. She asks you “what happened?” Your character, for some unknown reason, replies “to who?” Addison responds “it’s ‘to whom, and your goddamn father.”

I cannot envision a world where someone would: A) not understand that The Most Important Guy’s Death is the topic, B) correct grammar, or C) say “your goddamn father” in that context. It reads like someone trying to write charming and badass, but the situation is “a dude we all care about just died.” It makes no sense. What emotion was the writing team striving for? Did the voice actor ever think to go “uh, this makes no sense”? What the hell happened? How did this make it into the game?

The game presents us with a myriad of unlikable characters who do nothing but screw things up--Tann, Addison, Kelly, and so on. I can understand that disaster can stress people, but I also know that, in the face of disaster, most animals, humans included, have a powerful tendency to stick together in order to face off against a greater threat. In the case of Andromeda, the vast majority of living beings you encounter in the game are Milky Way characters who chose to abandon the colony and become criminal scum in the process. That Sloane Kelly lady, whose name I only remember because I just looked it up? She was the chief security officer of the program. No one should be more highly vetted than she is, but no, after a few months, she cracks and starts a criminal empire.

Why is this story important? Game design is the art of getting players to perform specific tasks that bring about some form of emotional fulfillment. In other words, it’s about establishing motivation. When the premise is stupid, the stakes are meaningless, and the characters unbelievable, it’s hard to compel players to keep moving. What is there to enjoy? What do I gain by playing a game where everyone’s an idiot?

How does a game, from a studio known for its stories, suck this bad after five years of development time? How does that happen? I’m exasperated with the game. I feel insulted by the script. I genuinely want to know how this game got as far as it did, because so many core ideas feel rotten from the get-go.

2. Technology and Presentation

Much has been made of Andromeda’s many animation glitches and bugs.

So, uh, just watch this vid if you want to understand how the game ended up:

Personally, I struggle with Frostbite, as an engine. EA’s doubled down on it, pushing the tech across all their studios, and I think for the worse. It seems like EA’s development times have skyrocketed since switching from Unreal to Frostbite, and developers have complained at length about the engine. That Kotaku piece linked earlier indicated that wrestling with Frostbite was a big reason Andromeda took so long to develop.

On my computer, Frostbite games are among the buggiest, most unstable games I have. People complained about the load times in the Unity-powered ReCore, but I’ve yet to encounter a Frostbite game with shorter load times. It’s a big issue with the engine. The lighting seems to work really well in the hand of DICE artists, but nobody else seems to have the hang of it.

Suffice it to say, the technology has been called out by a lot of people by now. The animations--in a game that was in development for five years--look worse than they do in an Unreal Engine 3 game from last gen. From a technical perspective, Andromeda needed more time on the cooker. Maybe six months of crunch would have done it, but that team was crunching for a while as it was. The end result was a game that simply does not compete with any other AAA game on the market.

But then there’s the art.

Great fiction often relies on the power of its iconic imagery to engage the audience. Star Wars movies always feel like Star Wars movies. There’s nothing quite as distinctive as the Lord of the Rings movies. Studios like Bungie and Arkane thrive on creating visually distinct universes. Even Bioware’s first three Mass Effect games were fantastically realized.

Mass Effect Andromeda seems like generic sci-fi art you can find anywhere. The alien Kett have some really cool Geiger-influenced stuff, but I couldn’t begin to describe the other two alien species. One’s a robot race that has lots of squares and blocky shapes in their art design, and it feels like I’ve seen it a million times before. The other species, which looks like bad Farscape fan art, looks, uh… pretty normal. Nothing you haven’t seen before.

It’s all incredibly forgettable. If you played Dragon Age: Inquisition, then the vast desert worlds and limited selection of geographical oddities won’t surprise you. Seen the Giant’s Causeway? Someone at Bioware sure loves it. Hexagonal rock pillars are everywhere in Andromeda, some natural, some not.

Again, I don’t really understand how, in five years, the art design ends up looking like… well, this. You know how people made fun of the suit design in Bioware’s other sci-fi series, Anthem, for looking like the bad CG models you see on off-brand GPU boxes? Andromeda has the same problem. It’s weird going from a game like Destiny, where every location feels distinct and fresh, to Andromeda, where it feels like the art just doesn’t have any creativity put into it.

And it sucks to say this.

It sucks to be so harsh. I wanted this game to be great. They were saying the right things about trying to nail that sense of exploration, and early plans for the game, as mentioned in the article I linked earlier, make it sound like they were going for a much more ambitious, exciting game, but they were hamstrung by the technology. That doesn’t explain the writing or the art design, though.

As some of you may know, I’m working on an indie game codenamed G1. I created it, wrote the plot, did most of the design work, stuff like that. Anyways, I wanted to create a really cool, distinct sci-fi universe that sticks in players minds as strongly as Star Wars or Half-Life does. Being a volunteer-only project for the time being (I’d love to pay people, but I am so poor I literally went homeless this summer and am now staying with some family members who are in danger of losing their home as well!), we’ve seen some interesting people come and go. Way back in the day, we had some guys who really wanted to change the game’s entire setting to a much less interesting, more generic environment. Later, we had some guys who were big fans of Ghost in the Shell and wanted to make our character art reflect that instead.

My point is, I get that a lot of people want to do what seems and feels familiar, but I think, for a big, AAA video game, distinctive is what people remember, especially in sci-fi and fantasy. Nothing looks like The Witcher 3, or Dishonored, or Halo, or the original Mass Effect trilogy, Half Life, or… well, you get the idea, right? Distinctiveness rules. Sameyness drools. And for whatever reason, Andromeda is the least-inspired AAA video game I’ve seen in a long, long time.

3. Design.

This, for me, is the big one. I can deal with bad storytelling in a game, because almost all game storytelling is garbage. I can put up with bad technology, because I grew up gaming on the PC, where modding could often turn my games into an unbearable slideshow, and sometimes, I’ve found games that were fantastic despite their poor presentation. But if the design is bad… then we got a problem.

And the design is bad.

As much as I want to speculate on why the design is bad, the truth is, nothing productive can come of that. I don’t know why it’s bad. I don’t know who made what designs, or how much the technology is to blame, or anything like that. All I know is that the design is bad, and I’m going to tell you what makes it bad, so if you decide to develop a game in the future, you at least can be armed with the knowledge of what Andromeda got wrong, and hopefully avoid it yourself.

If you asked me to use one sentence to describe Andromeda, I’d probably call it “a waste of time.”

I mean this literally. I’ve never played a game that wasted more time than Andromeda. Like… holy crap. So much time wasting. People complained so much about certain time-wasting aspects of the game, Bioware patched some of it out.

Here’s an example, and I’m going to italicize it so you can skip reading the whole thing if it gets too boring. Because it is super boring.

If you want to go explore the planet of Kadara, you have to go to the star system, which involves an unskippable cutscene as you ‘fly’ from where you are to where you were. Then, in the star system, you click on the planet, and you fly over to it. You fly too close to it, then zoom back out (this happens every time you move between planets in the game; I have no idea why). Then you rotate the planet on your display until you can select the city, which is on the opposite side of the planet from you.

Now click on that landing zone. You must then verify your loadout, because the game won’t let you change it without seeking out a loadout station, rather than just letting you open your menu and swap gear. You will be faced with an unskippable cutscene showing you landing on the planet. Then you will spawn somewhere that’s nowhere near where you want to go. Turn around. Click on the machine behind you, and select the “go to slums” option.

You will now be around 100 yards away from the slums and the mouth of the cave. Run out of the cave. It’s a big, empty field, so this takes like 20 seconds to do. Jump over the fence. Run another 100 yards or so to a big terminal that lets you summon your car. Congratulations, you have finally spawned. Now spend ten minutes driving wherever you need to be around a planet that’s a pain to drive around.

Every planet is this bad. You’d think they might let you spawn wherever you’d like, and maybe even set up a few different spawn zones on the planet, but no, that’s not how it works in Andromeda. It takes way too long to do basic things. Fast travel points aren’t in convenient spots, but there’s nothing interesting to find other than some crates with trash you might as well break down. Any time you spawn in a base, you’re usually quite far from the person you actually want to talk to. You’re going to spend a time walking across flat surfaces to get to where you need to go.

Contrast that with a game like Destiny 2, which has multiple spawns on each planet, and keeps the social areas with vendors nice and small, so there’s not a lot of down time simply getting between points. Usually, these spawns take advantage of the game’s joyful movement system, as opposed to the flat, empty space in an Andromeda.

There are other ways it wastes your time as well. Consider the UI, which decides to put everything in a list. I do mean everything. There are something like 10 distinct tiers of weapon, for every single weapon in the game. Like the Dhan? Cool, your crafting list will include the Dhan I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X, which is weird, because it’s a straight upgrade every time, so there’s literally no point to keep the Dhan I blueprint around when the Dhan X is craftable.

Chances are the Dhan X won’t be craftable, because there’s no reliable method of farming research (I did almost all the quests on all the planets and scanned as much as possible and couldn’t get beyond the Dhan VII), but still, it’s weird that they’d put literally all the guns and their ten variations in one gigantic list of the 20-30+ guns in the game. That’s like 300 something entries in your crafting menu, and you can’t sort between any of them.

Gun mods? Same thing. Rather than letting you, say, sort mods by location type (barrel, magazine, etc), you’re just stuck with a gigantic list, and for some reason, you have to carry them on you, even though the game only lets you swap them out at various stations. Wouldn’t it make more sense to store the mods in the stations themselves?

You end up wasting so much time just navigating menus, trying to find the one thing you want, or being forced into seeking out the physical locations in game that will let you access the menus, because you can’t swap items out at will… it’s frustrating.

There’s this weird fascination with diegetic UI in games, and it sucks. Seriously, there isn’t a single game that benefits from having you go somewhere to access basic menu options. I don’t want to have to go to a terminal to swap out my guns. I’d much rather just press a button, open a menu, and swap my loadout there. Destiny got it right. Fable 3 did not. For some reason, Mass Effect Andromeda wants to be like Fable 3, if Fable 3’s weird menu space had huge amounts of dead space where nothing interesting occurred between the menus.

It’s awful. And I don’t know how the game shipped like that.

But the worst thing of all is the mission design. If you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition, you know that the mission design was extremely repetitive. Every location you went to would have the same few basic missions, no matter where you went. It got predictable. Andromeda is the same way. Go to two big towers on the map, solve a puzzle, go to a vault, press a button, run to the end of the vault, voila, you’ve done it. Scan a bunch of corpses on a planet. Pick up some rocks and plants. Go find the glowing orbs on the planet, and you’ll be rewarded with a poorly written cutscene. Fight the exact same boss on every planet, but don’t look for the variety found in Inquisition, where every dragon had something unique going on that made it kinda cool.

On and on it goes. Every planet, the same thing. There’s a point in the game where you have to go to a place called Meridian, and you go to some ancient alien city, and it’s not actually Meridian, but you don’t know that until you get there. To proceed, you must go to two different towers, solve two puzzles, and then go to a third puzzle, and do a new thing. When you fight the final boss, you will have to engage two similar phases, followed by a third, more unique phase. Every single fucking quest in this game seems to be “do two things, and then the third thing will be different.”

Find out who did a thing? Talk to two colonist, then the third one will say something different. Get artifacts for a museum? Three things. Every quest. Every single quest. Do three things, then move on.

I don’t want to be the generic internet gamer type here and accuse the developers of laziness, but I can say that the end result feels lazy. I remember, years ago, a Bioware writer saying on their forums that Bioware had decided that three was the ‘perfect number’ or something, and so they did everything in threes. Well, sorry, dude, but you’re wrong. Doing everything with the rule of threes sucks.

You know why? Because it robs the player of dramatic tension. Yeah. It all comes back to that. When you teach your players that they’re going to do two meaningless things for every quest, the player stops giving a shit about your game. When you claim to be making a game about space exploration, but there’s settlers on every single planet you visit, and the quests are the same every time, it doesn’t feel like you’re exploring, it feels like you’re a space janitor.

The rule of three makes everything predictable. Great games don’t have it, unless they disguise it really well. Bad games wear it on their sleeves.

If players can predict what’s going to happen in your game, the tension is lost, and the desire to continue is dampened. Word of mouth dies, nobody recommends your game to their friends, and your sales dry up and you can’t even justify making DLC for your game.

Rule of three design is garbage. It is that simple. There is no case where it is great game design, ever.

I have no idea why Bioware decided to make a game with nothing but rule of three design, but they did. And even when they try to make it interesting, it’s not interesting. One quest had me go to a location, where a person told me “I need a thing,” giving me some absurd reason as to why I couldn’t help them another way. I went where they sent me. Turns out the thing wasn’t there. That’s two places where I wasted time not completing the objective. At the second place, I was told about some big bad gangster dude at the third place. I killed the big bad gangster dude without even realizing it at first. Got the part, went back to the first location, and ended the quest.

The stakes never matter in Andromeda. You’ll always be forced to do something pointless before you can do the thing that does matter. Once, I found a place on a map, but the door was locked, and I could not get in. I finally found the quest that let me in that location, but I had to go to someone’s office. I went there. I tried to interact with a crate that obviously had loot in it, but I could not. Scanning something else gave me a map marker to the original location. I returned there. The door was open. It wasn’t like I’d found a key or anything, the door was just open. Then a vendor from the other side of the map showed up. We had a conversation. The next quest step was to see her… all the way on the other side of the map. Couldn’t we have had the conversation while she was still at the first location? No? Anyways, it was only after this point that the chest became interactive, and I could sift through its contents.

Contrast this with Divinity: Original Sin 2, where my excessive exploration has got me into numerous areas I shouldn’t be in. Look at a game like Skyrim, where someone can say “yeah, take the reward, it’s in that box over there,” but you stole it hours ago while you were sneaking around.

The game forces you around empty and pointless maps for no real reason at all. At least Bethesda places its objectives far across the map as a means of taking you through interesting and distracting landscapes. That’s part of the reason that Bethesda is such a popular developer. Their worlds are easy to get lost in.

I’m not gonna lie, I’d love to sit down with some leads at Bioware and talk about how to make their games better, because right now, their games seem formulaic as hell--Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda are virtually identical games in their broad strokes, with the only real differences being the result of the setting.

If you’re a professional writer, you’re probably going “why is Doc using so many words to say things he could be saying much more simply?” Well, I’m being a dick and using this rhetorical device of wasting your time to give you the idea of what it’s like to play Andromeda.

It’s a waste of time, and it’s broken on the conceptual, writing, design, presentation, and technical levels. Nothing works here. Everything is broken. I don’t know how this game made it this far without being canceled. I don’t know how the writing standards for this game were so lax. I don’t know why anyone recommended this game to me, because it is quite literally the worst AAA gaming experience I have had in years.

Ultimately, it comes down to drama. Nothing Andromeda does is dramatic. It tries to use dramatic music and awful cliches to make things feel dramatic, but it doesn’t earn anything. The art isn’t inspiring, the stakes are rarely, if ever, high, the quests are so predictable that all tension is gone.

And it sucks that I feel this way. It especially sucks because the game actually starts out being interesting, making you curious, prompting you to ask lots of questions. By the second planet, you realize just how predictable it all is. By the end of the game, you’re wondering why you stuck with it this long. That 40-or-so gigs of hard drive space would be better off empty.

There are so many other problems with the game. Why do most mods either have negatives that outweigh their positives, or positives so miniscule there’s no point to using them? Does a 5% recharge timer in a 5 second timer really matter? Does a 3% damage boost on a gun with three shots have any perceivable effect? Nope. We could dive into the problems with dozens of quests, more specifics about the writing, and so many other things. There’s so little good to find in this game. It wastes all its time thinking it’s better than it is.

Drama is everything. Use your mechanics and your narrative to create drama. That’s what gets players playing and talking. That’s why they spend money. If you’re not going to do that, don’t bother making video games.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

December 11: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

(previous notes: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones)

Source: Blu-ray release, the box set with all six Lucas-era movies (2D)

The last of the trilogy. When it came out in 2005, hopes were high that it would redeem the trilogy from the mediocrity of the first two. The most impressive thing about those was the elaborateness and ingenuity of the CGI effects. They were so advanced at the time, but by 2005 we'd already had the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which combined breathtaking visuals with actually likable characters in a story that had stood the test of time. So this movie needed to make a mark somehow. My recollection is that it did, but I haven't seen it in a while. And…. Go.

The crawl starts: "War!" Which seems like a cheerleader is trying to amp us up. Then it talks about a droid army we've never heard of, and maybe that will be cool. It's odd how the whole anti-Republic gang consists of groups like "The Trade Federation" and "The Droid Army". Not traditional, like, "countries".

Opening shot is a doozy! A long shot tracking two fighter ships around a super busy, colorful battlefield in space.

"This is where the fun begins". Yeah, George Lucas is having his fan service fun at least.

It's weird how the clones are the good guys here, even though the OG clone was unambiguously bad in the last movie. But it only takes a second to remember why it makes sense.

"Buzz droids" crawl all over the fighter ships and do annoying things, that's the kind of fun idea that has always been a reliable hallmark of all these movies.

Super fun to watch Anakin and Obi-Wan hop out of their ships and immediately start fighting.

General Grievous! An evil droid with a physical deformity and a bad cough! I find this wholly acceptable.

This movie is just getting the whole overall tone right very quickly.

Ha, R2 used his jet flame things to cook the dumb bad droids!

Only 12 minutes in and we've got a fun light saber fight. Count Dooku is kind of irresponsible keeping that cape on with all these flailing laser swords.

Only 14 minutes in and Palpatine is all growling "do it!" and Anakin beheads an unarmed dude. Yup, dark!

The whole "Palpatine is seducing Anakin to the dark side" is really overt here. And really, why wouldn't it be?

The battle rages on, though, and there are neat cannon things, and don't forget that General Grievous is still around!

0:28:45 - Darth Sidious and General Grievous are colluding, but the movies have not yet acknowledged what seems obvious, which is that Sidious is Palpatine. Which makes us wonder why he's pals with the droid boss that was recently his kidnapper.

Dumb romance exchange, then a bad Anakin dream like the one he had in the last movie. Striking contrast, the look of the dream. Then more soap opera romance scenes. I miss the exciting parts. Hurry back to those, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith!

0:35:50 - More real purty establishing shots of Coruscant!

A couple of the people on the Jedi Council are holograms. It's nice that they offer the option of working remotely.

0:42:50 - I fuckin' LOVE this. A shot of lively Coruscant at night, and people are attending a swanky performance in a finely appointed auditorium. Anakin and Palpatine chat during it, but it's some kind of surreal anti-gravity acrobatic show, where the audience offers polite applause at calculated times. You never get a good look at the show. So odd!

But even more impressive, this is when Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine starts to do the most interesting, subtle, effective acting in maybe the entire line of Star Wars features. He's being so seductive. He's saying things that connect to Anakin. It's working, but I bet on paper you couldn't tell it would be THIS effective. This is comparable to how you would stage a story of a real-life cult leader convincing a follower to do crazy shit. "Not from a Jedi."

And then, yay, we're suddenly in a new battle on the Wookiee planet! It's cool! Oh, but it ended quickly and went back to Jedi/Senate politics drama.

I haven't noted this before, but I love the ship design where you dock your little one-seater onto a ring of engines to go to another planet. Please make the car equivalent of that, modern-Earth. And don't just point me to a ferryboat.

Obi-Wan is back to getting his spy game on! He's on a new planet, which is always fun, and he made a clear decision to pretend to leave, but secretly stay on the planet and ride around on a giant pretty-feathered reptile. Fun.

Then he just goes for it and jumps right into the middle of an army all by himself! That's some James Bond cockiness right there. General Grievous even turns himself into a four-sword beast and Obi-Wan is like "cool".

I guess he knew all these stormtroopers were about to show up.

1:03:27 - Here we go, ID is starting to chew scenery. That voice. He affects this deep, expressive growly whisper. "It gives you FOCUS. Makes you STRONGER." Why didn't George Lucas let any of his other actors go to town like this? Suddenly some good acting and it's very refreshing.

But hey, we're back to the battle on whatever this planet is, and Obi-Wan and Grievous are fighting. I love Grievous's wheel-ride! Obi-Wan noticed that Grievous has a heart-y organ in the middle and realized that if he shoots him RIGHT THERE, he'll just die. Video game logic.

Scene where A&A silently think about each other at each other across the city from each other, it works, and it has some unusually atmospheric music.

"I AM THE SENATE!" More sweet vocal production from ID, and he gets his sith light saber dueling on! "NO! NO! YOU WILL DIE!!!" Super awesome. And then just when you thought it was all in his voice, he does a kickass facial expression when he kills Mace Windu. I am delighted by Ian McDiarmid.

"Henceforth you shall be known as… Darth… Vader." I think I hurt my eyes from rolling them too hard.

1:19:30 - Cool shot of a battalion of sith assholes marching toward probably a bunch of good guys they're going to kill, against the backdrop of the city at night.

Now lots of bummer stuff is going on, and they're making sure it's all done in pretty places. The places are pretty and varied. And it's just the clone army dudes who had an order issued to kill good guys so they just do it. Except that Yoda is onto them. It is pretty intense though.

But the most intense part is where newly christened Lord Vader goes to kill the kids. And they're cute kids but he is definitely about to slice up every single child.

This is where, if this movie were a standalone story, we'd be approaching the part where there's a glimmer of hope that will lead to the course of events that resolves the conflict and happy-ends the movie. But this is where this trilogy's unique ambition has to work without doing that.

So here's where Anakin goes and talks to Amidala after committing atrocities. He doesn't mention his atrocities. Just lots of stuff about "loyalty to the Chancellor". We getcha GL. Message received. I honestly have to wonder if our 21st century workaday fascists see this as a happy ending.

1:35:45 - Lord Vader has evil red eyes now. Just because it looks cool I guess.

Anakin is killing Droid Army and Trade Federation people now. Total racist.

Badass climactic duel starts up with Anakin and Obi-Wan! Should be fun…

…but it cuts to Yoda barging into Palpatine's office kind of funny-rudely. And now they're dueling. Cool! Also worth observing that the CGI Yoda is super well integrated in the scene with Palpatine. You don't think about that at all.

And I'm glad those two are now fighting in the senate chamber because that's one of my all time favorite Star Wars chambers.

Anakin and Obi-Wan's fight takes place on, well, they're on a lava planet with lava rivers and spires and it's like part of the fight is they get points for picking the most dramatic place to fight.

Anakin burning in agony on a lava river embankment is pretty horrific. And yet he's going to make it out of there? Ouch. I guess if he weren't Sith Jesus, when they found him like that they'd probably just be like "oh he dead, k bai". But his elite status means they have to try weird things to make him still be alive.

Robot doctor delivers the news that pregnant Amidala is dying for no reason other than "she's lost the will to live". Sounds like a romantic tragic plot from the fantasies of a jilted fifth grader.

2:08:55 - Vader goes "Nooooooo!" when he hears that Amidala is dead. We're supposed to hipster-hate that, right?

Mostly it kind of seems like we're just tidying everything up so that it connects to "Episode IV". This isn't that terrible a thing. It lets this trilogy end with a rehash of the "Binary Sunset" music and imagery. But this time with Owen Lars. And his GIRLFRIEND, Beru.

That's it. I think Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is a lot harder to pick on than the other two movies in the trilogy. It ends up quickly getting to a point where we know the rest and have to sit there while the movie spells it out for us, but that's a lot better than the biggest sins of this trilogy.

(next: Solo: A Star Wars Story)