#well it's only sort of my first gundam. i built gundams as a kid but i absolutely didnt know what i was doing lol

[ban--tam]

i finished my first gundam today~ 08th MS team 🤖 i want to build the gouf custom next to go with him

[guidedbygunpla]

Gundam REDUX side story Chapter 4: Just another boy, lost in the woods.

             Char and Lalah walked for a while, mostly in silence, both of their minds clear of thoughts, simply watching the waves crash against the shore they walked along.

             “have you ever walked along a beach before?” Lalah asked, after a long while

             “no, the colonies I grew up in on side 3 didn’t have any real bodies of water, and I have mostly been stationed inland or in space up til now…..it’s nice, if I were to ever live in a colony with a  body of water, or god forbid move to earth, I could see myself building a house alongside the ocean, this is so calming”              “why would you say god forbid when talking about moving to earth, I thought that was your fathers one true wish….to move back to earth”              “it was, he always…..wait, my father?”              “you can’t hide things from me, I can read your mind after all. It’s alright though I won’t tell anyone about it, I realize you have to keep this mask on in order to protect me, and save those girls in the lab. Sorry I should’ve told you I was probing your thoughts”              “…well, yes you should’ve, but now that its out there in the open, yes it was my fathers dream that humanity would get to come back to earth, but we can’t. most of the globe is just salt water and sand at this point, the colonies were built as a cage, but the world outside of the cage is so much worse now then when we were put into that cage. Every cylinder on a colony can grow enough food to feed 150% of its population, the earth….I doubt it could grow enough for even 30% of the people living out there now.”              there was another long pause as they stared out at the ocean, the body of a zaku floated into view, its paint peeling off, and the high carbon steel below showed through, rusted and destroyed, likely the only thing keeping it afloat was the helium stored in its tanks that had failed to explode or leak out              “so you know my real name then, don’t you Lalah”              “yea, Casval…..your father was named Zeon, at least that’s the name you know he was given when he helped found the Contolist Church. Something about hot water and wine”              “old catholic ideas mixed with space age realities.”              “he called you Cassie, and he called your sister Arty. I like those names” Lalah said as she turned and looked at Char, her green eyes looked other worldly on her, as if she was looking into his very soul, which she kind of was.

             “so you know everything about me then huh…and yet I know nothing about you, seems a tad bit unfair” Char said as he reached up and took his helmet off, and his visor along with it, the world looking far brighter, and far more real without the rose tinted glasses

             “well….what do you want to know? I don’t mind telling you about myself, but where should I start?”              the pair of them followed the beach into a small sea side town, or the remains of one. The town looked to have been abandoned in a hurry, with cars still sitting along the road, and doors to homes and shops hanging open.              “well, where did you grow up? When did you learn about your powers? How’d you find yourself out here? If you don’t mind me asking of course” Char asked, his voice cautious

             “well, I grew up in Hyderabad in India. My mother was an Arcologist working with the local colleges Colonial science division and my dad was a politician, nothing huge though, mostly just treasury work”              “ah the earth born elite, must’ve been nice”

             “ha… it was awful, so many responsibilities. I just wanted to live, but it was always you have to go to your violin lesson Geetika, you have to go to your cram classes Geetika, you have to be home by 4 Geetika, your GPA is getting too low again Geetika. I hated it…I just wanted to be free, to explore. My parents didn’t understand it.”

             “Geetika? Is that your real name?              “yes, I was born Geetika Acharya Prasanna.”

             “so where did Lalah come from, I’m assuming you know where the name Charles Aznable comes from, but where did Lalah Sune come from?”              “ do you mind if we go for a drive? My feet are getting awfully tired” Lalah said motioning towards a derelict car that was sitting alongside the road. It was a small orange convertible, sporty, something that would’ve cost a lot of money.              “fancy….but I should mention, I have no idea how to drive” char said running his hand through his hair with a laugh.

             “oh right, you always had a driver, so you never had to learn to drive anything other than a mobile suit. Don’t worry I can take care of that” Lalah said as she opened the door and reached below the dashboard, below the steering wheel and began to muck about with the wiring harness to the car, until eventually the engine sputtered to life, the smell of burning ethanol filling the air              “what is that smell?” Char asked aloud              “its alcohol, have you never been around a car before?” Lalah said, patting the passenger seat              “well of course I have, but in the colonies theyre all electric, makes more sense, since you live in something covered in solar panels “              “well on earth we run cars off of alcohol” Lalah said as she put the car into gear and took off down the road through this old seaside town

“makes sense I suppose, it is flammable, and the sound the engine makes is quite pleasant” Char said setting his helmet and Visor in the footwell next to his feet and trying to relax as Lalah drove

“lords above, you can really tell just how high born you are sometimes Casval” Lalah said

with a laugh “so yea, I changed my name to Lalah Sune when I ran away from home, I didn’t want my family to be able to find me, I really just wanted to be left alone. There was a movie out at the time, Farewell Summer, and the lead actress in it was named Lalah Sune, I thought it was a nice name, so I took it. What we’re your other questions again?” Lalah asked as she pulled onto the on ramp to one of the old highways that snaked across the American west.

             “well when did you learn about your powers?” Char asked as he sat back into the plush suede seats of the convertible              “I think I always knew, when I was a kid I told doctors that I heard voices, that it was hard to think sometimes because it was so loud in my head, they thought I was crazy. Put me on medication after medication to try to fix it, I’d say I was about ten when I realized I could sort of control it by focusing on one or two peoples thoughts and then I would only hear those few voices, and when it was with people I loved, people I wanted to spend time with, it got much easier. It wasn’t until I met my first real boyfriend that I realized I was genuinely hearing their thoughts. I realized I could hear what he thought of me, and see what he fantasized about….it was quite freeing, knowing how much someone loves you, understanding them completely like that”

             “ugh, I’m not sure I could handle knowing what the people I’ve been with through the years thought of me. I’d feel so exposed” Char said laying his head back into the seat, watching the sky fly past over head as the sun began to set across the sea

             “well I mean, you’ve only ever loved Garma and another boy from when you were much younger right?”

             “I always feel bad that I can’t remember his name, he was my first kiss and I cant recall his name for the life of me. It was on a scout outing, my first real taste of life outside of Zeon and its trappings, no one treated me like royalty, I was just another boy in the woods. He told me he liked my eyes, and then he kissed me when the camp counselors were away….”

             “that’s why you fell in love with Garma right? Because when you saw him at your fathers funeral, he looked like the boy right? Same jet black hair, with the little curls in it?”

             “god there really are no secrets with you are there?….well yea, Garma looked like him sure, and he treated me the same way too, like I was just another boy lost in the woods. It was hard not to fall in love with him”

             “it is a shame you had to kill him, I can tell that thought is weighing heavily on your soul. But you felt you had no choice….couldn’t let your fathers ghost watch you become a member of the family that killed him….I am sorry you went through all of that Char.”

They stopped the car, as the road ahead of them was smashed and destroyed, a body of a Gouf lay shattered across it, oil and reactor coolant pooling up on the road ahead of them

             “thank you Lalah, it means a lot.”              “you saved me from a laboratory where every person in it would think about slicing my head open to see what was inside, like I was a pinata. I owe you more thanks than I could ever give.”              “I did the only moral thing” Char said turning to look at her, her green eyes again looked as if they held the entire cosmos within them

             “so often in war we want to be the moral and upstanding person, but within your heart I see that you know you cant always be right, that sometimes you have to be evil so that the right thing can be won out.” Lalah said as she turned the car around and headed back towards the flanagin institute and the Gow Char had come in on

               “so where will you go now? Now that you are free?” Char asked her

             “I will follow you Char, I know if I leave your side, my powers will be discovered again, and next time they might not take so much time to study me.”              “of course.”

 _______________________________

When Char returned to the flanagin institute he found Dozle was quite upset with him having broken Lalah out, saying that she was going to be a vital part of their newtype weapons program. Char informed him that he was going to train Lalah to be a pilot, and this calmed him somewhat. When char broached the question of the clones in the basement, and if he knew whose children they were, Dozle simple said

             “in war, sacrifices have to be made, and some men are strong enough to make that sacrifice.”

Char knew then that Dozle knew they were Gihrens children, he knew. He just chose to accept it as it was, as a fact of the world. An evil that had to be committed so that the right thing would win out in the end. No different to Dozle than killing Garma had been to Char. What a twisted world this had become Char thought to himself.

             He took Lalah aboard the Gow, and to his quarters, as an officer he had a private cabin, nothing outlandish. But he did have a private bedroom. Living quarters with a kitchenette and a bathroom to himself. He insisted on a second bed be brought in for Lalah, so she didn’t have to be near the common soldiers they were transporting as well.

             “I hope this is alright with you Lalah” Char said as they wheeled the spare bed into his quarters

             “oh its much better than I expected, in the institute I was kept in a padded cell, so this is definitely a step up” Lalah said with a laugh

             “I know this goes without saying Lalah, but everything we discussed today, no one can..”

             “remember, Char I can read your thoughts, I can see everything your minds eye can create. It’s fine, all your secrets are safe with me.”

             “right, of course. If you’d like I could go check with some of the female crew onboard, see if I could get some spare clothes for you, I think the only thing you took with you was that yellow dress”

             “that won’t be necessary, I typically just sleep nude. Growing up in india, sleeping nude in front of a fan was typically the only way to feel cold enough to sleep” she said with a side eye to Char, as small smile on her lips

             “oh….of course, well I will make sure to knock before leaving my room to come out here into the living area then, so as not to disturb you” char said looking away sheepishly

             “are you bothered by this Char? I know you find me attractive, and surely you can tell, even without the ability to read minds that I clearly think highly of you” Lalah said as she walked towards Char and wrapped her arms around his neck. Char felt himself expanding, his mind growing larger than his head, the walls around him disappeared, all he could see was swirling dust and stars, it was like he was floating above the milky way itself, the sounds of the waves crashing, and the feeling of floating at sea.

             “there is nothing to fear Char, I can feel you in ways that I have never felt a man before, you are a Newtype like me, we just need to unlock your powers, I can help you do that”

             “Lalah I don’t know what I am feeling right now, this is quite overwhelming”

             “we are melting into one another, our minds are becoming one, isn’t it a wonderful feeling Cassie”

             “it feels like I’m going home, I feel welcomed, I feel whole”

             “Char if you want me to stop, please just tell me….but I can tell you want this too, something inside both of us craves this”

             “I do, but Lalah, I’ve never, I mean….I’ve only ever been with Garma, I’m not sure I’ll know how to”

             “you are inside of my mind now Char, you’ll know”

               The world was a blizzard, a fire, a tropical storm. Small masses swirled dust around them until a planet formed from them. Humanity was formed, and they explored every inch of this ball of dust, until they could only explore what was above them, they saw the stars they saw the heavens. They touched the very face of god.

             Waves crashed, and Char felt his consciousness expand more and more. He could feel what lalah felt, he could see time, he could see the past, he could see the future, he could feel what had happened, what would happen. Lalahs third eye guiding him. He saw Lalah and him, in a small farm house on side 6, he could feel there was a family inside that house, that love would blossom in that small farm house.              was this his future?

                           Was he falling in love with Lalah?

Was this his past?

                                                         Was this a home his mother and father had shared before Zeon?

             He felt waves crashing as he made love with Lalah, it was different than making love to a man. But not wildly so, he had never imagined falling in love with a woman, he had never imagined himself falling in love for that fact. With Garma he always felt a pang of guilt when they were intimate, as Char knew how this was going to end. With Lalah he still felt guilt, but it was because of Garma, that if his fathers religion was right, Garma was likely watching him right now, making love to a woman less than a week after he had killed him.

             Garma didn’t deserve that, and Char didn’t deserve this

                           He heard Lalahs voice in his mind

                                         This is Life, none of us deserve it. It is a gift. And a curse. But we are different we aren’t tied to life the same way as others, our minds are free of it

               Char then found himself making love to Garma, they were both older, and there was a large bay window in the room, overlooking the Californian beaches he had seen earlier.              there were photos on the wall, Char in a tuxedo, and Garma in a white Zeon dress uniform, just covered in medals. A Contolist priest behind them.              was this a world where they had won the war? A world where Garma and him had married?

What was happening?

               He found himself now, a teenager, riding horses through the woods, the boy from camp was there with him, along with Garma, and a teenage Lalah, all riding horses through the forests of Side 3. The horse he rode on was familiar, it was Honeydew. His horse from childhood, She was okay, she was alive. She was fully grown

               “Lalah what are you showing me?” He asked concerned, this was terrifying, and wonderful

“as newtypes, we aren’t tied to reality the same as other people, when we’re together we can experience any reality we want”

He felt his mortal body climax, somewhere in the wake of this all, in the very distant part of space where surely his human form still lay, making love with Lalah

Char felt his body shrinking, he lay now as a baby, laying in his mothers arms as she rocked him, and sang to him, trying to help him sleep.

             He felt the world shrinking too, as he came back into his own body, Lalah held him, as he regained some semblance of consciousness.

             “I am sorry if that was overwhelming, I have never been intimate with another person like myself before, I wasn’t aware it would be so powerful.” Lalah said as she craned Chars lips to hers, kissing him softly

             “were those just fantasies? Or was any of that real?” Char asked as he sat up, he realized they were laying in his bed, and judging by the clock on his night stand they had made love for about 3 and a half hours.

             “I don’t entirely know, I know anytime I’ve made love I’ve ended up there, and when I was at Flanagan there would be times when I spoke with those experiments, I would feel my mind begin to expand the same as it did during the beginning throughs of passion, but I have only ever met 3 people outside of Flanagan like myself, and you are the first of them that I have ever made love with. I would occasionally feel my mind expand around the others, and moments where our minds would meld and we would fall into that place, where it feels like you’re in outerspace, but never like that, where we saw other worlds together.”              “I need you to teach me how to use this power Lalah, I want to be able to control it, I want to explore all of those places again” Char said as he kissed Lalah again

               “of course, I owe you more thanks than I could ever give”

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Blipbug Family

824: Blipbug

Then we move onto our obligatory caterpillaroid, and HAH. THAT BUG IS A NERD.

Blipbug is simply ADORABLE. Its oblong head put me off for the first moments looking at it but then I put those dots together with how its eyes look like glasses and it's dressed up with a little “bowtie”, and I guess what's supposed to be a dorky haircut. This nerd bug is the embodiment of “Many thoughts, head full.” It's such an endearing little bug.

There’s like, two things keeping it from perfection from me, one is a fugly color scheme. It feels like we haven't had a stereotypical green-worm Pokemon in quite some time, whatever happened to those? Either that or make it mostly black with a much deeper orange and white highlights to both reinforce the “dorky kid in a school uniform” look while still calling back to its roots as a ladybird larvae.

The design also feels pretty samey when you compare it to Scatterbug. Again, feels like they were drawn off the same template or something. I know there’s nearly 900 of these friggin things by now and there’s bound to be odd similarities here and there but EHH. A bit too alike. Even so, Blipbug has a lot more charm than Scatterbug does so...

Personal Score: 9/10

825: Dottler

And what else is a nerd gonna become other than a sleep-deprived recluse? Well. Obviously not ALL. But I'm certainly not gonna be helping out that statistic. I'm someone you could call a nerd and I'm sleep-deprived and recluse as hell. I'm one to talk!

I'm a bit less of a fan of Dottler though. Its shell is obviously meant to evoke a doppler radar tower, in the same way I suppose Blipbug has something to do with blips on a radar. The radar theme is evidently what has it pick up the Bug/Psychic typing! Which is our first ever with that typing, took em long enough.

I do like its namesake dots through, which light up during its different animations. Its dreary face is also fun. It just feels like fairly standard affair for a “cocoon” stage at this point. And I can take or leave the little cartoon feet, eh. I feel like it'd look best if either it stood on a little more buggy legs or if it just floated outright.

Personal Score: 6.5/10

826: Orbeetle

And what else would the nerdy shut-in become other than a MAD SCIENTIST?! Well, I can't say I'm a mad scientist myself. At least not yet. I draw weirdo monsters, is that close enough?

Orbeetle has gone and poised itself into a machine-like orbular construct not too much unlike Eggman or Wily. The only difference being it's built said floaty device into its very head. I do love the neat visual that the clear beetle-body is actually just the thing's huge head, with its huge ass brain inside. It's even got the stereotypical “swirly glasses” you see all the time in media that usually denotes the “mad scientist” role. Though I wish it was a little more obvious that they were glasses or goggles, cause as-is they just look like wacky eyes. BUT they do make a cool ripple effect when it uses its Psychic abilities! Even its dots light up, which looks really neat.

It's even got a bit of a mecha thing going on, only fitting for mad science men! Its mean eyebrow-antenna also double as a mech's head-crest, but it's also a pretty unorthodox mech shape. Reminds me of Big Zam a bit, but even more wacky in the body department. Though I've also heard from my friends that happen to be Gundam nerds that there's some Gundam references in this design as well. It's going over my head. I only know what Big Zam is because it was a Game Grumps meme at some point.

Speaking of other franchises, I think some more of its appeal to me is coming from how much it really looks like a boss robot from the Mega Man X series. It fits right in with their insectoid bosses like Izzy Glow or Antonion. Orbeetle could be some kind of... Gravity Beetle!

It's also got a really fun pun for a name. Orbeetle as in it's a very orb-shaped beetle, but also the name together sounds like Orbital, hah. It plays in with the line's overall radar theme by having Orbeetle slightly evoke an orbiting satellite, which are well known for being able to detect where particular signals are. Hence the Psychic type in general.

On top of all this, it'd be easy to point at one of these, apparently a popular toy from the 60s that could've possibly played a role in inspiring the whole line. Possibly hence why they went after a ladybird in particular. I do understand the general grimace with this being Pokemon's second ladybird line, but I've repeatedly said I'm perfectly fine with repeats so long as their distinct from the first time around. (Or, let alone this line be way more interesting than Ledyba ever was). I’ll excuse it just this once, but it’d be way less egregious if the rest of Gen 8 wasn’t just filled with repeat animals.

G-Max Orbeetle:

OH, OH!! AND it gets a whole dang Wily Machine to itself! Translating a ladybird into a UFO is legitimately slick, and totally justifies the repetition to me. Because of course, in Japan they refer to a ladybird's spots as “stars”, so Orbeetle of course winds up being Space-themed.

The Pokedex even describes this thing as having brain waves so powerful that it can brain-wash everything in its immediate vicinity and mind-control everyone. Mind control being both a nifty gadget or power used by both aliens and mad scientists across all sorts of media. It even gets a special G-Max move that intensifies gravity! Neat!

Personal Score: 9.5/10

[Archive]

[kartoon12]

What Does God Need with a Space Station?

Okay guys, this is probably going to sound like the weirdest post I've ever made, as this is a subject I don't talk about too often---that being dreams. Most of the time, I don't remember having any, or I'm able to recall tiny snippets here and there, with the rest disappearing into a fog. There's really only a handful of very long, very vivid dreams I can remember having, and all of them were wacky, but mostly funny thinking back on them. And they almost always involve fandoms in some way. If anyone's interested in hearing more about those, feel free to message me. (The one where me and the bridge crew of Star Trek: TNG were trying to escape a hospital with Captain Picard yelling at everyone because we were making him late for a party is a particularly fun one.)

 However....just a few nights ago, I had a dream that....REALLY takes the cake, which is putting it mildly. This is one time I really felt the need to make this public, as I seriously, really want to try and see if anyone out there can help me analyze this, as this dream contained subject matter I've almost NEVER dreamt about before, and certainly not to an intensity and specifically detailed degree such as this. I wouldn't call it a nightmare, but neither was it fun. It was spooky...but more for the oddity and sheer level of "what the f**k?!" -ness to it.

 I also feel the need to open with a disclaimer: I was raised in a Catholic household, and though I haven't attended a mass in quite some time, I still at least say my prayers every night. But I have friends of many different sections of faith; I totally respect other people's religious beliefs, and I'm not trying to force mine on anyone here. I try to keep my mind open to other interpretations of "what lies beyond" and such. Why this disclaimer? Well, you're about to find out.  Strap in, folks. This is gonna' get lengthy....

 So the dream opened in third person view, as though I were watching a movie. Somewhere in the middle of outer space, two giant robots are just sort of hovering there, fighting with each other. (I'm talking like mecha in the style of Transformers or Gundam or the like.) It's also worth mentioning that this whole opening section of the dream was presented like a cartoon. (The art style of "My Life as a Teenage Robot" is the closest I can get to describing what it looked like.) One mecha was an orange/red color, the other was blue and white. Note that I said they were fighting WITH each other, not attacking one another. That's because the "camera" (for lack of a better word) then shifted to show this HUGE spaceship off in the distance, slowly making its way towards a space station. (But not like, a realistic NASA space station or anything---this looked all sci-fi/future-y like something out of Star Trek.) The Star Destroyer from Star Wars is the closest I can get to describing what this starship looked like in terms of size and scope. Although it wasn't outright firing lasers or anything, in dream-world, my mind already knew the backstory that that Star Destroyer thing was on its way to attack the space station.

 So naturally, red and blue robot have been sent out to stop the thing. Except the two of them were bickering amongst each other, arguing over the best course of action. Blue Robot keeps insisting they have to work together; Red Robot won't listen to reason and thinks his plans are better. Finally, Blue Robot gives up trying to argue and flies off to fight the Star Destroyer thing alone. A voice over the radio (probably someone back at the station) pleads with the two to work together and that Blue Robot doesn't stand a chance and can't do it alone. Blue Robot responds with, "Well I'm gonna' have to try." And disappears into the distance.

  Considering my love for movies and comics and stuff, so far, this is par the course for dreams I've had in the past. But THIS is where things take a turn for the truly bizarre.

 The "movie" then cut to inside the space station (very futuristic and high tech looking. All white walls, furniture and equipment. Very slick and clean looking.). Everything's now in first person view, so obviously from my viewpoint now. There's a guy frantically typing at a control panel (I'm assuming he's the one communicating with the robots.) All sorts of alarms are blaring and going off. The entire station is shaking and vibrating as it starts coming under attack. I think to myself, "I gotta' get out of here!" So I race to the nearest automatic doors and have to pry them with both my hands just to get them to slide open.

 The second I crossed the doorway, everything stopped being an animated cartoon, and from here on out, for the rest of the dream, everything is now normal/live action/real world. I started running all through the station trying to find help, until eventually, I hit upon an idea.  I kid you not, the only thought that came to me at that point was, "....I have to find God."

 Yes. You heard me. "I have to find God." Hang in there. It only gets freakier.

 So I head off, trying to find anyone who can help me look for God, as by this point, He's the only one who can get us out of this mess. Couple important things to note here:

1.) Despite being on a space station, none of the people aboard are in any sort of discernible uniform. Everyone I encounter is wearing normal clothes like jeans and T-shirts and stuff (save for one person, but we'll get to HER in a second....)

2.) The deeper I go into the station, and the farther I get away from that docking bay area I started off in, the less the station shakes, and the alarms gradually get quieter, until eventually, the attacks stop completely.

And 3.) A large portion of the crew (or passengers?) I initially come across are all Chinese (or of some Asian descent thereof). Whether this station was built or funded by China, I don't know.

 In any case, no one seems to be able to speak English, and no one seems to be scared or bothered, or even aware of what's going on outside. But they can tell I need help, so they point in the direction of this lady that I'm assuming is the leader or figurehead of some sort.  I assume so, because she's the only one dressed differently from everyone else.....and she's dressed like something out of the Feudal Era. A geisha, I think they call it. A red robe with gold flower patterns. Hair done up in a bun. Face painted white. Red lipstick. The works. Queen Amidala look, ya' know?

 Of course, dream-me doesn't question this at all, and I plead with her to take me to where God is. I then started repeating the phrase, "you know?! Heart, mind, soul?!" to her, over and over again. During which, I'd point to my heart, then my head, then trace a circle in the air with both index fingers for emphasis, hoping she'd get what I was asking her. Please note that in real life, I have NO clue what Chinese religion or mythology entails, nor have I ever studied it, and I'm 100% sure what I just described is completely wrong and total bulls**t. But apparently, this is how it worked in dream world, and apparently, I knew just the right sign language to make, because Geisha Lady finally got a look of understanding on her face, smiled and nodded, and said something in her own language that gave off the message of "oh, okay. I'll take you to Him."

 So she takes me by the arm, motions for me to follow her, and I let her lead me through the rest of the space station. All the alarms and chaos from earlier has totally stopped by this point. Her dress/kimono thing is so tightly wrapped around her that she had to take fast little baby steps, and you'd think with her penguin-walking it would've taken forever, but it actually took no time at all to get where we were going.  During which, I look around, and notice that, at that point, the hallways of the station started looking more and more like the isles of a department store. She weaves me through rows and rows of shelves stacked with all sorts of stuff. Some shelves are full, others have some stuff but were clearly picked through, and some shelves are completely empty.

 At long last, Geisha Lady shows me into a large waiting room of sorts, bowing and sweeping her arm out as if saying, "well, here we are." I look around, and there's a long line of people all waiting to get into an adjoining room where God is. Only then do I finally start seeing other races of people besides the Chinese from earlier. Black, Hispanic, Japanese, White---a mixture of all sorts from seemingly all over the world are in line. And every single person has some kind of item in hand. Books, potted plants, a wooden spoon and whisk (guess that person liked cooking?); any kind of knick-knacks you can think of. (Which I guess sort of explains the department store place from earlier and why stuff was missing.) I then walked past the line and peeked into the adjoining room to see what everyone was waiting for, and.....

 Well.....um.....I found God.

 The room was a very plain looking bedroom, with beige-colored walls, a queen-sized bed, and a single nightstand, but nothing else, not even a lamp, which would explain why the room was so dimly lit, with the only available light coming in from the doorway. I took a step closer to try and better see the....well....'being' occupying the bed. Or pair of beings I guess I should say (more on that in a second). At the foot of the bed was, what appeared to be, a Hispanic man in his 20s or 30s, with short scruffy black hair and tanned skin, and wearing nothing but a plain, white T-shirt....because he had no legs. His body ended at the torso, and he was propped up with a ton of pillows so he could see the visitors better. More pillows were situated on the floor for the people to kneel on, and at that moment, a lady and her kid were kneeling in front of Him, and everyone was speaking in super hushed tones, so I couldn't really hear what they were talking about. Though, every so often, I'd hear the amputee guy (that I'm assuming was God) speaking in a calm, reassuring tone, saying things like, "Don't worry. You're going to be okay. Everything'll be fine." And so on. No stereotypical big booming voice or anything like that.

 But I probably wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying because I was then focused more on the OTHER being occupying the rest of the bed. Lying at the top of the bed, directly behind the Hispanic guy, was another humanoid shape cut off at the torso. I say humanoid because this....thing....was more hidden in the shadows due to its position in the room. I could make out a head, neck, arms, hands, and chest....but no discernible clothes. It was more like....a dark blob that took the rough shape of a human....and it had no face. Or maybe it did, but....anytime I tried to look directly at it, its head seemed to be encased in a kind of fog, with the face area constantly shifting and blurring. If you've ever watched police or crime shows where they interview someone who wants to remain anonymous, and they blur their face out, that's basically what it looked like. And seeing this half-a-humanoid lying above the Hispanic guy, making it look like they were stacked on top of each other, almost kind of reminded me of Vishnu a bit. (The being from Hindu mythology who looks like a human with multiple arms.)

 Anyway, so I'm just standing there, taking this all in, when someone who was waiting in line (can't remember if it was a guy or lady) came up next to me, and they must've saw my confusion, because they leaned in and whispered, "Every couple of years, they pick a new person to represent Him." This is the only wording I SPECIFICALLY remember, EXACTLY. Whoever the "they" is that this person was referring to, I have no clue. The robots? The Chinese? The people waiting in line? Who knows.

 The person then explained a little more, and unfortunately, I can't remember the exact wording, but they basically said something like, "It's strongly recommended that you bring Him a present." Guess that would explain why everyone in line was holding stuff. Finally, this person whispered to me, "I hear that books are His favorite." And I remember thinking to myself, 'Considering this dude's got no legs and is probably stuck in bed all day, yeah, he probably needs something to do.'

 And though I can't remember whether I thought it, or said it out loud, my last thought was, "Damn. I should've brought my books with me." (And if you know anything about me, I was most likely thinking of my self-published comic books.)

 And that's when, quite suddenly, I woke up.

  No, I'm NOT on drugs.  I have NEVER taken any drugs; recreational or otherwise,  nor do I drink. Thanks for asking.

 So.....what in the name of all that is holy does this all mean???

 Like I said in the intro, this is something that is SO far out of my wheelhouse when it comes to what I normally dream about that I felt that I HAD to put it out there somewhere. I mean, I've gotten a bare-bones taste of other religions and cultures, mostly via movies and stuff, but it's not like I'm actively studying Feudal Era China or Hindu legends all the time, nor was I reading up on any sort of material right before bed or anything. I guess what I'm getting at is that the whole religious aspect of it is what really threw me, to the point of almost feeling prophetic in a way. I had goosebumps upon waking up, and I just couldn't stop thinking about what I experienced for the rest of the day.

 I've managed to come up with just a few theories, though this could totally be off base, so bare with me.

 The only part I'm really sure on is the beginning part with the robots, since one was red and the other blue. And that whole part was in the style of a cartoon (while the rest of the space station was in "live action/real world"). My guess is that the robots are representing the Democratic and Republican parties, and how both of them have been reduced to blathering, cartoon caricatures who can't work together at all to fight something that's threatening everyone. (With the star destroyer as a stand in for the virus, I guess?)

 Then, what's with the people lining up with gifts and the section that looks like Wal-Mart? Is this supposed to mean that society's become super greedy and materialistic, to the point of thinking we can buy favor with someone? Or bribe our way into Heaven?   Then again, at least in the dream, I had little doubt that the beings in the bedroom WAS God, since He seemed like a pretty chill dude who spoke kindly and was being comforting.  So maybe the gifts people were bringing were like....representations of their hobbies or something? Maybe the vibe was supposed to be more like, "Hey! Thanks for creating me, God! Here's something I made with the talents you gave me!" Like a kid showing off their macaroni art to their parent or something like that. OR, maybe it was supposed to mean something like, "In order to follow Him, you have to give up your love for material things?" I don't know.

 And then there's that weirdly specific line that still haunts me. "Every couple of years, they pick a new person to represent Him."   I have a feeling the humanoid blurry shape that I wasn't able to clearly see the face of was the real God, while the Hispanic guy was His avatar of sorts.  Still don't know who the "they" is, though.   Or was this meant to mean something along the lines of, "Society has become so focused and desperate for a savior that they're starting to see celebrities and politicians as false gods? Thinking that one guy can fix everything, when really we should be bettering our inner selves?"

 "Every couple of years, they pick a new person to represent Him." I mean, with phrasing like that, and with a certain presidential election coming up.....

 *sigh* I'm just going to end it here before I start opening up a whole other can of worms. Thanks to anyone and everyone who stuck with this all the way to the end.  The whole dream actually felt like it lasted all of ten minutes---it just took me a bit to explain all the details is all. I haven't had any similar dreams since. But still.....if anyone out there can help me interpret this thing, I'd love to hear from you, as I have the biggest gut feeling this all means SOMETHING important. I just don't know quite what. But if this IS a premonition of some kind, I just hope to God it's a good one.

[rousingloki]

Thoughts: Nintendo VR

 Oh Nintendo, you really have outdone yourselves.

So on my last “Thoughts” topic, I explored what Nintendo has done to keep its identity of Nintendo, and how Nintendo has managed to keep it’s core philosophy alive, and to pass on the dream of Mr. Iwata in keeping games affordable, accessible, and most importantly, fun. I mentioned that I noticed all this with Nintendo Labo, and the upcoming VR kit, and it’s that VR kit that I’d like to talk to you all about.

(Note, if you want to start a discussion about this, I more than welcome it, because discussions about this sort of topic are always great to listen to. I think it’s very important to hear other perspectives, and what other people have to say. With that in mind, however; please try not to start a flame war, or attacking other people’s opinions, I did say discuss, not argue. Thanks)

So before I get into the Labo, let’s look back on a little history. Nintendo has been involved with VR, or the realm of 3D gameplay multiple times. It started back with the Famicom, with a device called: Famicom 3D System. (If you don’t care for the history portion just skip ahead 5 paragraphs)

This pair of goggles basically allowed you to have the game right in front of your face, not really making it Virtual Reality, but it was a start I suppose. To compare it to anything, would be Sega’s Segascope 3D glasses. The system was a colossal failure, and only compatible with about 7 games. It would be about 8 years before Nintendo threw their hat into the ring with another Virtual Reality project.

Skip ahead to 1995. Nintendo was dominating the 16-bit market, with their Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Or Super Famicom if you’re from Japan), and they had complete control of the handheld market with the Gameboy. Nintendo wanted an edge though, to fill a gap before the release of the Nintendo 64. Thus was born, the Virtual Boy. (Then known as VR32)

The Virtual Boy was sold as a Virtual Reality console, and it also was deemed part of Nintendo’s “Portable” line of gaming. Most use that term very loosely though because even I, someone who had a Virtual Boy as a kid, could not see this thing as anything being even close to portable. The Virtual Boy also did not boast real Virtual Reality, what it did have, was 3D screening. Using Stereoscope technology, it tricked your eyes into thinking you were seeing true 3D, which worked, but it didn’t have anything like head tracking, and the constant red and black colors, mixed with having your eyes so close to the poor screen meant eye strain, and headaches.

In the end, the Virtual Boy was a catastrophic failure from the start. It was discontinued less than a year after it was released, with only 22 games ever made for it. The Virtual Boy does have a legacy however; and that legacy was picked up in 2011, by the Nintendo 3DS.

The Nintendo 3DS was everything the Virtual Boy wasn’t: Fun. Not only did games happen for console, but it met the many goals that the Virtual Boy didn’t meet: It was portable, had better 3D, was a social console, and had an excellent line of video games made for it. The 3DS still continues today, and even though it’s hard to say if it’s gonna stick around much longer due to the domination of the Switch, the 3DS is an excellent handheld, and loved by many. Although the one thing it didn’t fulfill, was a VR type experience, which brings us to today...

The Nintendo Labo VR Kit.

Being the first “VR” style platform Nintendo has attempted in 24 years, Nintendo is bringing VR to it’s beloved platform: The Nintendo Switch.

Where to begin with this... I guess I’ll just give my first impressions based on all the pics and videos I’ve seen so far. (Here’s a link to the video Nintendo posted on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOjcbdAU5Gw&t=2s)

So from just the announcement, before a video was even in place, I was immediately excited. I’ve bought every single Labo kit before this, and each one has not disappointed. As someone who’s involved very deeply with STEM, this type of kit is perfect for those looking to get interested in that sort of field, while also having fun, and learning at the same time. I don’t look at the VR as a plaything in the traditional sense, while I do want to have some fun with it, and see what direction Nintendo is taking with it, I’m mostly interested in how everything works, and why everything works about it.

(This is why I will die alone)

When it comes to the games, they’re honestly the least interesting part of the whole experience. While some games (e.g. Piano Studio in the Variety Kit, Adventure in the Vehicle Kit) do have some pull and keep me a bit more interested, the most fun part I’ve had is building them. Anyone who’s played with Lego’s, Bionicle, Gundams, or anything that requires any sort of building, and enjoys that aspect the most, would be absolutely delighted by how satisfying it is to see these creations come to life with each sheet of cardboard.

And once you’ve built them, even if the game doesn’t stay interesting for very long, there’s something very exciting about seeing the Labo work once you start playing the game. The actual reeling in of a fish on the fishing rod, listening to it actually make sounds was something that made me act like a 6 year old kid going fishing with my dad for the first time.

Once you’ve built, and played with the Toy-Cons, you can learn everything there is to know about them.

Ranging from just learning about the Nintendo Switch Hardware on its own, from the Screen to the Joy-Cons, to the actual Labo creations themselves. You can see how the games work, how the Nintendo Switch system is involved, and some general knowledge like fixing the labos is included here as well. As well as how to make your Labo your own, giving customization tips, and what NOT to do if you want to preserve the life of your Labo.

Of course once you’ve learned everything, you can open up the Toy-Con Garage and make your own creations, make your own Labo’s to play with, now that you have the knowledge and tools to make them. It’s what makes the Labo near infinitely re-playable. Ranging from simple games, to instruments, if you have the imagination, I’m sure you can find a way to build it.

After having said all that, let’s get back into the VR kit itself. The VR Kit comes in two different flavors: One with just the Goggles and Blaster, and the other has everything else. Because I’m getting the latter (And will be reviewing it so stay tuned) let’s talk about that one. The Labo comes with 6 different Toy-Con creations: The Goggles, Wind Pedal, Blaster, Bird, Elephant, and Camera.

If we were to go through each one of these, we’d be here forever (Plus I said I’m gonna review it next week, so we’ll do that there) so I’m just gonna say what I feel about the kit as a whole. I absolutely love it. The whole idea of the thing is just fantastic. Not only does it introduce VR at a more affordable yet still fun level, it introduces it to a younger audience, those who are too young to be able to use actual VR systems that were designed with an older audience in mind.

Sure the games look simple, but like I said it’s the experience as a whole, from building the labo, to trying it out, to learning how everything works that makes everything count in the end. Like I said, as someone who’s worked extensively in the STEM field, I’m absolutely delighted to see something like this. It takes the limitations of the switch and expands them to incorporate an entirely new way to play video games. It stretches the field of imagination to new heights, and showcases not only what the Switch as a system can do, but how you can do things with your imagination.

Like the other Labo kits, this one is getting a “garage” where you can create your own games. While you probably won’t be making much out of cardboard, you’re able to make games that would fit with the VR’s idea in mind. From exploration games, to rhythm games, it’s whatever you can think of and get working that makes it so much fun. Plus Nintendo is adding support to Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for free, so that’s a bonus.

Now this isn’t a full fledged review, and I’m gonna take advantage of that to ask a question, why do people give this thing so much hate? Why are people so against Nintendo Labo?

I’ve seen the hatred for Nintendo Labo since the beginning, it shows with the like and dislike bar of the original video that Nintendo posted before the first two kits were even released.

I truly do not understand the flak that the Labo gets. Most people seem to think that the cardboard is made out of 8x11 printer paper that would fall apart the second you tried to play with it, but after getting 15+ hours out of EACH of my Labo kits, I can safely say that they’re surprisingly durable, and none of them have received any real wear or tear to them.

Yet I still don’t understand the hatred towards them, people say you’re paying a huge amount of money for cardboard, even though people are content paying $60 for a piece of plastic and silicon (not even that if they buy a download code) People also don’t look at the fact that the PSVR, which is usually around $250 to buy new (about $350 if you include move controllers) and most of the games are still nothing more than tech demos, ones of huge games like Skyrim, or Borderlands, which you’re expected to pay for, for full price, and even then the games still feel like nothing but glorified tech demos. Maybe I’m just being cynical, maybe I’m just being a Nintendo Fan boy, but it’s something I really just don’t understand.

So yeah, these are all my thoughts on the VR right now, something I’m looking VERY forward to, and has me being all giddy and excited like a 7 year old kid who’s only a week away from Christmas. It’s something that I know will make people happy, and maybe even get more people interested in VR, and the STEM community as well.

Thank you all for reading (And again, please ask away if you have anything you want to tell me, I’d love to hear what other people have to say on this)

[script-a-world]

Hi guys, I’m glad I came upon your blog. If you could give me some help in the right direction I’d really appreciate it. My idea is to have a planet [not our earth nor solar system, I need to create new ones to fit my story] devastated after a genocidal war and the end result is the bad guys completely defeated and the ones left over fled the planet. Now, the planet is pretty much ruined and sort of back in the Bronze Age with random bits and pieces left over of more modern stuff but anyone who can create more is basically gone so everything will have to be rediscovered and reinvented. But most importantly, the people that are left are from all over the world, hundreds of little tribes with as little as 1 to 2000 survivors with a total of a million population. They did get off world help to finally defeat the bad guys so there’s a further extra quarter million aliens staying behind to help rebuild the world. You’d think with aliens, they’d have technology? Nope. Everything is magic for them. So here’s a dilemma, use magic to rebuild the world or stay in the Bronze Age and rebuild with their own technology, that would take another thousands of years. People are divided or mixed. So we got a world that looks like a magical realm one town and the Bronze Age the next town over, and everything in between. End result is like I’m writing a fantasy story set in the Bronze Age but people have modern ideas and knowledge with no way to actually use them. They know what democracy is, the minority know they deserve rights and freedom. They can drive a car, they can use a computer, but those things are basically all destroyed and no one knows how to make them. So, any ideas on where I should do my research or problems the people will face, or perhaps similar stories I could draw inspiration/ideas from? Thank you!

Synth:  For any computers they had, look into the worst-case projections from back in the 1990s when Y2K was becoming a looming concern, and for electric stuff in general check out what mega huge solar flares have the potential to do right now.

Saphira:  The best thing about this scenario is that though the people are decimated and scattered, they have not lost their memories. This means anyone who had any training whatsoever still has it. Even better, literacy is still strong. They can still teach these things to their children and that is their greatest asset. What you have is not so much a race to resources, but a race to a Communal Knowledge, a Library of Letters.

What tradesman still live? How much do they understand the craft? How can one tradesman get help from another? How do we preserve what knowledge we still have before it fades? Sure we know what a pencil looks like, how it works. I can figure out a wood barrel, but I have no idea where to get graphite, or how to make rubber for an eraser. Maybe someone in the next tribe over might know. We can substitute graphite for charcoal for now, and send out a letter to every town nearby...

Most will not be tradesmen, I'm guessing. They can still read. They can still run. They might go about the destroyed world and look for scraps. Maybe a snapped motherboard. Maybe an entire gundam: who knows? Whatever they bring back, if it can jog the memory or provide insight, it has value. Look at how much we humans learn about our history and technology just by looking at old common tools and of all things the jars and plates.

Now not everyone will be so dedicated. Some will see the Arcane way of doing things that the Aliens provide, and think Well, why not? What if we simply cannot figure out some piece of advanced tech? Really hard to rebuild computers when you don't have a way to make silicon. Well, until we figure that out... Why not... Cheat? We'll uh, make it genuine later but for now we just need it to work...

I suggest try recreating something you have with household items. How would you recreate a doorknob? Yes, seemingly simple. Deceptively so. Take down what problems you face. Consider asking Google the same as asking the Arcane Aliens for help. What problems, what thoughts, what sort of experience is it?

Good luck.

Feral:  The first thing that comes to mind is what's left?

People remember how to drive cars? Are there still cars hanging around? People who not only know how to drive but how to maintain and/or hotwire the left over vehicles may very well do so.

The same goes for any and all technology that people can get their hands on. For all of human history, we have re-purposed the cultural artifacts left by previous societies; why wouldn't your people?

In terms of why people might choose to go with the aliens or try it on their own  is going to depend heavily on their access to clean water and food sources. A clean water source is paramount. And after a planet wide war, there might not be many water sources left that do not require filtration. Do the people have access to filtration technology? Or are their options alien magitech, war with a tribe that has filtration, or die from dehydration?

Constablewrites:  From the related works to study angle, the Schizo Tech trope is probably a good place to start, since the order in which they revive given technologies is probably not going to be the same order in which they were originally developed.

Like a lot of After the End stories, a lot is going to depend on how long they've had to recover from all of this. Consider that if it's been more than a generation or two, a lot of the knowledge of how to use this stuff will die out just because there's not much point in passing it down anymore. Are parents going to teach their kids to drive once they can no longer make the cars function? There will still likely be records of this stuff and people who choose to study it, but the widespread practical knowledge and experience will die out as soon as the technology is no longer viable. Just look at how many people these days don't know how to sew their own clothes, which was considered an absolutely critical life skill less than 100 years ago.

Synth:  The pro-alien-tech people clashing with the pro-DIY people seem like another potential source of conflict to help drive your story. Do the pro-tech people think the anti-tech people are stubborn and stupid for not wanting such easily accessed assistance? Do the anti folks think the pros are lazy for just accepting these handouts instead of working hard to do things themselves? Are there conspiracy theorists asking "But what are their real motives and goals?" about these aliens? Have people split themselves off into different groups/factions/entire separate settlements based on whether they embrace or shun the alien magitech? Which side do your main characters fall on, and what happens when they meet someone from or have to travel through an area populated by people from the opposing side? Hell, do all the members of your main gang of characters even share the same views regarding magic vs. going it (very) old school? What kinds of experiences might someone have that could change their mind about the alien magic? (e.g. someone against magic comes down with some horrible disease for which medications no longer exist, but can be cured pretty easily with magic. Does magic suddenly seem acceptable now that it's their life at stake, or will they go down with their principles? What about someone gung-ho about magic? What might make them decide "Actually how about No," and turn away from it?)

Tex:  I wonder if those survivors communicated with each other - the survivors of zombie-style apocalypse/ELE (Extinction Level Event) in movies such as I Am Legend and Zombieland utilized ham radios and sent out distress signals and messages containing news about holdout locations where other survivors could travel to and be safe. Radios don't require a ton of materials or knowledge to build from scratch (Boy Scouts of America has kits for building a crystal radio), and they're relatively easy to learn how to use. If there's manuals around to build something, and someone deems it important, it's probably going to get built.

That being said, the first generation of survivors is integral for the rebuilding of society. If there was enough tech left over for survivors to leave the planet, did they do so without contacting those left behind? Was any technology repaired or retrofitted for other purposes? Does this planet have any sort of internet, or even libraries? What about fleeing survivors that pledged to come back after X amount of time or Y reason? Settling on a new planet is awfully similar to restructuring society after a devastating event, so the skill sets between the two activities have a lot of overlap.

Being able to flee the planet and presumably settle somewhere else implies that the people are capable of interplanetary travel, if not interstellar. If there's FTL drives, could these be used to power city grids, so as to take advantage of electricity, LANs, and digital information repositories? What about power supplies or engines in transportation vehicles? These can be retrofitted for use as generators, and if you're crafty enough, to boost the range of telecommunications equipment.

You only need less than a thousand people to start up a society, so having a million people, even disparate, means that the aggregate knowledge is much higher than would even be needed for colonizing a new planet from scratch. The fact that these aliens use magic isn't necessarily an issue - can they be convinced to move heavy objects, can their skills in magic be used to repair power lines or other things? What about using them to help find ore and mineral deposits to make the raw material for tech again? Are these aliens capable of scrying or telepathy, and would they be willing to create a pseudo-telecommunications net (think magic phone network where the aliens are the phone booths) across the planet to allow the different tribes to talk with each other and come up with some sort of plan? A division of labour to complete a task according to skill set can be complementary instead of contradictory, and would allow the planet to recuperate to its antebellum technological peak much faster, even if some people decide to go without it.

[whitelippedviper]

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. Fuck war, love comics.

So I’m making my way through Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin and like I’ve seen Yaz’s work before.  I have the first volume of Venus Wars--but it just didn’t click for me. MSG: The Origin tho is goddamn sorcery on the page. You need to know this first off, you don’t need to know anything about Gundam to read this.  The whole thing is this is the book retelling the story that started it all but like Yaz’s from the heart version.  And two volumes in, which is like...1000 pages of comics, and this is a masterpiece.  

I’m mostly going to talk about the art, but story wise, military stuff is generally not my bag.  Unfortunately, it’s a genre that is grossly popular in American comics, not just in straightforward military stories, but superhero comics as well.  Too often these heroes have design updates that are all too happily to enlist heroes whose past models leaned more heavily into daredevil circus performers or wrestlers.  You know the look.  When your favorite hero goes from tights and a cape look to body armor looking shit everywhere.  War on crime right? And then these companies on their film side have all kinds of connections to the military industrial complex--hell these companies often employ ex-military, or in some notable cases ex-CIA to write the damn books.  And when you couple that with how interested the military has always been with warping people’s brains to keep the war machine humming(they once put acid in a whole town’s water supply just to see what would happen!) it’s quite unnerving!  So besides being extremely anti-war in practice, I’m also pretty tin foil hat when it comes to seeing the edges of the military in pop culture, particularly when the message is like “look how cool this is!”

Which as a sidebar is one of the things that makes the Aubrey Sitterson GI Joe thing complicated to me, because like...I don’t think GI Joe is a good thing, and I don’t believe leftists should be getting their pay pushing paper for something that could not BE more military industrial.  Like let's make kids think how cool being a soldier and going to war is--and then those kids grow up, and what a surprise we are in like ten wars that we know about, and will be for forever--and you get this kind of brainwashing that turns Kapernick trying to say “hey, maybe cops should stop shooting black men” into a debate about “respecting the flag” because the NFL is in bed with the military….agh.  I hate it.  I hate it all.  From Operation Condor, the firebombings of dresden, hiroshima and nagasaki, the genocide of the american indian, fallujah, Abu Ghraib, our complicity in Saudi atrocities in Yemen and Qatar...we are not the good guys of history!  We kill for empire, but our empire isn’t colonies, it’s more war. Our chief export is war.  And I would love to expatriate to a country that doesn’t have these values, but I don’t know if even then I could shake that shit from my stomach.  And even more insidious than our war is our financial arm, our banks and investors who have killed as many people with pens as any soldiers with guns.  We are an empire of atrocity!

So when I see military comics, or cop comics, it just reminds me that I live in the most warlike country of the last 100 years, and all of those innocent people that are caught up in our bombs, and the way we turn whole regions into chaos to serve our ends and make more money--my relative prosperity as an American is built on the bodies and bloodshed of innocents the world over.  I mean why is America what America is?  It’s because WW2 basically moved europe's wealth to the US, and then we spent it on more bombs and we stepped in not because of any real moral thing--we stepped in because england owed us too much for us to let them go down.  We as a country became a world superpower, the world superpower, through war profiteering and slavery.  That’s a huge aside, but I’m saying, I fucking hate war.  And maybe find ways to not contribute to more of those sort of comics?  But more than that in an aesthetic sense, the codes for military in American comics are so bland and it seems half the time to justify not having to do interesting character designs. So surely there is a better fit for someone like Sitterson who has the politics I do, I think, than writing war comics to a patriotic pro-military audience, so I wish him the best, but fuck GI Joe. (And as an aside aside, if it were Frank Miller and not Aubrey Sitterson with the controversial opinion that book isn’t getting dropped--these companies only do these things as financial calculations, and if you are a big enough cash cow you can say or do whatever you want in comics for the most part but if you aren’t--you better protect your neck because these companies don’t have your interests in mind. And we live in stupid times) So I can fuck with Gundam because 1) it hates war as much as I do. And 2) they’re not trying to make everything look like utilitarian military shit.  They’re about looking goood while they are hating war.   The story is really rich, background characters positively radiate and each have their own character which comes to the fore at different parts.  In some respects, Amuro Ray haunts this comic like death, because he’s the end of so many terrific characters that you really grow to love, and the Federation cause is somewhat murky at best, as is their exploitation of kids like Amuro. I kind of think Yaz does my favorite faces in all of comics, unseating Jose Munoz:

This kind of caricaturing is really lovely for a story this rich and dense, because you get so much just from how a character looks and the faces they make, and it’s quite appealing to look at I think.  There are characters you fall in love with just because you want to see Yaz draw their face again.  The range of expressions he has in the toolkit is amazing to me. Yaz’s style in general to me is like magic.  Lines don’t connect, and it’s like he can just shift around these minimal set of lines and accomplish anything on the page.  It’s like he has a set number of lines that he’s working with on every page, and he just dips his brush into the page and waves it around and those lines bend and contort into perfection.  He’s one like Kirby where he kind of just sits down at a page and the images come out of his brain.

 It’s not overly rendered, but it still is textural and inky.  I think this also has my favorite lettering in comics.  I don’t know who was responsible for it in english, but I love the obvious care that went into varying the lettering, and just how gentle and elegant it is.  It probably was just a font in a computer--but it doesn’t FEEL like that, which is cool. Oh also Yaz watercolors various pages in the book, and they are almost all stunning.  I’m planning to read his Joan of Arc book which is all watercolored, so that should be interesting. But I think what comes across more than anything reading these books, because of not only the comic, but the production value of the books themselves--the hard cover, the essays at the back, the slick pages, the thoughtful lettering--what comes across from stem to stern is that these books are a labor of love and passion in a way that you would not expect from the retelling of a decades old giant anime franchise!

Hideaki Anno said in his essay in the first book: “And I sense a certain good grace.  He decides to draw Gundam--well known to the masses as a premier franchise of the plastic model and anime industries--not from weariness, not as expiation, nor to return to his roots, but in earnest as a work of his own” and I think he’s absolutely correct.  There’s a love and attention to every inch of these books that is really inspiring to behold whether as an artist or in whatever you do to fill out your days--seeing something, anything, done by a master, with care and concern is a special thing to behold.  I mean I don’t know for sure that Yaz actually gives a shit about this book--but that’s what comes across on the page.  It comes across that he cares about these lines, about these stories, vividly, and even more surprising, the people whose charge is getting the work out to others, they seem to care just as much, so what you get is a very very special book.

In some ways, these dueling masters, Char and Amuro Ray, also express this concern and care.  At one point Char loudly criticizes Amuro Ray for his lack of style.  And while Char’s vanity, his secrecy, his romantic rogue ideal is extremely alluring, and any scene he’s in, I’m pretty glued to the page--he’s like Harlock or Queen Emeraldas.  We don’t have these kind of artist villains in American comics for some reason.  The closest I’ve seen was Ron Wimberly’s Prince of Cats which has characters who besides their bloody monstrous ideas, consider style to be important.

But even with all of that going on with Char, I’m surprisingly drawn to Amuro Ray--who is a character even without watching the original Gundam series(something I’m planning to rectify this winter--trying to finally knock out all the Gundam I’ve put off for years) that you just kind of know even without ever knowing why.  He’s a legend.  Like Luke Skywalker.  Even his name when you say it, you feel like you are speaking the name of a god.  But he’s a punk kid who has been dragged into this war against his will, and is desperately trying to balance doing the right thing, and keeping his identity.  I love that sometime he just refuses to go out in the Gundam which puts Ltg Bright in these particular binds(Bright might lo key be my favorite character in the series weirdly, for how he kind of morphs through being a snotty prick, to being in over his head, to being someone capable of real genius creativity. I’ve been watching Iron Blooded Orphans which is a Gundam series about child soldiers and is really brutal and depressing, and Orga is kind of like Bright mixed with Char.) His mercurial nature speaks to the nature of his art versus Char.  Amuro Ray belongs to the fickleness of inspiration, so because of that he’s not really reliable, but when he shows up he’s capable of things Char isn’t, moments of improvisation and grouchy genius that are the linchpins of the romantic appeal of the series.  

Versions of this character archetype I feel usually are supposed to be incompetent or dumb to those around them, but their conviction carries them, they have the most will--but in Amuro Ray’s case, he’s just an asshole.  The despair of it all, which is never lost on Amuro is that whether he does something, or doesn’t do something, people are going to die and it’s going to hurt.  And knowing that, that in the end horror is inescapable, and that death is undefeated--like what do you do?  How do you function?  What do you choose when there are no good choices?  Char is a little different, because his aim is revenge.  Which that side of Char that he hides behind his rogue’s grin, and devilish acts is really stunning when it first comes out in these early books.  He’s so careful to let that out, and when it does, you’re like “oh man, Char isn’t playing the same game the rest of you are”.  Agh.  It’s soo good. Comics like these keep the fires going.  There’s an infinity of them out there to be sure, but nothing makes me happier than a truly great comic.  Those comics that years after you remember the experience of reading them, where you were, what music was playing.  A great comic is a great lover.  It won’t last forever, though there’s a LOT of this book still for me to read--and I get in this mode where I both want to just inhale the whole comic as fast possible, and I don’t want this experience to end.  This is that sort of thing.  Which should be evident, since I bothered to write about it, haha.  I could never just review comics.  I’m like Amuro Ray with comics criticism, I need the right situation to be compelled to climb in and do it.  I don’t fundamentally love writing comics criticism--but when I experience something great, I have to talk about it and write about it.  Comics like these affirm everything about being involved with comics for me.  Check it out, see if you feel the same way.

If you liked this essay, and want to see more like it, subscribe to Sarah Horrocks’s Patreon.  For as little as a dollar a month you can help a comic topic in need get the coverage it deserves.

[gear-project]

.     .     .

Game Genre Discussion:

Game genres I struggle with:

Horror/Suspense/Survival --- In general, I have never done well with horror, as jump scares feel awful to me.  I also don't like it when this sort of genre crosses over in to Visual Novels, which seems to happen far too often for my taste.  I also struggle with the "Dark Souls" genre of games... while Code Vein looks awesome... I would probably be banging my head against a brick wall to play it, and so I feel terrible because of the ridiculous difficulty levels of said games.

Castlevania would be a rare exception, but I don't play it often enough to appreciate it.

FPS/First Person Shooter/Gun Games --- The saturation of the American market when it comes to this genre really kills me... and I'm a GUNDAM fan!  No seriously, I have zero interest in games like Team Fortress, Halo, Gears of War, Wolfenstein, or Overwatch... ironically DooM is exempt from this list due to aesthetic reasons (and a Metal Soundtrack).  Even games like Elder Scrolls irk me, because of the overall feeling of having to search for opponents when they jump all over your head where the camera isn't looking!

Stealth/Hunting Games --- Metal Gear Solid and Horizon Zero Dawn... while both are excellent games in the genre... I am utter crap at playing!  I am not a quiet gamer apparently, try though I might.  Though I adore games like Metal Gear Rising, they are far and above not built for Stealth.

Sports --- I don't think I need to explain the reasoning for this... but just in case... much of it stems from my family's background as diehard sports fans... I had enough of that to wanna barf.

Game Genres I have appreciated:

Action/Action-RPG: This genre... oh man this genre... micromanaging your stats so you can show off your fighting skills while simultaneously showing your building prowess... Gundam Breaker and Monster Hunter exemplify this genre to me... and I really appreciate such games... even Zelda Breath of the Wild has recently got in on this to a certain extent.

RPGs/Tactical RPGs: Role-playing games in other words... for the most part I have only ever seriously played games like Final Fantasy and Valkyrie Profile, but those are mostly mainstream JRPGs, so I can't really brag about it.

Action/Adventure/Battle Games: Chaos Legion, Bayonetta, Batman Arkham Series, Shadow of the Colossus come to mind.  Not my strongest suit, but still fun to some extent... Zone of Enders, Omega Boost, are also rare games in this genre.

Creation Games: These are mostly RPGs, but a few games like Soul Calibur and Tekken really do come to the forefront when it comes to fun... really nice to have.  I do like world-building games like Dragon Quest Builders and to a smaller extent Minecraft.  RPGMaker is more of a "tool" than a game, though I wish more tools were as FUN and easy to grasp as games.  I'm not a fan of SIMS or SIMCity however.

Shmups/Beatemups/Top-down Action Games: Ikaruga, TMNT, Dodonpachi, and the like are a literal "blast" to play... but games like Diablo are a little tough for me to swallow (I'm not too fond of Mouse-control games).

Puzzle Games/Card Battle Games: Tetris, Chime/Chime #Sharp, Daedalean Opus, Puyo Puyo, Super Puzzle Fighter, and Yu Gi Oh are on my list of fun titles... YuGiOh is fun mostly because there's like 6,000 cards or more you can collect, and that's WITHOUT DLC.

Platforming Games: I used to play these a lot as a kid, but it feels embarrassing to play them now as an adult for some reason.  I blame Nintendo for this feeling.  Still, Mario is a great game in and of itself... though, if I'm being "cool"... Kid Chameleon was awesome back in the day on Genesis.  Strider, Moon Diver, and Odinsphere are also great titles too.

Fighting Games: More my wheelhouse, but at the same time I get tired of this genre after a while... so I have to be picky about what games I pick up.  Guilty Gear is a given, Samurai Showdown, Darkstalkers would be if it wasn't on hiatus... Mortal Kombat (because Cyber Ninjas), and maybe MvCI if I can save up to afford it.  Dragonball FighterZ "looks" awesome, but at the same time I feel it won't be a game I get in to seriously because it's mostly about PUNCHING and I hate fists... I'm a sword play person... so games like Soul Calibur 6 and BlazBlue Crosstag would be more up my alley.

Fighting games with SWORDS, ROBOTS, and MONSTERS... that's my main hook.

[stillness-in-green]

Gundam IBO Odds-n-Ends (1/2)

 Being the first part of an essay commemorating all the interesting, odd, and just plain funny screenshots I saved on my rewatch of Gundam IBO.  I offer it in the spirit of shared fandom, as interesting information for the consideration of fellow fanfic writers, or simply meta for those who enjoy reading such things.  

I have split these photos into three major categories: Worldbuilding, Characterization, and Hilarity. The first category is the largest, and makes up this first post.  It consists of pictures that illustrate aspects of the show’s setting, and is further subdivided into Locations, Society, and Language & Arts.  If any of those sound interesting to you, hit the jump!

Worldbuilding: 

  Locations: Screenshots of the various locales of the series, both to point out interesting things about them, and, about as often, to highlight hilarious signs. We begin, as the show does, on Mars.

I think it’s very easy to think of Chryse as kind of a dirthole in the show.  We so often see it from the perspective of people like Tekkadan—whose base is located outside the city—or Atra, who grew up in a very poor area. Obviously there are some nice places, like Kudelia’s home, and there is a kind of dusty, sunny appeal to even some of the poorer areas, with their colorful signs and graffiti, but by and large, up until we start seeing locations like Admoss Company, it doesn’t seem much like a major planetary hub.

I think that’s because we don’t get a lot of high-angle views.

Here is Chryse as established in the very last episode, free from Earth meddling and finally self-governing.  We’re clearly in its more affluent downtown area, given the government building (bearing the flag of The Martian Union) in the middle of the picture.  It’s possible that it looks worse up close, of course, but notice the broad walkways, and the light-to-the-point-of-being-nonexistent traffic.  Notice the splashes of blue, green and red in the architecture.  Notice all the trees, both lining the streets and blanketing the city in broad swathes that would seem to indicate an unusually large concentration of lush parks.  In the far, far distance, you can just see the mountains that surround the city on all but its north side.  

All the evidence we have suggests a pretty awful class divide on Mars, but man, Chryse’s downtown area is still really nice.  Kudelia probably spends large amounts of her professional time in areas like this.  

Here, you can see that we’re far closer to the outskirts—note the slopes climbing rapidly into mountains—and are definitely back in a poorer area of town.  The ground is bare, and there are no trees.  At least the streetlights all work!  Kassapa Factory is located in an area much closer to this than the gorgeous downtown, to judge from the proximity of the mountains in that final shot of Yamagi in the epilogue.  

Moving on out of the city entirely—I’m thinking to the north, assuming the geography of Chryse is roughly analgous to that of Chryse Planitia, the Martian plain it takes its name from—one would find the Sakura Farm and associated holdings.  We’ll stop in there later, but in the meantime, I did want to include this picture.

Though it’s never referred to by name in-series, this is the actual orphanage Kudelia founded at Sakura Farm.  The photo is one of several in Kudelia’s Admoss office showing her company holdings—there’s also a picture of the mines—and was presumably taken not long after the building was built, judging by the lack of the art that would eventually come to decorate all its exterior walls.  Derma and Dante work here in the epilogue, but Atra lives on the farm as well, so one can assume Akatsuki is never lacking for other kids to play with.

We move now to Jupiter—or at least, one of the colonies orbiting Jupiter.  Saisei, where McMurdo Barriston lives and reigns, is home to an extremely healthy little shopping district, and it is just full to the brim with interesting or hilarious storefronts.  Lets look at some of them!

First off, Saisei is loaded with bars.  Seriously, the one the boys stop in on their first visit, Pub Someday, is one in a string of at least three—it’s sandwiched between Public House (‘public house’ being the term that the word ‘pub’ actually derives from) and Pub Always.  I think Naze probably recommended Pub Someday to them, and I think that largely because, left to their own devices, I’m sure they would have gone into Pub Always instead. Why?

Note the neon red and white fleur-de-lis hanging on the side of the establishment (which they’re standing around in front of the entrance to because they’re a bunch of ill-mannered yokels).  My god, how did they not go into this place?  It has their logo just right there on it.  

There are marginally less alcoholic portions of Saisei, however, like the one Lafter and Azee go do a touch of retail therapy in after Naze’s memorial service.  They pass a store just called Delicious, but I think my favorite was HOUSE STORE, seen below.

What does one buy at this store, I wonder?  Furniture? Furnishings?  Knick-knacks?  Oh, perhaps it’s actually an office front, and this is where one comes to rent/purchase an apartment or other living quarters at Saisei?  

Down the way from HOUSE STORE, of course, is the ill-fated Bear Factory.  I want to look at the place next to it, though, because it has caused me some serious confusion.  

So, the imagery here—the slightly frosted glass, the gold lettering, the delicate wrought-metal window decorations—suggests something like a high-end coffee shop, or perhaps some manner of light, ritzy soup-and-salad-type lunch café.  If you run a Google search for “cocotaso,” however, the primary thing you’re going to get is something that does not at all match this building’s elegant exterior.

At least so far as the English-speaking world is concerned, “cocotaso” is a Hispanic-by-way-of-the-Caribbean slang term for when someone (often a parent) strikes you on the head with their knuckles; it’s usually in the context of a disciplinary hit, like a kid in the US might describe getting a ruler rapped on their knuckles, or “dekopin,” the forehead flicks you see in anime sometimes (in IBO itself, even—Naze drops one on Orga early on).  

Now, I did manage to dig up another possibility, one that’s definitely the more likely reference, if by far the less popular Google result.  “Coco” by itself is the Spanish word for “coconut,” and it’s possible to find some bottles labeled “cocotaso”/”cocotazo” advertising coconut water or coconut-infused brandy and the like—mostly by running the term through Image Search instead of a straight Web Search.  I have no idea what the taso/tazo is indicating there, unless it’s just colloquial—particularly in the case of the booze, it’s no different than calling a drink a Screwdriver.

So, if I had to guess, I’d assume this lovely storefront is yet another bar, one of a vastly different cultural influence than we see in literally any other place in the show.  I find it alternately hilarious and rather confounding.  

Anyway, Saisei is really great to me, you guys.  It’s like the space Mall of America except there are 1000% more bars and it’s run by the mob.

How about anything else around Jupiter, though?  Saisei is literally all we ever see of the Jupiter Sphere, which is a bit disappointing when you’re wanting more worldbuilding.  Well, I did spot one image that might be giving us a look at something else in that area.  Specifically, in Naze and Amida’s flashback, we see them in a nice hotel room following a successful delivery, with Naze asking her to stay on with him more long-term. There’s a brief moment where the camera looks out the window, and gives us this vista:

You can compare this to the scenes that take place outdoors on the Dort Colonies; the structures running down the center right of the picture are clearly of the same general design.  A close analysis, though, suggests that it’s definitely not one of the Dorts we’re looking at here.  For starters, they’re huge. Compare the 4-to-5-storey buildings on Dort to the huge office buildings here; they come up to about the same height relative to their respective pillars.  There are also the lights up the center of the structures, suggesting some absurdly expensive offices or apartments available to rent—the pillars in Dort don’t have anything like that. Consider too the fact that in outdoors shots in the Dort Colonies, you could always see either the central pillar or the curve overhead of another part of the colony, often both.  While it’s nighttime here, the way the whole town is lit up suggests that, if this colony were the same size as Dort, its sky should be full of “stars”—the lights from the buildings on the other side of the ring.  But the sky is black and empty, without even a suggestion of the central pillar, much less the other side of the colony.  

No, I’m inclined to think that this our only look at an actual colony in orbit around Jupiter—not an enormous ship like Saisei, which is technically classified as a “large planetary cruiser,” but an actual permanent colony.  It’s one of the most metropolitan-looking places we ever see in the show, and certainly offers a fascinating glimpse of a place in the Jupiter Sphere unattached to Saisei.  

One last look at a planetary location, in one of my favorite bits of accurate but poorly deployed English in the show.  This shot is from Edmonton, during the Season One finale.   

I direct your attention, not to the perfectly acceptable roadblock signs, but rather, the large bank on the left side of the road.  You can tell it’s a bank because it’s been helpfully labeled as such.  Twice, even, in case you missed it the first time.  I mean, I guess you could say that this reflects the fact that Earth is divided up primarily by business interests.  After all, normal banks are named after people, or regions, or types of trees, or major industries in the area—something sort of pleasantly descriptive of their history or business aims.  But as Earth is run by divisions literally called ‘economic blocs’, you certainly can’t get much more descriptive than BankBank.  

Meanwhile, out in the vast reaches of space…  

Possibly this was obvious to everyone but me, but in the interest of sharing the information with people who share my lack of experience with a) sci-fi and b) mechanical thinking, I offer a pair of pictures of the bridge of Rustal’s ship, Arianrhod’s flagship vessel.

Like, compare those working areas, that raised, rear bridge area to the same layout on the Isaribi. I’m pretty sure just half of that back area would fit Tekkadan’s whole bridge.  Tekkadan’s bridge has five positions counting the captain’s seat—the halfbeak here seats—what, like thirteen?  Cripes.

Speaking of things that are way bigger than I had initially assumed, my last photo for this section is of one of the Ariadne beacons.  

That tiny little lifted bit crowning the Isaribi is, of course, its bridge, where Orga and company hang out all day on their space travels.  Compare it to the beacon in the background.  I had no idea the Ariadne beacons were so huge until I went looking for a picture of one.  I’m pretty sure just the lighting array on that thing is taller than a grown man, and that’s with the beacon still fairly well in the background of the shot.  I have no idea why anyone might need this knowledge to write fic with, but I did think it was interesting, so there you have it.

  Society: Pictures of stuff in the world, things that illustrate local color, shadows of unnamed organizations, bits of home furnishings, and other such things that influence what you might loosely call the setting’s ‘lifestyle’.  As before, lets start on Mars.  

One of the things we see, if I recall, fairly early on with Atra is that she knows how to drive. This crops up periodically throughout the series, with probably its best showing in the season one finale, but my favorite scene of Atra driving is probably in the first episode of season two. Why?  Well, because in season two she has her own car—and you can tell its hers by the vanity plate.  

“ATR” for Atra, “16” for the year (most of) the show aired in, see?  I’d also peg the 016 as indicating Atra’s age at the time she did the paperwork for the vehicle registration.  Kudelia is sixteen when we first meet her (per Gjallarhorn’s info), and Atra being two years younger than her feels about right.  This would also make Atra sixteen or seventeen when she and Mikazuki make a baby together, which is in line with Japan’s prefectural laws regarding the age of consent.  

The vanity plate lettering aside, this does also tell us that cars need to be registered with someone in this world, which further implies the existence of a Martian DMV, which is just delightfully terrible.  

It’s probably so terrible that when people get done, they really feel they need a drink.  Well, luckily the setting has loads to offer on that front.  Consider the following:

(What do you suppose happened to all the booze in Maruba’s office?  I’m inclined to think Orga didn’t have time to do much with it just after the coup, and by the time he got back, he’d had the experience of getting trashed at Pub Someday and decided to cultivate less vomit-inducing vices.)

So, one thing to note is that, at the official bars in the setting, you tend to see a pretty high amount of repeat bottles, especially at that Earth-side bar Galan and Radice are meeting at.  I’m altogether certain that the meta reason for this is just duplicated resources—setting designers have only got so much time to slap together alcohol label designs—but it is a little interesting to contemplate in-universe reasons.  If so much of Earth was destroyed, how much is really suitable for cultivating the sorts of plants you need for alcohol?  Is vineyard destruction why so few of these bottles look like wine instead of amber liquors like bourbon, brandy, and rum?  

Moreover, is Pub Someday considered to be a “fancy” place (per Lafter) because it has Earth booze? Note that you can see some label overlap between the first and third pictures if you look closely, whereas the stuff in Maruba’s office doesn’t match anything else.  Do they manufacture alcohol on Mars?  Are there any local specialties?  Is import and export very restricted?    

The “Gift of Nature” there is, if I’m reading the label right, a brandy—though a cheap one, according to Amida.  It’s Naze’s favorite, the one he and Amida drank at their first meeting (though the label on that bottle looked different—perhaps a redesign has happened in the, what, 10+ years it’s probably been since then?).  From an American perspective, this is pretty amusing to me—brandy is one of those drinks with a very posh, moneyed kind of image about it. That Naze buys Amida cheap brandy—a poor man’s rich man’s drink—really just says everything about where he was in his life at the time.  

But talking of money: I mentioned this some time ago in one my Human Debris Masterpost installments, and at least one fic I wrote for Yuletide last year, but: we do actually have a canonical shot of what denomination this setting’s money comes in. 

Two possibilities here. The obvious one, phonetically, is that the money in this setting is literally named after its biggest police force, Gjallarhorn.  This is both funny and deeply depressing, but either way, illustrates Gjallarhorn’s power in the setting.  It even makes a certain amount of sense, if Gjallarhorn is nominally there to arbitrate between the economic blocs—you would want a common currency, and wouldn’t want it to be too tied to any one bloc.  

There’s also a Norse myth that’s relevant, though, and given how accurately the Vidar reference was deployed, it’s worth looking at what ‘galar’ could indicate in that context. 

Fjalar and Galar were dwarf brothers, distinctly murderous ones, and their main claim to fame is the murder of a supernaturally wise man, Kvasir, and use of his blood to create the mead of poetry, which grants wisdom, knowledge and creative inspiration.  Using Galar as a name for money is an ugly little metaphor, I think, and one I could certainly see some very smug—or deeply jaded—scholar coming up with.  Money buys all manner of things, of course; artists can have patrons, put money in, get art out.  But because the denomination isn’t named for the source of the inspiration, the murdered man, but rather one of his murderers, there’s an undercurrent of violence, a suggestion of blood money.  No matter what you want, throw enough money (violence) at it, and results will blossom beautifully.  Guys, I’m pretty sure whoever named this setting’s money lost his entire family in the Calamity War, or something equally morbid.

As to its value, I think one galar is probably far closer to one yen than one dollar.  Why? Well, while I can’t remember where I pulled this shot from (Atra’s flashback to meeting Mikazuki, maybe?) we do see bills in this exact same denomination in one other place in the series—the cairn for Tekkadan’s dead after the fight with the Brewers.  So, yes, I think the bits of money that a bunch of underpaid orphans were able to scrounge up out of their pockets to literally shoot into space are likely to be very low value indeed.  I imagine most major transactions are just handled electronically.  

One other thing: I think this is the back of the bill.  If you compare it to the reverse-side of the same denomination, the other side has the more elaborate design, the more visible numeral, and higher general visual clarity.  It also has a big old picture of the African continent on it—perhaps other denominations also feature geographic regions?  On the reverse side, meanwhile, are an indiscriminate blur of what I think are meant to be people, presumably some manner of historic group or another.  

While we’re talking about emblems and the setting’s peace-keepers, I want to point out something I noticed in the epilogue—I think Rustal’s done away with the Seven Stars logo? Like, it’s still on all the flags at Vingolf, but there’s a new one on the Reginlaze standing behind him when we first see him in the epilogue and find out he’s become the new head of Gjallarhorn.

On the old emblem, six stars surround the central star; on this new one, the top and bottom stars have been removed.  I wouldn’t think it was to honor the fallen members—the Seven Stars as a governing body were retired, first of all, so they shouldn’t be on the logo at all anymore. More to the point, though, the group lost three families, not two—Issue, Kujan, and Fareed.  Perhaps the new arrangement is a reference to the four economic blocs, with the cental star now representing Gjallarhorn itself?  

Still talking about emblems, here’s a screenshot from way early in the show:

So, as far as I can tell, this is the emblem of Gjallarhorn’s medical branch—you can see the same uniform on the doctor getting yelled at by Gaelio about Ein’s prognosis, later on.  And that’s all well enough as it is—I wonder what the logo is meant to represent, in an organization so built around Norse mythos?—but we do see it in one other, somewhat more interesting place as well.

First-aid kits!  So I guess we can assume the logo fills in the place of our world’s red cross.  Of course, in our world the red cross is a legally-recognized emblem that can be misused or misapplied, in use the world over (with different variations in use in other countries, most prominently the red crescent), not bound to any particular government.  Unsurprisingly for the Iron-Blooded Orphans world, their red cross is affiliated primarily with Gjallarhorn—no different than their money, I suppose.  I wonder, very much, if the economic blocs have tried to keep their own currencies and the like that struggle to remain valid under the supremacy of Gjallarhorn?  

But, enough about institutions!  Who wants to look at home furnishings??  

Specifically, the furnishings in what I’m assuming is the Fareed apartment on Vingolf, as we see McGillis and Almiria here repeatedly in season two, and it’s the place where Almiria stands her ground as McGillis’s wife against Gallus coming to take her back home.  It’s an interesting mix of fairly standard looking furnishings—nothing too futuristic or archaic, just a modern-looking space, airy and warm, if perhaps with one too many chairs in it.  There are only two things in it that stand out to me on a technological level.

While I’m pretty curious about where those stairs hiding behind the potted tree go, given the stretch of building visible outside the sliding doors, what really caught my eye here was the speaker system tucked against the bricks, above McGillis’s head. It looks like such a perfectly real-world device, so much so that I wonder if it’s some kind of antique, or built to resemble one.  I’m pretty certain we never see anything else like it in the show, and it makes me wonder about the role music has in this setting, especially recorded music.  

Is it a thing for the very rich only?  Are there Martian radio stations?  Are there subtle variations between the genres of music popular around Jupiter’s moons? What about live music?  Does anyone busk on the streets with hand-me-down musical instruments?  How much would the Seven Stars pay for live entertainment at one of their important parties?  Are there still famous musicians that hold blow-out concerts on Earth?  How much cultural exchange is there between the planets and colonies in the system where their music is concerned?  

Moreover, what kind of do you suppose McGillis likes?  Myself, I’d guess big Wagnerian operas with convoluted plots and a lot of tragic-yet-noble bloodshed.  I feel like it’d appeal to the same moral binary in him that the Gundams do.  

The other thing in this space that caught my eye is the fireplace.  What’s that?  You don’t remember there being a fireplace?  Well, that’s because…

This—this can’t be very safe, can it?  I mean, it’s basically one enormous heating coil, like someone super-sized an electric stove and plopped one of the heating elements down in their living room.  But, again, it’s huge.  I have no doubt it can heat that whole room; what I question is the idea that any of that furniture wouldn’t be much too close for comfort.  To say nothing of the carpet!  

Also, if you’re not going to have actual open, dancing flames (or at least an image thereof), why bother with the huge recessed space for it?  And does that space lead to a chimney?  Is this just the world’s most bizarre space heater design?  I am just—so totally baffled by this thing.  

Lets look at someone else’s living space.  

I saved this first with the thought, “Man alive those are some huge bricks; where did he even get them?”  I have since realized that, duh, they’re certainly stone tiles, not huge bricks, but still, they are pretty ginormous, and lend a chilly, austere severity to Jasley’s room.  Most of the wealthy seem to prefer warmer spaces; McMurdo Barriston and Nobliss Gordon’s offices are all wood and warm brown shades (even though Gordon likes to sit around in the dark), maybe accented with cool furnishings here and there. Likewise McGillis’s apartment, above; the enormous purple rug in the middle of it is the one cool touch in a mostly neutral-warm palate.  

This certainly contrasts Jasley, who is, I’m pretty sure, one of the financial moguls of Jupiter—he heads J.P. Trust, which sounds very much like a bank name to me, and we know finance is one of Teiwaz’s corporate activities.  Does he just has unusually spare tastes for a rich man in the setting? That seems unlikely, given his loud coat and paisley-decorated battleship.  Or is the loud stuff for a public face, while privately he prefers the more stark sensibility?  (Of course, it’s also possible that it’s mostly a meta choice, to remove any warmth from around the character, as he’s not a man the audience is meant to feel warmly towards.  But I always want to look for the in-universe reason first, for a project like this.)

Also, Jasley, you’re so rich.  Get some more comfortable furniture for you and your goons to sit on, jeez.

Lastly, to stay with Jupiter for a moment longer, I offer some flowers.

This is the arrangement Jasley sent to Naze’s memorial service.  I wondered for a bit where these come from—imported, for maximum braying display of wealth and power?  Local, because trying to transport fresh flowers across the expanse of space sounds like an enormous pain in the ass when you could just build a greenhouse locally? It seems to me that these are probably local—local to Saisei, even.  All the other flower arrangements in this scene look like they contain mostly the same sorts of flowers, just in far more modest numbers.  That suggests to me that there’s probably a florist in Saisei’s shopping district who occasionally gets ludicrous amounts of money from some mafioso or another who wants to swagger a bit at a rival’s memorial.  What a life, eh?

Lets look at a little more ‘in-the-life’ stuff for the setting.

    Language & Arts: A short section on, as it says, language and arts.

So, while of course the series is voiced all in Japanese, overwhelmingly, the written language of the setting is English.  The signs, text from Gjallarhorn/Ariadne databases, newsfeed scrolls—all of it is in English.  Given the cultural mishmash the Earth and its outer orbit colonies have become—look no further than Mikazuki Augus sitting alongside Biscuit Griffon!—I’m inclined to think English is just the language that survived as the dominant written text, and is probably the language everyone is “actually” speaking (see Translation Convention).  There are a few places where others crop up, though!  They are in exactly the places you’d expect.  

I can’t make out the full title on the book kidlet!Gaelio has here, but I do see “Im” and “Wald,” so it’s “In the ____ Forest” in German.  I can’t imagine the organizations’ members on the whole speak the language—we see English on all their screens—but it’s not at all surprising that the leaders of the organization would have some exposure to it, though German is not, itself, a linguistic descendant of Old Norse.  (Of course, if associating Norse myth with the German language is as close as IBO ever gets to the UC’s fascination with Nazi stand-ins, we should all count our blessings.)

The other language in the show is the more obvious one—Teiwaz is the place in the show where the yakuza/mafia trappings dwell most openly.  The first time we see Japanese in the show is in their brotherhood ceremony, and they are where it crops up most regularly.  There are a few places I’d like to mention specifically, though.

So, that thing I mentioned earlier, where I said the language on screens was always English? This is the only exception, and it’s really cleverly deployed.  Teiwaz may or may not conduct all their internal business in Japanese—their ceremonies use it, but English is still the dominant written language in Saisei—but Radice uses the language for all his accounting.  We know that, not only did Radice betray Tekkadan to Galan Mossa, he had also been engaged in the more mundane crime of embezzlement, and who would ever have caught him at it?  No one in Tekkadan reads the language, even if they did understand accounting well enough to follow his tracks—Merribit was, I suspect, the only person in the organization who had even a chance of figuring it out, and she was on Mars. Radice is a rat bastard, but not an un-clever one.  

The other places we see the language in the show are unconnected to Teiwaz, save perhaps through discreet family alliances.  We see Iok practicing some calligraphy during his mid-season “exile,” and we know he has a longstanding family connection with Teiwaz, so him playing around with the language is eyebrow-raising, but not all that shocking.

The other place is a little weirder, though.  

Okay, so, Makanai Togonosuke—that is a seriously Japanese name.  I think he’s actually the only example in the show of someone who has a Japanese family and personal name.  He was the Prime Minister of the economic bloc that had its capital in Edmonton, Canada, but that’s not so strange—the economic blocs encompass huge, improbably strata of geography, after all.  The weird thing is that Arbrau isn’t the economic bloc that actually includes Japan—Japan is in the Oceanian Federation.  Arbrau has all of Russia, which certainly gets it very close to Japan, but it does make me very curious about Makanai’s early history.  

Did his parents emigrate? They must have stayed fairly connected to their Japanese heritage—despite being a leader of Arbrau, Makanai never lost his grip on Japanese culture.  It’s not just his name, but his clothes and his housing, too.  Of course, his island exile might have been around Japan; if he maintained strong ties to the country, and remained fond of it, why not live there while in exile?  This would certainly match with having to travel over water to land in Anchorage. Perhaps this strong connection factors into whatever scandal it was that got him ousted in the first place?  

In any case, it seems Japanese culture certainly survived the Calamity War and on into the future, where we can still find calligraphy practiced as an art, and bonsai trees tended as a hobby.  

What about more traditional art?  Well, certainly you can find examples of paintings all over the show, in offices and halls and homes.  I wanted to turn my eyes to two specific examples of things we see framed in the show. The first is not a painting, but actually a photograph. 

Specifically, it’s a black and white photo (maybe two of them) hanging up in the store where Atra worked at the beginning of the season.  Now, a black and white photo hanging in a store wouldn’t seem so strange in a modern setting—it’s the town founding! Or the store opening!  Or just some generic decoration!—but it does seem pretty weird in a futuristic setting long, long after the development of color photography!  We know color photography still exists—the show’s last ending sequence is a slow pan-out from an in-universe photo, after all—so what possible reason could there be for the set of black and white photos here?  People work in monochrome for artistic reasons sometimes, but this photo is just a bunch of buildings—it really does look like a “founding of the town” kind of photo, save that, again, this is a far-future sci-fi setting that has no reason to have been limited to black and white photography any time within the last, what, four to five hundred years?  

Suffice to say, I find it pretty bizarre.  

On the topic of pictures of places from long ago, though, what does everyone make of the painting on the left here?

Specifically, what are those spires on the left side?  They don’t look like any kind of object I can make out, nor any sort of architecture with which I’m familiar.  They’re not ship masts, nor do they match up with Gjallarhorn’s HQ ship-island, Vingolf. I sort of like the idea that we’re looking at some kind of very early spaceport facility, though the geography on the right side is a little prominent to be landing a big shuttle on. It almost has to be some kind of old Earth structure, though, given the painting’s location in the private home of a member of the Seven Stars.

Lastly, I wanted to showcase something that I wish I saw paid a bit more attention to in all the post-series Ride drama—the young man’s artistic streak.  I can’t prove he’s responsible for every one of the works below, but it does seem in line with what we know he did—the Tekkadan logo, which Orga asked him for, and no small portion of the Isaribi’s interior graffiti, which we can see him working on in the second closer.  He has an eye for fun shapes and mural work, and if he’s responsible for all or even most of the paintings we see around Tekkadan and Tekkadan-adjacent properties, art clearly consumed a huge portion of his time.  Of course, for all the hugely colorful work on e.g. the orphanage, we don’t see Ride doing anything artistic in the second season.  In retrospect, I wonder if this is some early foreshadowing of the darker path he’s headed down—that he puts down the paintbrush to focus on mobile suit training instead.  

In any case, here are a few screenshots of, presumably, his stuff that caught my eye.

It’s a little thing, but the sunburst here is pretty, its curves and use of color somewhat more delicate than a lot of Ride’s stuff.  A lot of his stuff is big and bold, using large amounts of red, orange and gold—this is softer than that, though it still speaks to a certain brightness of image and hope.  It even kind of matches the bridge’s color palate!

 This, on the other hand, is much more in keeping with his usual stuff.  It also confounds me, in that it certainly looks like calligraphy, but I can’t make heads or tails of any Japanese characters that might be hiding in there, and it certainly isn’t using the English alphabet.  I’d dearly love to know what, if anything, it’s saying, though.  If it isn’t a rendition of any particular writing system, I wonder if it was inspired by Teiwaz’s big brotherhood ceremony banners? Ride wasn’t at that particular ceremony, but enough people were whom Ride might have pestered for details about what it was like that I could see him hearing about it—and that’s assuming he didn’t just see some around Saisei or the Turbines ship at some point between Tekkadan’s first joining up with Teiwaz and McGillis and Orga standing around having this conversation.  If that is the source of the inspiration, I wonder what Ride was trying to communicate with this?  What words he thought he was writing?   

Lastly, I turn an eye to this fountain of feathers.  This is the least likely to be Ride’s work of the three, especially if it’s chalk instead of paint, but if it is his, I wonder where his mind was at when he drew it? Wings, for freedom?  Feathers, for angels, for death and/or the afterlife?  It’s a piece that looks perpetually unfinished, or perhaps restless—I like to imagine it is his work, but it’s from after Orga and Mikazuki’s deaths, but before Ride has cut ties with his old gang, when he’s still wrestling with what to do and, perhaps, still waiting on the older boys to come up with a plan he can stomach the idea of.  

And with that bit of shameless speculation, I draw this portion of the essay to a close.  

The second half of this essay will contain the other two categories mentioned at the start: Characterization and HIlarity.  The second category will consists of pictures that illuminate or provoke questions about the show’s characters.  The final category contains pictures I just thought were funny and wanted to highlight. If you got through this whole post and still want more, keep an eye out!

[agemintherough]

Revisiting Chapters Nineteen, Twenty and Twenty-One of Gems Without Measure; A Pirate’s Treasure

I do apologize for taking so long to do this, but between the holidays, writing final exams, reading over 60 research papers, and getting sick, I haven’t really been feeling up to writing anything of quality. Thankfully, it seems like I can finally breathe. This is a positive thing. Still, it has been three chapters since my last round of chapter commentary, so let’s dive into it:

1) Back when I thought the harpoon was a sword, the gag with Connie quoting Thor was going to be about King Arthur. Instead, I switched it to Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. May I just say that Moby Dick is an English teacher’s nightmare? I am so glad I do not have to teach it, but even I don’t think I could capture an entire class’ attention with that over several weeks.

2) I am unsure at what point I decided to have Amethyst and Petrea become best friends, but I feel like it works. I’d chalk it up to Petrea fighting Miss Doublefinger to save Amethyst, but what do I know?

3) I will never stop quoting the 4kids rap about Usopp doing his “marksman thing.” If I have an opportunity to slip it in, odds are I will.

4) Ratchet and his crew are absolutely terrible at being villains. They pose no threat and really accomplish nothing. When I decided to do this movie, I had not yet viewed it but I chose it for three reasons: to counterbalance the seriousness of the arc that came before it and the arc that will come after it, to have Peridot fight in a giant robot, and Luffy’s finishing move. SecondaryShade pointed out that, by keeping Ratchet and the others pretty much the same, I instantly removed conflict from the arc, thus making it less about HOW the conflict would resolve itself but, rather, WHEN it would. While it is funny to point this out in the story every now and then (which I do a lot, especially in the next chapter), something is lost. This was part of the reason that I am proud of how my version of “Oceans Dream” turned out. It was even suggested that I could have removed the villains and made it a standard treasure hunt and achieve the exact same outcome: a lighthearted calm before the storm. In hindsight, I agree that it could have been a fun time, but I like to think that this arc still had its moments to shine. 

5) I thought it would be funny to have Petrea have a running gag in this arc having the nice dress that she received from Ratchet (her being the only one who seemed to enjoy it without questioning it) constantly keep getting destroyed. I worded that I was making her too petty, but I do not think it came across that way. She is from the world of One Piece, where this kind of gag is considered commonplace.

6) Remember the Talisman of Cloth? I introduced that back in Chapter 38 of AGITR to explain where Steven keeps getting his shirts. It might be odd to think that Gems need cloth, but if you watch the newest set of episodes, it’s not that far out there.

7) This scene presents an example of one of my biggest flaws as a writer: having a giant scene with over fifteen characters and having them talk. Drawing comics or animating a cartoon can show the characters there, even if they are just reacting to the action. Here? I tend to interject a single comment every now and then just to remind the audience that they are there. It is one of my biggest problems and, as such, we are having more scenes of the cast splitting up and getting their own individual spotlights. 

8) Remember kids: Peridot has never heard of Malachite before. Will Malachite appear in this story? Time will tell.

9) Opal’s presence in this story marks the second official fusion appearing in this story. The movie just has them released from the trap by the butler, but I thought this was better suited. I made sure to acknowledge her forgetfulness that is outline in the book Guide to the Crystal Gems.

10) As of this chapter, Peridot’s official laugh is now (and was retroactively changed to “Nyehehehe!” As the Gem who is the most attuned to the One Piece world thanks to Robin’s influence, it makes sense that she would get her own One Piece laugh.

11) As noted, Ratchet’s castle is pretty much taken right out of Scrap Brain Zone or Metropolis Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog or Skull Castle from Mega Man.

12) If I ever decide to pull a Scooby-Doo split-up, you can bet your bottom dollar Greg will call it out.

13) I am proud of the Petrea/ Amethyst/ Maji beatdown. It features some of my better fight descriptions. Kudos to me.

14) Of course, Steven lists off various plots of video games in his rampant speculation about Ratchet’s fortress, including Dr. Robotnik, Dr. Wily, and Bowser.

15) My original intention was to have Zoro and Damian beat the shit out of Honki as a gag, but then I realized Steven would never allow that. Steven might have learned that fighting is necessary some times, but he’s still our boy at heart. If he can find a way around fighting, he will.

16) I drew out a lot of sketches for how I would create Peridot’s robot. I looked up various Gundams and anime designs, but nothing was speaking to me in terms of aesthetics. I did find an AWESOME custom of one of my favorite Transformers (Tailgate) customized as Peridot. Finally, I decided that if this was a video game inspired villain,  I should have a video game inspired boss. I looked up Mega Man Robot Masters and found my inspiration in Astro Man from Mega Man 8 (I have never beaten that one. Just typing this gives me terrible memories of “JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE.” He also appeared in Mega Man and Bass. The cogs connecting the arms might have been an unintended reference to Mega Man 2’s Metal Man (my favorite Robot Master besides Drill Man) but I honestly can’t remember.

17) I was so excited when I came up with the name “Peribot” only to get sad when I found out that was the official name for Peridot’s robot.

18) This fight was truly what sold me on this movie. The idea of Peridot fighting Ratchet because she was offended by him calling himself a genius spoke to me. This is the first time Peridot has actively fought for the crew and is a big step in her development. She might have not fully declared herself an actual Crystal Gem (save cowering at Aokiji), but she is open to being a Straw Hat. She is the only full Gem as of this moment to actually get offered an actual position in the crew as its inventor. Between Steven actually caring about Peridot both before and during this story, Petrea urging Peridot to become a team player, Luffy’s open acceptance of her, and Robin acting as her guide; Peridot has grown to care about this dimension and the people in it. 

The question is if she has worked that part out. Remember: the events of “It Could Have Been Great” and “Message Received” have not occurred…but who knows if those episodes will play out the same in this story?

19) The “I am many things” quote is appropriated from Superman: The Animated Series; specifically, Darkseid in the series finale. God, Darkseid is just a great villain and Michael Ironside is perfect. If I could cast One Piece with anyone, he would be my pick for Crocodile.

20) Peridot comparing Luffy’s new ability (I WONDER WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT. I'M SURE IT WILL NEVER COME UP AGAIN) to soup is a reference to “When It Rains.”

21) Peridot being chosen as the ship’s inventor of course leads to an argument with Usopp, who is the inventor by default. Surely this will have no impact on the upcoming arc.

22) We now have instance number two of Greg playing Avi and Surasshu’s beautiful background music: the fusion theme for Alexandrite from “Super Watermelon Island.”

23) My narration for the Alexandrite scene lifts a line from “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” I’m sure you can pick up on it. You guys are smart. 

24) To end the video game theme, Steven quotes the first ending of Super Mario Bros…though in-story, it would be Super Mueo Bros.

25) I almost named the baby turtles after Ninja Turtles, but I instead chose a Sesame Street reference (that was mainly because the name “Shelly” was too punny not to use) and a Looney Tunes reference that I doubt anyone picked up on.

26) In the movie, the Straw Hats try to drag the eggshell into the ocean and lose it due to its weight. Rather than make this all for nothing, the extra wealth will be used to further the story along. How? Wait and see!

27) Connie was given her bag back in Chapter Eight of AGITR. 

28) Phil, as you may remember, is a character from F*ckthesystem125’s fanfiction Luffy’s Renewed Adventure (which is the story that inspired me to write this story). I got approval to use Phil as a sort of underworld broker, so here we go. 

29) Backslide Island is named after Dan Backslide: Coward-Bully-Cad-And-Theif from the amazing Merrie Melodies cartoon The Dover Boys. Telemachus Island is named after Odysseus’ son from The Odyssey. 

Can you tell I teach English?

30) Spandam: the character I have been the most excited about writing. I have often expressed that Crocodile is my favorite One Piece villain, but Spandam is probably my third favorite right after Arlong. However, Crocodile and Spandam are very similar in my eyes because of one thing: I look at both of them as being like Cobra Commander.

…I have a point to this.

Versatility is very rare when it comes to characters. Typically when you create a character, you have to stick with the traits that make that character well-known. Michelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might have started out bland, but the second his Microseries came out, he was established as the gentlest Turtle. The second the 80’s cartoon came out, he was established as the “party dude.” From there, his characterization kind of built upon those two key story structures.

But every now and then, you get a character that can transcend that. The best example is Batman, who can be both a grim avenger of the night and a fully-deputized agent of the law and still be the same character. Batman might have his tragedy (even in the Adam West show, where it was mentioned once in the first episode), but he can be anything. I love Batman: The Animated Series just as much as I love Batman: The Brave and the Bold. 

Cobra Commander is similar, but different.

When first developed, Cobra Commander was appearing simultaneously in the G.I. Joe cartoon and the Larry Hama comic book. Both had him as the main bad guy, but holy shit were both of them radically different…and that is not even getting into Cobra-La or the Used Carsalesman Origin. 

This is Cobra Commander in the comics:

In the comics, Cobra Commander was deadly, manipulative, and competent. He created a terrorist organization by using a pyramid scheme and managed to have it grow multiple times. The entire Broca Beach arc right after he came back from the dead shows just how manipulative he could be…just like Crocodile, who manipulated an entire country into a civil war. However, I can’t even claim that the Crocodile I wrote was completely similar to the comic Cobra Commander. To complete THAT comparison, you need to add G.I. Joe Resolute into the mix:

Alternatively, you can add both of them together and produce the G.I. Joe Renegades version, who has manipulated the USA to thinking that Cobra is legitimate while being just as ruthless as the Resolute version. Is it perfectly Crocodile? No, as Crocodile is his own man, but the same sort of tone is there when I write him. Both are ruthless and intellectually brilliant. The difference is one has lost hope in his original dreams and shifted them instigating chaos in the hopes of obtaining military might, the other has never lost faith in their original dream of controlling the world. 

The cartoon version, however, throws that out of the window for what the writers described as “less Adolph Hitler and more Yosemitie Sam.”

Holy crap, this guy is ineffectual as hell, but there is always something slightly threatening about him. Clearly he a large enough threat to warrant the creation of a military mission force, but the man’s ideas in schemes range from creating mind control fast food restaurants to making the greatest rock and roll band ever. When I read Spandam (and if I ever get inspired to record an audio version of this story…yes, I have thought about it, but I have no actresses who could join such an ambitious project), I read him with Christopher Latta’s voice. He wants to gain power, but he is lacking in nearly every department. His minions are all stronger and smarter than him…and yet he still needs to be competent enough to demand respect. Spandam is dangerous and, quite frankly, despicable in how he treats Robin and Franky. He is the absolute worst…and yet is two steps away from being a laughing stock. I love it. I love the over the top antics and how smug he is. The man is deplorable in every sense, which will make him a perfect foil for Steven later on…

To sum up this giant, semi-off-topic post: Crocodile and Spandam are my faves.

30) Pay no attention to the mention of Vegapunk, Spandam picking up something and quickly putting it into his pocket, the mention of CP9 recruits, or the bit about “Gems of myth.” That is just fluff.

31) “Don’t cry for me. I’m already dead,” is from The Simpsons. This is not the last Simpsons reference in this chapter.

32) Steven is imitating Darth Vader from Revenge of the Sith…because why not?

  33) Despite my previous claim, “Pucci” is NOT a Simpsons reference, but was actually from the manga in this section of the story. Since it was explicitly called a city and not an island, that meant I could tie it into my Baroque Works trio’s underworld adventure. Hooray for canon-wielding!

34) It was important to split up the crew at this point. It would be way too hard to juggle around all of these different characters at the same time and still give everyone the proper attention they need. Does this mean I am putting them on a bus for this arc? Not exactly, but what they will be doing WILL be worth waiting for. 

35) Though Pearl is doing her best to fit in and enjoy herself, it is important to remind everyone that the Cluster is still a threat. Think of it as a “ticking clock.”

36) Genevieve remembers Greg’s advice from Chapter Forty-Five of AGITR on how to properly leave somebody for an extended period of time.

37) We now have our second Simpsons reference: the shipwright song. When I started writing down lyrics, I thought I was using the melody of “The Perfect Nanny” from Mary Poppins. Instead, I found myself thinking of its Simpsons counterpart: “Minimum Wage Nanny.” Honestly, I’m just happy I managed to get Luffy’s canon request for him to be five meters tall into the song. This might be my favorite song in this part of the story so far.

38) Why does Garnet want money for a newspaper? The answer may surprise you.

39) I justify Steven taking Connie on a date because they aren’t actually dating for romantic reasons. They are way too young for that. This is for them to have a great time together. Nami recognizes this and is levelheaded enough to properly handle Steven’s request. To be fair, who doesn’t look at those two kids and think they will be a great couple when they get older? If only there were a time skip that could show them that way…

40) Greg is, of course, reminiscing about the events of “Greg the Babysitter.”

41) Greg is my favorite Steven Universe character. He is one of the greatest fathers in television and a man who truly loved his significant other. I kind of used Greg here as a mouthpiece for how I view my relationship with my wife. We love each other for who we are and what we mean to each other, and this was brought about by time and open communication. No topic is taboo…that, in my eyes, is the key to a successful relationship. It is not about lavish gifts or forcing romantic moments, it’s about the times as the end of the day where you just sit and talk. A wife…a husband…a partner…they are your best friend first. It is my anniversary today as I am writing this, so excuse the sentimentality.

As it stands, I was surprised as I watched the newest episodes of Season Four (thank you Xfinity!) and *spoilers* noticed an INCREDIBLY similar conversation to this one in one of the episodes. If that was not prophetic timing, I don’t know what is. I think that is twice now this story predicted things on the show, with the first being Steven greeting every object in his house when he returned to it after a long absence.

42) CP9 was mentioned twice before in this story (Chapter 40 of AGITR and Chapter 21 of GWMAPT)…I am sure it means nothing.

Well, that turned into a giant post. Tune in next time in three chapters! In the meantime, check out @cyanideoreo who is now pretty much this story’s official artist! Now that I no longer feel sick, I will begin writing the next chapter tomorrow so let’s hope I can finish it soon!