#which is why there is no big hq version of this rip

[densewentz]

Dreamling can be dads together, as a treat

[twstjam]

alright so I saw Across the Spider-verse a while ago but have only recently been roped into the Miguel O'Hara craze and have this thing where I LOVE to combine my interests so:

Crack Fic Taken Seriously idea: An anomaly pops up in Twst and after a while of Yuu and the others trying to fight it off (Yuu is a spider-person, which is how this version of Twst is included in the Spider-verse) Miguel zips in all menacingly and takes it down and sends it off to HQ. After finding out about Miguel's dimension-hopping gizmo, Yuu is ofc like "!!!! Hey you can send me home!!". Their friends all get a bit upset over this, especially Malleus, which means that, before Miguel is able to take Yuu to HQ to send them home, Malleus's magic fizzes out Miguel's tech and now Miguel is ALSO stuck in twst.

Cue shenanigans while Miguel tries to get his tech fixed at Ignihyde. Idia fanboys a lot over his tech and maybe they both geek out or smth idk. Yuu ofc asks him a ton of questions about the Spider-Verse and all the other spiders. Meanwhile, their friends (the first years) are upset about them leaving but do their best to support them. Malleus is sulking in a corner somewhere though being all "Of course I'm not upset by Yuu leaving why would you think that." while his face is like >:T. Him and Grim comfort each other because ARSON FAMILY LET'S GOOOO.

This is completely unnecessary but I think it's hilarious (and also I want to project without anything being weird): but Lilia, when he sees Miguel, is immediately like "I swear to the Seven I WILL get in this man's pants." and starts relentlessly flirting with him. Miguel is just miserable while Yuu watches, confused but amused, and Silver is kind of tired by his father's antics but does his best to be supportive and talk him up to Miguel. Miguel is desperate to get out of there at this point.

After Miguel gets his gizmo fixed, Kalim throws a big farewell party (rip Jamil) and everybody comes to terms with Yuu leaving. They all say their tearful goodbyes, the first years have a big group hug, and then Yuu and Miguel are gone.

Some time passes, and similar to the ending of Into the Spider-Verse, Yuu shows up again via their own gizmo to hang out with their NRC friends.

[ouran101]

hq! ctt [log 3]

log one | two | you are here

Step 9, continued: how open INCS file

Huh, I could've sworn there was a DOC file in this FE11/SD folder. Oh well, that's okay. I can just roll with it.

From my "Gay Fates" days, I know that the m folder in FE is usually where text data is. In FE11, this one is story, unlike Fates where it's supports.

H-Huh. There's no file suffix. But it opens up in a hex editor just fine.

Going into another folder, I open up a CMD file. It... works... Granted, hex files can range from being script to actual flags for the game. I think.

I try out romfs/test/script/story and grab the prologue_1_1.incs file to get rid of the suffix.

"oh god wtf is this shit"

FE11 had English text show up in the decoded text... but, if you look in the right column of the data inspector... under WideChar / char16_t, it shows a character...!

Two steps later, I discover that, like... every file in the world has hex numbers associated with it. Does that mean that Asian characters would show up in the decoded text?

Granted, prologue_1_1 is a stupidly big file for all this garbled text to be at the bottom.

Opening this file and changing the language (in Notepad++) to Japanese doesn't help either.

I might have to find a Japanese hex editor or something? I caved and went to get the FE11 Documentation again. Again, English shows up fine on the hex editor.

But it only exists on this page as a guide. The real shit is for FE12/NMotE. I actually still have files from the Japanese version of FENM.

Opening up the story chapter from there, I can see that the text is garbled similarly too. So it might be my hex editor, since encoding for other languages is hard.

Going onto Romhacking.net, it turns out that there are several things that I might need to do.

First, I should rip the script. That way, I don't have to mess around in the hex editor trying to figure out wtf someone is saying.

Second, to do this, I'm going to have to make a table. Yes, make a table with like a defining column and row, but also not really. With hexadecimal, you essentially use two "spots" like in the picture above where we have "EC."

Where most games are English and make things easy, Japanese has kanji. What does this mean? This means that because there are over 255 kanji, some characters will actually take up two hexadecimal values. So it would be something like "00 11."

Following the general steps of this tutorial, I need to know 1) how the letters are organized and 2) a reference line from the game to then actually find in the hex editor. This tutorial uses a Gameboy emulator, which sucks because GB has been thoroughly picked apart by now.

(God, I hate all of these ROM hacking tutorials because they never explain anything like I'm five. Even though I understood and did CFW for my 3DS easily, this shit is hard.)

...So, basically, I have to make my own cipher to switch from hex to words. It's probably something that every translating ROM hacker has done, so I can't really complain.

In the tutorial, it shows a picture of the font, and essentially shows it all in order. So "00" would be blank (usually an indicator of some kind called a pointer), "01" would actually be 0. (Hexadecimal is hard in general because it goes "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F," where your 3 = 4 in hex and your 16 = F in hex)

Of course, things will be a bit more complicated for me because 1) text box for current person speaking and 2) variable box for Haikyu-kun's name.

Thankfully, the normal text has a small selection VS what the game calls "name" text. A later problem down the line, but, this text might also appear when selecting a skill. If I have to edit the font tiles later, I'll... have to think about it.

(Speaking of editing font tiles, Kuriimu2 didn't work, so I'll eventually be trying out Crystal Tile 2, infamous in the Pokemon hacking community. Crystal Tile 2 also has a hex editor, apparently, so I'll try that out eventually.)

This is clearly why people work in teams when doing ROM hacking. Anyways, I'm going to take a break because it's been like 5 hours of trying to figure this out. If anything, I'll probably do how all great ROM hacks start out... and just do menus. I understand now, why people only do menus.

[lucemferto]

Hey girl, don’t mind me, I just quickly went and rewrote Dream SMP Season 2.

I’m focusing on the big plot stuff from Season 2, which makes it really easy for me to make it good, because I don’t have to contend with all the hard parts like dialogue and scene pacing and stuff. As an additional challenge to myself, I try to change as little as possible. If I don’t mention stuff (like the Egg-Arc) then that means I’m fine with them the way they are.

I wrote this in an hour, so don't expect it to be good, pls.

Whether you agree or think this is trash, I'd be so interested to hear your thoughts!

ACT I

Fundy’s early arc with Ghostbur, Eret and Phil is great and should stay the way it is. It sets up the character relationships and potential for conflict that we can explore in the future.

Similarly, I wouldn’t change too much about the conflict during Exile with one exception: Both Tommy and Quackity don’t want to include Technoblade. Instead, they believe that they can take one Dream by themselves – this is important for Techno’s, Tommy’s and Quackity’s personal journey later on. In this rewrite, Quackity also didn’t found El Rapids, but instead recruited George & Sapnap to L’Manburg – because his stated goal is to make L’Manburg the strongest nation on the server, so why would he make a rival nation with a plotline that goes nowhere?

What’s also important is that it’s revealed that Dream has a spy in L’Manburg around here. Maybe Tommy confessed his burning of George’s house during a cabinet meeting and word still got out to Dream. Who knows, but it’s important for later.

Something big that I would change about this Act I is that I would give Techno an actual B-plot. As it stands, Techno’s early plotline was just “Grrr, I’m angry that Tommy would use me like that! Someone killed my cows and robbed me! L’Manburg will know my wrath”

3 weeks later

“Nevermind, I’m a pacifist now and live in the arctic”

Instead, we pick up where S1 left off. Techno is intent on destroying L’Manburg and instituting anarchy. During that time, he comes into conflict with Quackity’s henchmen (Fundy, George, Sapnap, etc.) to establish that L’Manburg could be an actual threat to him.

We also have some conflict with Phil. They’re old war buddies, but Phil’s son built L’Manburg and Phil himself is unofficially Tubbo’s advisor. I think them reconstituting their friendship will take up this early part until Tommy’s exile – it makes for a nice foil to Tommy’s and Tubbo’s friendship falling apart.

Technoblade also tries to recruit people like HBomb and Niki to his cause, but they’re hesitant, because, you know, he sent Withers to destroy their home. Not the best first impression. Techno is hurt, but convinced it’s because of L’Manburg propaganda and they don’t want to work with him, because they don’t see him as useful.

ACT II Part 1

Exile-Arc basically stays exactly the same – with one notable difference. When Technoblade comes to visit Tommy it’s not to mock him – it’s as a final attempt to convince Tommy to join him. It’s a first culmination of Techno’s character journey so far: His previous interactions with the citizenry of L’Manburg has left him shaken, but not shaken enough.

Tommy truly does need “The Blade” right now and he has no reason to further believe L’Manburg’s propaganda. So, by Technoblade’s inner logic, Tommy should accept.

But he doesn’t. Tommy viciously rips into Technoblade and gets very personal (he’s in a bad space, understandably) – Techno can play it off nonchalantly, but either the cinematography or some later moment shows us that he was hurt by this.

Nevertheless, he gives Tommy a compass that points to his HQ, showing us that he cares about Tommy, like he did during their early days in Pogtopia.

This is where we implement some big changes. The story of Technoblade and the Butcher Army becomes the A-plot, while the Exile becomes the B-plot.

It makes perfect sense. The Exile-Arc is a very inward-focused, almost a character study of Tommy and Dream. It doesn’t have a lot of big narrative movement – so the perfect time to execute on that narrative movement in the storyline that has a lot of moving pieces.

So, after Tommy chewed him out, Techno is hurt and meets with Philza. Techno then explains that for him anarchy always was the natural order of things – to fight for a world where only the strongest survive – but pursuing anarchy like that has left him empty. Philza then explains that anarchy should be more about helping people and building an equal community.

We’re all but stating a major thematic conflict of this storyline: Fighting those who wronged you vs. Helping those in need. All this while also exploring the philosophy of anarchy with Techno and Philza serving as symbolic stand-ins for some different thoughts on the matter.

So, while Tommy’s Exile is going on, Techno refines his approach. This goes hand in hand with Quackity using his henchman to turn L’Manburg into a totalitarian police state in order to root out Dream’s traitor (told you it would become important later).

This will be the main conflict here in the first half of Act 2. Quackity and Philza will play shoulder-devil and shoulder-angel respectively for Tubbo and Fundy, pulling them in different directions. Ghostbur also hangs around L’Manburg – a constant reminder for Tubbo of the most sanitized version of President Wilbur and the lofty ideas he stood for.

This is another big thematic conflict for this storyline – externalized in part through Ghostbur’s presence: When do the ends no longer justify the means? It also feeds into the motif of Tubbo and Tommy becoming like Schlatt and Wilbur respectively (even if that’s still mostly superficial).

During this political turmoil, Niki is getting into Quackity’s crosshairs. She opposes his policing and brutal methods. So Quackity really focuses in on her and she has to live with constant surveillance, searches, etc. Niki tries to talk to Tubbo about this, but he says it’s necessary to keep L’Manburg safe. Slowly, Niki grows disillusioned with L’Manburg.

It is during this time that Niki gets into contact with Techno and the two start to form a bond and helping the citizenry hold out hope during this time (I don’t know who would be the citizenry, probably people that don’t have their own storyline going on such as HBomb, Vikkstar, Lazarbeam, etc.)

And we can have a few lorestreams like that, where the conceit is that Techno’s sneaking into L’Manburg to help people and there’s actual tension.

All this culminates in Hog Hunt. Fundy sees Phil, Niki and Techno team-up. He confronts them after Techno left and Phil begs Fundy to not out them – but their divide has grown too deep (and we’ve actually shown that during Fundy’s streams this time).

Quackity has Phil and Niki incarcerated (L’Manburg has a prison now, it’s not as good as Pandora’s Vualt). Tubbo is deeply disturbed that Philza and Niki would betray him by working with the man that took one of his canon lives and finally gives the Butcher Army his presidential approval. Quackity was already prepared and the events of Hog Hunt play out as we know them.

ACT II Part 2

Again, plays out relatively similarly, except for one major difference: Tommy comes to Techno with the explicit purpose of asking for his help. Exile has left him really hardened, probably more so than we have currently.

This would a.) make Tommy a bit more proactive in his partnership with Techno and b.) actually gives some weight to Techno’s later beef with Tommy, because now it’s based on more than just some flimsy phrasing during S1.

Otherwise, this plays out relatively similarly – Techno and Tommy maybe share a few more character moments, just to drive home that Techno cares about Tommy. Also, none of that dumb keeping it a secret whether or not we destroy L’Manburg – that’s some contrived nonsense and I hate it.

Tommy knows that Techno wants to destroy L’Manburg and while he’s conflicted, he ultimately goes along with. Once he gets his discs back, everything will be over after all. The destruction of L’Manburg will have been worth it.

Part of the rising action will be breaking Phil and Niki out of prison instead of the petty bullshit about Techno’s items that he doesn’t need. This is where we have the initial confrontation between Tommy and Tubbo (and Techno doesn’t ruin the moment by being his worst self).

Other plot points include: Techno receives the Wither Skulls over the course of him and Tommy working together by some mysterious benefactor. This is after he and Tommy confronted Dream. He doesn’t tell Tommy who the benefactor is, even though he knows (spoilers: it’s Dream).

Meanwhile, Tommy, Techno, Niki and Phil are secretly rigging New L’Manburg with TNT a la Wilbur, just to really drive that comparison home. Niki is getting really angry; she has suffered enough and she’s really gonna get revenge.

One of her big moments of terrorism before the Green Festival is burning down the L’Mantree (maybe we can include some character conflict Fundy, so we have these two people who were once really close friends now so warped and torn apart by these two sides at war).

Meanwhile, Quackity has figured out that Ranboo was the traitor and is pushing for Tubbo to execute Ranboo for the greater good of L’Manburg. Tubbo is hesitant, but as there’s no moderate voice in the cabinet anymore, he concedes to the idea.

Finally, the Green Festival is here. This part is really … tough to rewrite, because you have to accommodate so many different character arcs, but I’ll try my best.

In a move not unlike during the Red Festival, Ranboo is revealed as the traitor and put in the execution cage (because those parallels). Tubbo feels really bad about it.

This is when Tommy and Techno start their assault and unleash the whithers. L’Manburg is under attack and we have the big fight between Tubbo and Tommy. We get the big shout-out “The discs were worth more than you ever were” and the ensuing epiphany on Tommy part.

Techno’s calling for him to explode the TNT, but he doesn’t do it.

Quackity is calling for Tubbo to execute Ranboo, but Tubbo has an epiphany himself and refuses. Both their personal conflicts are resolved here. Also, we have some nice parallelism between Quackity and Techno as Tubbo’s and Tommy’s respective bad influences.

Techno – understandably this time – feels betrayed and hurt. He and Tommy have their shouting match. Quackity tries to attack Techno, but during their match they accidentally trigger the TNT. Quackity’s hunger for power has created the grave of his ambitions.

(Niki is also pissed at Tommy and Fundy is fully distraught, because L’Manburg was everything he had left from Wilbur).

Dream steps out of the shadows and reveals that he was Techno’s mysterious benefactor. He gets his hands on the second disc and gloats to Tommy. The scene from Doomsday plays out only that Techno shows some stings of remorse for helping Dream accomplish what he wanted. (Quackity flees the ensuing chaos).

Dream tries to goad Tommy with the discs, but Tommy doesn’t bite, because he has resolved his Want vs. Need now. Dream is frustrated, but retreats for now.

ACT III

In the aftermath of ACT II, I think it’s very important to hammer home that this wasn’t a win for Techno, Niki or Phil. For that to work I think it’s important to make clear that Tommy’s and Techno’s bond was genuine and that they really cared for each other during the Bedrock Bros thing. Neither of them is happy for how this turned.

Niki is plagued by nightmares and sleeps in a prison cell like in the current canon. She stands in symbolic for the emptiness that vengeance brings. Phil is shaken from his talk to Ghostbur and he’s the one who brings up that maybe what they did wasn’t for the best.

Then Techno and Phil have a discussion about the nature of anarchy again, calling back to that earlier conversation at the beginning of Act 2. Techno also feels empty – his vengeance and the destruction he wrought left him no happier.

Meanwhile, Punz and Tommy are actually spending some quality bonding time. Thanks to the medium, they could simulate that pretty well. Punz actually gets attached and when Dream mentions his coup-de-grâce, the cinematography shows that Punz isn’t too happy about it.

Tommy and Tubbo prepare to fight Dream on their own terms. They know, they have to stop him lest he hurts the people they care about (this makes both of them a bit more proactive in the finale). Punz (as per Dream’s orders) tells Tommy where Dream is hiding. Tommy thanks him, oblivious that Punz is a traitor, but Punz feels bad. He has grown attached to Tommy.

During the Final Disc War we actually get two perspectives: One is Tommy’s and Tubbo’s as we know it (only without the constant “Your discs or Tubbo”-stuff) and the other is Punz’s. He has decided to help Tommy even though there’s nothing monetarily in it for him.

First, he goes to Quackity, but Quackity says that Tommy has betrayed him and L’Manburg and that he gets what’s coming to him.

In a last-ditch effort, he goes to Techno. Here’s where we resolve that thematic conflict (Vengeance vs. Charity) for the Techno-Butcher Army storyline: Quackity has chosen to perpetuate the cycle of vengeance (because he will be the villain in S3), but we want some nice character development for Techno.

Niki is against it and stays put, but Techno and Philza ultimately decide to go with Punz and the others to help Tommy.

Finale plays out the same. Stuff’s still awkward between Techno and Tommy/Tubbo; they haven’t resolved all their problems, but it’s a first step. Some good set-up for S3.

And that’s my basic rewrite. It’s long and probably not the best.

[kylos]

Finding high quality film/tv rips, saving the large files, and screencapping them are half the battle for gifmakers when setting out to make a gifset. Here’s a little guide on this process, including my advice on

Where to download stuff

Where to store your movies/shows

Screencapping programs

Making gifs as HQ as possible, including tips for picking out what to download when you have multiple options (not all 1080p rips of the same movie or tv episode are the same quality and I explain why)

Why screencaps of 4k movies can look weird and washed out and how to fix that

and more

✨ You can find my gifmaking 101 tutorial here and the rest of my tutorials here.

Where can I download movies and shows?

First off, I prefer direct downloading rather than torrenting stuff because it’s faster and with torrenting, there’s more of a risk. Other people downloading the same torrent can see your IP address. This means movie studios can find out you’re downloading their content and can send you a warning letter. The download speed also varies depending on how many other people are seeding it. I would only do it if it’s your only option and you have a VPN or something.

This is THE best guide for pirating I’ve ever seen. I use it for finding sites for books, music, you name it. The part of the guide you’d want to look at is where it says Direct Downloads Link (DDL) sites. My favorite place is Snahp. These ddl sites will have links to their movie/tv rips that are typically hosted on one of these two sites: google drive or mega.nz. You can download stuff from both of those sites for free, but with mega, they have a 5GB file download limit unless you have a premium account. I personally pay the $5 a month membership for mega because it’s worth it imo. You can buy a subscription through the mega app found on the iphone app store (so you’re billed through apple and it’s less scary than giving a random site your credit card info lmao) and as for androids I think mega has an app on there too.

So basically, if you go to http://snahp.it, they’ll have rips for different movies and shows.

You click on the movie title and it’ll take you to a page where they have links for the video which they have uploaded on a variety of sites (including mega).

How do I make my gifs as HQ as possible?

It’s best to gif things that are 1080p. And usually the higher the file size, the better. A really important thing to note is that not all 1080p bluray rips are the same. The piracy groups that rip these files take uncompressed .mkv rips from discs that are anywhere from 10gb to like 50gb, and then run that through video converters to compress the file down so that they’re 2-8gb. Sometimes when that happens, the video quality goes down a LOT. The same goes for TV episodes. One rip could be 800mb, the other could be 3gb and both could claim to be “1080p” but the quality would be NOTICEABLY different. Your best bet is to always pick the rip with the highest file size.

I’ll show you an example with this scene from You’ve Got Mail.

I downloaded 2 different 1080p rip versions of the film. Both claim to be 1080p, but one is 2.41 GB and the other is 9.75 GB. After taking screencaps, it’s obvious that there’s a BIG difference in quality.

(these pictures are best viewed on desktop tumblr)

When it comes to Blu-ray rips, download remux versions of films and shows if possible. Remux means .mkv files that are uncompressed and straight from a Blu-Ray disc. Giffing remux rips cuts down on the possibility of seeing pixel-y effects a LOT in my experience. It’ll take a bit longer to download than typical 1080p rips but it’s worth it imo.

For TV episodes, if you can’t find a Blu-Ray rip, uploads with the word AMZN in it are usually the highest quality and your best bet (unless you see another upload that’s higher in file size - again: always try to pick the highest file size). 'AMZN’ means they’re from a person that ripped the episode from Amazon Prime Video.

Also, even better than 1080p is 4k (2160p). I only really recommend this though if you know you’re going to gif something up close and crop it a lot - like if it’s a big 540x540px close-up gif of a person. You’ll REALLY see the difference if it’s a 1080p vs 4k rip in that situation. I usually don’t bother with giffing 4k files unless it’s the case above because my laptop lags when taking 4k screencaps and it takes longer to load them into photoshop (4k screencaps are usually about 60mb each!)

⭐️ Another thing that’s important is making sure that when you actually make your gifs, you set them to the correct speed (.05 for movies and most shows, and .04 sometimes for reality tv and live broadcasts). Here’s my gif speed guide. Having the right gif speed is really important for making a gifset HQ. You don’t want it to look too slow or too fast.

What’s your favorite video player to take screenshots with?

MPV player, hands down. And I’ve tried a TON of programs over the years. I’ve tried KMPlayer and found that it added duplicate frames (and even missing frames) which is horrible, and I’ve tried GomPlayer which is.....I’m just gonna say it, I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s a little overly complicated in my opinion and it has ads. If you like these programs, more power to you! Use whatever you’re comfortable using. I just like MPV the most because it doesn’t have ads, it’s simple, you can take sequential screencaps with a keyboard shortcut, and it can play 4k movies.

Screencaps I take of 4k 2160p movies look so dull and washed out, like the colors aren’t right. Why is that?

That’s because your computer can’t handle HDR 4k video files. It probably can handle SDR 4k video files, but unfortunately, 99% of 4k rips out there are HDR.

[picture source]

Now, HDR displays just fine on computers that have 4k-HDR capabilities, but most older computers don’t have this ability. Having said that, MPV - the video player I mentioned above can take a 4K-HDR video and fix the colors/lighting in real time so it displays correctly AND take screenshots of it with the fixed colors. If you have an older version of MPV, make sure you download the newest update for this. In my general gifmaking tutorial, there’s a portion on how to install this program on macs. I also just made a video tutorial on how to install it on pcs here!

High quality TV and Movie rips can take up a LOT of space on my computer. Where do you store your files?

I store them on external hard drives. External hard drives are like flash drives but they have a MUCH higher storage capacity. You just plug them into your computer via a usb cord when you need access to the files and it’s that easy. I have two of these Seagate 4TB hard drives in different colors so I can easily pick out whichever one I need. I have silver for my movies (because it makes me think of “silver screen” lmao and it’s easier for me to remember) and then I just have a blue for shows. Now, external hard drives of this size can be $$$$ but it’s worth it imo. Look out for when they’re on sale.

What’s the size limit for gifs now?

It’s 10mb! It used to be 3mb and then last year Tumblr upped it to 5mb. Some gifs initially had distortion because of Tumblr’s switch from the .gif to .gifv format, but they’ve fixed the problem AND increased the upload limit to 10mb.  Just make sure not to add any lossy to a gif.

Lossy is basically a grain you can add to a gif to lower the file size down. Gifmakers (including myself) used to use this as a trick to get the file size down under 3mb. However, since the .gifv update on Tumblr, any gifs with Lossy added will look distorted like it’s a gif made on a phone app or something.

_________________________________

That’s it for this guide! Again, feel free to check out my other tutorials on photoshop, how to center subtitles, download hq movie trailers, and more ✌️

UPDATE 6/23/20 ⚠️

I’ve gotten an ask about this problem 3 times since I’ve uploaded this tutorial, so I thought I’d add this in. If you are experiencing duplicate and/or missing frames in mpv, it is a glitch with the latest version of mpv. download an older version like 0.29.0. this happened to me on my mac and downloading an older version fixed the problem.

[stillbandofbrothersthirsty]

As Far As Friends Go

Chapter 8 (Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6; Chapter 7)

Nixon - March 1944

The new year saw no improvement to Emily and Nixon’s relationship despite his fumbled attempts at reconciliation. Nixon felt that he went out of his way to make small talk with her, to be friendly (especially in the mornings) and to be enthusiastic about her work. Emily was outwardly friendly, to an appropriate degree, but Nixon could sense the barrier she had put up between them. When they had first met, she had been so open and warm, bordering on desperate for his friendship. Now, she made polite small talk and performed her tasks with a new rigid professionalism. Nixon couldn’t help but feel that this behavior was exclusive to him. He saw how she interacted with the men in the pub, in the mess, and on the rifle range; she didn’t seem to have a problem with any of them.

On more than one occasion Nixon found himself complaining to Winters about Emily’s insufferable behavior.

“Didn’t you find her attitude obnoxious before?” Winters asked.

“Yes, but I got used to that. Now she’s changed it up on me again! It's annoying is what it is,” Nixon said.

Winters dipped a spoon into a bowl of soup and brought it to his mouth, patiently waiting for Nixon to continue, “its the unpredictability, the mood swings! Women.” Nixon scoffed.

“Well,” Winters ate another spoonful of soup, “you were a jerk.”

Nixon’s brow furrowed, “not enough of a jerk for her to give me the cold shoulder for three months.”

“Has it been three months?”

Nixon didn’t answer. “You two still talk, I’ve seen you,” Winters said, “maybe she’s focusing on her work. It has gotten busier.”

“Yeah we talk, but not like before. And she seems to have plenty of time to talk to Harry or George Luz.”

Winters’ mouth crooked into a small, thoughtful smile, “why do you think it bothers you so much, Nix?”

Nixon caught his friends smirk, “Oh no,” he shook his head, “its not like that at all. She’s a kid. Besides, I’m invested elsewhere in this boring town."

Winters cocked an eyebrow, “so this really is just about friendship?”

“Friendship, friendliness - I just want things to go back to normal!”

Winters nodded and turned his attention back to his soup, “maybe this is the new normal.”

Nixon was running out of patience and hope. As March crept along he decided that he would simply have to come to terms with the impersonal working relationship that Winters called the new normal.

“Morning,” Nixon entered the intelligence HQ room with a manila folder already in hand. He was flipping through the aerial photos inside.

“Good morning, sir,” Emily said, barely looking up from her typewriter.

“We received some aerial photos this morning. Here look at this,” Nixon said, stretching out a black and white print to Emily.

She took it, “what’s this of?”

“Undisclosed,” Nixon said, “but we’ll be getting a lot more. Our office needs to piece the photos together and start building sand tables of the geography.”

Emily blew air out of her cheeks, “Wow, so this might be..”

“Yeah,” Nixon caught her gaze, “this might be it.”

“Okay, yeah we’ll get started on this.”

“Great.” Nixon shut the manila folder firmly and threw it on Emily’s desk. “Let me know what you need.”



“Will do, sir.”

Nixon waited until his back was turned to roll his eyes. He hated it when she called him sir. No one else would hear it, but he could hear the contempt in her voice. She wasn’t saying sir out of respect. He knew that she was doing it purposely to annoy him. Sure, he couldn’t prove it, but he knew it.

Nixon dropped into his desk chair just as Vest entered the room with uncharacteristic hesitance.

“Uh, Miss Rooney?” Nixon’s dark eyes flicked over to Emily. An unexplainable feeling of dread grew in his stomach. It grew stronger as he saw Emily’s face change. She was sensing the difference in Vest’s energy just as he had. Vest made his way over to her desk with a letter in hand.

“A letter for you,” Vest cleared his throat, “from the war department.”

Nixon sat straighter in his chair as Vest made his awkward retreat from the room. Emily ripped the edge of the envelope with trembling hands and slowly pulled the typed letter from its folds.

Nixon watched her eyes run across the ink-black lines. His heart beat in his ears in anticipation for her reaction. Finally, Emily let out a shuddering breath and the letter dropped from her hands. Fat tears began rolling down her cheeks. She pressed a hand to her mouth in an attempt to squash her sobs, her body folding in on itself as if to guard her from the world around her. Jolted into action, Nixon stood abruptly from his chair and was beside her in two strides. He positioned his body on the edge of her desk, blocking her from the curious looks from the other intelligence staff.

“What happened?” he asked in a low voice.

Emily shut her eyes tightly against the tears, she shook her head indicating her inability to speak. Instead, she held up the letter. Nixon took it and read,

Dear Miss Rooney,

The following information is provided in regards to your fiancee, Corporal John Elliott. Your fiancee sustained significant wounds of the left leg and arm and on 11 March, 1944 was reported as being in a naval hospital in London, England for further treatment. You may be sure that he is….

Nixon stopped reading as confused relief softened the knot in his stomach. 

“Wounded, wounded in action,” he said.

Emily nodded. She ran her finger tips under her eyes. Her cheeks were sopping wet with tears, her eyelashes heavy with salt.

“Here,” Nixon handed her the handkerchief from his pocket. “It’s clean. Well, cleanish.”

Emily accepted it and swallowed hard, doing her best to compose herself. She patted her cheeks dry with the fold of the linen cloth.

“You okay?” Nixon placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. This was their first physical interaction in months, but neither of them seemed to think anything of it. It was such a natural action considering the circumstances.

“Yeah,” she gulped, “I’m alright.” Emily exhaled, “it took me by surprise is all.”



“Naturally,” Nixon rubbed her back.

“I don’t know why I’m such a mess,” Emily’s voice cracked with emotion.

“You don’t need to excuse your reaction,” Nixon murmured, “this is big, scary news.”



“I thought- I just thought that it was going to say he was dead.”

“I know, I thought so too.”

“Lew, I - I was,” she hesitated.

“What?” he encouraged her.

“Never mind,” she screwed her face up as if thinking against what she was about to say. Her lips were swollen from crying, her lipstick slightly smudged from the press of her hand. “If he’s wounded I have to see if I can visit him.”

Nixon nodded, “absolutely.”



“Do you think we could find out where he’s at?”

Nixon grimaced with uncertainty, “uhm, I mean it’s not our branch. But I’ll see what I can do.” Nixon was conflicted; this seemed awful personal for him to get involved with. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to get involved with Emily’s business considering how things had been between them lately. Then again, this could be his chance to make amends, to show her that he meant well by her.

“Lewis, thank you!” her voice was full of gratitude and looking down at her red rimmed gray eyes, Nixon prayed he would be able to find the hospital easily.

A few days later Nixon interrupted Emily at lunch, which she was once again spending with Welsh.

“I found him,” Nixon announced. He expected Emily look more excited.

“Oh thank you, Nix! Where is he?” Emily asked.

Okay, back to some version of a nickname, Nixon observed. That was a good sign. “Worcestershire.”

“Who’s this?” Welsh looked between Emily and Nixon.

“Worcestershire? I thought he was in London?”

“He was. He was originally with an evacuation hospital but has since been moved to a convalescent hospital in Worcestershire.”

“Ah, okay,” Emily said.

“That’s a good thing,” Nixon said, “he’s on the mend! And Worcestershire is only north of here.”

“Who’s this we’re talking about?” Welsh asked again, this directed just at Emily. 


“Right, I guess I should go up this weekend,” Emily spoke more to herself than the men. “I guess I’ll have to make sure…” she trailed off lost in thought.

“You’ve got my permission. That’s all you need,” Nixon said.

Welsh opened his mouth again but didn’t have the chance to speak before Nixon interjected, “her fiancee Harry, we’re talking about her wounded fiancee.”

“Ah,” Harry looked down at his plate suddenly uninterested in the conversation.

“Get the train Saturday morning and plan to be back by Sunday night, okay?” Nixon rapped his knuckles on the wooden dining table. “Okay, I’ll see you both later,” and he walked off without Emily’s confirmation.

The Friday before she was set to leave Emily was a ball of nerves. She was constantly tapping her foot, or getting up to walk around aimlessly. Her restlessness was grating on Nixon’s nerves, which was the last thing he needed with the headache he was nursing.

“Would you relax?” he finally snapped.

“Sorry, sorry,” Emily stilled her foot. But then only a few minutes later her fingers began drumming against her desk. The rigid tension between them had relaxed slightly since the letter had come but Nixon still felt like he was walking on eggshells. He was worried about being too harsh with her or of saying anything insensitive. The last couple of days he had been careful to be extra kind to her. The stress of seeing her fiancee again for the first time in at least a year, and knowing that he would be both physically and mentally different than he had been, was a lot to carry. Nixon knew this. He had taken it upon himself to offset her edginess but boy was he finding that particularly difficult at that moment.

“What’re you gonna be like when we get to the continent huh?” Nixon demanded, “that’s gonna be stressful too, are you gonna be able to handle it?” So much for not being too harsh or insensitive.

Emily scowled at him from her desk, “leave me alone, Nixon. I’ll be fine when we get to the continent. Will you? Gunfire isn’t great for a hangover.”

Nixon narrowed his eyes at her but didn’t say anything more. Finally, they made it to dinner and she excused herself early due to her early departure in the morning. A peculiar sensation came over him as he watched her leave. Seeing her walk away in her woolen skirt with pieces of her dark, red-brown hair flying away from where they were pinned down felt like some sort of goodbye. An anxiety that she was leaving to join her fiancee never to come back tickled at the back of his mind. Beside him, Harry Welsh was looking after her in just the same way. Nixon couldn’t help but wonder what that meant for both of them.

Nixon didn’t have plans for the weekend. He had a loose arrangement with a beautiful young local woman but didn’t feel particularly motivated to call after her that Saturday. His mind was with Emily, worrying if she had made it to the hospital safely. He squandered the day away in bed, then the pub and during a brief window of sunshine, walking around the outskirts of town.

England was beginning to defrost into Spring. When Nixon looked out at the rolling hills of Wiltshire, he could almost pretend he wasn’t there because of a war. He might have been there to study, or to visit family friends. There was a peacefulness in the open plains that surrounded the town of Aldbourne. Every stone, field, and building held a storied past that seemed to look past the impending events as if to say I have been here before and I will be here after.

Later that night Nixon excused himself from a game of poker for a cigarette outside. It was chilly out, but he was grateful for the fresh air while it wasn’t raining. He was stood just in front of the steps leading ups to the HQ building when he spotted a figure making its way up the driveway, suitcase in hand. It was a woman’s figure and Nixon’s first thought was another nurse was coming to join the ranks. But it was such a late hour for a new member of staff to check in. As the figure grew closer he recognized her.

“Emily?” he asked in confusion. Her features became clearer as she stepped into the dim light coming from the building. There was a bizarre expression on her face. Nixon didn’t know what to think of her. “Emily?” he repeated, “what’re you doing back?”

She didn’t smile, but her countenance was calm, serene even. Her eyes were wide and bright despite the limited light. She parted her red lips and with the intonation of surprise said, “I’m free, Lew.”

[mobius-prime]

239. Sonic the Hedgehog #171

I Am

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

This is a fantastic story, and a great example of the kind of storytelling Ian is capable of in comparison to his predecessors. Shadow is pissed that Eggman was leading him on all this time, holding onto both Eggman and Snively and coldly interrogating them on the location of Gerald's diary. Eggman is furious, claiming ownership of both the diary and Shadow and demanding that Shadow put him down, but Shadow merely turns his attention to a terrified Snively instead. Snively gives up the information out of fear, and Shadow rips off the six solitary hairs on his head as punishment for "wasting his time." As Snively freaks out, Shadow heads to Eggman's private study to locate the diary.

Well that's a weird bait-and-switch, hiding a disc in a book like that. Shadow makes for Knothole, while Sonic enters Freedom HQ next to Knuckles, still frustrated about not being able to find Fiona. When he mentions her recent disappearances, Tails becomes distressed and runs out of the room, confusing both Sonic and Knuckles, as Sonic had thought they'd resolved their disagreements over him dating Fiona despite Tails' infatuation. Before they can discuss much more about Fiona's absences, however, Tails comes running back in, this time with news about Shadow's approach and Eggman's robots giving chase.

This is why you wear clothes, Shadow. Clothes with pockets. Shadow swallows his pride and begs Sonic and Tails for help, knowing that this disc is his final hope to find out his true purpose in life. Sonic cheerfully agrees, but once Tails gets a good look at the data on his computer, he says that the combination of damage from the attack and the age of the disc has corrupted a lot of the data, meaning that if they try to dig around on it the entire thing might become unusable. Nicole chimes in with an idea - namely, that she pull Shadow into the disc in a kind of virtual reality simulation, which might give them a chance to sift through the relevant data more quickly before everything falls apart. Sonic insists on coming along into the disc with Shadow, while Tails and Knuckles stand guard in the real world. Soon, they're in, with Sonic pleasantly surprised to see Nicole standing next to them in her lynx form, complimenting her on her "look." I feel like a compliment like that goes further when you're not just talking about someone's outfit, but their entire body that they designed themselves from scratch. They begin to wander the digital halls, which look like the halls of the ARK, but right as a figure in a dress approaches them, alarms begin blaring within Freedom HQ. Tails and Knuckles realize somehow they've been tracked here, and turn as one to look at Snively's six stolen hairs, discarded on a nearby table. Yes, that's right. Snively put trackers on his hairs, apparently for just such an occasion as this, because he's insane. Great use of your uncle's technology, Snively! Tails remains behind to keep an eye on the digital travelers while Knuckles races out to hold off Snively.

I've often thought myself that a potential friendship between Shadow and Knuckles has been severely neglected within the games. After all, Shadow's had quite a few life experiences that would likely strike a chord with Knuckles, and vice versa. I like that Ian actually acknowledges some of this here, and that Knuckles takes Shadow's search for a purpose personally. In the diary, Shadow is stunned to find himself face to face with a digital version of Maria, who happily greets him. When Shadow tells her that he's been locked away for fifty years and is still searching for his life's purpose, Maria leads them into an adjacent room, where Professor Gerald awaits. Unfortunately, the data is fragmenting more quickly by the moment, so Gerald quickly explains the true circumstances of Shadow's creation. Those who have played his titular game already know it all, but I'll give a brief summary here for those who haven't - Gerald was searching for a cure for Maria's rare and fatal disease, Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (this never got a name in the games), and ended up with the idea to create an immortal life form to research a potential cure. However, without the necessary knowledge to create such a being, he ended up seeking the help of Black Doom, the head of the Black Arms hive mind, who donated his own DNA to go towards Shadow's creation. However, the price was that in fifty years he and his race would return to the planet to eat every living being on it, so Gerald ensured that Shadow was also equipped to be a savior of the world, with all the abilities necessary to fight off the Black Arms and save Mobius. At this point, the diary begins to degrade in earnest, and Nicole insists that they have to leave immediately.

I love that in the comics, Shadow actually gets this final moment to say goodbye to Maria. I mean, a huge part of his past with her is meant to hinge on how sudden and tragic her death was, but this ultimately allows him some closure, even if he's only saying goodbye to a digital facsimile of her. Sonic and Shadow emerge from the digital realm, and a panicked Tails informs them that Knuckles is losing his fight against Snively outside, as Snively is still pissed about the loss of his hair. Shadow, without a word, snatches up the hairs from the table and rushes outside to smash Snively's mech and deliver perhaps the best version of his "I Am" speech in any Sonic canon, ever.

You go, Shadow! After everything he's been through, he deserves this moment of certainty and power. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails watch, simultaneously proud and amused, happy for him but also sure that he'll be back to brooding after all this is over. Sonic then says that now that that's taken care of, he's going to go find Fiona and finally figure out why she's been disappearing on him so much lately. Good luck, buddy, cause I have a feeling we already know why…

Separating this story and the back-up, we have not just one or two, but four pages containing data files on various aspects of Mobius! In order, they cover the Master Emerald, power rings, Chaos Emeralds, chao, and Flickies. As is common with these data files, most of the information is stuff we already know from previous issues, so there's no need for me to recap here. The info on chao is mostly taken from the games, particularly the information on how they grow up, reincarnate, and express their emotions. The only real new info we get is that apparently, recently, some Flickies have been spotted around Knothole, and no one is really sure if this means that the portal to their home dimension has opened back up, or if there's another flock of them out there somewhere that hasn't been discovered yet. Ian has a distinct penchant for planting plot seeds and bringing back plot points from much earlier in the series, so you can be sure that they'll be coming back at some point in the future.

Enforcers

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

In contrast to the previous one, I have… some problems with this story. Well, I suppose it's not with this story in itself, but rather some details shown within it that have an effect on the comic's larger plot as a whole. If there's one big criticism I do have of Ian, it's the fact that he seems very eager to get rid of a lot of Penders' old worldbuilding, or at least render it useless. Case in point: despite one of Penders' final issues depicting Echidnaopolis being rebuilt after the dingo occupation, apparently it's been razed once again, and the few survivors have relocated to some random wilderness clearing and built suspiciously-Knothole-esque huts and named their crappy little village "Echidnaopolis" after their fallen city. How can a city that once contained over a hundred thousand people have fallen so far as to be represented by a dozen huts? Well, apparently over 90% of the city's inhabitants were killed during the occupation, either in concentration camps or otherwise in the Egg Grapes! I actually actively dislike this quite a bit. Of course not all of Penders' worldbuilding was stellar, but I was fond of a lot of it, particular the intricate interactions between different factions that defined a lot of his work. By wiping out both the city and most of its population, Ian has quickly rendered most of that build-up completely meaningless, and the ensuing plots that involve the echidnas feel oversimplified, because they're missing a lot of that rich backstory that once defined them as a race. Unfortunately, this isn't a one-time thing, as future plots are not kind to the echidnas either. I can't help but feel that a storyline that combined Kenders' worldbuilding skills with Ian's storytelling skills would have been utterly fascinating, but alas, that's not what we're getting here.

Well, no use moping about it I suppose. "Echidnaopolis" is under attack from yet another contingent of dingoes, who threaten Lara-Le and Wynmacher along with their baby, but a warp ring suddenly appears and the Destructix emerge from it. They begin fending off the attacking dingoes, and a nearby Locke, watching but not helping (asshole) is surprised to see them fighting for his people, as he only knew them as villains before now. Finitevus then appears behind him, and despite Locke's surprise at seeing him again, he explains that the Destructix work for him now and he truly wants to help his people. Locke is naturally highly suspicious, so Finitevus brings in a familiar face to vouch for him…

Well, I suppose this explains Dimitri's comments from the revised M25YL timeline! Nice to see you again, Dimitri! Remember, the last time anyone has seen him in this timeline was right after Knuckles saved his life at the cost of his own before the Tossed in Space time skip. Finitevus offers Locke one of his warp rings, so that Locke can leave and continue his hunt for his missing family members, promising that he'll look after things here. Locke continues to remain suspicious, voicing his intentions to come back to frequently check up on him, but eventually, is swayed by Finitevus and accepts the ring.

Wow, we never saw a betrayal from Finitevus coming! Dimitri follows Finitevus through yet another warp ring into the Chaos Chamber, disgusted with himself - apparently Finitevus convinced him to lie to Locke in return for some mysterious favor. Finitevus approaches the Master Emerald, and reveals his true intentions - he plans to use the emerald's power to bring back Enerjak, once again transforming Dimitri into his superpowered, deadly alter ego. I'm sure that will go well…

[trinketprince]

Analyzing the IDW Sonic Issue #24 cover

Cause it actually gives us a pretty good insight on which characters will/allowed to appear in this series! (or at least I assume)

Ok so just to give some general context, Ian Flynn has said in a previous interview that classic era characters won’t appear. IDW Sonic, (at least for now, is strictly Modern Era)

So we can expect to not see these following characters in the IDW Sonic comic-verse for a good while.

Classic Versions of Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Eggman and Metal Sonic

Segasonic the Hedgehog (Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel)

Sonic the Fighters (Honey the Cat, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Bear)

Sonic Triple Trouble (Fang the Sniper/Nack the Weasel)

Tails’ Sky Patrol (Carrotia, Focke-wulf, Bearenger, Witchcarter)

Sonic R (Metal Knuckles, Tails Doll) 

Silver Sonic

Battle Kukku Empire (XV, Speedy and Doctor Fukurov)

Chaotix (Heavy and Bomb)

But in IDW Sonic Issue #3, Sonic mentions The Hooligans, so at the very least they can mention the existence of classic characters. 

But this restriction of characters does beg the questions though? What is and isn’t off limits in IDW Sonic?

Apart from Classic Universe, there are three other universes that come from the sonic games. Boom Universe, (though quite loosely-considered as a universe) Storybook Universe and (a more sketchy, loosely considered as a universe) Chronicles Universe.

In the case of Boom!Sonic, given the design of Sonic and the rest of the cast, we can outrule Sticks the Badger and Lyric from appearing, not sure if they’re allowed to reference them though. 

In the case of Storybook!Sonic, they’re allowed to reference the storybook games (as shown in IDW Sonic Issue #16). However using characters such as Shahra and Merlina is also unclear (but I’d guess they won’t appear).

In the case of Chronicles!Sonic, given the whole Ken Penders thing, I bet that Shade and the rest of the characters won’t even be given an allusion to.

Well how about one-off characters? Characters that appeared once or a few times in Sonic’s adventures?

Well, this is where this cover helps! See, as of the current issue, IDW Sonic Issue #22, a generous amount of characters has appeared.

The Main Cast (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy)

Returning Cast from Forces (Wisps, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Shadow, Rouge, Omega, Silver)

Antagonists from Forces (Eggman, Metal Sonic, Orbot, Cubot)

IDW exclusive new characters (Tangle, Whisper and her former Squad, Rough, Tumble, Jewel, Dr. Starline and others)

Returning cast not in Forces (Cream, Vanilla, Cheese, Chocola, Gemerl, Blaze, The Babylon Rouges (In a spin-off comic))

Returning Villains not in Forces (Zeti)

That’s almost everybody we see in this cover... except for a few characters.

That’s right, some previously unseen characters like Big the Cat, Froggy, and Marine the Raccoon of all characters, are seen again.

In Big’s case, it isn’t as jarring. He was bound to appear sometime, being apart of Team Rose, appearing in Sonic Adventure, his role in the Sonic games is far too big to skim over. In fact we actually may have an idea on where he is in the current arc. In IDW Sonic issue #22, page 5, we see a speech bubble, “Froggy?! Where are you?!”.

While Big is not explicitly shown in the actual issue, he is most well known for this phrase and his love and concern for Froggy, his pet frog. This suggests he may be present in the Restoration HQ...

... His fate, however, whether he got infected by the metal virus or not is undetermined. 

After scanning the room for people who has not been infected Gemerl stated that every one in there are already in different states of infection. So unless Big has somehow escaped (which to be honest, his character seems to be the type to pull surprises)...

... Big is already infected and left behind with Vector, Charmy and Vanilla.

Now for Marine. Blaze originally came to Sonic’s dimension because she felt something was wrong. 

She is introduced to Tangle as a princess from another dimension who wields the Sol Emeralds. She eventually joins the fight against Neo Metal Sonic and taking back Angel Island. 

At the end of IDW Sonic Issue #12, she says her work is done and decides goes back to the Sol Dimension.

In the Sonic 2019 Annual Issue, there is a story that involves Blaze visiting Silver’s Garden. 

And according to David Mariotte, the 2019 issue takes between issues #12 and #15. So Blaze was still in Sonic’s universe until at most before the Metal Virus arc started.

In the Metal Virus arc, Blaze is absent, most likely already having returned to the Sol Dimension. So with the appearance of Marine, does Blaze return back to Sonic’s dimension in this arc? Does she bring Marine along? Why?

And the presence of the Babylon Rogues and Jewel in the cover coupled with the solicitation description for IDW Sonic Issue #24:

“The Last One Out" As the Metal Virus spreads, Tangle's hometown of Spiral Hill Village stands as one of the last strongholds of the uninfected. Sonic, Tangle, and the remaining heroes of the Restoration make a stand, but will it be enough?

And the fact that the last time the Rogues and Jewel were last seen was during the jewel heist at Mineral Museum suggests that they will appear there once more.

Does the appearance of Marine, who’s only appearance in the game series is Sonic Rush Adventure, and the Babylon Rogues, who only appeared in the Sonic Riders spin-off games, suggest that other one-off characters will reappear in this continuity? Like Tikal and Chaos from Adventure, Elise from 06 and Yacker from Colors?

Speculation:

Yeah remember when I said that Big is the type to pull surprises? I bet that in a later issue it will be revealed that Big got on the ship safely. However, Froggy is infected, Big, who cares for Froggy too much, couldn’t bare to leave him behind. I mean, that one throwaway dialogue could be a clue for what’s to come. He compromises the safety of the ship, spiraling the mood of the heroes down further. I think that someone of note is gonna get infected, other than Big. And that would send Cream’s mood to be even more desolate. 

It can’t be Tails cause he’s working on the cure, he’s got plot protection cause he needs to bounce back from his mistake (dropping the cure, and it’s incomplete). Sonic is plot protected as well and Knuckles is on Angel Island. Espio needs to avenge the Chaotix so he has a flimsy plot shield. Tangle is needed because something is definitely gonna happen in Spiral Hill, where Jewel is currently in, so she’s protected. 

I think it’s Amy. Just think about it, she’s one of the main 4, she’s the head of Restoration, she’s been doing so well, handling everything that comes at her, She is the face of the restoration and who many people rely on. She is Cream’s role model. And she promised Vanilla that she’d protect Cream. When you take her away, everything seems more hopeless and desolate, one of the main pillars of the sonic franchise has crumbled, and now the metal virus seems more dangerous than ever.

It can also be Whisper, Whisper and Tangle’s spinoff series ends exactly before issue #23 will come out. And in the spinoff, one of it’s main themes is the friendship that Whisper and Tangle have. They’ve become close to rely on each other. And as much as I hate to think it, Whisper may be “fridged” to boost Tangle’s desire to save her friends in issue #23. A setup for issue #24, where the metal virus goes to Spiral Hill, where Jewel is. 

Now why am I mentioning Cream’s role here? Well it’s because Cream is the hidden star of this arc. Think about it. Charmy’s infection is the catalyst for Sonic to check up on Cream and her family. Gemerl’s main purpose is to protect Cream, and he is currently the protector of the uninfected, given that all other “protector” characters, are currently unavailable (Sonic is infected, Shadow has turned, Silver is busy, Blaze is not yet there, Omega is ripped, Vector is infected, Amy will soon turn). Chocola and Cheese, her friends, compromised Tails’s cure. Vanilla turned in front of her eyes. So many of the events are centered around Cream, and there will definitely be one more catalyst for her big role.

Enter Marine and Blaze. Cream is friends with Blaze, finding friendship with one another in Sonic Rush. And in the cover, we can see Cream holding hands with Marine. There will definitely be an interaction between the two of them considering that 

All characters in the cover are posed in a way where all interactions have meaning. (Babylon Rogues are together, Chaotix are together, Dark are together, etc.) Why pose Cream and Marine like this when they’ve never interacted before?

Both are related to Blaze in a way, mayhaps a humorous introduction may happen between the two “Oh Hello Ms. Blaze!” “I’m her real bestfriend!” etc.

If Amy does turn, Cream, for once in her life will be alone, Amy is gone, Vanilla, Cream and Chocola have turned, and if I’m right, Big is already infected as well. Even the more minor friends she has like Sonic is infected, Tails is busy, Knuckles is MIA and Vector (Sonic Riders), has already turned. Blaze will be the only person left, a sister figure that Cream can cling onto.

And as a final catalyst, A few more people will get infected, whether it will be Tails, or Sonic or Blaze, I can’t guess. But what I will guess is that Cream will definitely have a big role in this arc’s ending.

Aurgh! I’m just so excited for the upcoming issues, and seeing this cover definitely made my brain churn!! 

[snowflake-apocalypse]

The Shanghai Hardrive Caper

-Notes: I was trying to turn the angst meter up to 11 on this one.

*Musical inspiration: Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks, Vitamin Sting Quartet: How to Save a Life (Or whatever version you like)*

|Prelude|

So 3 years have gone by. 3 years worth a capers and plotting and way too close of calls.

Once Mission Control is unveiled, the whole team, especially Carmen are worn to the bone. But one incident in particular really opened everyone’s eyes. They knew what they were doing was dangerous, but still. After Player unveiled Mission Control, he’s giving the grand tour and everyone can’t help but collectively stare at the 3 V.I.L.E hardrives on display in the center of the computer rig. Hard earn trophies of their conquests, though with a tired, forlorn spirits. It took a lot to get to this point.

Everyone has mostly settled in for the night. Carmen is sitting at the main computer, in some kind of thought, staring at the hardrives, when Julia quietly walks up.

Carmen: “Hey.”

Julia: “Hi.”

Carmen: “So what do you think of the place?”

Julia: “It’s brilliant. .. It took so much to get here.” Julia gazes up to the hardrives on display.

Carmen: “Yeah,.. it did. ...Berlin.” Carmen says with a fond smile as she places a hand on the Berlin hardrive.

Julia: “Shanghai.” She says sharply.

Carmen sighs and lowers her head in defeat. They didn’t really talk about Shanghai. No one did. Not really. Got a very stern talking to by Shadowsan and some comprehensive samurai training. But things cleared up a bit after the Big Apple Caper.

Julia: “ ...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so cold, it’s just no one talked about what happened. Not really.”

Carmen: “It was my fault. I was reckless and self-righteous. I resented V.I.L.E. so much I lost sight of myself. ... You know what the worst part was?”

Julia: “Being cooped up in that apartment for 2 months?” She was gonna say “Nearly bleeding to death?” But she bit her tongue.

Carmen: “Not talking to you for 2 months.”

{Flashback}

On the skyscrapers of Shanghai, Carmen has a V.I.L.E. hardrive in hand, she’s fighting Tigress, who isn’t relenting, she’s angry. Tigress gets a swipe in, razor sharp claws make contact with Carmen’s side and she digs in, with satisfaction. Carmen raises a leg to separate them, breaking Sheena’s arm, which gets Carmen kicked off the building. She shoots a line to a nearby ledge, only of it to be cut by a finely crafted origami star. Paper Star is here too. Carmen doesn’t have time to react as she hits a ledge and tumbles further down, eventually making it to the alley way with an additional broken leg. Julia watched the whole thing happen and she’s mortified. She doesn’t voice her concern out loud... ACME is everywhere. She rushes the quarter mile or so to Carmen’s side.

Julia: “Carmen... oh my-“ She doesn’t get another word in before Carmen is shoving the hardrive to her.

Carmen: “Run, Jules. Just take it and run.

Julia: “I am not just going to leave you here-”

Carmen: “Just go! ....Please.”

Reluctantly, Julia takes the hardrive and disappears into the night of the crowded city.

Player: “Zach, Ivy, Carmen needs help. Get there. Now.”

Ivy: “On it. Hang on, Carm. We’re coming for you. Click away.”

Then from out of the shadows and above, Tigress and Paper Star loom over Carmen. Tigress rips open her coat for the hardrive.

Tigress: “What..? Where is it?!”

Carmen: ”Ha... guess I lost it....” As the adrenaline is wearing off and she struggles to remain conscious. Sheena is pissed.

Tigress: “ ...ERR!” And a sharp blow to the head and Carmen is out cold and left for dead. Tigress and Paper Star run out into the city. All the while, Julia is listening to this entire conversation. Player kind of went into autopilot.. way to cope with what just happened.

Player: “Julia. You have the hardrive?”

Julia: “...yes. Zach, Ivy have you made to the alley yet?

Zach: “Just pulled up. Oh, man... Carm’s in bad shape. Real bad. We’re goin’ back to the hideout.” To much of Julia’s dismay, she thinks, “Because they could never go to a hospital, right?”

Shadowsan is contacted and meets them there.

|The Hideout|

Once at the hideout, Zach and Ivy are trying to keep Carmen from bleeding all over the floor, and stabilize her leg when Shadowsan appears from the window. Disappointment and also concern framing his face.

Shadowsan: “Get me needle and thread, boiling water, and gauze. A lot of gauze.

Ivy: “Yeah on it.”

Shadowsan: “Oh, Black Sheep...”

And then not to mention, Shadowsan ends up breaking into a blood bank for more blood to replace the all she lost...

|The Rendezvous|

Player: “Julia, I’ll send a red drone to rendezvous for the drive at your location.”

Julia: “Why is this the first concern right now?”

Player: “Because it’s important to Carmen.”

And Jules just drops her head in defeat.

(This is where Player and Julia differ, they both care deeply about Carmen, but Player is that tried & true person that’s going do whatever it takes to do right by their best friend. Julia however, she’s lived a bit longer, still somewhat new to this capering business(and certainly never one this brutal), she would rather Carmen be happy and healthy and alive, even if it meant letting V.I.L.E get away with one hardrive.

|A Week Later...|

So Carmen is stable. They moved hideouts between that time. Julia comes to see how Carmen is doing.

Julia: “How are you feeling?”

Carmen: “Oh, y’know, just a bit sore. How’s everything at HQ?” Carmen nonchalantly says, as Julia glances at the empty blood bags in the trash can.

Julia: “....I know how badly you want to take down V.I.L.E., Carmen.. but how much is enough?

Carmen: “... V.I.L.E. has to be destroyed. They’re toxic and corrupt and- It just- has to, Jules.”

Julia: “After law enforcement is standing over your broken body? Their broken bodies?” She motions to Zach and Ivy, who are, “not” listening from the other room. (And neither is Shadowsan from the balcony.) “You could have died..”

Carmen: “But I didn’t.” She says it in a very 😏 kind of way.

And Julia can’t take it, she growls in frustration and storms out of the building, slamming the door behind her.

Carmen: “Wha- Julia wait! I- ah..!” Carmen nearly falls off the couch, straining her injuries trying to go after her. But it’s too late, she’s gone. For the better part of 2 months. Carmen just smacks her head to her knee, “Stupid!” she berates herself. Zach cautiously walks out to the living room.

Zach: “..Did we just lose Jules?”

Carmen: “Yeah, I think we did.” Carmen mumbles in defeat.

Then the scene fades to black. Time skip

|8 Weeks Later...|

Everyone is still laying low for the most part, Carmen is mostly healed. Zach and Ivy are scoping out potential targets. Shadowsan is closely surveilling V.I.L.E. from the island. Through the 2 months of healing, Carmen had done everything she could to grow and become a better adversary for V.I.L.E..

Carmen: “Player. How’s decoding the hardrive going?”

Player: “It’s fine.”

Carmen: “Fine.... are you mad at me too?”

Player: “I’ll never be mad at you, Red. But Julia was right. You were getting too reckless.”

Carmen: “Yeah, she’s always right.” She mumbles, studying the passerbys and life outside of the apartment window.

Player: “Hm?”

Carmen: “Nothing.”

Player: “Hey, look at this! Turns out V.I.L.E. is pretty active in the stock exchange.... seems like a low impact caper. How are you feeling?” Carmen’s eyes widen at the sudden excitement in Player’s voice.

Carmen: “Fidgety and ready to get out of this dang apartment. Plus, white collar crime is where the real money is, after all.” As she packs a new hat and coat.

Player: “Booking the flight and calling the cavalry.”

Carmen: “New York City, here we come.”

| Continues in “The Big Apple Caper”|

[shin-uroborus]

I forgot I haven't posted WWX and JC's reploid designs in here rip. There's more in my dA, but I'm pasting in brief descriptions for you guys anyways. LWJ’s design can be seen in this post here.

If you want to ask me about the MDZS terms, ask ahead, or IM me. ovo

First comic re: LWJ’s/L-02′s earpieces

My attempt to adapt LWJ's pink blushy ears from the original MDZS novel in the end helped carry over the forehead ribbon (adapted into the headgear+earpiece+shades combo) being a sensitive object, albeit for a different reason.

LWJ was originally programmed to only glow in three colours like BioShock Big Daddies (WWX nicknamed him “Lan daddy” and it spread across the entire Far East HQ rip) but Madam Lan enhanced the lights to help express more emotions, linking it better with his electronic brain than originally planned. The other two lead scientists, Qingheng-jun and Lan Qiren were not expecting this. QHJ was fine with it, but LQR accepted it only grudgingly.

J-0WB/WWX was the only one who can get that kind of reaction/(flustered) pink glow from LWJ. After falling for him post-X6, LWJ's earpieces will reliably glow pink when he's in proximity with WWX.

The reason why LWJ's emotional parts were not turned off or removed despite him being a machine is because emotions will inevitably occur in creatures with enough intelligence such as humans, elephants, primates, and corvids. QHJ, LQR, and Madam Lan were concerned that if his emotional parts were tampered with, it will affect his intelligence and in turn his performance. This is why they resorted to education (like X's moral testing) to suppress his emotions. LQR was strict (being the only scientist between the three whose stance on reploids being "they're just machines") but QHJ was lenient and Madam Lan emphasized the concept of emoting when he can afford to.

The pic of the three MDZS reploids They’re meant as accompaniments to trivia. Will paste in bits and pieces. (For LWJ) Designed to be the killing machine to circumvent X's "feelings problem" (rip X, dude was just in the wrong workplace), L-02 was also given his own version of "variable weapons system" except it works more like Zero's various weapons. L-02's left hand can morph into weapons. It's mostly used for his sword Bichen, but can also be used for other weapons like drills or machine guns. I purely did this, at first, for the BioShock Big Daddy reference, though, coupled with his earpieces that (normally) glow like Big Daddy helmets. But then this takes on even more significance for his arc because he ends up replacing it with a tracking module called "Inquiry" for the sake of tracking J-0WB who goes MIA sometime during X6, despite the objections of the only one of his creators and guardians who survived Eurasia (LQR). His multiple weapons system will later be given to his successor, L-03 "Sizhui".

(For WWX) J-0WB/WWX doesn't just fight with his buster or bayonet saber. He is also proficient in item crafting and engineering, and had modified his buster to both be able to fire standard energy shots and various bullets to be loaded. In turn, he can craft bombs to either be thrown or loaded into his buster.

(For JC) Zidian is exported to MMX with no problems here, except without the ring form because reploids pull or morph their weapons out of nowhere anyway (see: Axl's guns.). For non-MDZS readers, Zidian is basically an electric whip that can exorcise spirits forcefully possessing one's body. But here in the MMX verse, there is no magic, so Zidian can't whip the virus out of the reploid, so it functions like a normal electric whip. 

WWX and JC After Doppler supposedly invented a cure for the Maverick virus (before X3 but after X2), the reploid industry boomed, leading to innovations left and right, including in China. One such laboratory in the innovation boom is the Lotus Pier laboratory, owned by Jiang Fengmian, who is also the lead scientist along with his colleague and co-owner Yu Ziyuan, who happens to be a prodigy. JFM has feelings for Cangse Sanren, who had unfortunately (for him) married his best friend Wei Changze. CSSR had also wanted to join in the innovation bandwagon along with WCZ, but they are laymen compared to JFM, who owns the laboratory; they have the skills, but not the money. JFM's feelings for CSSR (and his connection with WCZ) led him to incorporate them into his laboratory and even let them work on their project. Their project was initially planned to be a maverick hunter-type/combat model reploid, but JFM and YZY were already working on one such model themselves, which is J-02. A compromise was reached in which CSSR and WCZ's existing project is to be retooled as a support model and what combat faculties already in there will serve as some sort of "prototype" (i.e. they work on it but the experience from working on it will be used for YZY and JFM's project) for YZY and JFM's combat model. Because of this joint venture, CSSR and WCZ's finished reploid "Wei Wuxian" was given the serial number J-0WB. The relationship between JFM and YZY is strained. This is because Lotus Pier is a high-level laboratory which only accepted the best of the best, and YZY had to work hard to get to the top despite her being a prodigy, while JFM took in WCZ and CSSR based on his connections and feelings. YZY thus made sure that JC can outshine WWX so that she can drive the point home, and she also made sure WWX and JC are aware of the hierarchy between them, the former being the latter's subordinate. Well, both reploids are aware of it, but they don't really care. Their relationship turned into more like brothers than superior-subordinate. It helped that their older sister J-01 "Yanli" helped bridge the two of them together once they were placed in Far East HQ. However, JC couldn't help but feel a bit envious, because despite having lower specs, WWX was more well-liked and valued in Far East HQ; not just as a support unit, but also a combat unit, which was what JC was meant to be in the first place. In short, WWX surpassed him in every way except for specs. It was like JC was living in his brother's shadow instead of standing side by side. The scientists' treatment of each of them differ as well. While CSSR and WCZ supported both WWX (like a son) and JC (like a nephew), they're obviously closer with WWX. JFM was warm and more smiley towards WWX, while he was more stern with JC. YZY also constantly reminded JC to perform well as the "pride of Lotus Pier laboratory" and for WWX to remember his place as JC's subordinate. All of this made JC feel down, but WWX assured him that he will support JC no matter what and called the both of them "Twin Heroes" (to contrast L-01 "Xichen" and L-02 "Wangji" who were collectively referred to as the "Twin Jades"). It went well enough until X5 and X6... but that's for later.  

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

A love/hate review of The Division game and all the things I wish it could have been. Please note that as of this point I have not played the massive update that supposedly took place to ‘fix’ the game. This critique is opinion based and if you love (or hate) the game more then I do feel to let me know how/why. Just be respectful of your dissent of my review.

I am of two mindsets about this game in the fact I thought it was a great concept and I generally enjoyed the setting and gameplay (to some degree) but on the other hand, the storytelling was less than exceptional, they had with PVP element and RPG damage system which ruined the game.

New York City Setting (Loved) Reading up on this game I appreciated the groundwork the developer put into getting the setting right. How they contacted with real government agencies to try accurately portray the JTF accurately and took thousands of pictures of New York to capture the city. Like a winter cemetery with monolithic skyscrapers looking like dark pillars reaching towards the sky from the very beginning you knew you were in the Big Apple. There are many games that take liberties with real-world cities in games by shrinking them down to manageable sizes, you can love GTA all you want but if you lived in LA you know San Andrea is like a shadow compared to the real thing. The Division had no such issue as almost every second (save the underground/sewer levels) kept me believing that I was elite agent fighting in for New York.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Never (Hated) An aspect of the game that really bothered me was “Always Shooting” approach to the gameplay. Find a group of guys in the street with guns? Shoot them. Meet a fellow agent in the Dark Zone? Think about shooting them. Find two people over a body? Shoot them too. I understand this was a gun game but this really undercut the morality and humanity that could have made this game great. In eyes of the developer, everyone was guilty of something but by the rules of probability, not everyone in the city who was armed had to be a ‘bad guy’. Those group of men standing with guns on the corner? Neighborhood watch protecting their community. The two guys over the body in the alleyway? Found it like that and looking for ID or supplies.

Point is they could have easily put a verbal engagement into the game where you get the drop on somebody and allow them to surrender peacefully. Give a Mass Effect conversation wheel where you can get to the root of what the hell they are doing and either let them go, arrest them, rob them or even (if they do end up being bad) shoot them. I don't believe video games desensitize kids but they don't make me arguing their case for them any easier when the only option is to kill kill kill. 

Story Telling (Love/Hate) The use of the hologram playback of events was an original way of telling stories and gives you an almost interactive perspective on what transpired before. As did listening to the voice recordings, hunting down missing agents and reading the walls also helped paint the city that is in utter chaos. 

Perhaps I spoiled myself with the Brian Wood comic DMZ (totally worth the read) which really dove into a New York warzone setting but I felt like the developers took the story to a point and then just kind of stopped. No long-term plot, no secondary missions with a rich fiction to delve into or even a good use of the secondary characters who made up the JTF. This a consistent issue with most Tom Clancy games (save the Splinter Cell series which is linear but fun as hell). I would have happily given up the whole ‘Dark Zone’ for investment in more plot but most companies look to multiplayer now as the measure of success instead of having the fans keep a lasting impression in their mind like Mass Effect or other story-driven games. I think that metric of success is simply wrong.

Death By A Thousand Bullets (Hate) Probably the BIGGEST failure of the game was the DPS element to the guns. Nothing like being a firefight with a guy and pumping him with hundreds of bullets and only taking away a sliver of his health. I understand why they wanted to have a quality of weapons aspect of the game to encourage people to try/loot new weapons but going this route really just ruined the experience. They could have easily gone with a gun jamming up over time requiring maintenance or switching it out for something new to encourage alternative firearms. They did a really good job with the weapons system of Ghost Recon: Wildlands and for some reason omitted this game from that quality weapons system.

I just marvel the most at the fact that there was a probably an office somewhere full of developers creating this game and someone said “Hey shouldn't a bullet to the head kill a guy?” and someone saying “No, he is a level 13 and you’re only a level 2, therefore, your bullets do less damage!” “That doesn't make any sense...” “Shut up, Derek. No one likes you.” Did it actually play out like that but I promise you someone had a conversation like that AT LEAST once.

Missed Opportunities (Love/Hate) Getting passed the nitpicky elements above let's talk about some things it could/should have been. There was so much potential with this game for alternative missions, game modes and ways to play that I wish some developer might correct in the next version of this game.

The Convoy Mission - Seems simple enough but in a city full of cars, there should have been convoy mission where an APC or a group of Humvees needed to drive a couple blocks to help resupply one of the safe houses. Walking alongside it, dealing with the occasional attack and smashing open windows of cars that are in the way and push them to the side. Seems simple but a diversity of missions is never a bad thing.

Reclamation Tug-O-War - Would have been great to have seen a game mode where you hold your block and work to liberate surrounding areas from the various factions which sounds simple but also have those factions push back trying to reclaim blocks you control. This would have provided a replayable element where you take areas, establish a JTF presence and hold them until the city is under control.

Establishing Safe Houses - Like the Reclamation idea, when you set up a safe house it should have not simply been unlocked and then done. I would have enjoyed having missions focus on the success of these alternative safe house location away from the main base with tangible perks for doing a job well done. Could be complex like defend it from attack, find a new radio so they can keep in contact with HQ, or something simple like deliver the blankets where you keep the people happy and alive.

Zombie Mode - Lots of people shit on zombie mod mostly because they are dime a dozen but I doubt anyone could argue that this setting (the city itself) doesn't look like a setup for a zombie movie. It would be amazing to have a co-op horde mode being a separate playable game mode for players.

The Dark Zone (Hate) We know why they put this into the game but fuck me if it doesn't make any sense. “Hey! My radio stopped working over here.” *Shakes it* “Guess I can let my psychopath flag fly now and kill other agents.” This REALLY cut into the Achilles tendon and dropped the game to a new low. I already talked about how Shoot First, Ask Questions never basically was a green light for murdering anyone you came across but this game mode plays to the worse aspect of gaming culture.

Co-Op (Love) I wanted to end on two high notes after ripping into the game with so much hate. I enjoy games with a Co-Op element where 2 or more players join me in the world to set things right. There is always chance that one of my friends will flashbang me on purpose to piss me off but for the most part, it enhances the experience and the Division does this well, making Co-Op a feature and not a mandatory function for enjoyment.

Ola Strandh (Love) A special shout-out to the composer of the game's score. While I did not notice the soundtrack to much while playing the game, the score eventually popped up on my Spotify and with some easy listening, I started to appreciate the complexity of the music and the use of sounds to create an atmosphere. I would suggest giving it a listen and if you like composed movie/game scores adding this to your playlist wouldn't be all that bad.

Conclusion You’re a special agent with the license to kill murdering your way through a civilian population that was basically abandoned by their government during the quarantine. Kinda hard to have a moral footing when you think about the game like that. The story itself was unrealized and the RPG element to the game (along with PVP) killed the immersion that could have made this game epic. I leave the weapon/gear perk element in my RPG’s with the suspension of belief of ‘because fucking magic” but it has no place in the realistic shooters like this.  I will probably play it again as there was that update but I doubt they did the overhaul that this game badly needed. Regards Michael California

[wmaitla]

40k Factions Headcanons Part 3

Mkay, moving on to part 3 of my series where I explain how I’d change the armies of 40k if I woke up one morning and had control of GW. Holy shit this is taking so much more time and effort than I thought it would. Well at least with this one I’ll be finished all the Imperial armies. So when it’s done I’ll have finished three multi-hour writing efforts out of... ten?

sob

Also, something I left out of the start of the first post - there is no allies system in my version of Warhammer 40k. You get what’s in your codex and nothing else. The point of my redesigns is to give each faction a distinctive feel, both thematically and in terms of their playstyle. If you can just mix-and-match freely when you listbuild it makes it much harder to balance the game, because you have to playtest each unit fighting alongside every other unit in the game rather than just the ones in the same codex. If you want to run something that the codexes don’t allow (Gue’vesa Auxiliaries for example, or a strike force of Chaos Space Marines) you can just use the “count as” rule, using different models for one of the codex entries. It won’t make everyone happy. Remember, my redesign is based around getting the themes of the Guard across while ensuring they have a distinctive feel and playstyle, and that each unit is distinct enough that there’s little “overlap”.

Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard (or the Astra Militarum if you’re a GW exec trying to maximize your intellectual property) can be both the least “40k” of all the army factions and the most “40k” of them. On the one hand, factions like the Death Corps of Krieg and units like Commissars really capture the feel of 40k and of the Imperium. On the other hand, its very easy to write the Guard as being a fundamentally good, human force triumphing over the horrors of the galaxy. This is a trap. There are no “good guys” in 40k, especially not the Imperium. The themes of the Guard are humanity and inhumanity. The Guard is about sending countless humans to fight and die in suicidal actions against the most horrific enemies in the galaxy because it protects humanity. Or because your commander is an incompetent blue blood who only received a commission because of your obnoxiously rich family and his brilliant military strategy was to bayonet charge Ork Nobs. The Guard is about executing a man because he took poor care of his lasgun, because the Guardsman is infinitely more replaceable and therefore worth substantially less than the single most-available weapon in the galaxy. It’s about ordering tens thousands of young people to charge across an open field at a Tau gunline - because the Tau will run out of ammo before you run out of conscripts.

The Guard protects humanity, but it doesn’t value humans. Crunch-wise I’d want to emphasise that, with the focus being on squads rather than individual models. Here’s a quick run down of the list I’d use to make up the Guard:

HQ Command Squad - as is. Nothing wrong with orders, nothing wrong with an Imperial Guard Classic.

Tank Commander - for armies themed around hordes of tanks. Can issue orders to other tanks. Can also take side sponsons, unlike regular tanks.

Commissars - You can take 1-3 of these guys as one HQ choice, and assign each one to an infantry squad while you’re setting up. They allow you to sacrifice one member of that unit to re-roll a failed leadership check, but if you still fail, you remove the Commissar. I’d leave priests out, except in the Command Squad, and let these guys have the “morale buff” role instead. I originally had them in the Elites section, but it was getting pretty crowded, and a bunch of ordinary humans makes more sense for the guard than one big heroic human, so they’re replacing the Lord Commissar here.

Elites Scions - because “storm troopers” has unfortunate connotations, and “Tempestus” sounds stupid. These guys are pretty standard, they have carapace armour and hot-shot lasguns. They have higher leadership than regular guardsmen too. Can take a rhino, a taurox or a chimera

Ogryns/Bullgryns - big guys with big guns. These guys are the biggest, meatiest guys you have. But this is the guard, and they aren’t space marines (why don’t space marines recruit these guys???), so I’d actually nerf them somewhat. They’re still str/tou 4, but they only have one wound each. They get carapace armour and either shotguns (str 4 assault 2) or power mauls and force shields (5+ invuln save). Because they’re smaller than they used to be, they can ride in Metal Bawxes now (and because they’re meant for seizing objectives, so being able to ride in a troop transport is rather important). They’re still giant brutish abhumans, but they aren’t superhuman.

Tech-Priest - Able to restore wounds to nearby tanks and provides a buff to all nearby vehicles (he helps calm the machine spirits with his chanting). This guy is the closest

Psykers - not astropaths, which are in the command squad, but some kind of “Militarum Choir”. Lay psykers discovered by the guard and herded together as a kind of psychic battery. More of them working together makes them more powerful, but they can still fail a perils of the warp check and all turn inside out together.

Troops Guardsmen - because “conscripts” would be redundant. A squad of between 10 and 30 cheap-as-chips guardsmen, wearing flak armour (which I am VERY tempted to say only gives you a 6+ armour save) and carrying lasguns. They have leadership 6, but can use a command squad’s leadership instead if the CS is alive and on the table. For each full 10 Guardsmen you can take one special weapon (plasma gun/grenade launcher/sniper rifle) and one heavy weapon (heavy bolter/missile launcher/autocannon/lascannon). I’m leaving flamers and melta weapons off these guys, because these ones fit the Guard better (especially Gets Hot! plasma guns over melta guns). I was tempted to have the “platoon” system from yesteryear, and have them be two separate squads of guardsmen and a platoon command squad, but this is simpler. Can’t take troop transports.

Veterans - guardsmen with one extra point of BS and Leadership, in squads of 5-10. They can take camo cloaks, which gives a +1 to cover saves, and they can infiltrate if they don’t have a troop transport. For each five of them in a squad they can take two special weapons (plasma gun/grenade launcher/sniper rifles/flamers). These are the guys you take if you want a wholly mechanised force of guardsmen. I swapped the Scions and these guys around because it makes more sense for these guys to be more available than the scions, and because the scions were actually “Elite”.

Transport Chimera - Old Reliable. A middle ground between the Rhino and the Taurox, a multi-laser and a pintle-mounted storm bolter give it some firepower while retaining a full 12-man troop compartment, although its armour is light than the rhino’s. It’s on-board generator means the turn its unit disembarks they can re-roll to-hit rolls of 1 with their lasguns/hotshot lasguns.

Rhino - big and beefy, gets you there safely although not heavily armed. The quintessential Metal Bawx.

Taurox - the Immolator of the IG. Has a top-mounted autocannon, but can only carry 6 people.

Fast Attack Sentinels - ah, the chicken walkers. Nothing wrong with these, although I would give them Heavy Flamers and Plasma Cannons in addition to Autocannons/Heavy Bolters/etc. The they can be upgraded with extra amour, but lose the ability to scout.

Hellhounds - a squad of 1-3 scouting tanks. Same armour as a Chimera, but their troop compartments and multi lasers are replaced by a giant flame thrower/acid sprayer. Can receive orders from tank commander.

Roughriders - 5-20 hugely mustachioed men on horseback. Same as they are pretty much, good for taking objectives but piss poor at holding them (their lances count as power weapons on the turn they charge). Allow you to relive the charge of the light brigade in space.

Ratlings - they have to go somewhere, and the Elites section is full enough as is. On second thought, I’d actually drop these little guys and just say their models now “count as” veterans with sniper rifles. There’s nothing they do that the infiltrating vets with camo cloaks don’t do already. There’s no point having TWO units of infiltrating snipers, and Gaunt’s Ghost have a hit book series, so they get first dibs.

Heavy Support Leman Russ Squadron - these guys would actually get stripped down. The emphasis in the guard is quantity over quality, so I’d still have them packing big turret guns and thick armour, but I’d lose the side sponsons (they still have the hull-mounted gun though) and any special rules they might have in order to keep them as cheap and mass-producible as possible. All the flavours of Leman Russ can be mixed and matched here. These can receive tank orders.

Artillery Squadron - wyverns, basilisks, and death strikes.Basically any tank that shoots things it can’t see from your edge of the board, so they don’t have to share a squadron with Leman Russes on the front line. Death strikes are still random, but they share squads with horde-killing wyverns and tank-busting basilisks. These can receive tank orders.

I left out Heavy Weapon Platoons, because they don’t really seem to fit in too well - if you can give every two guardsmen a plasma cannon, why not do that? It makes more sense for the heavy weapons to be mixed in with the regular troops I feel. This has lead to the unfortunate demise of the mortar squad however. RIP little dudes, your dropping mortar shells on Orks in heaven now.

Super Heavies Baneblades - because it wouldn’t be the guard without them. Say it with me now - ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL.

Imperial Knights - because they have to go somewhere, they’re popular enough that trying to drop them would lead to an uproar. Plus these giant warmachines actually fit in quite well with the guard.

Playstyle-wise, they’re similar to Tyranids, but the focus is on shooting rather than melee. They’re the Tau to the Tyranids’ Sisters of Battle, a horde interested in keeping its distance from the enemy and whittling them down with mass firepower rather than rushing in close.

Fluff-wise, I wouldn’t change much, besides emphasising that the guard and the imperium aren’t the good guys, and that the guard doesn’t value individual humans at all, even though its charge with protecting humanity. I’d make sure to have a lot of stories in the codex about guardsmen and -women being executed for cowardice, being sent on suicidal mass-charges, etc. Basically using North Korean/world war one military strategy, which suits the bleak tone of the 41st Millenium more than heroic world war two stuff. I’ve already said everything I really wanted to say about this at the start of this article.

So yeah. That’s how I’d redesign the imperial guard. Tune in next time to read my ramblings about how I’d change the Chaos so they aren’t just Space Marines with spiky bits.

[justgotham]

When it premiered in 2014, the premise of Gotham was easy to explain: the show is a prequel to the Batman mythology as comic book readers, animated series watchers, and moviegoers already know it. It's telling not just the origin story of Bruce Wayne's alter ego, but the origin stories of the theatrical, malevolent bad guys who'll plague his version of the city. And perhaps the most sympathetic downward spiral has been the transformation of umbrella boy Oswald Cobblepot into the criminal mastermind known as Penguin. Gotham added another step past the point of no return for Oswald this season when he was jilted (and nearly murdered) by Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith), who Oswald claimed to be in love with. For both characters to stay on their trajectory towards city-threatening super-villainy, they couldn't have a happy ending. Yet some Gotham fans cried "queerbaiting" on social media when the relationship was never consummated. In an interview at Bustle HQ, Robin Lord Taylor says that "queerbaiting" accusations "baffled" him. Homophobic backlash, he sadly anticipated. But not that.

"So, of course I expect 'f*ggot this' and 'gay that,' and 'they ruined the show,'" Taylor says. "We had a little of that. But on the other hand, I was not expecting on the progressive side of things, still that same exact insistence on putting people into a definable box — into a box that [viewers] can also identify with — as opposed to letting an experience happen."

Taylor is protective of Oswald, murderer though he may be, but more protective of presenting an authentic experience. As he talks about his character's romantic awakening and some fans' perception that the show had cultivated 'shipping via performative homosexuality with no intent of "following through," he leans forward in his chair and punctuates his words by lightly punishing the tabletop.

The criticism is especially frustrating to Taylor because since he heard from the writers that Oswald would be developing these feelings, he's taken an active role in helping the show tell a story that doesn't "ring false." When I ask him how he first reacted to the pitch, he chooses his words carefully and gives me the fears first.

"My big concern was like, OK so, this is the first time I’ve heard about any sort of alternative sexuality to Oswald, be it anywhere on the spectrum," Taylor says. "Even any mention of any sort of romantic interest. I myself am gay, so I knew that this is not going to be a traditional story of someone coming out of the closet."

While other Gotham baddies want power more than anything, power is just a vehicle for Oswald to achieve something else: validation and love. Taylor sees the former Gotham City mayor as a person who's "very emotionally, physically, sexually immature," possibly because his self-worth "has been beaten out of him" after years of abuse and ostracization.

"I wanted to be true to what I know and understand of human sexuality and it’s not that you" — he snaps his fingers — "wake up one day, and you are gay. And to say that you are gay means that you identify with a group of people; it’s a cultural thing," Taylor says.

For him, Oswald doesn't claim that orientation, nor any other. Taylor was determined to keep his character's discovery "a romantic, yearning need to connect with somebody" rather than strictly sexual interest, because Oswald's understanding of himself is so limited.

"It was the Riddler — the first person who showed any respect or understanding or even enjoyment of Oswald’s company," the actor says. "Who's to say that if it was Barbara that it couldn’t have been her? I wanted to keep that ambiguous. Because what I understand of my own personal experience being gay... this is something that I’ve been thinking about my entire life. It’s always been a part of my life."

Of course, Oswald's wooing of Ed didn't go exactly as planned. (Isn't it just like the Penguin to kill the competition to get her out of his way?) But Taylor says these two characters are inextricably linked to each other, even if Nygmobblepot 'shippers should get used to the idea that there's no white picket fence on the horizon.

"It's a one-sided romance thing, but in [the April 24 episode], it’s when the Riddler announces himself and he’s taking pills and he’s having hallucinations and he’s hallucinating Oswald and you can see in those exchanges — not romantically, he didn’t have that for Oswald — but there still was a love and a respect and a need on his part too to connect with him," Taylor says.

You'll remember that scene: it's where Ed has a vision of his old friend Oswald singing a sultry Amy Winehouse song. (They recorded his vocals, by the way, in the same studio where Winehouse laid down hers — an experience Taylor says made him ask himself, "What the hell am I doing?")

"If you watch it back and you notice: this is the first time you see Oswald in the traditional tux and tails and top hat, which is the traditional Penguin look," Taylor says. "And I love that he didn’t come up with that look initially. That was the Riddler. So it’s almost like Riddler created part of me. And they’ve created each other, there is no one without the other."

It's the coexistence of their kinship and their bad blood that make Riddler and Penguin quintessential Gotham bad guys. And that brings Taylor back to the misguided complaints that those crazy two kids just can't make it work.

"It’s never going to be the show where people live and fall in love and live happily ever after. This is a story about how these people become psychopaths," he says. That's the theme of the series for the actor: "What happens when love is ripped away? When the access to love or to be gentle or be respectful — when connection between two humans — when that is ripped away, what’s left after that? And in this case, this is how these people go from villains to super-villains."

It wouldn't be Gotham if it were populated with happy, fulfilled people. This heartbreak is bringing Oswald ever closer to the villain fans know from Bruce Wayne's canonical future, and his new alliance with Dr. Strange's "freaks" is a part of that. But in spite the vast range of reactions to Oswald's Season 3 arc, the actor is pleased that it provoked a reaction at all.

"What I love about it is that it created this much bigger conversation," Taylor sums up. "I'm talking about queer politics. I'm talking about where people fall on the spectrum. This is a giant conversation that we’re having, that’s originating in a Batman story."

Even a heightened world like Gotham's can still have a lot to say about the world we live in, and Robin Lord Taylor is determined to keep it (close to) real.

[thejacksmit]

Projection Room: Secrets of a Haunting- The Shoot

Between February 16th and the 23rd, the UCLan Film Production students I have been shadowing for the last few months shot the majority of their production on location at Borwick Hall in Carnforth. It is legitimately haunted, which made for a lot of humour across the Mad Vision production team as they committed their version of The Haunting to film. I joined the team on the penultimate day of their main shoot at this location, with the production getting very close to the end of principal photography. 

THE LOCATION

Borwick was chosen because of its history in the area. Built in the late 14th century (and mentioned in the Domesday Book, there’s a hot and fresh science fact for you all), the Grade 1 listed building is used primarily for residential visits for educational purposes nowadays. When I seen pictures of it back in early pre-production, it looked like the ideal location even with the potential for other groups of visitors to impact on the shooting schedule. But for the entire half term week, UCLan’s students had the main building booked to shoot this film. Upon my arrival, I had the full tour with lecturers Linda Sever, Mandy Langton and of course, the crew’s go-to guy for any help, Ed Greenberg, where there was a lot of talk about the history and the myths behind some parts of the location. The production team had kept the majority of the building as it was, adding some of their own pictures in the dining room set and rearranging some rooms (notably a few bedrooms, and a small part of the library area) to better suit the scenes they were filming.

SETTING UP THE SETUPS

Lighting a doll’s house is more difficult than it looks.

One thing I learned from my time on set is the amount of time that goes in to the composition of a shot. They’d rehearsed this bit to death in the Media Factory before arriving at Borwick, so they were on fire with this stuff while I was around. With two units, both only having a single Blackmagic camera each (shooting at a higher resolution than they need as a way to make the edit easier for any cropping and masking), a lot has to be considered- lighting, framing, the positioning of actors as well as a variety of other things for the optimal way of visually communicating the story that they are telling- which is vital with some of the sequences in this film. One scene that I witnessed being shot in the library area between Nell and Luke- who are being played by Megan Paul and Lex Simkin respectively, required several setups to be done in very quick succession to get close ups, extra dialogue and alternate angles. Seeing the lighting adjustments being made in less than 3 minutes gave me an idea for how difficult it is to get a production like this up and running- it’s a side of the industry not many of us critics get to witness, we generally get ripped apart for having zero knowledge of how a film is actually made, so it was a real eye-opener. Plus, knowing that the cinematography awards were very nearly cut from the Oscars this year, now I know why the industry got outraged about it.

THE NETWORKING: BECOMING A LITTLE FAMILY

For the cast and crew, this was a time to foster friendships and professional connections- for Lucy Marshall, who is playing Theo in this film, this was a project that allowed her to channel her passion for wanting to get into the acting industry full-time, something which I think will be evident in the finished product based on what I’ve been hearing from the directors and DoPs- one scene legitimately had two of the directors crying because it was that well executed by their team. She also spoke about a script she’s currently developing for a film of her own, so everyone had experience in the production side of things. While I didn’t get much time to speak with more of the cast on the day, the general consensus I found was that everybody involved in the production had that passion for film that can make an independent feature of this kind feel more polished, and having built this year’s blog theme around the lesser known indie features, those are the best kinds of people to work with when you’ve got very little time to make a professional quality film of this nature. 

BANTER WORTHY OF THE GREAT MEN AND WOMEN™

Even down in the green room, I got to see a lot too. Everyone felt like a family just wanting to see this film go well, and in between setups (as well as the lunch breaks), there was a brilliant atmosphere with everybody involved, and it was very reminiscent of a typical Friday night at the office as we’d say at Smit HQ. There were frequent visits to a local pub following the end of an evening shoot, a fair few games of Mario Kart and Uno (a good, consistent card game from what I understand) were played between the production crew, and surprisingly, when 1pm came around on my visit, a lot of jokes were made about me being on set rather than on the radio for Ripped Ticket! Obviously for me as someone coming at this from an external perspective, chatting with the other film production lecturers was a bonus; while only half of the second year students are doing this feature film project, the other half are broadening their skills with a variety of short films, documentaries and other practical modules that are enhancing their post production techniques ready for their solo projects next year, so even as an outsider looking in, I could tell that UCLan put a lot of effort into making these students into all-round filmmakers ready for when they graduate.

KEEPING THE CALLS ON TIME

The other thing I’ve seen from my time on set is the amount of administration that goes on in the green room. Seriously, the paperwork is insane even when you’re actually shooting a film like this. So are the call times. 8am on some days, 9am on others, with some days resulting in 12+ hours worth of shooting being done. How they’ve been able to make all of this work has been incredible, and having seen the shooting schedules being created back in the Media Factory last month, the production managers really did account for every eventuality- they were even ahead of schedule at some points too, and still within budget. And even though I wasn’t around for the big moment, just after 3pm the day after my visit, the guys wrapped on the principal shoot at Borwick. They really did plan this to perfection.

THE FOLLOWING TRAILERS ARE APPROPRIATE...

That’s the only spoiler I seen for that entire day.

But importantly, at the end of my visit to the set, myself and the lecturers who hadn’t seen much from the week of shooting were treated to 13 minutes of footage from the film. Even in its raw, uncoloured and very rough cut, the bits I seen are looking really promising. Obviously I’m not in a position to issue any form of rating at this stage, but based on those 13 minutes of footage, the film is on track for a very good review once it is ready for its first screening. And just to make one thing clear- even though I’ve had this level of access to the shoot, the film will be reviewed to the same standards as you’d expect from the main TheJackSmit.com First Take reviews just to make things fair for everybody. The next steps for the crew now that they have pretty much finished the second unit shoot is to head off to the edit suite to cut the film together, create that elusive surround sound mix, lock down the finished visuals and prepare this labour of love not just for grading by the UCLan team as part of their studies, but also for that elusive premiere screening.

[olderthannetfic]

Escapade 2017 Con Report

I gave @rhaegalks​ a lift, came home, and flopped on my bed for a few hours. It turns out that a gross head cold plus a ton of parties plus the hotel’s alarm going off at like 7am is not good for my ability to be upright and functional. Zzzzz.

This year, we were in a new and fabulous hotel. Let’s hope we can afford it next year too. (Check out Escapade’s crowdfunding campaign.) The rooms are big, with an excellent fold-out couch in the outer room and two TVs: it’s the perfect set up for room parties.

Not that I had any of those this year. I was too busy helping with the Friday night dance party and hosting the Saturday night after party in the con suite. I would have thought that the hotel’s layout made sound travel, but we had no security issues, so I guess the sound proofing is better than I thought or we just weren’t that loud.

Booze and food:

What? You don’t think those are the most important parts of a party?

The hotel has happy hour every day. All the ehhh wine or basic mixed drinks you can cram down from 5:30 to 7:30. I didn’t eat at the hotel restaurant; reportedly, the burgers were dry. The old hotel is just across the street, and its restaurant is very good, if overpriced. I brought some real food for the con suite. I wish I’d been able to do more. Maybe next year, a few more of us can bring entree type offerings. I love how BASCon let you just eat lunch out of the con suite to keep things cheap. (RIP, BASCon. ;__;)

Friday, there were three specialty cocktails served by the hotel bartender. Vodka (ew), more vodka (ew), and a specialty margarita (pretty good for a bar at a hotel event). The hors d’oeuvres were great: little egg rolls and beef skewers.

Saturday, a bunch of us went out for swanky Mexican a short drive away. (The con is in the cultural wasteland that surrounds LAX, so the options are mostly bad chains, plus terrible Mexican, better Mexican, and swanky Mexican. Not so much with the variety. There’s a Greek place I’ve still never been to.) I had duck molé and regaled @t-cupsandtime​ with my many lolwhut fandom adventures. (Yes, I talked about myself all through dinner. Why do you ask? ;D)

Later, after the vid show, I hosted the after party in the con suite, where I set up a bar to serve a variety of lovely cocktails, each a different color. (Predictably, I got caught up dealing with tech issues in another room, so people just drank all the vodka and poured themselves whatever they felt like, but I did have a cool cocktail menu in theory!) 

We also watched a few vids and, more importantly, I was able to inflict Always Crashing in the Same Car on a whole roomful of fans. Come dwell with me in terrible kinky porn land, friends!

My cocktail offerings were:

Negroni - in honor of Killa always eying my sugar death bomb drinks with alarm

Moonlight - in honor of Joi McMillon’s gushing at Visible Artists over the editing process on Moonlight (you fangirl, you!)

Amaretto Sour - because I had a lot of home-grown lemons

Grasshopper - because SUGAR DEATH BOMB

China Blue - no, not that vodka bullshit in a martini glass: the tropical weirdness with lychee liqueur, blue curaçao, and grapefruit juice

White Russian - can’t go wrong with the Dude

Penguin - frothy, pink, and full of gin--in honor of Escapade’s mascot, gay penguins

Vids

This year, there was just a vidding 101 panel (which I did not attend) and vid review (which I did). The Friday dance party was my playlist, which you can see on Tumblr here. It wasn’t as OT3-y as I wanted, but it worked great as a dance playlist.

I’ll mention again that I started my vid search based on the fandoms on people’s profiles on the Escapade website. 90% of you didn’t fill anything out, so I didn’t look for your fandoms. Just saying! The dance party also takes suggestions, both for fandoms and for specific vids. Suggest early; suggest often!

I did a lot of my vid hunting on AO3. Unlike Tumblr or Youtube, you can search it properly for just things that are fanvids or just for fanvids in specific fandoms, and you can find things that were posted longer ago than last week.

The Saturday vidshow is the big one where vidders premiere their vids for a rapt audience as opposed to a bunch of loud drunk people... unless you’re in the loud room, in which case, it’s still a bunch of loud drunk people. This year, it was a little underwhelming. While the vids were all excellent--maybe even better than in other years--they were also heavily drawn from last Festivids and last VividCon. As often happens, many of them were rather heavy. For the dance party, I chose based on music, even if the only copy of a vid I had was grabbed from Youtube and full of pixilation. The real vidshow tries to keep image quality higher, and that makes finding vids much harder: most vidders don’t think in terms of HQ files that will look good on a projector. I think that’s a pity because, while our numbers at Escapade are small, we’re a very dedicated audience. Make pretty HQ versions, vidders! Let us love you! And post to AO3! Let us find you!

Panels!

Lots of meta and recs panels for me this year. I ran a panel on films about fandom: the problematic ones that exist, the ones we’d like to see, and my grad school thesis that I’d like you to donate to when the indiegogo goes up.

I also ran The Fannish Dating Game, the panel where you pimp your fandom by being a bachelorette and answering our lovely contestant’s questions. Certain People having failed with McHale’s Navy last year were determined to drag everyone into Barney Miller this year. When I was a contestant, the three options turned out to be The Eagle, Master and Commander, and Cardcaptor Sakura--all fandoms I used to be in. Heh. I think I’m due for a turn back through Hornblower, to be honest, but maybe another Age of Sail frenzy will follow.

The Kids Are Not the Problem: I know I attended this, but I can’t remember a thing about it other than who the mods were... Doh.

Home on the Web: This was a panel about what’s missing in Tumblr or other alternatives today and where we should go. The discussion circled around the idea that there needs to be a fannish-run social media site and that we need a good backup/download tool for Tumblr lest it go away some day. I don’t think we really discussed what’s wrong with Dreamwidth: many things are great about it, but it lacks some of the audiovisual aspects that I’ve grown to love elsewhere. One thing that came up again and again for me is that some of the requested things exist or could exist, but we either aren’t making use of tools we should, like filling out our AO3 profiles or using AO3′s bookmarks feature, or we don’t know where to find the good fuckyeah tumblrs and other replacements for fannish newsletters. In my opinion, everyone should go ahead and invest time in tumblr even if its economic model is unsustainable, but we should figure out how to back it up ASAP. Everyone should also go have the threaded discussions they want to in AO3 fic comments.

Let’s Collab! New Forms of Collective Fan Creativity: I couldn’t make it to this since it conflicted with Home on the Web. I’d love to know how it was.

How to Threesome: We played with posable dolls and nattered about what kinds of sex we like in OT3 fic and whether or not it’s similar to what makes sense in real life. (Answer: of course it’s not. It’s exactly like two-person couples in erotica and romance in that there’s lots of Souls As One simultaneous shit and much less realistic sex where one person takes a lot longer than another.)

The Slash Book: This is really cool. There’s talk of a slash book that combines fan and academic perspectives.

OT3 for Me: Another panel of OT3 squee. (It’s Escapade 27, so the theme is OT3s.) We all wanted more canons with OT3s and other poly arrangements. What year is this again? Surely, there should be more in self-published ebooks at least by now? Lots of us talked about shipping teams together: buddy cops = OTP, Leverage = 2+3, MCU = team orgy.

It’s Canon, but is it slash? I proposed this but didn’t run it, so it spent a lot of time on the meta question of what defines slash. I was more interested in the question of whether pro m/m is scratching the same itches and what’s good. We concluded that it theoretically could, but the vast majority of it doesn’t because it’s just not good enough at setting up the iddy character dynamics before it gets to the fucking. Give us buddy cops and superhero-supervillain feuds before they bump uglies, please!

You’re Totally Welcome on my Lawn, but I Wish You Wouldn’t Pee on the Grass: Not, as it happens, my panel. Anyone have a panel review?

We’re All Going to Hell: Obviously an amazing panel full of all of My People. Now where are my noncon xeno recs?

Wank: It’s Coming from Inside the Fandom: We tried to define both ‘wank’ and ‘The Discourse’ and never really settled on anything, but we did get to explain His Wife, A Horse to the unwary. Muahahahaha!

[darwinbigelow]

There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE

Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.

Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):

Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold

How Drywall is Made

Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall

Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ

Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)

Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.

This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?

Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…

Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant

It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:

When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.

Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.

Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!

A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)

Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).

How Its Made — Purple is… Green?

So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:

But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.

We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.

Specialty Drywall Types

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:

XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).

Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.

SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…

SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).

Competition

To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.

Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!

Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!

Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple

Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.

As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!

The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.

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