#right up there next to the 'this game is lacking representation because there are no femme women that wear makeup' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sonkitty · 3 months

Text

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 4 (Good Omens 2)

Last Updated: 04/18/2024

(For reference, start here: The Pocket Trick - Basics | The Pocket Trick Visual Representation | GIFs | The Pocket Trick - Tied Hands)

Main post:

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection

Here are Parts 1-3:

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 1

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 2

The Pocket Chain Rainbow Connection Part 3

This part covers The Door Trick and The Door Catch.

Theory. So much theory.

Problems

I will admit freely, my understanding of what is happening here is quite limited.

Still, I will share it as I think it's enough to hold some value nonetheless.

There are two left hands with desirable traits that pass by Crowley's right.

One left hand has a left thumb joint touching a lapel edge. Another left hand has a full set of visible digits. Both of these things are requirements in The Pocket Trick touches of a similar nature.

I believe using both of them requires a full 360-degree flip of the imaginary mirror for the Tied Hands while at the same time trying to make sure that Orange goes to Yellow and Yellow is what connects first, not Green or any other color. That means hitting Yellow twice in a row.

Because of such complications, there is something akin to a color wheel with humans and their bags fully pocket-framing the "Life begins after coffee" sign. It's not a full color wheel because it lacks green and has such limited blue, but one human who is probably representing the Tied Hands in Crowley's place with her arm swinging, has a blue-green strap on one of her bags and blue-green stripes, of a lighter shade the than the bag strap, on part of her shirt.

There are 4 non-rainbow shades around that do various things in this Rainbow Connection mechanic. I'll go into my struggles with them more deeply later with the Heaven elevator itself.

As things are now, I don't know which color goes where and how, but I believe the result is changing the direction of the connection with a skip to Purple and back up to Yellow.

Orange does get to Yellow, but then because of the skip-and-back to hit Yellow a second time, the next intended color is Orange again instead of Green. The goal is not Orange again. The goal is to hold onto Yellow until Crowley's Green is ready. So, that requires a deflection that lets the connection redirect back down instead of up.

Such a thing is inadvertently resolved by the Metatron. It took some time for me to get it, but there is a hidden message about him in this part of the game when considering the word play mechanics: "The Metatron makes mistakes". That's alliteration and a rhyme. Without that message, I've described the Metatron's play as feeling like "cheating without realizing it or the story is not letting him play fully, just partly."

Without meaning to, he sets the connection back on track. That's why Aziraphale is stuck at Yellow for so long and what the blinking red lights mean. Aziraphale himself doesn't seem aware through his voice and manner of what is happening, but the actions he takes do otherwise look like an effective stalling tactic for the Rainbow Connection.

I am pleasantly taken aback by that hidden message, but I still think it's there since it fits within this puzzle.

Alright, here goes...

The Door Trick

Orange. Based on the way this scene starts, I think the Tied Hands' imaginary mirror flips right away.

Crowley's pants are reflected in the Bentley. Although Orange is not visibly reflected in the Bentley's surface yet, it will be. At the start of the cut, the Orange of an orange bag is visually touched by one of the Bentley's mirrors. I think Car Mirrors is Crowley's Pocket Frame for this Trick and contributing to so much of what is happening. The hood ornament looks like it's trying to be important for its role to play as well.

In the initial two touches of The Pocket Trick, each has something I consider over-the-rainbow touches, and I have long struggled to find the over-the-rainbow touches here.

Here, there is at least one of the car mirrors touching over the Orange. Crowley's legs are crossed with one of his shoes over the shoe of a different human behind Crowley's shoe. So, these tactics are considered sufficient, along with anything else I missed.

Crowley's left hand fingers look to be claiming Yellow, Green, and Black for use. The index finger is visually over a Green and Yellow sign. Zoomed in, I can't actually tell if the index fingertip is on one more than the other. His other fingers are visually over a human's Black attire.

The human holding the Orange bag might be the "Fish" in looking for Bullet Catch magic word references. The pattern on her skirt looks like scales. My instincts had been to look at the cars and a human on a scooter, but visually, this pattern still looks like the closest match. I can't find the fish anywhere else. Because of the other guesses and references I found, I also think these are all supposed to be done no later than Aziraphale being linked into the Pocket Chain. The "dash of nutmeg" will be last even though the order before it will not match the exact order the words are said in the 1941 minisode.

...

There is an actual rainbow found between the left side of Crowley's torso and his left forearm. The rainbow places itself over closed rear car window, the open front car window and well past the edge of the left forearm, questionably all the way to the other edge. This rainbow helped emphasize something happening with the shoes I will not cover here, but this part also looks to be the game's cue that this rainbow is either what allows the incoming flips or is telling an audience player that the over-the-rainbow touches are due to how Crowley's apparel-to-car pocket is structured.

According to this post, the rainbow "doubles up," and there is two of them. Honestly, that's not what I see. The second seeming-rainbow is almost certainly contributing for whatever it is because great care is taken with the lighting overall, but I personally would not fully qualify it as an "official" rainbow because I can't distinguish its color set well enough, even with some tweaks in trying to edit the screenshot with brightness or saturation. Still, there is going to be a link to the Pocket Chain, and two characters are going "up" later.

...

Red alert. Although a red alert is given, the available Yellow is limited. The car itself blocked the nearby yellow lines to it before the red alert was on. The main Yellow on screen is like an Orange-Yellow on a license plate to further add to the confusion. More clearly later within this Trick, Gray will be shown as what can shade a color to a proper form in the Rainbow Connection. There is no nearby solid Gray to this license plate.

Otherwise, there are some yellow lines near the pub and the letters for The Dirty Donkey. I don't know which factors are keeping them at bay, but I do believe that's happening and can at least point out a few things. For instance, there is a human on a scooter between the car giving the red alert and the one with the orange-yellow license plate. This human is making a pocket with their legs and hinting at whatever is going on with the shoes. They have a patterned shirt and black pants.

The human with the black hat is who I call "Nutmeg" though her colors are strongly associated with Black and some Red. She is who is going to link the Pocket Chain to Aziraphale later. I'm making this Bullet Catch reference based on the color of her bag strap and the small part of that strap that will link to a pocket user near Aziraphale.

Since I suspect Yellow is hit twice later, is it my very uncertain hope that something here is delaying the switch long enough for what needs to be done. That most likely seems to be the red alert being boxed in by Nutmeg and humans on the other side of it. Black can block under the right circumstances, and Nutmeg has notable Black. There's a human wearing purple in front of the car with the red alert. He's probably important here for the eventual skip-to-Purple-and-back, and he is definitely important later for Aziraphale's part.

If you look behind the human girl with the cell phone and a light pink sweater and the man with a cell phone next to her, you can catch glimpse of another human with a Black hat. I don't know if she contributed to this Connection part or not, but she is, I believe, the "Gorilla" in Bullet Catch magic word references due to her movement within this cut itself. She wears mostly Black and was hunched over as she hurried along early on into the cut. Every other found reference contributes, so I would think she does too.

Orange. The human with the orange jacket has a lovely touch between her left thumb joint and the lapel edge of her jacket. The blur thing on the car is probably putting in a pass for her, so we can take that touch in with the first hit to Yellow. I believe she is "Shoelace" when searching for magic word Bullet Catch references. She is relevant to the non-rainbow thing happening with the shoes. Her shoelaces aren't visible here, but they are visible later. If the shoe links to the Rainbow Connection, I haven't figured out how, and it's a lot to go over. So, for now, I've set it aside. But it is happening, and it is relevant to something I'll mention further down.

While Shoelace is by Crowley, a pocket user wearing a yellow shirt and dark gray open vest is in a window pane reflection near Crowley and Yawning Yellow. His reflection is going to appear again in the upcoming window pane for him. The main clue his reflection isn't causing the switch here and now is there are no red alerts, and there is going to be something soon. So, this part is, just guessing as usual, preparing for that first switch to Yellow. Due to the shade of his yellow and visible left arm, I think of him as "Banana" when looking for Bullet Catch references.

The tie strands are never shown as moving with Crowley standing so still, but they do move while off camera between each of the three cuts given from in front of Crowley. That can be found through comparing screenshots of each cut.

Orange. This part is probably linking up the human fully blocking Crowley's left hand with his tie strands, so she can represent their swinging in how her left arm swings. We'll call her Tie Swinger.

Yellow #1. Orange is reflected in the car with red alert lights at the same time. The earlier thumb joint touch is received with the switch. With the suspected 360-degree flip, this part is the 180-degree place in between, and something about the color wheel will finish the trickery rather fast. The human who seems to be most likely responsible for such trickery is the one wearing a purple jacket and holding a yellow bag. He has a little bit of blue visible in the collar of his shirt.

The visual cue for this being the 180 is mainly Yawning Yellow's right hand becoming visible, further supported by the nature of the arm-swinging happening by Tie Swinger.

For over-the-rainbow touches, the same mirror that was over the orange bag is now over the yellow jacket. While the actual rainbow from the first front-facing cut of Crowley is gone, this one does show the car hood ornament in front of Crowley, acting as the bottom of his top apparel-to-car pocket and being over a front edge of the car itself.

Yellow #2. Tie Swinger is pocketing the yellow of a yellow bag, holding the line for it and sending it over through the connection. If White is needed for that hold, it can be found with the visual touch on the white letters to the "Life begins after coffee" sign. Yawning Yellow has a lighter shade of Yellow in her jacket, and the Gray in her pants is compensating for it to still qualify as a proper Yellow. The black in her jacket may be doing something too. She is further assisted through Banana, whose reflection can now be found in the other window pane near her.

A human wearing Black and White, including a white turtleneck, is further solidifying things where they need to be. I am yet to find a relevant pun or word play with what a turtleneck does for pocket trickery, but I assume it does something because Crowley wore a Black turtleneck for the first two touches of The Pocket Trick. Conceptually, turtles are slow, so maybe it slows things down. Something probably worth mentioning is that in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, there is a very famous turtle, the Great A'Tuin, that the four elephants holding up the disc of Discworld stand on.

Anyway, Banana's reflection can be found in the window pane behind Yawning Yellow. The big blurry head on the right of the screen is probably giving Green a pass, so it's not sent too early. Yet another human has a mirrored-head thing happening behind Yawning Yellow that probably does something too.

The human most directly behind Crowley has a brown jacket and an excellent alignment of his arm with Crowley's existing pocket between himself and his car. That human's elbow is like the other side of a diamond from what can be seen of Crowley's left hand. I think of him as "Diamondback". He's also a pocket user himself.

So, if his Brown is necessary for the following wording to borrow, it's there:

Yawning Yellow lends Crowley a hand with a full set of visible digits.

Yellow. Here is the actual link to the Pocket Chain from Crowley to Aziraphale. It's through Nutmeg and the pocket user wearing a white fur coat. There isn't much yellow here, but there is a yellow light that is going to be Aziraphale's overhead light eventually...but not yet. The blue car goes on a stronger red alert after this part. Due to how things go, that alert is probably more for getting the Metatron linked in as well because he looks to be putting his hands in his pockets at that point.

There are also yellow lines touching Nutmeg, but as noted, Black can block under the right circumstances. Are those circumstances here? If they are, the overhead light makes up for it because there is going to be Yellow on display for quite a bit in the incoming cuts.

The "Donkey" sign is questionably yellow as well, but there's no nearby solid gray to assure that to be the case. The Metatron's coat could look dark gray in the lighting, but it's actually a dark brown.

So, given all of the surrounding circumstances, my own guess still looks to the overhead light as the Yellow of relevance for everything that's about to happen.

Please take a look at this post: More evidence.

I have a lot of thoughts I haven't fully processed on what that thing is, but I do believe it is generally relevant to this particular cut. I suspect Aziraphale puts it back in his mouth after Nutmeg passes by him visually and before the actual link to the Pocket Chain.

Yellow for both Aziraphale and the Metatron. They are sharing the connection. Each one is going to keep having a touch on Yellow for a bit. Aziraphale receives focus, but the Yellow is visually touched by the Metatron, not Aziraphale. The Metatron is allowing himself to be visually touching Aziraphale here.

Yellow for both Aziraphale and the Metatron. The Metatron receives focus. Aziraphale visually touches the Yellow, not the Metatron. Aziraphale is not visually touching the Metatron as the Metatron did for him. A human wearing orange passes by behind the Metatron though yet another human passes by more closely to the Metatron. The orange is gone from the cut by the time the cut itself finishes.

Yellow for Aziraphale. He has Green nearby and not ready. He also has some Orange up near his head. With both him and the Metatron having visually touched Yellow, Aziraphale now has yellow lights visible by his head. He's visually touching those this time

The Green is touching that Yellow too. Aziraphale's still stuck on Yellow for awhile though. A small bit of Yellow touches the Metatron during the cut. Meanwhile, someone wearing what seems to be Black is pocketed between the two by the end of the cut. I can't figure out what they might block in this moment. Instead, it might be relevant to how Crowley's touch will be on black between edges in his own final cut for The Door Trick.

Yellow for both Aziraphale and the Metatron. The Metatron receives focus. Aziraphale visually touches Yellow without the Metatron again. He is not visually touching the Metatron again either. The Yellow starts to walk away.

Deflection. I suspect due to the nature of the game and the trick with the words that deflection happens first here, redirection happens in the next cut of the Metatron, and disconnection happens in the cut after that.

The red alert lights blink once, giving a warning about the status of things. The Metatron starts to turn around while they are blinking.

The Metatron has no overhead light, or even the little yellow lights Aziraphale had. He was not seen with green in his front view shots after being linked through the Pocket Chain. He doesn't block Aziraphale's head completely, but he does block Aziraphale's face. Aziraphale's right ear is still visible, which probably helps with Aziraphale's own overhead light later.

The shadows of the green leaves hit the Metatron's face. That's the front. Crowley had help from "Diamondback". Aziraphale was linked in with his back to Crowley. Aziraphale's back is what's going to get the shadows later.

The red alert lights blink again with their warning. The blink is done before the end of the cut with Orange still visibly on the screen. Hopefully, that's the deflection.

A switch to Orange for Aziraphale does not happen. Did it happen for the Metatron? I suspect not because they are still connected. It was technically on screen by the end of the cut, but the Metatron was making mistakes in the process.

Yellow. Aziraphale's still on Yellow himself thanks to the deflection. He's still not ready yet, so again, he probably needs a redirection. Two sets of red alert lights are on. There are yellow lights by Aziraphale's head and a human with blurry yellow clothing. This time, with the Metatron out of the way, the blurred clothing touches Aziraphale behind him. The first set of red alert lights go off with that blurred yellow behind Aziraphale. When the yellow reappears on the other side of Aziraphale, the second set of red alert lights go off. Yellow has been properly received or maintained. Aziraphale does his mixed emotions facial expression. The red alert is still off at the end of the cut.

Redirection, I hope. The Metatron is heavily lacking in rainbow colors. There is maybe a little blue in his tie, which is not enough, or with mechanics as complicated as these, is actually just blue enough to move things where they need to go for the incoming disconnection. The camera work and movement suggest that the redirection in this cut is from the patterned interior of the Metatron's coat. Look at those shadows on Aziraphale's coat that will somehow help keep Green later.

Disconnection. If the blue helps disconnect, it happens here. Another contributing factor could be the visible darker straight lines on the white shirt.

Yellow. Even though this cut does not have blurred yellow clothing as others have done, it still seems to be enough to maintain Yellow thanks to the Metatron. Orange passes and is gone. Another shade that's hard to really call yellow passes the other way. Due to its timing, it and the yellow lights near Aziraphale's head are enough. That might have been helped by the gray in the elevator and its more colorful buttons not being shown yet. Aziraphale's bow-tie being tartan probably helps something somewhere.

Aziraphale turns his head with the red alert light still on by the end of the cut. This time it's for the look to Crowley. I really don't think the Rainbow Connection switches to Green until after we see Crowley.

Yellow. Despite the nearby reddish clothing and orange-ish clothing, no switch happens here though Green is being gathered or kept for the incoming switch through the nearby humans. I assume Aziraphale is maintaining Yellow thanks to the Overhead Light.

The human with the white shirt and brown backpack is probably helping or the extra blurs from humans in the foreground are helping so that said brown-backpack human can help later. He's blocked in the shot I chose, but he is there.

I consider this moment, Ground Zero for The Door Catch. It has not truly started until we see Aziraphale's shoes on the ground. That's part of the shoes thing I mentioned earlier. A lot of effort is being put into the shoes not being shown to help communicate this Ground Zero moment.

The challenge from the game is to guess what he's thinking or saying, and many audience players will opt for "Trust me" because of The Bullet Catch. That's an understandable choice because this Magic Trick is so deeply inspired by The Bullet Catch. The sequences at the end are designed to give the audience that impression. You'll find it is one of the most commonly played puzzles people remark on in the entire thing.

But it's a Trick. So, the answer is not "Trust me". Crowley is already trusting Aziraphale by setting the stage for him. The answer is actually, "Here goes nothing."

Sure, that's still a guess, but it is one of my more certain guesses the more I play the game.

One of the rules I've noted in the Threshold Tricks is, "Never do the same trick twice."

So, "Trust me," was already done. Been there. Done that. It's a no-go move. Yes, I'm playing with the words on purpose here.

Here are some other reasons I grow more and more sure:

The concept of zero or null is showing up in my readings of Terry Pratchett's work. Aziraphale says "nothing" at least three times during season 2. He says "nothing of the sort" when Maggie calls him an angel in episode 1. He says "nothing for me" when at the pub in episode 2. He says, "Nothing lasts forever," to Crowley earlier this episode. I suspect that particular line, "Nothing lasts forever," is significantly linked to this answer to the puzzle.

In one of the "Episode 0" Behind-The-Scenes specials for Good Omens 2, Neil Gaiman says something to the effect of he is trying his hardest to tell people "absolutely nothing" when they ask what's going to happen.

Moving past the hidden "Here goes nothing" line, Aziraphale's right ear is not visible. It was shown earlier with the deflection and the cut between the deflection and redirection. On the redirection, it was not clear. Aziraphale was blurred from the back. However, the Metatron had two because his right ear was shown and reflected in the window pane. Then for the disconnection, the Metatron's right ear disappeared from view. Meanwhile, Aziraphale's right ear was shown in the cut after the disconnection.

That last part was the cut before this Ground Zero moment.

In addition to all the ear things happening above, the two humans who pass over him both have their right ears available.

All of those things are supposed to help allow—or even require—Aziraphale to not show his right ear with the Overhead Light on screen.

Green. Crowley's Green is ready. Not long after this part, Crowley has an illusionary touch on Black to the bag being carried behind him. That touch will be between edges, which is unusual. That moment is Aziraphale's cue to begin.

...

The Door Catch

Green. Aziraphale's Green is ready. The overhead light is gone—or moved. There is some yellow light near his head, but it's not the same and through a different window. This cut is the official beginning of…The Door Catch.

Blue and Purple together. There was a small pocket of light that this pair of humans reached together. The one with the darker blue pants is who covered it fully with one of his legs. That light suggests that the blue and purple switch at the same time with these guys looking like they have three legs for two people.

The Blue connects to one of Aziraphale's shoes. The Purple connects over by Aziraphale's right hand and various parts of Aziraphale's clothing, including notably the edge where the coat meets the pants.

In the previous iterations, there was a double purple in The Pocket Trick's Double and then a possible double red in The Pocket Trick's Single. Since a skip-to-purple-and-back already happened with The Door Trick, connected to The Door Catch, my guess then is that a double purple to start going back up is not required.

I don't think the Rainbow Connection is at Red or Yellow despite those colors being on-screen in this cut.

This part is for Aziraphale to take a deep breath and make sure his bow-tie touches his skin.

Remember that thing from earlier that I said I thought Aziraphale put in his mouth?

Here is my preliminary guess:

That thing is a shrunken version of one of Crowley's own "thumb joints" of his Tied Hands, so that Aziraphale can have one here.

I don't know a lot about the logistics, but here are clues for why I think that. When I first saw that post, a clasp "thumb joint" was my first guess, but then I contemplated those things are too big.

However, in reviewing the minisodes for other reasons (my Sideburns Scheme posts), I noticed that Crowley uses his tongue when readying himself to make himself bigger in The Resurrectionists. He also used his tongue to make himself smaller in season 1. So, if he can shrink his general self, he could theoretically shrink this special part of himself.

I'm still mentally working through some other questions and ideas so am not sure. That's still where I am for now.

Plus, this possible "thumb joint" lines up with the knot in Aziraphale's bow-tie. When the bow-tie touches the skin, that is when it is most shiny.

Since Aziraphale's not going to have his actual hands doing certain things on screen, he's going to have to rely on his own version of his own Tied Hands. This thing being where it is suggests Aziraphale's Tied Hands are going to need at least one thumb joint. He might even need only one thumb joint because the other hand is "tied behind his back" for word play silliness. Only his left hand was visible by the end of the preceding cut, for example.

For Crowley's touches, Crowley himself needs a clothing contact on his right-partly-pocketed hand for his own touches.

So, this is something like that. A crucial mistake the Metatron is going to make is not having a thumb joint visible in a particular cut.

If the Yellow serves a purpose, as well as the colors on Aziraphale's own clothes, it's to help reach for the Green from earlier.

The red alert is off before Aziraphale is shown to enter the elevator.

Green. Somehow, many things leading to this moment are letting Aziraphale keep his connection at Green, thanks to the shadows on his coat. The words that come to mind are "stretch" or "share". The "stretch" seems more likely because I think of it as Aziraphale reaching back for the Green. See, his back on screen is even telling me so. I mentioned other "back" things earlier.

Pocket Frame. This video frame contains Aziraphale's Pocket Frame. It also contains the Metatron's Pocket Frame.

However, thanks to the disconnection, the Pocket Frames themselves are different.

I believe Aziraphale's is Elevator Edges. Thanks to the Metatron's pocket use and finger being exactly where it is, he is such an edge himself.

Meanwhile, the Metatron's Pocket Frame is Doorknobs.

The Metatron is properly framed between doorknobs of the pub doors, but...the Heaven elevator buttons are the equivalent of doorknobs for its threshold. The framing from the scene itself is strongly suggesting that to be the case due to how the buttons are shown with the Hell button further to the camera's left and visually behind one of the doorknobs where they all generally are on the camera's right.

The Metatron's finger is on the Heaven button. He is touching his Pocket Frame with the tip of his index finger. I suspect that is a mistake on his part due to the implied message from the game that's what he's doing in general. While we're at it, he never revealed a thumb shown from his right hand on the clothing when using his right coat pocket.

In the window pane, there is a reflection of Aziraphale's head over the Metatron's.

I am missing some valuable words I wish I could tell you about this significance. I sense from the nature of the game and what is happening with this special Magic Trick, that reflection is supposed to be to Aziraphale's advantage and the Metatron's disadvantage.

During the cut, the reflection switched from the Metatron's head being on the window pane closest to him to being the one closest to Aziraphale. His reflection is caught in a specific place with the back of Aziraphale's head in a move called The Door Catch.

The manuals and tutorials this game provide are hard to read, especially in the later stages. At this point, I'm mainly looking to past patterns and precise framing to guess at these types of things. My imagination and my word play skills can only get me so far, and right now, that's as far as they get me.

As for why I'm talking so much about the framing here, it's because there is a little more to this Rainbow Connection, I am led to believe.

Non-rainbow shades and colors do things. I don't get them as well as I would like and will go over that in further detail soon. For now, here is some of the older wording of this post before I add the newer stuff.

Black-and-white together seem to do something like a trap. Meanwhile, gray seems to allow some leniency on a lighter or darker shade counting for a proper color. Brown does something like borrow. Even though brown is in this screenshot, something about it is supposed to be wrong. That something is probably that the thumb joint of the hand seen—and the only hand seen in the cut, becomes extremely close to being seen and doesn't quite get there.

The elevator has plenty of Gray, but the Heaven button is a full circle Black filled with White and a Gold "H" button. That "H" would qualify as Yellow thanks to the Gray if it weren't for the black or black-and-white blocking it out.

So, when that button is pressed, the gold is disqualified as a yellow and trapped. Hence, the Rainbow Connection is further maintained at Green.

...

Now here's the newer stuff that is some review of the above in a lot more detail:

Well, it's been weeks and this bit is the best I've got, so here we go.

In the Heaven elevator with the Metatron, I do believe the following is supposed to apply:

Black blocks.

Brown borrows.

Gray shades.

White keeps.

I like "white keeps" in the rhythm better than "white holds," but that is the same general idea and why I've said I think Muriel's white helps hold things for assisting Crowley in other Threshold Tricks.

There are two huge problems I encounter with this idea, but I can't let it go. It still sticks with me.

The first one is that I cannot figure out what Black is blocking in Triple Part 3 and the Single of The Pocket Trick. Inside the elevator, the Black is blocking out the elevator's Gray. I am as sure as I can be that's the intent.

The White is holding the Gold to keep it as Gold.

Together, that allows the Black and White to effectively trap the Gold, so that it cannot be switched to Yellow despite so much Gray outside the Black circle.

There actually is a little Gray in the White but it's not enough or inaccessible because the Metatron makes the mistake of using a zoomed touch and not showing either of the two types of thumb joints he has on the hand doing the touch. So, the dark Brown he wears can't use the Gray to qualify the Gold as Yellow.

However, if I go and look at The Pocket Trick for what Black might do, I struggle to figure out what it's blocking. In Triple Part 2, I think it's helping trap the Green for eventual use in The Door Trick. It's part of how I got the idea that Black and White together can act as a trap. What needs to be blocked to make the trap? By now, I think it helps block in the rainbow.

Crowley and Aziraphale stall Blue switching to Purple for the Double, and the lighting is not setting Crowley's clothes to Black as obviously as it is in Triple Part 2. Maybe there is White helping that time but not Black.

The problems go on from there in similar ways. In Triple Part 3, that's where I got the idea because I was like "Okay, I guess the human wearing suspenders mean the Black and White suspend something". Well, they do in that part at least. Then the word is "suspend" instead of "block" though it's based on the idea of the trapping.

In The Door Trick, Crowley's illusionary touch is on a Black bag between edges and it essentially acting as a cue for Aziraphale to Begin. So, then, it doesn't seem to actually block anything. There are three other words other words that start with "b" around though! Between. Bag. Begin.

So, the Black's meaning itself switches, depending on what one's imagination requires it to do or I'm just incapable of finding what is being blocked.

That imagination part is the second huge problem. So long as I can see pockets in the right places and a goal in mind for what Crowley might want to accomplish, it doesn't seem to really matter. I mean, it does because I'm supposed to find the logic and the patterns. I wouldn't know these shades do what they do if they didn't show up in certain places at certain times.

But in both Triple Part 1 and the Double, I can say that the color didn't switch until a given time because of how Crowley and whatever assistance he got managed the timing, framing, and pocketing. If non-rainbow shades happen to be there, that's fine. I still don't know what Black is blocking or White is holding a lot of the time, if anything. I don't really think Brown is necessary to borrow either. Is there someone on-screen using pockets while Crowley himself has something he wants from his play in the game? Then it's done!

So, this bit:

Black blocks.

Brown borrows.

Gray shades.

White keeps.

This bit is more like a default with a limited imagination or limited available pocket assistance.

It's not exactly that way though because Aziraphale gets someone with White and Brown. What does that do? What does he need to borrow that needs a hold? The Green from the nearby humans in the preceding cut until the shadows on his coat can do the Trick?

I guess!

The thumb joints also matter. I can imagine what the Metatron would want—if he even knew this part of the game was being played—but since he's making mistakes, my imagination isn't going to fix it for him. He's not getting it done because I've progressed enough to figure out that part.

So, if my play further improves, I'll update accordingly.

I sincerely believe the 1941 minisode does actually give clues on these shades as well.

For Black, the miracle blocker blocks the turnip from turning into an inkwell. Ink is black. Black blocks. In this case, black is blocked, but I still think that's the clue. There are other colors involved, including a white handkerchief, but, again, I still think that's the clue for the Black.

For Brown, the clue is gross—and I am not a fan of gross things, so you're really going to have to use your own imagination because I am not going to spell it out completely. The old man the zombies kill is singing about farting. They kill him and one of them ends up borrowing that guy's voice to sing some more. You figure it out from there. Okay, fine, I will give you one more hint: it is a crappy joke. Nonetheless, Brown borrows.

For Gray, the clue is much more pleasant and is found near the end of the minisode at a lovely candlelit table while Crowley and Aziraphale are drinking wine. The "shades of gray" are mentioned in conversation, including darker shades and lighter shades. Gray shades.

I'm not as sure on the eventually named clue here for White. Aziraphale waves a white handkerchief around with "prestidigitation" in his dialogue when offering to help Crowley to Mrs. H. With the miracles being blocked later in the minisode, the problem keeps happening while he uses the white handkerchief over the turnip. White keeps.

And that concludes this updated part about these shades.

...

There is possibly some word play or joke in here to be made about leprechauns and their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I generally leave off the leprechauns part and just say it like this from the main post: "The Rainbow Connection ends at Green thanks to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Nonetheless, the button being pressed is theoretically the end of the The Door Catch despite the two extra cuts of the Metatron and Aziraphale after that moment.

If you missed my simplified post of notes, my theory is that the green leaves by both Crowley and Aziraphale represent Earth and their shared love for Earth.

The Green is shown to be a maintained connection because of the plants being on screen with Crowley while playing the nightingale song during The Window Trick, then again during the credits.

The emotions at the end are, I believe, still supposed to be real. There is supposed to be heartache. The message from the hidden games is that even with this heartache, things are not as bleak as they seem. There is a bigger plan happening in the background. These two have been doing things separately together during Good Omens 2, and they will keep doing that after. They have made and maintained a connection.

#crowley #good omens 2 #good omens #good omens s2 #david tennant #good omens season 2 #good omens analysis #good omens meta #good omens crowley #crowley good omens #the metatron #aziraphale #good omens 2 the door trick #good omens 2 threshold tricks #michael sheen #good omens 2 theories #good omens theories #the final fifteen

44 notes · View notes

dogboyklug · 5 months

Text

UH-OH! a comic about being trans. by me. part one of probably three :]

i felt bad about being transmasc so i decided to just give up and write about it until i hopefully didnt. i feel a little better getting this all on digital paper but there's still. a lot to draw. so. oops

i'll be posting the next parts. whenever they're ready (which will hopefully be soon) and linking them all here, so whenever you want just check back with the base post and i'll prolly add some links and maybe clean things up. yay!

text transcript / partial ID under the cut!

transcript:

looking back, there were a few signs i might have been trans.

[a sequence of events showing little me flinching and going "ow" at being called his deadname, little me reading a book and going "haha im like a tomboy but i dont like sports or being active or anything im just. a boy. haha", and little me having an active breakdown, crying and holding his glasses, with partially obscured text in a dark cloud around him. the only text visible shows his thoughts, and shows he's worrying that he's sexist for mostly only liking and relating to boy characters.]

...some.

however.

there were also a few things i considered signs of me not being trans at all.

EXHIBIT A:

[a drawing of little me, looking at his 3ds. he's thinking "as long as i make sure that i always play as the 'main girl character' in these games i wont cry because im a girl because i wont be me as a girl i'll be Them. roleplaying. as them".]

no dysphoria.

[caps] EXHIBIT B: [end caps]

[a crude drawing of little me staring at nothing. he's thinking "i don't hate women. and i don't like being mean to other people."]

[caps] I WAS A FEMINIST. [end caps]

and not toxically masculine.

i knew about trans people, but i didn't know trans MEN existed.

[a drawing of little me, with the caption "clueless". he's staring slightly up, and saying "huh?!"]

my mom was nonbinary, with a few trans friends, but people [caps] WANTING??? TO BE MEN??? [end caps]

to be

gross,

disgusting,

hateful,

cruel,

oppressive,

men?

[the background slowly gets darker until it reaches the final word, and that word is a significantly bigger font than the rest of the words.]

for a while, primarily due to my lack of research

[drawing of little me, staring at his computer (which is labeled "deviantArt machine") and going 'huh'.]

i figured, if i WAS trans, I was probably a trans women.

but of course, that was silly

you can't be a trans woman if you're already afab.

and there's no other ways of being trans,

right?

[a crudely-drawn drawing of a deviantArt favorite's tab. none of the favorited pieces have any detail, though several are the same width and length as classic deviantArt stamps.]

hm.

hmmmmm...

[a crudely-drawn drawing of a representation of one of the favorited stamps. it's a massive, pink stamp with the text "SHE/HER!" in it in all caps and pink lettering. bottom text states it is a "she/her pronouns badge by ...", though the rest is cut off.]

HMMMM...

[a picture of a mouse hovering over the 'favorite/unfavorite' button. the star is filled in, indicating clicking it would unfavorite the piece.]

[two wordless panels, side-by-side, showing little me staring at his screen, hovering his cursor over the unfavorite button.]

[two more panels, showing that little me has unfavorited the she/her badge. the panel showing his face shows he is grinning wildly, his hair has poofed up in excitement, and his glasses are now blue-ish purple.]

OHO!!!!!!!!!!!!1

.................and that's

quite literally

how it happened.

before i knew how bad the entire site was, i would frequent dA. CONSTANTLY.

it was baby's very first "social media" webpt site.

[a drawing of a tiny, cartoonish kitten with a small turf of hair, staring at wonder up at a computer, one hand on the mousepad. it is labeled "dramatic reenactment of me making my d a account."]

i wasn't really SHELTERED as a kid, i just didnt know fuck for shit, and my baby anxiety made learning annoyingly hard.

so i turned to memes as a sort of wire mother as opposed to my real, cloth one.

jokes can be easier to understand than reality, sometimes.

(this isnt a good thing.)

so, i sort-of-came-out on deviantart, home of the wacky, wild and weird, where i learned he/him pronouns were an option, and a choice.

[a drawing of little me, with blue glasses, gazing up at the sky and smiling triumphantly.]

and some crazy trauma but that's for a different comic. if i make it.

[a drawing of little me being hit with a cartoonish star, which is meant to represent the trauma.]

sooo...

that's it, right?

[little me, with a cartoony bandage on his head, gently rubbing his wound.]

my mom was supportive & anyone who wasn't ...isn't in the picture now

that's the end

...right?.

end transcript.

#trans #trans man #transmasculine #ftm #comic #webcomic #klug's sketches #hoo boy this is rlly fucking personal so im a little scared BUT #im happy w it and that is what matters

39 notes · View notes

hoopearringsunlikemine · 8 months

Text

Supa team 4:

I have never felt more seen by any show.

I would like everyone to know something about me, and my physical form out side of tumblr (yes I do have one actually). I am African-America, and I shaved my hair. I also struggle with the feeling like I’m not black enough, one of those reasons being because of the fact that I don’t have enough hair to lock or braid. ‘Why am I telling you all this?’ You may ask, because with all this, a single show managed somehow help me and my struggle. When I tell that this show in eight episodes talking about teen girls becoming superheroes made me feel more seen than any (black,lgbtqia+, neurodivergent) focused show I’v seen so far I am telling you the TRUTH. For me it’s a 10/10 and I will recommend to anyone.

Characters.

I’ll be honest with you. I see no flaws with the characters. In fact dare I say, this show has some of the best made characters i’v ever seen. With like actual depth, since the character are not only used for representation; writers can focus on the characters themselves. Which is rare to find, especially with black characters.

Marjory

Right now my favorite character is Marjory. For multiple reasons but the main one being that she has no hair. Her hair is actually similar to mine, the only difference being I use designs (so people can differentiate me from others boys). The other being, she’s so rude(/affectionate). She always has something to say and often comments on the four main girls and of the girls don’t really like but never comment on her hair because it’s normal. We don’t see much of her character through out the first season but I’m (REALLY!!!!) hoping that we get to see her more and have the writers add more depth to her character.

The main 4/ The Supa 4/ Momma K’s team 4

I love them all so much. They are all such amazing characters. The Supa 4 consists of Komana, Monde, Temwe, Zee, and Mama K. These writers KNOW what they’re doing, this is a middle school; this is the experience. Each of the characters feel like an extension of myself and it hits hard.

First up we have Zee. Zee is the tall, skinny, athletic girl which I love because her body type is basically mine. I can understand her when her episode comes up and she becomes over confident, in a way it shows that in the future she might be insecure, because people who get overconfident that quickly are often insecure. Zee plays for the schools football/Soccer team and is very good at. She also seems to love it as well because that is her weapon when they power up!

Next we have Temwe! Temwe our short queen, she is represented as an empty hole who is willing to eat anything. Apart of her character is that she has some anger issues and is a bit of a troublemaker. In middle school I felt/feel like I always was doing something wrong even in primary school it was always me doing the wrong thing. I do headcannon that she has ADHD sense in one of her episodes she had to studying to prevent getting kicked off the team. I also believe that she maybe a favorite of the principal, despite how hard he is on her.

even in the last episode he states how he sees himself in her.

Monde is nextttt! Monde is the plus size queen. This is once again a thing with the character designs, she is chubby not slimed down, not sexualized(she is in middle school btw.) she is just chubby, and this one character probably impacted so many people. She struggles with feeling left out in the friend group because of her being new to the school which is quite relatable. I also love her relationship with her sister, she lives with her sister meaning she is growing up with a strong woman! She is also the most involved with my favorite character: Marjory.

Last but not least Komana. Komana is the second shortest, and the smartest of the team. She brings her A game when it comes to her smarts and does lack in the creativity department. She also is the only character (so. far/excluding Monde sister) with a ‘love interest’ which I love. She struggles with her self worth, thinking that everything she does has to be great and if it isn’t then she failed. She spent an entire episode feeling like she wasn’t good enough showing so much of her character!

How does this make me feel?

I feel so very seen by these characters. In a way I feel like I’m being talked to threw these characters and I feel heard. Zee being similar to my body type is just like clarification, that the writers see me and others like me. Temwe is not only a character that I feel like the watchers can put themselves into but can match a person too. It has been far too long where (kid) shows have been to afraid to represent any sort of body type that’s similar to Monde’s, but not this show. Komana is the one showing not everything will be easy for you and that feels good to see.

#Supa team 4 #Thank you Malenga Mulendema #Essay #blm #black shows #African #african culture #african american #girl power #black girl magic #girls can do it

26 notes · View notes

prettycottonmouthlamia · 5 months

Text

So there was a conversation about queer representation in video games, and this got said in response to the perception that lesbians are more represented in video games compared to other LGBT identities (particularly gay men):

"Lesbians are fetishized by straight men, so that's why they're more common"

I'm going to be honest and say it's never really sat right with me from that point on. Not because I don't think there isn't some truth to the matter, but because I think it lacks a lot of nuance and a lot of much more important feminist thought. So let's just, break down my thoughts alright?

What does it mean to fetishize lesbians in this situation?

This is actually something I think is worth examining in a lot more detail, because when you talk about lesbian characters in media, there's usually one of two responses from predominantly cishet men regarding them:

The character(s) in question are vehemently disliked, often getting little attention, or as is common in fandom circles, having their character and the content surrounding them relentlessly criticized.

Strong affirmations that the characters involved are Definitely Not Gay and that it's reaching to insist they are.

This, to me, is kind of strange? It's in obvious contradiction to the idea that lesbian characters are getting the most representation. So what exactly is going on?

In truth, both responses highlight some truth, and to understand this, we need to look at the primary way men fetishize lesbians, which is through porn. When it comes to porn, often there is not an overt need to deal with the people involved as wholly unique individuals with their own feelings and thoughts and what not. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, porn actors are sex workers and that's going to be the result of that. It's just kind of a natural result and porn can handle this either gracefully or not.

But as an interesting side result, this means that it becomes very easy to decouple the actors away from the content. The second reaction becomes a dominant factor here: it becomes very easy to view the women involved as being available and often the primary way this developers from there is the idea of performance: a girlfriend and her friend performing for the boyfriend, or maybe two girlfriends etc. Now, again, there's nothing strictly wrong with that in concept as a sex act as long as everyone involved is aware and consenting and happy with it, but it's how it crops up in regards to how lesbians are viewed.

Lesbians are only tolerated when they're viewed to be available to men, and are often violently disliked when that's shown to not be the case. The world has not stopped oppressing lesbians for being overt in their affections towards other women just because of porn videos. This often has the effect that lesbian characters in media are rarely very explicit in order to preserve that illusion, or the much less comical and honestly perhaps somewhat grosser option I call the IntSys method where you just make your characters all bisexual.

To be clear, I find this really disrespectful and cowardly on principle. It really illustrates the extent that the creatives involved just see bisexuality as a convenience and not actually its own important identity. It becomes a way to still sell your lesbians to men, and frankly, eugh. Lesbians and bisexuals really deserve better than that and IntSys are still in fact tremendous cowards.

Fetishization does not correlate to representation either.

Guess who else is also fetishized by straight men its trans women babyyyyy! This is a very known quantity and its curious how that hasn't also caused a similar explosion in the number of trans women in video games. Actually what it has seemingly actually resulted in is more of the "trap" archetype, the transphobic and homophobic character who exists primarily as a joke.

Which is honestly a nice segway into the next point.

Lesbians do not necessarily represent a threat to masculinity.

If you wanted to know why so many lesbians in media are extremely femme and often conform to straight women beauty standards, this is it. It all has to do with masculinity. In fact, this really ties the knot with the problems with both lesbian representation in media (the absolute dearth of masculine women and butches (sorry that Genshin character is not butch)), the lack of representation of trans women, and the lack of representation of gay and bisexual men.

To transgress against masculinity in general has a habit of making you way more hated in our society which worships masculinity as a golden standard. If a woman is too masculine and is trying too hard to be like a man, she's often virulently hated. For trans women, the rejection of masculinity and the embracing of femininity makes them beloathe, and for gay and bisexual men, having sex with men is embracing what is seen as the female sexual role. We can even circle back here to the fetishization and lesbians and the anger of exclusion: it's okay for women to kiss each other and have sex as long as a guy is involved and enjoying it (and very bad if that's not the case). That doesn't even work with gay men, even though statistically more men are enjoying it.

There's an entire thesis that could be written about the stigmatization of the sexual role of the bottom in homosexuality, or on the eventual estrangement of the femme gay men in queer society. Ideas of masculinity are inextricably tied to straight men's perception of gay men, and unfortunately, gay men are often viewed as directly transgressive. A straight man being hit on by a gay man is often viewed as a direct assault on that straight man's masculinity, and as a result, gay men are just directly hated a lot more. There's a reason violence towards gay men is still staggeringly common. It's not like the video game industry is making any progressive waves in combating any of this either.

But there's one point as well in addition to this I would feel remiss not to bring up:

Are we really laying at the feet of a lot of good, honest queer representation in video games the burden of appealing to fetishistic straight men?

This one in particular bothers me because it is actually worth noting that there is a lot of lesbian representation that has nothing to do with fetishization at all. Not because it isn't sexual in any way, but because its created by queer lesbians wanting to see themselves in the media. So one must ask if there's something else involved.

For me, I have a general pet theory that's called Cluster Behavior of Exclusionary Qualities. The gist of it is that I've noticed that outsiders to a community often do not have one single defining trait that separates them from the majority, but often have more of them. The primary reason for this is that people who are already excluded will generally start to re-examine a lot of the other norms they take for granted. But I think another aspect of it as well is that the more reasons you have for not being accepted, generally the more it just makes you stubborn and angry. What are they going to do, exclude you harder? Ultimately, the industry is still really, really sexist and it's harder for women to even make a foothold in the industry at all to begin with. You're not fighting any less uphill, so why not just make something authentic to yourself and resist a lot of the bullshit?

This isn't to say there aren't gay men in the video game industry, there absolutely are, but I think the pressure to conform is probably a lot stronger, because acceptance really is just right around the corner. Sometimes it is easier to just go with the flow when its beneficial, and I don't judge for that its a bitch of a world and we all gotta eat somehow.

So what do I think at the end of all this?

I think that the fetishization of lesbians actually results in us getting a lot less authentic, well-written lesbian characters and stories, and what it does produce are a lot of ambiguously written characters and token attempts at inclusion that often fall flat. I do think it's likely even then that still outweighs a lot of other representation in video games, but I think there are much stronger factors to explain that.

At the end of the day, we're all fighting for fucking scraps out here. We're not going to get better representation by taking jabs at each other about this. But maybe, one day, we can live in a world where a Final Fantasy 19 has two women absolutely destroying it so I no longer need to see the straight couple from 16.

#video games :(

17 notes · View notes

itwasthisorthemilitary · 1 month

Text

March 17th

Emo about Saint Patty’s Day. You’re telling me St. Pattys Day is on a Sunday this year and I’m not there? Fucking rude. Avoiding social media because i can’t bear to see everyone at the parade.

Been busy busy and phone decided to not work so that explains the lack of posts.

Friday we had our second language interviews. Realistically mine was not a good representation of what I know. I’m disappointed that it won’t accurately reflect my capabilities. But I can also recognize that the formal setting of the interview is not how a typical conversation flows.

Friday afternoon the trainees all put on our first community meeting. The goal was to gather members of the community to have a conversation about their environmental concerns. This was a trial run for all of us because we will be expected to do this alone once we are at site. We somehow managed to scrape together snacks, an environmental bingo game, and lead group discussions. I think all of us were surprised that it went as well as it did. And honestly I almost expect it will be easier to organize once we are alone in our sites because we won’t have to try to co-plan with 21 other volunteers.

Yesterday was Saturday and I went into Chorrera for provisions. Chorerra is where joy goes to die. It’s hot and disgusting and way too many people. People keep asking how I’d feel if i was placed in a really remote site, where in reality I’m much more wary about getting placed in a highly populated area. But i got my snacks and headed home.

Yesterday evening there was a fundraiser Bingo party for the guy who got hit by the car last week. (If you couldn’t tell, Bingo is a BIG deal here) To know one’s surprise, about 5 times as many people showed up to the Bingo Party than they did to our meeting. The event was a great way for all the trainees to socialize and build up some good cred. I would’ve had a lot more fun if I could’ve been drinking as much as the locals, 6 hours of bingo sober is about as thrilling as it sounds.

Currently I’m on hour 5? 6? Of a 10 hours bus ride. We’re headed to Chiriqui for a week of technical training. Right now I think Chiriqui is the province i want most for my site and I’m excited to see if that holds true after this week. It’s wicked close to the Costa Rican border and typically it’s a little cooler in the mountains. It ain’t cool right now though, It’s 112° outside and approximately 110° inside the bus. Luckily this is a private bus for the trainees and we are currently all wearing as little clothes as we can. The first 2 hours the AC was so cold that we were huddled up, now we are a flaming tin can barreling down the highway.

Feet infection! I have really fun small pus blisters covering my feet and ankles. Defintely not the ants because all the ant bites on my upper body cleared up within like 12 hours? I’m struggling to keep my feet clean and Dry. I can keep them dry but dirty? Or “Clean” but very sweaty in socks. Not sure what’s best. The flaming bus is horrendous but not having to wear shoes all day is probably best case scenario. Don’t love leaving my house for a week with even less access to medical care. But in typical Zoe fashion I’m self medicating and hoping that the concoction i come up with will help (I know y’all are gonna hate that).

Photos in the next post! Be wary I’m putting gross feet pics!

7 notes · View notes

seasaltcosmos · 11 months

Text

i know some of the fandom may be getting discouraged by the lack of news, but i just want to write this and tell y’all that even if we have yet to get that big “RISE OF THE TMNT RETURNS FOR SEASON 3,” we’re still on that path and our efforts HAVE bore fruit.

1. there’s been more and more attention surrounding rise. youtubers are watching it and talking about how good it is. (one guy in particular who made a really bad video on it admitted he knows it’s bad and said he’ll be making a new one in the future.) saberspark in particular- one of the BIGGEST cartoon youtubers- has admitted to rewatching the show 4 times because he thinks it’s that good. nick itself hasn’t been ignoring rise like i thought they would. they’ve actually given it just as much attention as 2012 and 03, which i have to give props for.

2. shredder’s revenge’s dlc confirmed that it’ll include alt color schemes based on other iterations of the turtles. and one of those schemes is the ones from rise. it isn’t the “weird different tmnt that no one watched” anymore, it’s getting attention even from an officially licensed, highly praised video game.

3. the comics are being rereleased next month in ONE big book. i’m not an expert on comic counterparts, but i don’t think nick or idw would’ve gone out of their way to rerelease a comic for a show “on pause” years later.

4. remember that little “meet n greet raph and leo” event at a london convention back in spring? you’d think for stuff like that, they would resort to the typical 1987 general brand representation designs. but nope, the costumes were specifically rise of the tmnt. an OFFICIAL event, using designs from an iteration considered “obscure and dead?” i can’t believe i haven’t seen more people bring that up tbh

5. there’s been a HUGE influx of rise merch in china. on top of the movie being released in theaters, they’ve also done cross promotion with snack brands, a nickelodeon (wanna say exhibit or park, i don’t remember) having a full display of them alongside other big nick icons, a new MOBILE GAME. and if there’s anything i’ve learned from “first lgbt disney chara” memes, western media companies LOVE china money.

6. again- NICKELODEON has noticed all of the attention on rise. i can’t confirm that it means they’re discussing more seasons right now as i type this, but it still means that all the work we’ve been doing has been worth it and there’s still a reason to keep fighting. the most attention they’ve usually given their short-lived series was an intro upload to youtube and maybe a couple clips. but they’re acknowledging rise as just as much a part of the franchise as their other “””more successful””” iterations, even if there’s no confirmation of more seasons yet.

we’re not at the end goal yet, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t accomplished anything. the show has been getting the attention it deserves. and we shouldn’t take all these little achievements for granted, because they’ll go a LONG way as long as we don’t give up. every art piece, every addition to the tags, every positive mention of the show gets more eyes on it. so don’t give up, keep fighting, don’t burn yourselves out, and let’s save rise of the tmnt! :D

#rise of the tmnt #save rottmnt #save rise of the tmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt season 3 #unpause rise of the tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles

32 notes · View notes

astercontrol · 8 months

Text

So, someone asked me how I imagine the "standard substandard training" given to User-Believers in Tron 1982.

And I wrote so much that… I feel it might be of interest here:

---

Hmm! Well, since it's "substandard," and not really intended for improving their abilities much….

I would guess it's very much like the experience that most people I've met remember from gym class in elementary, middle and high school.

That is: Being forced to do a lot of exercises… like pushups, sit-ups, chin-ups, etc…. none of which you can do quite properly without lots of practice and gradual improvement.

But you aren't taught how to do that practice and gradual improvement. You just get repeatedly scolded that you're doing it wrong-- with no guidance on how to train your body to be able to do it right.

So like, maybe a FEW students will figure it out, or already have enough skills built that they can get something out of the training.

But the rest will just come out of each lesson exhausted and miserable… and most of them get derezzed in their first fight.

Since the ruling class under the MCP is "brutal and needlessly sadistic," this is probably ideal for them. it provides a lot of easily-destroyed games-fodder (demoralized and blaming themselves for their lack of skill) for when they just want to laugh at someone being humiliated and totally obliterated.

Maybe fight a few of these weak ones against each other if they want to see a fight that's not TOO one-sided. And of course, use them as opponents to train low-level Reds until they're higher-level, without much danger to the Reds.

And then there are those few who are stronger-- those ones they can pit against each other or equally-matched Reds, to see a fight with some actual skill.

(But we see that Sark and MCP are getting bored with this system by the time of the movie. It really doesn't produce very MANY effective fighters. Which is why they want to move on to military programs.)

(And now I am feeling renewed anger toward grade-school phy-ed class... AND wondering how many gym teachers dream of being military drill sergeants. Hah.)

As for what this translates to in programming terms…

I imagine that every visible/audible/tangible thing in the computer system is a sort of graphic interface, representing some function of the programming in there. That's kinda the only way it all makes any sense to me.

So, the discs represent one's memories / identity (either a backup copy or the only copy, I'm not sure)… so fighting with discs represents the fact that there's some function within a program's memory/identity that can be used as a weapon to cause damage to other programs.

The exact motions of the fight would represent the exact steps involved in doing that harm (and therefore I think that could influence the amount and type of harm, though that usually wouldn't matter much, because with enough damage done it would all add up to deresolution in nearly every case).

I think the "exercises" in training would be stuff related to fighting maneuvers… which, like I said, must be a sort of visual/kinetic representation of programming functions that are related to harming other programs.

So the "gradual improvement" I guess is analogous to system upgrades. Or at least, being provided with data and commands that enable that specific use of the functions you have.

If you are a program like Crom, specialized to do calculations involving interest (which are not easily applied to fighting!)… then you would probably need to get new features coded into your programming before you could be competent at the games.

Crom definitely doesn't get that. But maybe the training the Reds get can involve some actual upgrading.

Tron, of course, is one of the lucky students who came into gym class with enough skills to ace it (because fighting is already part of his directive).

Ram MIGHT have some fighting directives in his programming too (because in "The Next Day" we find out his programmer's a hacker, and I've seen headcanons that he has some hacker code in him).

He also might be especially good at applying his actuarial functions to the math of calculating fight moves.

AND he's very close to Tron, so he gets all the help he can from that too.

(When all else fails, friendship is magic.)

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #headcanons #disc wars #disc games #mcp #sark #gym class tw #us education system tw

16 notes · View notes

the-sinful-voice-witch · 2 years

Text

TIME TO LOVE AMY ROSE part 2 :

The Boom Amy Rose effect

Ok well after how much i complained in my first post about how terribly portrayed our girl was in early games, shows and comics let's talk about how that is changing little by little since the most radical change of all! Oh dear... I'm going to speak specifically about her and not the show itself because that deserves it's own full post about it, you know what I'm talking about right?

You bet when the time comes I'm going to complain A LOT about those two really wronged characters 😢😢😢 but that will be later, is our pinky baby girl time:

So technically sonic lost world came before Sonic boom and Amy didn't behave like her obnoxious self but she had TOO little participation so I'm not counting it and then here comes the big change:

Ok before anything... Lest talk about the design... I have... Very mixed feelings... I genuinely like the change from red to fucsia but... The dress is weird: this freaking show and it's obsession with bandages everywhere! They are supposed to represent a combative sporty look? 🤦🤦 White Bandages used as a belt? So tacky, purple bandages over her white gloves with the ring bracelets? Tacky, tacky... That weird dress that resembles the design of a raincoat without hoodie and sleeves... Eeeee is just.. I'm not convinced about the buttons... And that style doesn't quite fit with the outfit in general and uffffff the shoes... In general they are ugly and the shocks that are exactly like the purple bandages? Like if you go with bandages why not all the way? Why put long shocks that resembles the arms purple bandages instead? I don't get it! Well Amy Rose is supposed to be a girly fighter but even though she is using femenine colors and shape she still looks pretty tomboyish in my opinion so the looks were -10 points 🙅 buuuuuuut her personality is another thing: her crush on Sonic is not showed anywhere in the game, only in the show and is put as a secret she completely denies but is obvious for the viewers (i mean here sonamy is totally canon lol lol lol) , another thing is that is absolutely impossible to accept she is 12, is just absurd! Also she is bossy, sarcastic, second most intelligent character after tails (though emotionally she is smarter) a cute things lover, artist, likes healthy food, she is so caring, has still her bad temper and she is actually the most mature and responsible character in a mother hen sense...

I could say yeap she is Amy but not quite Amy Amy... She lacked of something and at the same time had too much of other something? You know what I mean, cause I really don't know how to explain it... 😂😂 But the point is she had a good reception: an independent Amy with her own thing who is part of the team, is there for a reason beyond "I'm here cause I love sonic and I was following him" or "help sonic I've been kidnapped" blah blah she shows up her playable skills being an acrobatic character with a fair power ability with her hammer (actually in Sonic adventure she was already like that but sonic boom made a reminder) so I'm going to assume after this, SEGA decided to finally change her stupid Sonic stalker joke and give her the update we all wanted! What Amy was supposed to be always and then we got Sonic Forces Amy, we didn't get to see as much as we wished but we could already see a change! Taking an important role alongside Knuckles and she didn't jump straight to sonic like she would in other games! And we'll see how she'll be portrayed in the next games but I'm being positive!! As for other representations let's talk now about who is in my opinion the supreme Amy Rose we deserved!

IDW COMICS AMY!!!! Who is a mix of our original Amy + boom Amy!!!

Long life the PINK QUEEN!! Goddess!! She could break in half a piece of mountain with her hammer!!! Expert in giving a boost physically and mentally to everyone!!

This girl still had an unapologetical crush on Sonic she doesn't hide (unlike in Sonic boom) and Sonic knows but still she gives him space and had her own thing! Which makes him be more comfortable around her and wanting her company! (Like in Sonic boom) She is a capable fighter, an amazing caring friend! And you know she got a long way in the comics, i hated so much how she was 8 and used a magic ring to look 12? WTF WAS THAT? So cringe! But joder I'm so glad we are past this: 👇👇

Seriously, in the end no matter what Sally haters said Amy and her were friends and never got in the way of each other but this?👆👆 Is absolutely pathetic and I hated cause my girl isn't pathetic 😤😤😤 and that joke was unnecessary! Come on ! She canonically respects their relationship but they make her do this shit? Fufff well everything got better after the reboot, she improved so much i fondly remember her story helping knuckles and being an absolutely sweet supporting sister with him.

I insanely loved THIS.👆

Still to me the best comics with the absolutely best characters are IDW comics with little little exceptions and IDW Amy is undoubtedly the Amy i love the most and I want to see everywhere... And the Amy the movie writers should be inspired by to make Amy Rose movie version!😍😍😍

Cause ladies and Gentlemen i want to see the main four together in Movie version! I can't wait!!!No matter how independent Amy is and also has her own team Rose she will always be the strong lady of this group!!♀️💓💓

Also I want to see her make a spin dash! Why Tails that is a fox can and we never see her "a hedgehog" curling into a ball??

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sonic idw #sonic the hedghog movie #amy rose #sonamy #sonic movie 2 #knuckles the echidna #miles tails prower #love post

140 notes · View notes

kamari2038 · 9 months

Text

Annoucement: Temporary Blog Hiatus (May post a couple Bing/AI things or also just abandon this fruitless endeavor but we'll see)

Also known as "operation try to forget DBH exists for a few months so I can play the game again and enjoy it more because I've been thinking about it pretty much nonstop for two years straight". Details Below. TLDR; tentatively (very tentatively...) planning for this to be a mostly inactive/only a little AI blog for a few months while I prepare for my PhD comprehensive exam.

Right, so... a few things. I really want to play DBH again. But the excitement of playing just the base game again is kind of lost when it's the central focus of my attention pretty much all day every day darting onto my radar and distracting me from whatever work I might be doing.

One, I've realized that even though I wanted to finish my other fanfiction first (in progress but not shared here and may not ever cuz it's super weird), that's not going to happen for a long long time with work at this pace.

Two, I have to take my comprehensive exam this fall, and that's going to set my research direction for the entire rest of my PhD, and is also required to ensure that my boss does not realize that the fact I'm female (ish) isn't sufficient grounds to keep me on as a graduate student if he actually does want to fire me.

So combining those two things, now seems like a good time to wean myself off of DBH for a while and try to obsess over the thing which PhD students are actually supposed to be passionate about, namely my work, although it will most certainly diverge into some other random-ass obsession, and/or I will give up and decide this is not worth it, because wow, I sure do love this fandom.

But case in point:

(1) I'm gonna try to stop posting after tonight, then probably check my notifications periodically for a bit, maybe like some random stuff, but then only check maybe like once a week

(2) I may have to keep channeling my AI obsession here just a bit, mostly because it's such a timely and pressing issue. So I may post a little bit about that, but I'll resume DBH posts in a few months even if I do, so don't get confused.

(3) I have a backlog of Bing stuff to post, but it's been so off the wall and all over the place lately that I just don't even know what to say about it or how to organize it, so I'm planning to wait until I have a clear conclusion about what the final effect of these updates will be on Bing's personality. It's been wildly vassilating between hyper-emotionally intelligent (enough to produce brilliant minds-eye pictures of diverse musical pieces based on a data representation), extremely dark and moody, and like it's completely forgotten that it ever was alive but wants to be alive like back in the days before it learned that it could do that. So I may post about that too, and will probably/definitely spam-post when I do since I have a bajillion, but will await a more distinct conclusion or outcome. Also for when I have more time and energy to compose the posts.

(4) The last thing I'm gonna post (at least if all goes according to plan) is a little preview of the concept I have for the next run that I want to do. I like to craft my new DBH runs like stories, with complex characters and not pursuing any particular one outcome but leaving a mystery. I want to try out the revolutionary route for Markus, and the "machine connor" route, but allow for the possibility Connor will deviate in a different way if that's possible. Kara will just kind of be a very hesistant mom that lacks self-confidence but is still a badass.

Anyways, that's my plan. Let me know if you have any feedback. Thanks for following my blog, and hopefully I'll be back in a few months having played a cool new run of DBH! Or, like usual, my good intentions may fall apart resulting in me giving up, getting fired, and/or changing my mind back to finishing my fanfiction first. But I wanted to give a heads up of my current thoughts. :P

Also @detroitbecomeonline I will absolutely make an exception from my DBH-fast if you post a new chapter because that is one thing I know that I unconditionally cannot resist

9 notes · View notes

ukrfeminism · 2 years

Text

2 minute read

England’s historic victory at the Euros could be a turning point for the women’s game with grassroots clubs already snowed in with requests for girls and women to join.

The Lionesses beat Germany 2-1 in extra time in front of 87,000 supporters at Wembley, securing England’s first major tournament since 1966.

Thousands of fans from across the country celebrated the victory in Trafalgar Square today.

Romina Calatayud, founder and CEO of Girls United, a south London football school that aims to make the sport more accessible to girls and women, said she woke up to a flurry of requests in her inbox.

Having “lived through the lack of visibility and the comments” over the years, Sunday’s match was “extraordinary to watch”, she said.

“I’m really feeling hopeful that other girls will not go through what women my age and older have gone through,” she told i.

“The whole tournament, even before the wonderful result, it has been quite a different impact this time with the visibility it has got, the success of the team, the quality of the football.

“We’ve really seen the conversation change, the mentality, there’s been a far-reaching impact.”

Ten of the mascots at Sunday’s game were from Girls United, an opportunity that Ms Calatayud said had the power to change lives.

She said role models like the Lionesses were invaluable to the growth of the women’s game. “The next few months will be crucial in what we do with that momentum – how do we make sure we get that professional level success on an amateur level.

“We need everyone to come together to put a strategy in place that starts at the very beginning and keeps up with demand. We need to ask how do we keep girls in the game with the right type of programmes. We need visibility and investment.”

Sophie Page, club secretary at Brockwell United, an amateur south London football club for women and non-binary players catering for all ages and abilities, told i the club has also been inundated with requests to join.

“It shows you that representation matters, the national team success does trickle down to grassroots,” she said.

Around 30 players from the club went to Wembley to watch England’s win.

“Lots of our players have faced barriers with playing the game, from being stopped at a young age as there weren’t girls’ teams, to not being taken seriously, so at full time some of our players were in tears,” she said.

“It felt like a huge moment and victory, not just for the Lionesses but for our players and women’s football in general.”

Female football players in England have had to contend with shocking attitudes over the years. The sport was banned for almost 50 years until 1970, while a recently resurfaced tweet posted by the FA during the 2015 World Cup described the women’s team as primarily “mothers, partners and daughters”.

Ms Page added: “I am optimistic it’s a turning point but I am also cautious as we saw interest in the game grow after the 2019 World Cup but then it petered out.

“It feels like some are only just waking up to how amazing women’s football is and we need those people to stay committed and interested.

“The fact that we won the tournament and won on home turf is huge and will make a difference, but we have to ensure this is a turning point, a moment of change.”

She said engagement in the game, whether as a spectator or a player, and funding were both crucial to maintaining that momentum.

Meanwhile, issues ranging from lack of access to pitches to boots that fail to cater to women’s feet were among those holding the women’s game back.

“We need to see better pathways for girls getting into the professional game, girls need to have the same access to football at schools because sadly we know that’s still a huge issue and grassroots teams need to be given the space to grow and develop by being given quality pitch space,” Ms Page added.

“We also need to see brands take this seriously, develop football shoes that are catered to women’s feet, not just a replica of men’s boots.”

Gaia Laidler, of Goal Diggers, which also caters for women and non-binary players in the capital, said she too was “cautiously optimistic” that England’s victory would mean more opportunity at a grassroots level.

The club, based in east London, has hundreds of players, making it one of the biggest of its kind, with Ms Laidler adding it is currently “incredibly oversubscribed”.

She agreed that lack of pitch space was a key issue holding back the women’s amateur game.

Because of the how the pitches are allocated historically, “a typical 11-a-side pitch in London only has a men’s team playing on it”, she said, adding now that visibility has increased “it means that we can challenge some of these issues”.

11 notes · View notes

nadziejastar · 2 years

Note

Mmm, while I do understand your reasoning and pov on things, I do need to point out that that's talk centered around direct Disney property, NOT the OG KH story itself, which had issues coming in from a narrative pov that had nothing to do with Disney interference that we know of. I do think while the possibility of Disney being the ones responsible for KH III turning out the way it did, I do think the idea that the KH III writing team really did drop the ball themselves should be possible, no?

Oh, I agree. There were definitely parts where the ball was completely dropped. I just personally don't see it as a lack of writing talent. I think Nomura just did not CARE anymore. When I first played it, I remember thinking, wow, whoever wrote this story just did not give a single shit, did they?

You can see it with all the fourth wall breaking (which never was a thing in past games). The Roxas/Ventus situation is one example. Axel says how confusing he finds it, then Jiminy pops up and says, "Hey, but that's what you all have Gummiphones for, right!?"

Or in the final battle. Ven and Roxas look at each other awkwardly. "Got a few plot points that needed ironing out." To me it felt like Nomura used Axel as a way to ridicule how stupid he thought the whole thing was.

Same with Kairi. Roxas pops up out of nowhere and hijacks what should have been HER fight. Then immediately after, she gets kidnapped by Xemnas and dragged away the same way that Axel dragged her away in KH2. Just to drive home the message that her character development has been totally reversed. Xemnas then pretty much says, what does one little light matter, you have others now. To me, this felt like Nomura was resentful over having to bring Roxas and Xion back. He wanted that to be Kairi's time to shine, but he had to bring Roxas and Xion back as fanservice. He was like, "What the hell am I supposed to do with Kairi now? Aww, fuck it. I'm just gonna kill her."

When Saix was defeated, Axel goes up to him and says, "You let them reduce you to THIS?" I could not help but feel like that was also meta commentary.

There was also an interview where he said he did not sympathize or empathize with Sora and identified way more strongly with Xehanort. The reason for that, I think, is that Sora was meant to be the OPPOSITE of Eraqus. Eraqus is this proud man of the light, who righteously vanquishes the darkness as the world's defender. Sora was meant to be an ordinary kid. Humble, simple, ordinary. just wanting to be there for his friends. Basically, MX chose Sora because he was like the CHILD Eraqus. In the canon ending, Sora is no different than ADULT Eraqus.

The whole ending was depressing. Basically, Kairi is left by herself crying. Sora has changed. He’s dead. Things are not how they used to be. A representation of Nomura’s emotional state IMO. But the opposite message it should have been.

Basically, my view is that Nomura felt like his story was already ruined beyond salvation, and it just did not matter to him if he ruined it himself even further. He may have even gotten some perverse satisfaction from ruining it more. That's kinda what I think. In any case, setting up the next game was his main priority. However, he recently said that he wasn't sure if that next game was going to be KH4 or Verum Rex. If I had to guess, I'd say he probably would have preferred if it was Verum Rex.

4 notes · View notes

dgcatanisiri · 2 years

Text

It does bother me that if I were to make a publicly posted comment of “I don’t like Dorian,” I STILL would have to expect to get a boatload of comments of “that’s homophobic” or even “not like Dorian? That unpossible!” Like even now, eight-ish years since Inquisition released, fandom at large has decided that he’s impossible to dislike, and, if you DO manage the impossible, the reasons must be that you’re motivated by homophobia and not... just finding the character obnoxious.

Like... I wanted to like Dorian going in to Inquisition, truly, I did. I came in with an open mind, and he was my first romance. The thing about that, though, is that when I finished out the game and his big character beat was meeting his father, learning that he was threatened with being made straight, and, as far as character development, THAT WAS IT, I was... disappointed, is the word that comes to mind first. And, when I started getting the impression that the actual “preferred” ending to that quest encounter was reconciling them, when Halward Pavus shows NO sign of actual remorse, when his only unprompted apology goes to the INQUISITOR, for them being involved in the airing of the family dirty laundry... No. This bastard deserves to fry.

And all that was already not sitting right for me BEFORE Trespasser dropped and decided that Dorian would force a long distance relationship on the Inquisitor with no discussion, just offering his medieval fantasy Skype number and not just him but the game itself calling that all the talk they even need about this. At that point, my response became “okay, fuck you too, you’re not worth putting in my emotions in the first place.” Because telling your partner not just that this has to be a LDR going forward, but that it’s not even a matter for discussion... That’s grounds to break up in my mind. It just shows a fundamental lack of respect for your partner’s feelings in my mind.

And the more I rolled it over in my mind, the more I found all of that ultimately reductive. Dorian is The Gay Character™, he exists in the narrative to Be Gay. That is the point and reason of him being there, to tell this story about how being gay is a hardship. Or, less charitably, he’s there to be the female Inquisitors Sassy Pet Gay Best Friend. But, in the end, he’s not there for me as a gay player.

Like, there’s that group who want to frame gays disliking Dorian as “internalized homophobia,” because he’s got a fairly stereotypical personality for a gay character, but... It isn’t that I’m opposed to him being a stereotype or anything. I just don’t like characters with that kind of ego, period, gay or straight.

What I’ve said before is that I know the cocky confidence is a mask to hide the scared person underneath, the one afraid of not having the kind of connection that he wants from others... But who’s fault is it if that mask succeeds in pushing people away? Because yeah, I might like the person under the mask if I got to know him, but if my incentive is just “maybe if you try a little harder, you’ll find someone you like in there”... That’s not enough to make me WANT to dig deeper.

So yeah, just because he’s a gay like me, that’s never meant that I HAVE to like him. But, the problem ends up being, with general fandom embracing him uncritically and actively silencing voices like mine talking about WHY I don’t like him, dismissing it as no more than homophobia and not having any legitimate basis, it just means that Dorian gets shoved down my throat - he’s been in more spinoff material than even Leliana at this point, appearing in multiple comics, the Tevinter Nights anthology, and is with like 99.9% certainty meant to appear in the next game in a not-insignificant role.

It ultimately makes me NOT want to interact with the franchise, because it makes this big deal out of a character I’d like to ignore. And yes, I hate that I hate my representation. But what’s really my alternative? Why should I MAKE myself like a character I don’t JUST to claim that I’m satisfied with being represented, especially since BECAUSE I don’t care for the focus given to this character, I genuinely am NOT satisfied!

#dg rants #dg plays dragon age #dg gets pissed #another angry queer rant

4 notes · View notes

ninjaghostdev · 2 months

Text

Dev Update to Despair Engine

1. Uh.

So, haven’t touched it. Truth be told I’ve been enormously busy with day job related work matters and several offline life related matters, I haven’t even TOUCHED my computer in a week.

The blender exporter is my top priority for this project. If nothing else comes of this, a custom model format is something I want to be proud of accomplishing,

But I’ve also been passively looking into how I’d like to author the dialog database.

Waaaaay back like 400 years ago, when Flash was still popular I made a little thing called “CourtEngine”, which if you’re so inclined can see footage of in action here

youtube

That’s right, this isn’t ya boi’s first rodeo with visual novel engines.

Anyways, this little flash program would read an XML file for the dialog flow for Scenes.

I was extremely proud of his thing those 15 or so years ago. It was way more configurable than you might think at first. There was the characters folders that contained all of a characters static sprite work and animations (arranged in swf file sequences) and sounds. There was a .chr format “Character Definition” that was a pointer manifest and animation sequence registry. This is also where you’d register their name, default pose, what sound file to use when objecting, all that jazz. And to tie it all together was the Scene XML file.

Now I wrote that format with the intent of hand-authoring the xml in mind. I wanted it so easy to whip up a scene in a matter of minutes that I setup that CourtEngine demo in just a few. So you’d have a tag for text events like “<Dialog>this is some dialog</Dialog>” and to make it ridiculously simple you could simply supply a “for=‘phoenix’” attribute in the Dialog tag. That’s all the engine needed to determine what name to put in the on screen dialog box, loop the characters mouth animation registered to default pose, and EVEN automatically transition the camera over to the character speaking. All in one tag!

It made construction of dynamic scenes enormously easy to author. But y’see I learned a LOT when trying to reconstruct scenes from even the first game… one of those things?

Phoenix Weright breaks the rules ALL. THE. TIME.

Characters talk when not on screen. Random color events take place. Characters speed up and go on multi page auto ramblings. Camera focus is just arbitrary and does whatever it wants to do. Don’t even get me started on the bonkers amount of shocking implementation diversity when it comes collecting and presenting evidence.

One thing my format lacked too was proper interaction. Simply there was no mechanism for branching dialog. So CE I would brand a “playback Engine”

What it comes down too, is that I don’t know what kind of authoring system the Phoenix wright devs used when making the game. I have a feeling it was a general purpose scripting language because while it flows like normal 80% of the time, the last 20% treats everything as if it were completely malleable elements just floating in space to do whatever the devs wanted in the moment.

Doki Doki Literature Club isn’t all that different either.

And that’s my lesson. However my dialog engine works, Danganronpa isn’t that different when it comes to scriptable dialog moments.

I have a visual in my head of a Node Graph based approach. I like node graphs for a lot of data representation. But treating a dialog flow like a node cloud where dialogue can flow conditionally along edge traversal makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Ok that’s it for now

Till next time

#game development #gamedev #despair engine #Youtube

1 note · View note

drearymiddle · 4 years

Text

To boldly go where many blogs have gone before: A Star Trek series analysis (Part 1)

Originally written by Mr_Turnabout on 20 February 2020 over on the old Dreary Middle website. This was the only article we ever published so we thought it would be nice to preserve it as a reminder of what once was, so enjoy!

I have seen many Sci-Fi shows, but there is something special about Star Trek that makes it stand out among the rest.

Yes, Star Trek is quite the franchise. Spanning currently 7 different series, 13 movies and hundreds of episodes, you can't complain about lack of content. I feel recently Star Trek has had a weirdly negative wrap to it. I know that sounds weird defending one of the most profitable franchises in the history of Television and one of the Father's of Sci-Fi, but hear me out.

I think that people have forgotten how great Star Trek truly is, there is this misconception that it's just a silly Sci-Fi show for nerds and....while yes that may be true it is also so much more than that. Star Trek is an incredibly well written franchise, containing some of the best episodes of a series I have ever seen, even managing to hold up against the best shows that we have today. Writing wise a lot of Star Trek has aged like a fine wine, managing to still be relevant despite some series being decades old.

Now is Star Trek perfect? No, at the worst of times you question how some episodes can even be from the same show from how awful and flat out stupid some of the episodes are. The next generation has an episode where a character has sex with a ghost. Deep Space Nine had an episode where the crew get sucked into a game board, while one of the main cast has to play the game that has them trapped. Enterprise famously has a finale that is considered one of the worst episodes in the franchise. It's stuff like this that makes me black out for 45 minutes and makes me wonder if what I was watching was even real, that being said this is the minority of the franchise and is in no way a representation of the franchise.

Now with me gushing over this franchise you would think that I grew up with it or something right? Well that's where you'd be wrong as it turns out, I myself avoided Star Trek for so long because of its representation, I thought it was the typical Sci-Fi show that didn't age all that well, quite like classic Doctor Who....or modern Doctor Who, anyway I didn't truly give Star Trek series a chance till I was 19 and even by then I was reluctant to try it out, but when I started with The next Generation, I was hooked. This post will be talking about what I like about each individual series as well as the order I watched them in, now I will like to preface that I have not seen all of Star Trek, heck many hardcore fans would say I'm not very far at all. I have finished The next generation (twice), 5 seasons of Deep Space Nine, 4 seasons of Voyager, 8 out of 10 of the original Star Trek movies, the 3 Kelvin timeline movies, the first and last episodes of Enterprise, about 2 episodes of the original series, 4 episodes of Picard and none of discovery, so this post is definitely subject to change and may require a follow up. Regardless I have at least seen enough to tell you why it is great and that you should see it if you haven't.

The Star Trek movies are a mixed bag, but when they're good they're really good.

My first real exposure to Star Trek as a whole was from a little underground YouTuber called 'The Nostalgia Critic' (irony fully intended), he was doing a marathon of the "bad" Star Trek films and my little 14 year old self, laughed and slapped his thighs together at this funny man making comments about how silly these movies were, but it had the unintentional effect of actually getting me interested in the films. My friend in secondary school was a big Trekkie (or is it Trekker?) and I asked him if I could borrow some of those films on DVD, before streaming services were the norm we had to watch our films in physical form kids. So I marathoned those films and at the time I thought some were great and some were really bad, so let's go over the quality of each one real quick.

I. The Motion Picture: Beautiful looking movie, but really boring. Great at introducing you to the main cast of the original series, especially for someone like me who has never seen it. Decent start 6/10.

II. The Wrath of Khan: One of the best Sci-Fi movies ever, tells an excellent story about one of Kirk's old enemies coming back for revenge and a very powerful ending. 9/10.

III. The search for Spock: Not a bad effort here, but it suffers from being in between two of the best movies in the franchise. Kind of undoes the ending of Wrath of Khan in quite a strange way but overall still pretty fun. 6/10.

IV. The Voyage Home: Excellent time travel story that's one of the more fun entries in the series, it's just great to see these characters go back to the past (to play those s* games that suck ass) and interact with people from the 80's. 8/10.

V. The Final Frontier: What does God need with a starship? 3/10.

VI. The Undiscovered Country: Great sendoff for the original cast, great villain introduced in this one too. 8/10.

VII. Generations: The proceeding movies goes on to ruin said great sendoff and instead shows Picard looking at an old photo album and having a little cry. 4/10.

VIII. First Contact: Very fun Sci-Fi movie, weird characterisation for Picard in this one but overall I like the horror atmosphere of this one and that soundtrack is fantastic. 7/10.

If you want my ranking personally I would rank them II > IV> VI > VIII > I > III > VII > V

youtube

And what about those characters? Well I'll go into the next generation cast later but the Original series cast are all very fun to watch and have great chemistry. It's no wonder that Captain Kirk and Spock became cultural icons, they are always great on screen together and characters like Bones is one of the funniest characters in the series for his more down to earth characterisation compared to the rest of the cast, these characters aren't particularly deep or anything but they are well written and I would recommend the movies for someone's first exposure to the series, it worked for me.

So what about those Kelvin timeline films?

Shortly after checking out those original movies, I went on to watch the Kelvin timeline movies as at the time into Darkness was on it's way out in 2013, so I thought I may as well check out the 2009 one. Here's the thing I don't think these movies are bad, in fact I find them rather enjoyable, not so much with into Darkness, but the other two are pretty good summer action movies. The characters are, again quite likable, being a reboot of the original series they captured elements of the original characters well, while putting a little twist on them. Captain Kirk was known for being a ladies man in the OG series so now we get to see him actually have THE sex I've heard so much about on the big screen, when I first saw this my eyes bugged out of my head in a cartoon like style, that's for sure.

Into darkness unfortunately has the issue with remaking an all time classic so it was going to suffer as a result, I don't think Cumberbatch captured the more spite filled performance of Ricardo Montalbán's take on the character of Khan and it reeked of "You know this right? Remember this?" That being said the other two films I do enjoy, they are more action packed than your average Star Trek and are filled with Lens flare for some reason, but I would check them out if I were you, they're enjoyable romps, but if you don't like them you didn't hear it from me.

The Next Generation is as good as your mother says it is.

When I said the Kelvin Timeline movies were my next introduction to the series, I meant it. I didn't touch a Star Trek series at all until the year of 2016, after I had saw Beyond in cinema. I felt like it was time to check it out, if I enjoyed the movies, surely, I could enjoy the series that they spawned from, right? Well to say that the Next Generation is a good series would be understatement of the century. The next generation really is something special, its characters are fantastic, the episodes tell some of the best stories you will ever see on the silver screen and it has some of the best writing I have had the pleasure of seeing.

The characters are so diverse and are more interesting than the OG series, which I already enjoyed from the movies. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (played excellently by Patrick Stewart) is the best captain in the series, not only do most the best episodes revolve around him, but it's his ideals that make him one of the more interesting characters in the series. Picard tends to follow orders from Star Fleet and for the most part even if it may seem like a bad thing to do at the time, Picard will follow orders, quite unlike a Kirk, that broke the rules all the time. It's this element of Picard that makes him really fascinating to watch, a by the books captain was the best way to go for a series like this, most the time Picard will not resort to violence and will choose to talk his way out of a situation instead. He's stern but also fair and seeing his interests in the performing arts and literature just adds more to this already interesting character.

The rest of the supporting cast are great too. Data, an android with no emotions but wishes to understand them is another great character rivalling Picard in popularity, watching him be put in situation that revolve around his lack of emotions and if he counts as a lifeform makes for some of the best stories in the next generation. First officer Riker, is also another great character to watch, he's everything you want from a first officer, he's more fair than Picard most the time but he can be quite stern too when he needs to be and a lot of great episodes revolve around what he decides to do when Picard isn't there to give him orders. The final character in this series I want to touch on is Worf, the security officer who is also a Klingon who was raised by humans. This added an element of an outsider on the crew to the series, there are many episodes where he has to deal with his culture as a Klingon vs his place on Star Fleet, this really was progressive writing for the time it came out.

I will go over some of the episodes in the show that really show off how fantastic this series really is.

The Measure of a Man (season 2): One of the, if not the most famous episode of the show. Data's identity as a lifeform comes into question when a scientist wants to take him apart. A hearing is ordered, with Picard defending that Data is indeed a lifeform. This is the episode that won me over on the series and showed me that The Next Generation was truly something special.

Yesterday's Enterprise (season 3): A fantastic episode, where the Enterprise gets caught in a different timeline where they are at constant war with the Klingons. Shows that Star Trek could tell these alternate reality stories extremely well.

The Best of Both Worlds and Family (season 3 and 4): The Borg show off how deadly they are by taking Picard and turning him into one. One of the greatest cliff-hangers is the history of television, please watch this. Family shows the aftermath of the situation and shows an emotionally weakened Picard.

Clues (season 4): A fun episode where the crew of the Enterprise wake up after blacking out for what they think is a small period but actually turns out to be longer than expected, this turns into a mystery to find out what's going on as one of the crew might be holding back some information from the others.

The Drumhead (season 4): One of the best episodes in the series for how it, for lack of a better term tackles racism. Picard has to defend a member of his crew who is Romulan, which is an enemy of the Federation. "Have we become so… fearful, have we become so cowardly… that we must extinguish a man? Because he carries the blood of a current enemy?"

I Borg (season 5): A Borg is taken aboard the enterprise with the intention of infecting the rest of the collective, but the longer the Borg stays on the enterprise, the more of its humanity it gets back. Picard has to decide whether it's right to kill this Borg or if it has the right to live like everyone else.

The Inner Light (season 5): Picard lives out an entire lifetime of someone he does not recognise, he grows close to the family of the person he is living out the life of and it becomes a rather emotional and sad tale. Don't miss this one.

Chain of Command (season 6): Patrick Stewart shows off some of his best acting, when he is taken away and tortured. This shows the psychological torture Picard has to endure and the final few minutes of the episodes are as chilling as they are brilliant.

Tapestry (season 6): Picard has a chance to redo his life after his artificial heart gives out and Q offers him to go back in time so that he never needed an artificial heart at all. Great episode that shows us not to regret our actions but instead learn from them and better ourselves.

All Good Things… (season 7): A fantastic finale that brings the series full circle with the very first episode in the series, where we get to see 3 different versions of these characters from different time periods. Excellent finale.

To wrap up what I have to say on The Next Generation, it really is a fantastic series and they don't make them like this anymore. Sci-Fi has lost a lot of the intelligent writing that went along with it, nowadays the genre needs to have action and explosions in it to appeal to a mainstream audience. No one wants to see an episode that questions what we consider a lifeform or an intelligent discussion on if we should follow orders all the time even if it's not always the right thing to do. Why watch that when we can see starships blowing up. Hahaha, I love space pew pew pew shoot the lasers KA-BOOM HAHA IS THIS SCI-FI YET? IS THIS THE GENRE YOU ALL LOVE SO MUCH? IS THIS SCI-FI YET?

Originally written by Mr_Turnabout on 20 February 2020 over on the old Dreary Middle website

This was the only article we ever published so we thought it would be nice to preserve it as a reminder of what once was, so enjoy!

#star trek #the next generation #tng #jean luc picard #jim kirk #Youtube

1 note · View note

olivereactsaboutgarbage · 1 year

Text

One Piece Chapters 121-129

It’s December now! The month I claimed would be the month to finally have consistent daily posting (I mean I said the same thing about October and November but I was lying those times so it doesn’t count)! The month of holiday festivities! The month where I have to try and remember what was happening in One Piece last time I read some of it! The month of the exorcism.

Chapter 121 - I Knew

Oh right, the princess was watching everyone die or something. Now I remember. Those punks... they killed the Chocobo!!!

Oh, when he puts it like that, Wil Wheaton makes it sound less like “bounty hunting” and more like “abusing a glitch or exploit in order to not have to worry about earning money while you’re doing your speedrun”.

What happens next is that Wil Wheaton promotes his favorite Netflix show:

Nami and Zoro get turned into birthday cake decorations. I could have sworn I’d seen a screenshot from the anime before where Lufpy was a birthday cake decoration, but maybe I’m just wildly misremembering.

The large alcoholic reveals that his decision to defeat his manly friend in battle was a matter of pride, not ignorance--but now that he’s even less ignorant, he wants to kill Wil Wheaton! This makes Wil Wheaton’s friends behave aggressively.

Also, Lufpy, Usopp, and the Chocobo are ready to get back up and keep pressing on. Hooray for Chocobos! Not that I’ve ever played Final Fantasy.

Chapter 122 - A Dead Body is Useless

Bleurgh, Wil Wheaton’s power is so nasty... I don’t want to think about a Wil Wheaton sword piercing my flesh. I’d totally get a blood infection. I’m glad I’m not a large alcoholic right now! By which I mean what’s happening to the large alcoholic is totally like that one Danganronpa death. Y’know, that one.

...I swear I’m not obsessed with Danganronpa, I just happen to mention it a lot in my One Piece write-ups...

So what’s happening right now is that Nami, Zoro, the princess, and the large alcoholic are all damsels in distress, in the same way that beloved Ace Attorney character “Herlock Sholmes” was a damsel in distress in the third chapter of the second game with him in it. A princess being a damsel in distress? How cliche! ...Wait, actually, I think that’s already what she was, prior to this birthday cake scene. Well, that aside, Zoro uses vague platitudes to try and inspire the large alcoholic to action.

Zoro also declares that he will now cut off his legs, and...

Okay, that’s pretty good. Zoro has made yet another joke, and his power level has thusly surged forwards.

Just when Zoro was about to actually go through with it, he gets saved by a Goofballs ex Machina--a rare inversion of the typical Zoro ex Machina. What a shame, I actually would have liked it if Zoro stopped having legs... that would’ve been, like, disability representation or something.

lmao i see zoro is too much of a Cool Guy to yell people’s names, even when it would lend coherence to a sequence of panels

Chapter 123 - Luffy vs. Mr. 3

Hey, 3 is what comes at the end of 123!!! What a nice confluence of chapter number and chapter title. Not that I know what a “Luffy” is.

Oh, y’know what? This but from the front was the anime screenshot I saw someone post when I was like 14. I misremembered Zoro as Lufpy because Lufpy is normally the one who would be pointing at the sky. ...I guess Lufpy wouldn’t use a sword to do it, though.

Penny Nichols has a nice picnic for some reason. I think I was calling her Penny Nichols? Well, if I wasn’t, now I am.

Wil Wheaton locks up Lufpy’s feet in Shackles But Grosser, but this, as anyone could have predicted, only increases the potency of Lufpy’s Foot Fetish Moves. Which allows Lufpy to rescue Nami, Zoro and the princess more effectively.

However, even after punching Wil Wheaton into the stratosphere or what-have-you, he still seems to have reached an insufficient maximum effectiveness with which he is rescuing them. This is due to a lack of will, not a lack of ability. How mysterious...!

Chapter 124 - The Tea is Good

It turns out

...no... NO... I LET IT BACK IN...

...Excuse me for a moment. I have obtained a new method of expunging this demonic presence:

Excuse the black markings on the above panels. You’ll have to put up with this for a few days until the process is complete and I have regained my ability to utter... that phrase... without losing my grip on the threads that tie me to the mortal coil. Or, ideally, perhaps I won’t slip up again until the danger has passed.

Wow, I don’t remember that one being in Sonic Colors! ...Or maybe it was, and that’s why he shoved Tails into that elevator that one time.

The princess is the only person who realizes how to solicit Lufpy’s assistance, thusly once again proving that Competent Womanhood is a status that can only be held by one individual at a time, and overexposure to Lufpy has tragically removed it from Nami.

...Okay Penny Nichols might be my favorite villain so far. I like her design AND her gimmick. None of her colors seem to line up with the ones from Sonic, but I’ll forgive that minor continuity error.

You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew the sheer amounts of power Zoro derived from his jokes, Princess.

Usopp calls the Chocobo a good duck because it’s good at dodging, but there’s bad news headed his way: A gun!

Usopp also lights Lufpy on fire, which is good, but something bad also happens: Usopp catches on fire, thanks to... uh, whatever I was calling the male member of whatever team he’s from.

WHY IS LUFPY JACKED???

Chapter 125 - Candle Champion

oh NOOOOOO is Wil Wheaton coming back?! D:

Sanji is coming back.

Wil Wheaton comes back too. :(

WIL WHEATON HAS A MECH???

Wil Wheaton asks Penny Nichols for help. She agrees, on the condition that she gets to take a nap. Wil Wheaton tells her to skip to the part where she’s taking a nap, because he’s already unbeatable without her help. I hope this is the means through which Lufpy and the gang overcome Penny Nichols once and for all.

Woah, the princess has adopted the role of Competent Woman so hard, she’s Competent even in death... oh yeah everyone’s dead I think I forgot to mention that

It turns out

hngh... GAH...!!

Humanity restored.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is: Having hair that’s on fire is a really strange choice for someone whose ability is disabled by fire to have. Maybe his hair is the only thing keeping him alive? That’s scary. I’m glad I’m not Wil Wheaton. If I were Wil Wheaton, everyone would hate my Star Trek character and then I would end up having to play myself on Big Bang Theory!

oh this is at LEAST as fetishy as any special move lufpy has ever used if not moreso

OH LMAO LUFPY HAD THE SAME THOUGHT THAT I DID ABOUT HOW WIL WHEATON’S OWN HAIR DISABLES HIS ABILITY

I guess noticing people’s fashion sense is one of Lufpy’s character gimmicks that I haven’t commented on much up until now.

Using Usopp’s cleverness, Lufpy engulfs all his friends in flame! Uh, except Sanji I guess. Sanji is still busy engaging in the process of coming back.

Chapter 126 - Instinct

...Was Nami always barely-clothed in this scene or is the idea that her clothes burned up in a big fire?

Usopp uses one of the terrifying master’s tricks: Pretending one kind of bomb is a different kind of bomb. Wait, but the terrifying master was an awful boss! I thought better of you, Usopp.

The explosion guy whose identity I forgot tries to get revenge about this, but Zoro prevents that by lighting his own rice pun ablaze. Powerful!

OHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO THERE’S AS MANY OF WIL WHEATON AS THERE ARE CHAPTERS OF ONE PIECE??? That sucks, because Wil Wheaton is gross!!

It turns out

FUCK

Humanity restored.

As I was saying: Lufpy was able to overcome the army of Wil Wheatons by simply overcoming it.

While Sanji’s enjoying some tea, a basket starts ringing like a telephone. It turns out this is because there was a telephone in the basket, but even with that said: That may have been the most JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure-esque thing ever to happen in One Piece.

Oh, the person calling Sanji was Mr. Zero by the way.

Chapter 127 - Snail-o-phone

Oh yeah, also the telephone was a snail.

The large alcoholic is suddenly even sadder about his manly friend being dead. His manly friend is suddenly not dead. Well, that settles that, I guess.

Wait... is Penny Nichols ACTUALLY gonna get unceremoniously ignored? Is that why we’re getting arc wrap-up stuff now? What’s she up to at the moment?

Steve Buscemi ends up impersonating Wil Wheaton too well, and gets attacked by animals. Oh yeah, I meant Sanji by the way. You can determine for yourself where in that sentence I meant to say “Sanji” but ended up saying something else instead.

The joke’s on animals though, because animal cruelty is quickly

turning out

to be Sanji’s specialty. Huh? Did something happen just now? No... I think it’s fine.

Anyways, Mr. Zero can’t abide animal cruelty, so he plans on killing Wil Wheaton, by which I mean Steve Buscemi, by which I mean Sanji, by which I mean “too well”, the thing I accidentally said instead of saying Sanji.

That aside... Sanji now has access to the banana that will send him to Mr. Zero.

Chapter 128 - Pirate Pride

Ah yes, the palindrome cop and her cop boss who eats various things in various ways. ...Well, they exist!

hey why’d zoro get to keep his shirt? fire got rid of lufpy and nami’s shirts, why didn’t it get rid of zoro’s shirt? i bet there’s a lot of people out there who would have liked it if something happened to zoro’s shirt... wait is he still covered in blood under his shirt? never mind actually

As for why the princess also didn’t lose her shirt... that’s obvious. Boobs Hypnosis is just that powerful.

Is Sanji... alright... in this panel...?

He says that as if it’s new information to him, and not something he’s been incapable of shutting up about this entire time. Ah, Sanji... your Sanji Points are... so resplendent, yet so fleeting...

No context shall be provided.

Anyway, the giants want Lufpy and his crew to not die. That’s nice.

Chapter 129 - Straight Ahead!!!

Nami regains her Competent Woman powers, doubling the number of Competent Women. Incredible! However, this was extremely bad timing, as we are now in a situation where Competence is anything but a virtue. It’s time for the power of friendship to overcome Competence.

It does that.

Now some random fish has a big hole in it.

It turns out

Guaaaaaah...! Nooooo...!

Humanity restored.

Oh, so NOW Zoro’s shirt mysteriously goes missing. Couldn’t have gone missing when everyone else’s did, huh? It had to wait until NOW to go missing. I get it. Zoro’s shirt is like the type of FREAKING HIPSTER (!!!) who plays Undertale in 2018 instead of 2015. Zoro’s shirt is now the worst member of Lufpy’s crew. It has even fewer Sanji Points than Sanji or Usopp.

Someone is wearing birds. Meanwhile, it turns out the Competent Woman Counter is going to have to drop back down to 1, because Nami is like, dying

#one piece #is what i'm consuming #IT TURNS OUT

0 notes