#if you equate these things without further analysis...you might be an idiot

[utilitycaster]

stopping a little pre-break to go to the gym, and this is also a little salty and in response to the ask I deleted but once again the idea that the Mighty Nein didn't follow plot hooks and meandered and whatever is just instant "oh you're stupid." like, I think they followed weirder plot hooks, but they did in fact consistently follow plot hooks or organically ended up via dice rolls:

from Trostenwald, headed to Zadash, which was a pretty natural progression given how many of them had interests leading to an urban center; Alfield detour because it was literally on fire

followed the mail that Beau stole to Zadash

Took TONS of opportunities in Zadash, eventually deciding to get out of town as they (understandably) didn't want to get involved in the war; took a job with the Gentleman who was part of the hook from the mail Beau stole and tied into Jester's backstory, though that wasn't something they knew at the time (but was a person one would want the party to meet so that the payoff would hit right...consider how flat all the Apex War stuff fell in C3 because no one followed any sidequests/investigation about it)

Did the jobs for the Gentleman and a few things that popped up en route; Molly's death

Found the letter from Avantika at the Sour Nest and it served as an opportunity to see Jester's family; followed that hook

accidentally stole a pirate ship, pirates arc, Fjord's plot becomes relevant, followed that to a reasonable point of stoppage given that Fjord didn't want to unleash Uk'otoa and Avantika was dead

Returned, in part because Felderwin had been attacked which was of relevance to Nott; stopped by Yussa's out of curiosity re: cool shit in the world [doing interesting things on a thursday! what a concept]

The discovery that Yeza had been taken leads them to Xhorhas and drives their plot from there up to and including giving the beacon over to the Bright Queen

I will admit the episodes in the 60s get a little "what do we do next" but they still serve a vital purpose of showing them the perspective of The Other (the Kryn) after a strongly Empire (and coast) perspective that quickly picks up once they start following the start of the angel of irons plot, which carries them through Yasha being taken

Follow Caduceus's visions and Fjord's pact-breaking (70-76) and then return to chasing Yasha

Upon multiple failures, seek out Yussa, masterfully DM-ed introduction of Allura and the return of the Happy Fun Ball to not only provide more information on an antagonist (Laughing Hand) but also renew the party's spirits

Get a lead on Yasha, find and free her only to be immediately tasked with ending the war

Follow that lead with a few opportunities to check on some long-running personal quests (Caduceus and the grove, Veth being turned back into a halfling, both of which are the characters' goals at the time of their introduction and have had recurring attention throughout) in the meantime

Attend peace talks, learn about Essek, get hook for Aeor from Vess DeRogna

Go to Rumblecusp, part of Jester's story that has been previously seeded

Get a vision of The End Plot (Vokodo fleeing Cognouza), return to talk to Vess, realize they could resurrect Molly perhaps given the power they had amassed

Aeor plot and endgame kicked off; honestly that alone covers more things but I do want to get to the gym.

Like...the characters all had stories very much driven by the mechanics and structure of D&D, which is inherently about gaining power, and all were given significant attention throughout, but also, while they didn't always follow the hooks Matt expected, they either were following hooks he had nonetheless provided, or making their own interesting decisions.

If this isn't for you, that is fine, truly. But I think that Reddit - especially during C2 - was mostly people mad that it wasn't still Vox Machina's story, and the idea that C3 is a response to Reddit is not a defense of C3 but a condemnation, ie, the correct response would be flipping off Reddit and saying "I do what I want." And again: "not for me" = totally fine. "avoidant/plotless"= you are abysmal at narratology and this means your analysis is not worth my time.

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

[itsworn]

Why You Should Go 200MPH with the ECTA

We did it – we just slid into the 200 MPH Club during September’s ECTA Arkansas 1-Mile Challenge with a scant 202.6mph pass. The mistakes had been ironed out, and a final tune-up made sure that every bit of the 5280 feet before us was traversed as quickly as possible.

  While we had a solid HOT ROD Special – Rydin Decal’s venerable 1982 Pontiac Trans-Am that was filled with a 518ci all-aluminum big-block Chevy, Bruno-driven three-speed G-Force transmission, and a four-linked, quick-change rear-end with 2.77 gears – along with the experienced team of Jay Bell, Mark Weiler, Eric Gellman, Carl Dillon, Ed Sellers, and Greg Drake, we still had a lot to learn to break the two-century mark.

  Land speed racing (LSR) is a curious adventure for those who’ve day dreamt about hitting terminal velocity on just about any open road laid out before us. It’s not the same competitiveness of going toe-to-toe in drag racing, or door-to-door in wheel-to-wheel racing. In fact, what drives most LSR racers is pure curiosity. There’s something to be said about pushing a record further into the speedometer’s reach, you “beat” the other guy or gal that way; but for the most part, it’s a strangely personal pursuit of speed.

There’s really no prize money in LSR, even auto-cross has more payouts, and there’s virtually no fame outside of Bonneville. You’re often not even chasing the times of someone you’re sharing the weekend with – many records are broken years and decades after their last reset. It’s just you and the machine versus horsepower and aerodynamics. Maybe there’s a little bit of ego, when you’re racing for a record, what you’re racing for is an accomplishment that really only a single human being has ever achieved. That accomplishment might be very, very niche- like the Geo Metro of Jim Sievers gunning for 120mph, or a turbine-driven streamliner chasing 500mph – but each is equal in their passion and persistence.

  In that focused atmosphere, there’s no room for error in making a record. There’s not another corner that you can line-up and make up time, there’s no pedal-fest where holeshots can be reeled back in. Yes, we’ll argue that your machine is doing most of the work in LSR, there’s just only so fast you can go with one that’s not built properly at this kind of performance knife-edge, but to make a record or a Two Club, it’s still all on your shoulders. You’ve got to make the best use of the start so that you can get up to speed sooner and fight the drag at higher speeds over the most distance. Each shift is vital, especially in our case where this particular engine is unproven in the car for a 200mph mile. We had to make sure that our little 518ci powerplant had the best chance possible at stretching its legs on every single run.

  We kicked off the Arkansas 1-Mile Challenge on Thursday with the initial tech inspection and registration. Like any race, Day 0 is something of a homecoming for a group of high-speed misfits. Race weekends bring teams together that are often splintered across the US on a typical day, but it’s one of those reasons why even a bad weekend at the races are better than most good weeks in real life.

  Tech as a rookie in land speed racing is necessarily strict – all eyes are on you to prove that you’re not a total idiot (as you’ve got to be a least a little bit of one to engage in motorsports). This includes proving that A) you can read a rule book, B) that your safety gear (cage, belts, suit, etc) is up to snuff for your class and speed, and that, C) you can bail out of the car in case of emergency.

We must’ve shown an honest sense of self preservation, as we passed our bail-out on the first go, and the team had the car ready-to-roll for ECTA’s safety inspection. On Friday, lanes opened for licensing passes. This is where you’ve got to show that you’ve got a good handle of your machine and a reliable sense of placement on course. This is all equally serious, no matter if you’ve got a 150mph goal or a 250mph one – what the race organizers want to see is that the parachutes come out on-time, the right turn-outs are used, and that you and the race car aren’t fighting each other to get there.

  Our first run was to the half-mile marker, and it was our first time driving the car ever. It was a soft pass, rolling in and feeling out the Bruno-driven, three-speed G-Force transmission. In short, it’s a three-speed manual with a torque converter, and it used a V-gate shifter. It’s a unique sequential shifter that makes what would be an H-pattern a seemingly simple back-and-forth motion. By pulling the trigger lever on the pistol-grip and pushing it forward, first gear was engaged. Then you release the trigger before pulling back to engage second, and one last click forward for third. The tricky bit is the Bruno drive adds a variable, that the engine RPM and transmission input shaft RPM can be mismatched (unlike a manual, where the clutch keep things locked.) This tidbit didn’t affect our next licensing pass to the three-quarter mark, but it bit us on the first full-throttle pass.

The monstrous Pro System SV1 carb was just a bit out of tune at the start of the weekend, and it bogged at full-throttle. Pulling it back to 95-percent made more power, but the slight pedaling meant that the engine and transmission RPM began to miss-match, blocking third-gear just like if you hadn’t clutched correctly in a normal manual. The third pass was aborted when the throw forward was blocked with a blocky vibration through the shifter. We ended the second day with a respectable, but still boggy, pass to 190mph. It was mostly our fault, we missed third again, but managed to gently hold the shifter forward and breathe off the throttle, which allowed it to fall into third-gear (like it feels when clutchless shifting as the sychros match up), but it was a small delay that penalized our speed on the big end. But, hey, at least all of our ‘chutes were popping after having just learned how to pack them that morning!

  These gaffes were annoying, but there was no expectation of a trick shot, and Jay and Eric were constantly helping to problem solve with us through each step of the learning curve. The next morning the best chance we had at getting the 518 up to 200. The cool morning air meant that power would be easier to find, and we were confident that fattening up the carb would allow for healthier full-throttle runs. Coming off the line that morning, things felt good.

  There was no bogging, as soon as we rolled into the throttle, the 518 grunted off the line as if it was being pulled by a rubber band. First and second gear clicked by quickly, but almost half of the run was charging through third gear (which, we finally threw successfully.) The half-mile marker came up sooner, and the three-quarter flags were gone in blink. There’s no light-speed moment, it’s just that you progressively have to pay more and more attention to what’s going on further down course. When you’re looking to skip a footfall-field-a-second, it’s world-altering to perceive things at this pace for the first time. We knew that the run was faster, we knew that there was more RPM through the traps, and that everything felt faster – but it’s all but certain as you finally reach for a parachute as you enter the traps, even though it’s also hit harder than ever felt.

At ECTA’s 1-Mile challenge, there’s about a minute alone on the return road as the chase truck catches up. By this point, we’d but come proficient at packing up the parachute and resetting the car for the return trip, but it’s almost robotic as your head floats in the clouds analyzing every bit of the previous run. It’s a bizarre mix of confidence and doubt: you’re sure you’ve gone faster, your six senses haven’t been rattled so hard before… but in that hyper-critical analysis it’s too easy to start picking at the mistakes. It’s a few seconds of self-reflection that’s hard to match in the usual nine-to-five life.

  It was an honest surprise when Jay finally quit teasing us and gave the final word: 202.6mph! It was not just good enough for the AA/GC record at the new Blytheville course, but it was enough to enter the ECTA 200 MPH Club. In fact, that little 518 managed to scratch another driver through 200mph, with Greg Drake picking up the wheel and chiseling though several runs in the 190mph range to enter the 200 Club in AA/GRS with a 200.3mph pass.

What’s proven here is less about our gall in chasing a Two-Club in our first land speed race and more about the result of an excellent team. This is really the secret in racing, more than any horsepower or wind tunnel trick: it’s an extra set of eyes over your shoulder. Racing is undoubtedly risky, especially when you consider there’s no real, world-changing prize at the end of the road. There is something special about being a part of a small population of the Earth that’s chosen to break this barrier, but we’d be shakely chiseling at the number much longer without the wisdom and coaching of a great group of racers and crew around us. In motorsport, it takes an unspoken selflessness to operate a stable team. Mistakes happen in every race from all sides of the equation; from the driver, crew, or car. That said, when all three can put up with each other long enough, grow together from each other’s struggles and put the pieces together, that’s what makes the magic happen on track. It’s impossible to ignore that the racing family is one of the main reasons we sign our lives away to this stuff – second to winning your goals, wherever that bar is set.

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