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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep13

The true mystery of this show is trying to figure out how to even talk about each episode without just repeating myself or talking about other parts of the franchise, lmao.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut. Plus probably spoilers for both Umineko and Ciconia.

I’m not even sure where to begin talking about the fundamental issues this show has at this point, lol. It’s easy to just say that Sotsu on it’s own is bad, but I feel like it’s highlighting the fact that right from day one there were problems with the show’s structure and it’s intentions that have just become more and more of an issue as time’s gone on.

At the very least, I think that it was a huge mistake for them to have the gun cliffhanger happen midway through Gou, and to then spend so much time on backstory stuff and answer arcs. That just cast a negative shadow over all of those arcs because everyone was just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. At this point I think they shouldn’t have even had Nekodamashi be in Gou to begin with. If they transitioned straight from Tataridamashi to Satokowashi then you could keep the general cliffhanger of revealing that Satoko’s the culprit without making people so impatient to go back to it and see what happens afterward.

But there’s also the issues like how Satokowashi revealed everything we needed to know about the howdunnit of the mystery, or how the whole gimmick of reusing the same scenarios as the VN in order to play both sides and make it technically accessible to new fans really wrote them into a corner and forced them to spend more time on the answer arcs than they needed to.

If we at least assume that the whole story ends in this arc, I think you easily could have condensed it all into one 2-cour season if they’d just committed to aiming this at old fans.

I guess there’s still a chance we’ll get some sort of continuation, but at this point I feel like the only way to get that much more content is if it ends up mostly retreading Satokowashi from a different perspective, which might actually drive me insane, lol.

In general it just feels like we’re already at the climax of the story one way or another, and there’s not many ways to keep it going for much longer without it seeming super forced. Like, Eua and Hanyuu are having their big confrontation with each other, and now Rika and Satoko are both on the same page, so they’re going to basically be stuck in a stalemate until one of them gives up. There isn’t really any mystery left to answer aside from giving more info about what’s going on between Eua and Hanyuu, so I’d rather they just cut to the chase and not drag this out.

We also know from TV listings that a different show is going to taking over Sotsu’s time slot next season, so unless it changes time slot for some reason, we’d probably have to wait until at least January to get a continuation, and I just dunno if that’d even be worth it.

I’ve already gone over my general ideas for how I think this will end, but I still think it’s entirely possible to wrap things up in just two more episodes. At the very least, if we get another full cour out of this then that’d probably just end up only having a few more episodes of actually new content, so my point still stands, lol.

I don’t think this episode did much to change my mind about where this is going, but it did at least clarify a couple of things. Like how Eua explicitly calls Hanyuu a ‘part of her’, which means that I’m probably right about my interpretation of them being two halves of the same being. There’s still a lot of different ways they could explain it, but at this point it’d basically still just boil down to the same idea of them being two parts of the same person.

It’s also more clear now that Rika more or less didn’t really know about Satoko being the culprit until the last minute, and was starting to get flashbacks to the end of Tataridamashi. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about that. It’s kinda hard to believe that Rika wasn’t at least suspecting Satoko by that point, but I do like the implication that Rika wasn’t fully dead when Satoko arrived, since that at least feels like pay-off for Satoko being so cocky and openly monologuing about how evil she is when she thinks Rika’s dead and can’t hear her.

I guess this episode also shows that there wasn’t anything particularly special going on with how Takano decided to confess to Rika in this one specific loop, which is also kinda underwhelming. Basically it seems like it just boils down to her feeling guilty about all of the stuff she remembers doing, but it’s still kinda weird that she didn’t confess to her in any previous loops. One of the weird issues with Gou/Sotsu’s storytelling is that Rika seemingly put no real effort into trying to investigate Takano even though she remembered her being the culprit, and I think that could have been really easily resolved if there was a scene like this in Onidamashi where Takano confesses her sins to Rika and leaves the village, since that would at least give a reason for her to not try and investigate them, and to assume that somebody else is behind these new loops. They could have even just had that happen off-screen and only be shown in Oniakashi if they didn’t want to spoil new fans. It just seems like a really easy change to make that would have made Rika’s passivity and hopelessness in this series way more understandable.

I think we’re also meant to assume that Satoko reacting to the box in this episode was just her faking it, since there’s no real indication that her conscience has returned or anything. But I’m not really sure why Satoko would go out of her way to fake that, when the trap box hadn’t even come up in that timeline. Maybe it would have made more sense if we saw her inner thoughts in that scene, but it kinda feels like they had to come up with some sort of scenario where Satoko would accidentally display knowledge that only a looper would know. Compared to how she’s been almost overpowered and hyper-competent in this series compared to Rika, it has a weird vibe of her being stupid because the plot demands it, lol. Either way it just seems kinda weird and contrived.

We also ended this episode on the gun cliffhanger again, which I saw coming, but it still kinda stings, lol. Hopefully the payoff is worth it. Realistically I think Satoko will just immediately shoot Rika, and we’ll cut to them having a proper confrontation in the meta world. With how they compared it to the ‘miracle’ scene with Takano in Matsuribayashi, it’s possible that they’ll somehow stop Satoko from shooting her, but I dunno. The stuff Hanyuu said about how this ‘isn’t the world that Rika fought for’ makes me think we’re probably not gonna stick with this loop for very long anyway, so I’d rather they just cut to the chase and get to the part where the two of them fight it out in the fragment world once and for all. Which at least seems to be what that one part of the OP is teasing at.

On that note, the only other mysterious part of the OP [and the key visual] left is the older club members in new outfits, which still feels like a bit of a loose thread, but it’s entirely possible that it doesn’t really mean much. For one thing, it could be as simple as it being related to an epilogue scene back in the Matsuribayashi timeline where they’re in different outfits to the ones we saw them wear last time we saw them. Either way I don’t really think the other club members are going to be super relevant to how this all ends, so one way or another whatever that stuff is related to could still just come up in the next two episodes.

Basically the question is just how exactly the big conflicts are gonna get resolved, and what note we’ll end things on. Which also ties into the larger question of whether or not this is genuinely meant to tie into Umineko [and maybe Ciconia] like they’re indicating, or if that’s some kind of elaborate troll.

I know i’m biased, but I think all the Umineko and Ciconia stuff is totally sincere, and Ryukishi really is using this as a way to start tying the wider WTC-verse together in a more concrete way, so that’s what I’m basing my theories off of.

With that in mind, I still think this will end with Rika and Satoko officially abandoning their humanity and becoming witches together, with the sword maybe being an in-universe plot device to depict that process. And with the reveal that Eua and Hanyuu are for all intents and purposes two parts of the same person, I feel like their side of things will probably end with them merging together in a way that creates Featherine, which would at least explain why Featherine’s personality is more mild than Eua’s, and also why Bernkastel is her miko, and why Featherine’s whole name is a giant pun about Hanyuu. It’d also fit with the whole religious motif that Hanyuu has going on if she basically ‘sacrifices’ herself to neutralize Eua. It’s at least the closest I think we’ll get to seeing Eua be ‘defeated’.

And on that note, I don’t really think this will end with anyone like Eua or Satoko being used as a villain who everyone else defeats so they can go back to their happy ending, since that’s the exact sort of thing that Ryuukishi regrets doing originally, and is why we’ve gotten so many redemption arcs for people in Gou/Sotsu. So I think at most we’ll see Eua get turned into Featherine so she’s less actively hostile towards everyone else, but I think this will ultimately end with Rika and Satoko reconciling and mending their relationship.

Over on the Matsuribayashi timeline side of things, I feel like this is gonna end up paralleling Nekodamashi a bit, and we’ll find out that Satoko ended up planning to kill herself in the Saiguden, but Rika and the club will show up at the last minute and she’ll choose not to. Then we’ll probably see her and Rika talk things out properly, and maybe Satoko will find out that Satoshi woke up from his coma or whatever, and that way they’ll all still get their happy ending, while also simultaneously we can still have Rika and Satoko split off their witch selves into separate entities that become the Bern and Lambda we know in Umineko.

It’s possible they’ll do something with the idea of Satoko losing her game and being sent to a world without Rika, but that also might just not happen at all. So who knows.

If they really lean into the idea of this directly setting up for Umineko, then it’d be neat if we also see Satoko and Rika meet Ikuko in the future of the Matsuribayashi timeline.

There’s also the Ciconia teases to think about, but they seem to be going in the direction of Ciconia taking place before all this even happened, so I think that’ll be kept kinda nebulous and unexplored until Ciconia itself finishes. Ryukishi might announce a release date for phase 2 after Sotsu ends, but I think it’s way too early for anything like an anime adaptation of it. I’d rather they wait until at least after it’s finished before they do something like that.

On the other hand, Umineko’s been over for like ten years, so it’d be much easier to do something like a remake for it after this. I have a lot of thoughts about how that might go if they do that, but I’m gonna wait until Sotsu ends and then make a separate post about it.

Anyway I guess now I just have to wait and see what happens next week, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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The Amazing Spider-Man: Mayhem in Manhattan Audiobook Thoughts

Marv Wolfman and Len Wein deliver a problematic that’s perhaps more interesting to talk about than actually experience for yourself.

Plot synopsis

As is standard for these types of post for me, I’m copying over a plot synopsis I found elsewhere to save myself time, and because they do a better job than I could. I edited it for a few reasons and the unedited synopsis, along with their review can be found here.

Allen Huddleston was the accountant for a small-time gangster. He worked his way to the top of the organization. His company merged with a legitimate oil company and his career and fortune soared. Then one day, a man made him an offer he had to refuse.

Because of his refusal, this individual – showing signs of superhuman powers, threw Huddleston from his 50-story apartment…

…Spidey finds Huddleston’s body and is…blamed for the murder.

Meanwhile, there is a meeting of the presidents of the 8 largest oil companies in the US. This same bad guy, hidden by a screen, told the eight that they must buy oil from him during the next year. Their oil has been irradiated and rendered useless. By the time the oil can be cleaned up, the year will have passed. This individual – known through the novel as the Master Planner until his real identity is revealed – is set to make millions.

While Spidey investigates the death of Huddleston he finds a taped telephone conversation with Huddleston and the Master Planner. Spider-Man finds that the murder is connected to a manipulation of the eight US oil companies. This leads to some of the Master Planner’s moles in the other oil companies. The Master Planner sets a trap for Spider-Man. There, the Master Planner reveals his real identity.

As the novel progresses, we meet regulars Mary Jane [Watson], Glory Grant, Joe Robertson and good old J Jonah Jameson. At first Triple-J is pleasant to others and happy that Spider-Man is accused of murder. As the facts become clearer, he is back to his usual…self – brusque, short-tempered and kvetching…He and Robbie investigate the mystery of the eight US oil company executives meeting in secret...At the end he confesses to Robertson why he REALLY dislikes Spidey – what about the REAL heroes who work to better mankind every day. “Who do you think is under that mask?” Robbie says. “A man, just like you.”

To add to this synopsis the climax transpires on a drilling platform where Doc Ock has the 8 oil men gathered up. Spidey uncovers a diary that has Ock’s whole plan committed to paper, and though it is destroyed, hearing the details is enough to clear his name as far as JJJ and Robbie are concerned (they are on the platform too). Doc Ock tries to escape with what amounts to a Scooby-Doo style latex mask which Spidey sees through fairly quickly and their battle resumes. When it’s over Doc Ock has seemingly perished in an inferno as the oil platform is set ablaze.

Out of concern for May’s health Peter throughout the novel seriously considers retirement but relents at the end. He plays a web-related prank on Jonah making everyone in the Bugle laugh. Close curtain.

Sorry it’s not as good as other synopses I’ve found but it’s the best I could find.

Context

This novel was released in March 1978 and, according to the information I found, was published when Len Wein’s run on ASM (ASM # 151–180) was nearing its end and not too long before Marv Wolfman would take the helm in ASM #182). Based upon Marvel.com’s publication dates, the novel would’ve been released between ASM #177-179. It’s unknown (and in my view highly unlikely) if Wein or Wolfman wrote this with the intention of being canonical. If read in conjunction with the then recent issues of Wein’s run it plays very much like most Spidey novels (especially the ones from the 1990s) wherein it takes place in a vaguely contemporary status quo within necesarilly marrying itself to any specific recent events. However how you perceive the novel in terms of being a Spider-Man story changes depending upon whether you look at it from the perspective of canon or as it’s own entity.

This was the first ever Spider-Man novel and also the only definitively canonical one (due to a direct reference in Wolfman’s ASM #186).

Obviously the standards for comics back then were not as realistic as they became later, and indeed the general craftsmanship quality wasn’t as high either. Perhaps more importantly we need to bear in mind Spider-Man’s place within collective pop culture osmosis at the time.

By this time Spider-Man’s exposure to the mass public merely extended to the (by then long since cancelled) 1966 Spidey cartoon, the (then recent but not particularly successful) 1977 live action TV show and a long running skit as part of the educational kids show the Electric Company (which had ended the year before).

What I’m trying to say is that whilst today most everyone on the planet could rattle off Spidey’s powers, his association with the Bugle and at least a few supporting characters and villains, back in 1978 the average person at best might be able to recognize the character, name his secret identity and list off most of his powers.

This is important to bear in mind when discussing the novel because, though it is canon, it doesn’t take audience familiarity for granted. If you are an old hand with Spidey a lot parts of the novel are going to feel like going through the motions as Spidey is framed once again, Spidey wants to quit once again, Spidey gushes about Aunt May, etc. There is even practically a whole chapter dedicated to recapping Peter’s origin.

But then again, this novel wasn’t written for the small number of people already familiar with the character but for a wider audience who weren’t. As such it’s fair game to retread this material and play stuff that’d be obvious to comic fans (like Doc Ock’s identity) as mysterious.

If I were to be kind I’d say it was because Wein and Wolfman wanted to give readers a broad idea of what Spider-Man’s deal is, and the typical ins and outs of your average Spider-Man adventure. Were I to be less kind I’d argue they retread old ground to make completing this job easier on themselves, although admittedly the central plot isn’t one I believe had ever been done in Spider-Man before.

That being said, even within the context of the novel certain elements get brought up repeatedly to the point of them becoming tedious, Aunt May being chief among them.

Finally, though I admit to have not researched them extensively, the novel touches upon then contemporary social/economic/political issues. The one of most note is the 1973 oil crisis. Long story short, there were fuel shortages due to events transpiring in the Middle East that obviously caused financial and maintenance troubles for America (and other regions of the world). There was another oil crisis in 1979 so it’s possible people (like Wein and Wolfman) were seeing the writing on the wall and including the topic in this novel. Obviously these events don’t directly impact the book nor are there direct allegories but the subject matter of the book makes it more likely than not that the oil crises were a source of inspiration.

There are no references I can recall to Middle Eastern people (and in fact exactly 3 people of colour in the whole book, Robbie, Randy and Glory) so Doc Ock and his scheme could be viewed as symbolic of the Middle East’s actions (deliberate or otherwise) in creating a fuel crisis. If this was intentional it doesn’t quite work as, to my understanding of the oil business, the oil companies he’s blackmailing were concerned with providing fuel for cars and other such vehicles, not for everything. As such the victims of Ock’s scheme would chiefly be vehicle owners (which most people in New York are not) and chiefly the oil company owners.

Now a fuel shortage even just for vehicles would have impact on a lot of good people, like everyone who ever needed an ambulance or fire truck to show up quickly. This makes Spider-Man’s lack of caring about the blackmail rather selfish, short sighted and out of character. But at the same time the story does frame it more as the oil companies being inevitably forced to take up Ock on his scheme and lose billions of dollars so Peter’s indifference to them makes more sense, especially when one considers he didn’t know Ock was involved at that time. However this is also the biggest reason for why the possibly/probably intentional connection drawn between this scheme and the oil crisis falls apart. Not only is it not truly analogous to the real life crisis but it also frames the primary victims as uber rich dickheads who will become slightly less uber rich for one year as a result of this.

Even by 1970s standards that’s a failure in reader investment because literally only other uber rich dickheads would have any sympathy.

Less significantly New York’s financial troubles coupled with a 25 hour black out in 1977 and high crime rates led to a feeling within and outside of New York of the city being a place beyond redemption.

Broadly this perception was the fuel for a lot of super hero stories in the 1970s and 1980s (like Frank Miller’s Daredevil run) and for this novel, whilst it isn’t strictly speaking the main concern, the idea of New York being stuck in a rut and a tough place to make it forms a backdrop for the story. There are references to how NYC is a place you need to survive and in doing so it becomes part of you. Though they emphasis the decay and the fact that the city is not in great shape, Wolfman and/or Wein display a certain amount of pride in the city through Peter Parker. This is fitting for the character, not just because he’s always resided in NYC, nor because the real NYC eventually adopted Spidey as one of their unofficial mascots, but because NYC as a city is tailored to Peter’s character. In truth it’s integral in defining his identity and the one place on Earth that offers an environment designed to optimize his super powers (how many other places have that many tall buildings in such a close proximity?).

From pictures to prose and the lack of personal stakes

According to the bibliographies I was able to find, this was Len Wein’s first ever prose novel and Wolfman’s second, so their degree of skill of experience with the format isn’t on the same level as say Jim Butcher’s Spidey novel.

That being said, the story wasn’t badly communicated through the prose. However, you can tell that these guys’ forte is in a visual medium as the scenes were primarily action orientated and all about trying to paint a clear picture in your mind about what’s happening. They usually succeeded though there were a few times my mind drifted off and on occasion instances where I was wondering why Spidey doesn’t just do this or that to get out of dodge; admittedly that might have more to them dropping the ball with Spider-Man’s skillset than anything else.

The novel in general shares the tone of your typical mid-late 1970s Spidey story, albeit with a greater emphasis placed upon investigation and a longer plot. In fact had this story been a comic book it could’ve passed for an original graphic novel (before Marvel was regularly doing those), albeit one with an only slightly more complex tone. Really the sinister opening chapter with Doc Ock along with the details the plot goes into as far as the investigation are concerned are just about the only things that would’ve have occurred in a then standard issue of ASM or Spec. Other than that it’s very similar to a Spidey yarn from the time, which unfortunately includes some unsophisticated and even dodgy writing.* Case in point Doc Ock’s incredibly convenient journal detailing his evil scheme and his Scooby-Doo style disguise that doesn’t really do much but pad out the story.

However those complaints pale in comparison to the most central problem at the heart of the story.

This is not a Spider-Man story truly about Peter Parker.

Even in the primordial days of Spider-Man in the early 1960s, Lee, Ditko and Romita knew that Peter Parker’s personal life was at least half as important as his hero activities. They had already mined the idea of the two sides of his life negatively impacting one another and in multiple instances colliding. Perhaps the most famous examples are The Master Planner Trilogy (wherein Aunt May’s life depends upon Spider-Man confronting Doc Ock’s gang) and ASM (wherein a party with the supporting cast is crashed by Kraven the Hunter).

The problem with this book as a central story is that it places the emphasis upon Spider-Man moreso than it does upon peter Parker. Even in 1978, merely referencing Aunt May, his origin and giving brief appearances by Mary Jane, wasn’t going to cut it. The subplot about Peter deciding to quit also feels rather unearned and would not be particularly impactful to most readers unfamiliar with the character.

For old hands at Spidey like me him wanting to quit is tedious and was something already in need of a fresh angle even in 1978 (which this novel absolutely doesn’t provide). But for newer fans or people introduced to Spider-Man through this novel it lacks punch as you’ve spent inadequate time depicting Peter’s everyday life and super hero career for his decision o give it all up to mean much. It’s a little like how Batman in BvS: Dawn of Justice having lost his way means little considering we knew so little of what he was like before that. It doesn’t help that Peter’s decision to not quit is flippant, I can’t even remember how or when it happens, just that it does. It might even have been off panel. Spider-Man No More it wasn’t.

The whole subplot was rather poorly handled and felt inserted for padding or out of obligation. But that is also one of the three meager things that offer any personal stakes for Peter in this story. One of the others is that Jonah and Robbie eventually become endangered by the scheme because they are investigating it, but even that is much more connected to Spider-Man than Peter Parker and Pete doesn’t even know about it for most of the story. The third attempt at personal stakes is Spider-Man’s false accusation of murder, which is about as well worn as ‘Spidey wants to quit’ as a trope and one that is even less laced with personal drama. In fact most of these personal stakes could be mitigated if Peter simply went ahead and DID retire and his personal life would improve as a result.

Yes we are TOLD his personal life suffers because he s Spider-Man but we are never really shown it beyond injuries to his body and there are no relatable normal life stakes in play for him. It’s just that if he dies, no one will take care of Aunt May. That’s it.

Okay fine, technically an argument with Jonah leads to him losing his job with the Bugle and in theory being blacklisted from other jobs but like…if he’s got the only Spidey photos in town are competing newspapers REALLY going to turn him down? And it’s not like photography was his long term career path at this point anyway. The novel doesn’t even ruminate all that much on the conflict, putting much more emphasis upon his concerns for May.

Compare all that say Spider-Man: Forever. There Peter being Spider-Man causes Peter’s peers to think him a coward, his friend is jailed, he believes Gwen and Flash are growing close because he isn’t around and because he is thought of as a coward, his stress causes him to lash out at Flash and in turn lash out at criminals in costume. Oh and he’s trying to rescue his friend/teacher Curt Connors and his family. I appreciate that novel was written decades after this one but everything I just described comes from it’s adaptation of a 1960s Stan Lee story.**

I’ve not revisted all of Wein and Wolfman’s stories carefully enough to deduce if this was par for the course back then, but to my recollections it wasn’t and common sense would dictate it’s not great writing in general. Even for a thriller or action orientated story, personal stakes ramps up the readers’ investment. Considering the comics had been doing this for years beforehand there really isn’t much of an excuse.

What’s even more baffling regarding the decision is that the switch in media you would think would make the need for personal stakes more relevant not less.

Let’s face it, action is almost always better when conveyed through visuals rather than prose and that is especially true for super heroes considering they were specifically designed for a visual medium. It’s a rare and very honed skill to make action really exciting in prose format, and Wein/Woflman are no Horowitz or Fleming. Whilst they can clearly convey what is happening well enough, I kept thinking how much better most of this would be as a comic book or film.

Given the nature of the character and limitations/strengths of the medium, it would be natural to emphasis the personal life stakes, introspection and soap opera elements innate to Spider-Man over the action adventurer aspect of who he is. This is precisely why Peter David’s ‘Five Minutes’ story from The Ultimate Spider-Man anthology is perhaps the strongest example of Spidey prose fiction. I’m not saying action and adventure should be at 0% here, but the ratio for this novel is at best 90% and that just doesn’t work very well.

I speculate this is perhaps partially due to Wein and Wolfman taking cues from Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and pulp novels; Holmes and Bond are even name checked in the novel. Such books have commonalities with the super hero genre and in some cases such novel characters contributed elements innate to the super hero genre. Batman for instance has Zorro and Holmes imbedded in his formative DNA.

Indeed, if you examine the physical ‘Mayhem In Manhattan’ book at face value it certainly reminds me of those types of action thriller novels and pulps. So in theory doing a super hero novel with inspiration from those books makes a lot of sense. But the problem is that, whilst the earliest 30s and 40s super heroes might’ve evolved from those types of characters, by the 60s-70s times had changed. Spider-Man and the early Marvel pantheon, whilst still super heroes, are a generation removed from the ones inspired by the likes of the Shadow, Holmes or Zorro, existing more as a reaction against their predecessors if anything. Because of this the emphasis upon action and adventure at best feels like it merely captures part of who Spider-Man is and simply dabbles in the other, perhaps more important, part (i.e. Peter Parker).

The Wein or the Wolfman

An interesting question to ask regarding this novel is to what extent it is the product of Len Wein and to what extent it is Wolfman’s. For all we know they actively collaborated throughout the writing process. But for all we know one might’ve provided the other with an outline the other actually fleshed out into a full novel.

Personally speaking I am inclined to believe that it was the former and that this book is more a product of Wolfman than Wein.

My reasons for this are circumstantial but hear me out.

Okay so, for starters when the book came out Wein was busy writing and editing ASM and was very likely doing work on ASM back when the book was being written. Secondly it was in Wolfman’s own ASM run that the novel became canonized. Thirdly the novel also features the great power/great responsibility mantra, which might seem insignificant, but in the comics to my recollection the Wolfman was the first guy to actually repeat the mantra since AF #15 (unless one counts the short lived Spec magazine). This makes this novel one of the earliest times that the mantra was ever repeated in a Spider-Man story.

Fourthly, the novel hammers Peter’s affection for Aunt May over and over and over again. Granted, Wolfman was neither the first nor the last person to do that. But he did do it to a bigger extent than Wein ever did in his run having Peter practically shed tears over how sweet Aunt May was. Wein might’ve used May and emphasized Peter’s affection for her, but nowhere near to the same extent. Wein, whilst giving May one of her more notorious health scares, didn’t make as big a deal of her health as Wolfman did in his run and her health is brought up more than once here as a rationale for Peter’s retirement.

Finally, I know Wolfman has an affection for hard boiled crime stories (his mid-late 80s Superman work conveys that) which this novel is definitely cut from and indeed the tone of this story is somewhat reminiscent of another Doc Ock story he did in ASM Annual #13 (released in 1979).

So I feel the lion’s share of the credit (for good or ill) for this novel should go to Wolfman. Although the fact that 2 people worked on this could explain certain inconsistencies and discrepancies in the novel. One such example (and frankly an unforgivable mistake for any Spidey writer to make) is Peter’s claim that he designed his costume to scare criminals only to later in the novel give his origin and (correctly) explain that he actually designed it to have show biz spectacle.

Another example arguably applies to the two main ladies of Peter’s life. Namely…

Aunt May and Mary Jane

At one point early in the novel Peter is listing off the price he pays for being Spider-Man. Among his complaints is that he has ‘no real love’. However this is in spite of referencing Aunt May in the same passage and MJ having appeared earlier in the novel.

In the former case one might argue that Peter was referring to romantic love and in the latter case the intent might’ve been that, whilst they were dating, he and MJ were not in love with one another.

More problematically is how both characters are handled in this story.

Now I’m not suggesting that a Spider-Man story is obliged to give Aunt May or MJ significant play, or more play than other supporting characters (Jonah and Robbie are definitely the most important secondary characters in this novel).

Heck, back in 1978 Mary Jane lacked the presence within the Spider-Man mythology that she has now, they’d only been dating for like 3-4 years by the time this novel was published; as far as anyone knew she was merely the latest Spidey lover not the endgame. That being said, her role as (at the time) the Spider-Man girlfriend did entitle her to a certain amount of importance at least on the level of Jameson. But okay, this was aiming to be a an action thriller/detective/pulp story, so giving focus to two newsmen over the girlfriend or elderly mother of the lead character makes a certain amount of sense if that’s what you are going for (even if a Spidey novel should probably be more than that).

The story doesn’t demand their inclusion but since this is the first ever Spidey novel, maybe Wein/Wolfman felt it a disservice to not include them as part of giving readers a taste of what makes Spider-Man tick.

With all that said though both characters would have probably been better off omitted from this novel completely given how they were used.

They both got the shaft but in noticeably different ways. Outside of an overwrought dream sequence May literally never appears and is merely referenced multiple times in annoying internal dives into Peter’s mind. It’s rote stuff. Peter has to quit cos Aunt May. She’s so kind. She’s so frail. She’ll die if she finds out the truth. Blah blah blah.

It’s not just that established fans would likely roll their eyes over this stuff, but even new fans in 1978 would likely get fed up with Peter’s hang up over May. And so much of this stuff fails to connect for the simple reason that, for as much as we hear Peter think or talk about her, she never appears to speak for herself.

As tedious and cliché as Aunt May on her sickbed had become by 1978 at least in most of those stories she was physically present. She’s still a prop to motivate Peter but here she’s been reduced to the idea of a prop. Although 1970s Aunt May wasn’t a great character she still deserved better. The kindest thing I can say is that the reference to her having recent heart attacks synchs up with Len Wein’s final storyline on ASM.

As for Mary Jane it’s just insulting.

On the positive end of things MJ’s flirtatious personality traits are present. On the less than positive side of things…her function in the story is a very clunky vehicle to get Peter to the Bugle, which is baffling considering Peter works there anyway and MJ doesn’t.

The long story short is that she bangs on Peter’s door early in the morning because she was told by Glory Grant (or whoever) that there was a sexy new reporter at the Bugle that all the men were drooling over and that she was now partnered up with Peter. She’s clearly upset, but claims not to but wants to get things clear because she thought she and Peter had ‘an understanding’.

WTF does that mean? That they are exclusively dating? That they aren’t exclusive but need to tell one another or get permission if they want to see other people? It’s not at all explained and if they were just straight up dating there would be no need to be vague about it.

Perhaps this is partially due to the iffy nature of their relationship under Wolfman’s run. Conway left readers in little doubt that Peter and MJ were both exclusive and more importantly in love with one another. Wein’s run muddied the waters somewhat as he didn’t go back on what Conway established save two significant moments. One of those is when Peter wonders to himself that he isn’t sure about his relationship with MJ when after Conway’s run he absolutely should be sure. The other is when MJ dates Flash to get back at peter for ditching her.

Whilst you can No. prize both instances, the fact is Wein didn’t explicitly go back on Conway’s work but also apparently didn’t take their romance as seriously, nor did Wolfman seeing as he broke them up ASAP into his run then made sure it was permanent later on.

What I’m trying to say is Wein, whilst he did give the couple some interesting ups and downs, didn’t exactly live up to the promise handed to him by Conway and Wolfman straight up disliked the Peter/MJ romance for bullshit reasons.

So whilst it is possible that Wein and/or Wolfman were covering their tracks by referring to Peter/MJ’s relationship as ‘an understanding’, I’m much more inclined to think it was one of them (probably Wolfman) misunderstanding or deliberately undermining the relationship cos they suck.

And let’s talk about MJ’s portrayal here. I honestly don’t understand the logic here. MJ hears there is an attractive woman who will be working with Peter and…she is angry?...because Peter…didn’t tell her/is working with her at all??????????

Huh?

It comes off as a ‘Jeez wimmn amirite fellas’ moment. Like MJ is threatened by this sexy woman she’s merely heard about. Okay, maybe there were 1970s standards for dating or just workplace etiquette that 40+ years removed I’m in the dark about. But even back then, if a woman didn’t like the idea of her male partner working with another woman, jumping to anger or a presumption of romantic shenanigans seems really petty and insecure.

And frankly, seriously OOC for MJ even as she was established back then. Let’s put aside how she vowed to be less clingy back in the issue where Betty and Ned got married (which likely happened before this story). MJ isn’t the type to be threatened by the mere presence of a sexy woman. Yeah she competed with Gwen, but that’s the key word. She competed. MJ knows she’s highly attractive and wants to be with Peter so she’ll go for it, but here she feels insecure about a woman she’s literally just heard about merely working with peter. Did Ann Nocenti write this or something?

It’s asinine and either really contrived in order to get us to the Bugle or a really desperate way to crowbar MJ in as part of a checklist of Spidey elements that should be in this story.

It feels like something Silver Age Betty Brant (Wolfman’s favourite Spidey love interest FYI) would’ve done but with MJ just being comparatively more chill and understanding when she realizes she’s made a mistake. Which is another bit of circumstantial evidence supporting my theory that this is more Wolfman’s work than Wein’s. Wolfman had a reductive view of who MJ was (although he technically established her issues with divorce/commitment) which was very much stuck in the Silver Age. He swiped plenty of his run from Ditko era Spidey stories and literally wrote out MJ in order to have Betty Brant become Peter’s lover again. So I suspect he was imposing the archetypical unreasonable Silver Age girlfriend template upon MJ in this story but tweaking it in accordance to her more hip and loose persona. Essentially a Silver Age girlfriend dialed down to the most mellow level…which is still NOT what MJ was at the time.

She proceeds to tag along to the Bugle, support a joke where peter forgets the name of the sexy Bugle reporter and then apologise, subtly offer sex and leaves. She is then unmentioned for the rest of the book until the very last chapter where she amounts to a pretty face, a cheerful personality and vaguely the supportive girlfriend. And frankly all that is really overselling it, she hugs Peter and congratulates him and little else.

She might as well not be in that chapter or in fact this entire novel. The subplot about the sexy reporter doesn’t even go anywhere. It’s just a clumsy means to facilitate the introduction of the Bugle cast, the incredibly minor subplot about Peter losing his job and get the ball rolling on Peter’s investigation.

Call me nuts but couldn’t the story have achieved all that by having Peter himself just go to the Bugle for work, been told directly by Jonah he was being partnered up with someone against his will, etc?

And you wanna know the worst part?

This sexy reporter is apparently a previously unmentioned niece of JJJ…who we never see. Not only would meeting Jonah’s extended family have been an interesting novelty if nothing else, but if you are going to have a whole contrived plot revolve around this niece have her put in an actual appearance maybe????? It doesn’t even go anywhere, I was expecting her to show up at some point and she absolutely didn’t.

So yeah, the female characters in this novel get fucked over quite a bit, even ones we merely hear about. Hell the opening chapter makes multiple mention of how the gangster’s wife is ugly and unlovable.

Jonah and Robbie

As I said, Jonah and Robbie get more play in this novel and they are actually handled well.

By this point in time neither character had been exactly given three dimensions and I can’t recall even a subtle implication that Robbie knew Peter’s secret. Nevertheless both characters are on point for how they’d been defined by 1978.

Jonah is the blowhard with a major anti-Spidey agenda, Robbie is steadfastly moral and voice of reason counterbalancing him. Jonah’s rants are a highlight as usual with a memorable argument with a cab driver and an even earlier one with Peter regarding his niece; to the novel’s credit Peter fights back.

We see both men display street smarts and investigative skills as they methodically pursue the trail of Ock’s scheme right to its climax. The most stand out example of this is when Robbie pays a drunk to spill information, the scene being ripped straight out of a crime noir story.

Furthermore, Robbie shines when he helps Spidey out during his duel with Ock, the aftermath of which involves him also calling Jonah out for his psychosis where Spidey is concerned. I can’t recall exactly if the comics had by this point pinned down that Jonah was in fact a very good newsman but had a Spider-Man shaped blind spot. If not then this would be the first time in canon that idea was established and furthermore kudos to Wein and Wolfman for lightly fleshing Jonah out some by doing so. They then followed up by doubling down on Lee/Ditko’s proposed rationale for Jonah’s vendetta, having him verbalize to Robbie his resentment and jealousy towards the wall-crawler. However they soften him up by having Jonah be more upset that the attention Spider-Man garners overshadows the normal everyday heroes like cops and firefighters.

This is an interesting angle to approach Jonah from, even if it doesn’t really jive with the status quo of the novel wherein Spider-Man is clearly regarded as a public menace. Howe can he be a public pariah yet also someone people glorify at the expense of fire fighters?

This then precipitates some more interesting

There are also two noteworthy exchanges towards the end of the novel.

The former has Robbie succinctly skewer Jameson for allowing his hate-boner to blind him and acting as JJJ’s conscience, insisting he print the truth about Spidey’s innocence. This is followed by an over the top old timey dialogue about how Jonah is going to spin this to his advantage; It just goes to show how back then Jonah was more of a yellow journalist than the dignified newsman.

The latter has Robbie sings Spider-Man’s praises. Whilst it’s heartwarming for us old established fans to see Robbie express such respect towards Peter, in the context of the novel the scene has it’s problems. To begin with it is arguably overwrought and rather unrealistic in the context of the scene. More significantly it’s rather too blunt a way for Wein/Wolfman to essentially spell out to the readers why Spider-Man (in their view) is a great character and you should love him. It falls flat since newer readers would’ve only experienced Spidey in the course of this rather short novel anyway so the moment feels rather unearned, albeit much more applicable when you look at this in canon.

Also since Robbie is essentially implied to not know Peter is Spidey in the novel it feels odd to new readers that Robbie would be speaking this way, as though he knows Spider-Man to a much more personal degree. The novel even states Robbie I mostly indifferent towards Spidey a chapter or two earlier than this speech so it’s another example of the novel being inconsistent. The actual sentiments of the speech as they truly apply to Spidey can be discussed later.

Don’t be fooled. I’m not trying to say JJJ or Robbie were not great in this novel because perhaps more than anything they absolutely work.

Doc Ock

I don’t have a whole Hell of a lot to say about Doc Ock in this novel. Doc ock hadn’t really been given the meaty layers he’d get later on and by this point was Spider-Man’s #1 bad guy kind of by default. He was the most visually dynamic of Peter’s foes, the one that thematically had the greatest connection to him (aside from Norman, but he was dead) and had been the most recurring of Spidey’s foes.

He also doubled up as a mad scientist and a fighter meaning he was a character with a shade more versatility than knuckleheads like Sandman or clever yet weak opponents like Mysterio.

Wein/Wolfman use him fairly well here and you could argue this novel is a better Doc Ock story than Spidey story.

I said above that this novel likely takes cues from (among other things) James Bond novels and here Ock certainly echoes a Bond villain in his scheme, he even has a secret lair with death traps and hilariously a finely furnished room on an oil rig.

He’s described using effectively intimidating language. Wein/Wolfman interestingly avoids describing him as overweight and instead claims he’s stocky and strong, conveying a sense of power quite apart from his tentacles. When he and Spidey begin dueling at the end of the novel the novel really sells him as formidable and dangerous figure.

Perhaps the highlight of Otto’s characterization stems from his rant about how he spent years unrecognized for his genius. Whilst Doc Ock has always had an undercurrent of being driven by a desire for recognition, to my recollection this was perhaps the first time ever it was stated outright. It’s not much but it allows Ock to be a tad more than a one dimensional villain.

The primary weakness of his portrayal mainly stems from the mystery surrounding his identity. To any old hand at Spidey it’s incredibly obvious it’s Doc Ock very early into the novel and it becomes even more obvious as soon as he is identified as the Master Planner. This even creates some continuity problems due to Wolfman canonizing the novel. Given how momentous an event the MP Trilogy was in Peter’s life why would he fail to remember the Master Planner was a moniker used by Doc Ock? And if Otto is attempting to maintain secrecy why would he use an alias that is public knowledge anyway?

Hell now I think about it, why even bother with secrecy at all? Remember this was before the days of the internet and when surveillance technology wasn’t what it is today, so if what benefit would Otto have in disguising his voice or using an alias when trying to blackmail the oil tycoons? If anything, being upfront with them would surely be more intimidating.

Other weaknesses include his committing his plans (including a confession of murder) to a diary for plot convenience, his Scooby-Doo level disguise and conveniently (and repeatedly) verbally confessing to murdering Huddelston.

These issues are partially connected to another problem with the novel, that of padding.

Not so fantastic filler

In spite of its length the novel is weirdly padded out. For sure a lot of stuff to people who’re already fans of comic Spidey there is a lot of unnecessary stuff. But even having said that there is plenty of stuff to cut here.

The filler takes two dominant forms.

The first is stuff you would expect. The brief subplot regarding Otto’s diary doesn’t really serve the plot much as Otto destroys it pretty soon afterwards. It mostly exists just to cheaply inform Spidey of Otto’s scheme but there were much more elegant and effective ways for him to have learned about that. There is basically a brief video game side mission wherein Peter has to save an old blind man from being run over by a carjacker, all to desperately (and unsubtly) remind the readers of Uncle Ben’s death. There is a brief fight involving Jonah and Robbie verses their kidnappers, which at best might serve to set up Robbie’s bravery for when he helps Spidey out later. And I already mentioned all the stuff with Mary Jane.

The second and probably more annoying for of filler is the needless elaboration on bit characters. A random cop, a random security guard, a random tourist and a random criminal are among the several pointless characters who do not need names, let alone potted backstories regarding their future’s with the police force or their street names. Each one feels like something ripped from a noir novel but the only instance where this is effective is in the case of Alan Huddelston. He is the POV character for the first chapter and integral t the plot, so his murder nicely sets the tone, puts some pieces in place for the story and establishes a bit about Doc Ock. Everyone else though is not only cuttable but their inclusion made me outright dislike them.

I suspect the writers were so used to the faster pace afforded by comic books that they found their initial efforts for the novel coming up short hence these insertions.

Peter Parker’s Portrayal

Obviously the single most important thing when it comes to a Spider-Man novel is how it handles Spider-Man himself.

It’s a mixed bag.

At face value Wein/Wolfman seemingly capture Spidey circa the late 1970s. Descriptions of his movement clearly evoke comic images in your head.

His banter sounds authentic to the time period too, although his quips aren’t the greatest. They feel oddly old fashioned eve by 1970s standards although maybe that’s just me because I find Stan’s Spidey dialogue still holds up.

However ultimately this portrayal of Peter Parker falls flat, largely because it doesn’t strike a balance between earning the moments of pathos or emotion from newer readers and for older Spidey fans it’s very rote. Actually it’s more like it’s rote but it also gets stuff outright wrong.

A small example of this Peter’s agonizing to quite. Putting aside how that had been done to death even by 1978, the novel has Peter come off as rather whiney and it’s almost like it’s yelling at you to appreciate the novelty of a superhero who doesn’t ENJOY being a superhero. When Peter sought to quit even in the early days of the comics, Lee and Ditko earned it much more through the art and through conveying Peter’s constant uphill struggle. For newer readers though the first thing they read about Spidey is him in costume and complaining, already framed for murder. Most adaptations opt to either first set up Peter then introduce Spidey or open with standard Spidey action and then after establishing his normal life have it go to shit. Wolfman/Wein are in essence writing for a new audience who they think already know enough about Peter to care, when in reality they don’t and the audience that does care wouldn’t be impressed by recycling so many tropes of Spidey for this novel.

Another example is Peter’s complaining that he has no real love. This is baffling if you contextualize it into the comics canon because, hello…Gwen Stacy (who is never mentioned once in this novel even though her Dad died due to Doc Ock)and Mary Jane? Maybe this ties into Wein and/or (more likely) Wolfman’s over all problems in handling MJ in their runs, but like Peter undeniably is in love with Mary Jane by this point and knows she reciprocates. This feels more appropriate to a generalized idea of Spider-Man as opposed to the specific nuances of the canon character.

Undeniably though the single biggest example of mischaracterization comes from when Spider-Man suspends a suspect in a web high above the ground to make him squeal and then literally leaves him there. As in the guy has to carefully disentangle himself from the webbing and gradually inch his way back inside to safety. The novel never states Peter’s webbing lasts just 1-2 hours, but even if it was permanent, WTF man? Unless there was some extenuating circumstances Spider-Man would’ve leave the guy there.

I am not familiar enough with Wein’s wider bibliography, but that feels much more like a Wolfman thing. Wolfman’s work routinely involves tough guys beating the shit out of gangsters and this scene is ripped out of crime noir story. It’s another example of how I suspect Wein/Wolfman looked to precursors of the superhero genre for influence but it doesn’t really jive here.

Then of course we have the second act climax in Doc Ock’s lair. Guys…this is 100% a Master Planner Trilogy rip off.

Now in defence of this story, the cliché of ‘Spider-Man needing to use his willpower to lift something really heavy’ hadn’t yet become a cliché by 1978. In fact this may well have been the very first time somebody returned to that well in all Spidey media.

But here is the thing. As eye rolling as it has become to see that cliché again and again…this is probably the single worst example of it I have ever seen.

This isn’t an homage, this is basically an outright rip off.

You could argue JMS outright ripped this off too back in his Doc Ock/L.A. arc in ASM vol 2. But that story didn’t involve also going through a veritable laundry list of Spider-Man clichés as well.

For real this is a story where Spidey is framed for murder, Jameson is an irrational lunatic who ironically needs Spidey to save him, Peter angsts about Aunt May’s heart, contemplates retirement and ALSO needs to lift something really heavy.

How much of a rip off is this?

Well stop me if any of this sounds familiar. Spidey goes to the Master Planner’s secret lair, there he learns the MP is really Doc Ock. At the lair he survives several obstacles, then is buried under tons of debris and is in danger of drowning. But using his will power he frees himself.

The only real difference is Spider-Man is in danger of drowning because the tide is coming in not because he is underwater. Combined with Aunt May’s lack of immediate peril, Uncle Ben’s memory and the build up to this moment and you basically have a shittier version of the scene that undermines Peter’s character.

It comes off as rote because he’s dwelling on May’s fate if he dies (and how she’s so sweet and kind) for the umpteenth time in the novel. And because we’ve spent so little time with Peter as Peter (as opposed to Spider-Man) that emotional investment is lacking. The dialogue if placed in a different story could work, but having Peter think to himself ‘I’m Spider-Man!’ doesn’t mean much. It’s like if in the first ever Sherlock Holmes novel, Holmes saves the day by clenching his teeth and affirming his own identity. It’d falls as flat as when Cumberbach revealed he was Khan in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

More than this in the actual MP Trilogy Peter went through Hell BEFORE we got to this moment. He suffered a shitton before the single worst thing could happen to trip him up at the finish line. This comes out of nowhere and is dispensed with. He doesn’t evolve or change in response to the moment.

At best it’s just another injection of titillating peril to keep people interested, at worst it’s Wein/Wolfman indulging themselves by redoing the best Spider-Man story ever.

It’s not even the culmination or climax of the story either. Whilst the iconic scene in the original story was the start of the third part of the story, it was 100% the culmination of the saga over all. This? This is the second act climax, it’s the equivalent of when Spidey fucked up the ferry in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Except that at least had consequences, this was glorified filler.

Then we have Peter’s desire to quit. I’ve already talked about this a whole lot but one thing I didn’t touch on is something that happens after he recounts his origin.

Once Peter repeats his responsibility mantra he begins to follow up by claiming he’ll never forget his lesson.

Well putting aside the semantics of that because he obviously has quit multiple times in canon (ASM #50 comes to mind) isn’t he literally forgetting that lesson in this very novel by opting to retire?

The novel then continues to basically imply great responsibility naturally comes with great power. “Sure great responsibility comes with great power…” This is a small but significant thing to misinterpret. Spider-Man’s mantra isn’t about how great responsibility is part of the package when you get great power, it’s about how that power needs responsibility to temper it, to keep it in check.

That’s why the original quote (as Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz have pointed out several times) is “with great power THERE MUST ALSO COME great responsibility.”

What Wein/Wolfman describe is the equivalent of just saying: “with great power COMES great responsibility”.

But it doesn’t.

That’s the entire point of Spider-Man’s origin. He had power, he didn’t use it responsibly, something bad happened. It’s also literally what Doc Ock is doing in this novel. He has power and abuses it, he doesn’t have any sense of responsibility and it causes harm.

The difference is small yet profound and what is ironic is that the majority of portrayals of Spidey use misquote even though they grasp the original sentiment. And yet here Wein/Wolfman get the correct quote but then follow it up with a misinterpretation in line with the misquote.

The novel continues by claiming Peter’s first responsibility had to be to himself and those he cared for.

Again, this is a small but profound misinterpretation of Spider-Man.

As far as Spider-Man himself is concerned yes his loved ones are his first responsibility (in terms of their wellbeing, obviously he’ll miss an engagement with them for the greater good) but not himself. Peter does not view his own well being as above what he does for innocent people as Spider-Man.

If a situation endangered Aunt May, himself and a stranger, his priorities would be May, the stranger, himself, in that order.

Wein and Wolfman are subtly demonstrating a big misreading of the character in this part of the novel, even if it is refreshing to hear Peter acknowledge himself and his loved ones as ONE of his major responsibilities and not irrelevant next to being Spider-Man.

Now in fairness, older stories under Stan did demonstrate Peter was willing to go into retirement for the sake of Aunt May (and thus by extension his other loved ones too), for example ASM #50. That same story saw Peter only come out of retirement when May was on the mend. The first time he seriously considered retirement (as opposed to throwing a teenage hissy fit like in ASM #3) was in ASM #18 when May was again seriously unwell. So there is a certain truth to what the novel is saying, the problem is May is not unwell in the novel. Spider-Man is planning on retiring simply because may MIGHT have another heart attack or he MIGHT die and be unable to take care of her which is literally the regular status quo of Spider-Man. Like he was doing this in ASM #1-100 so why the Hell is he now bleeting on about his responsibility to her and to alienating people who try to befriend him (which we see no evidence of in the novel, again, he’s literally dating MJ).

It’s another example of the novel being at odds with itself. This characterization contradicts things for established fans, but for newer ones it’s incredibly unearned.

The novel continues by having Peter say that if great power demanded great responsibility (which again isn’t what his mantra is about) then he’d give up that great power. This further cements Wein/Wolfman’s misinterpretation of Spider-Man because, hello, the point of his origin is that he had power and didn’t use it! The only way that Spidey giving up his great power works is if he is literally depowered, not simply choosing to not use it for fuck’s sake.

The whole passage in the book doesn’t even add up because Peter conditions his retirement upon both clearing Spider-Man’s name and bringing the Master Planner to justice…but why?

At this point in the novel all he knows is the Master Planner is stealing money from billionaires who themselves steal from the common man and who’s losses will not (the novel makes clear) impact him or anyone lacking a car. So if Peter is of a mindset to retire and doesn’t get that having his powers means he’s obliged to use them to help others, then why is he choosing to use them to help these douchebags and clear the name of an identity he’s giving up anyway?????????????

There are, of course, other discrepancies in Peter’s characterization too, noticeably in his account of his origin story. For starters he uses Stan Lee’s ASM #50 revision that Peter went sought to cash in on his powers specifically to pay back May and Ben when in AF #15 he is way more selfish than that. Additionally the origin claims Peter turned down an invitation to join his peers at the movies, preferring to go to his fateful science exhibit. This is a tiny but significant change, as originally Peter invited his peers to the experiment and was rejected, rather he rejecting them. It’s an important distinction as it made Peter more sympathetic and less asocial whilst still being an outsider. Essentially it was Lee and Ditko balancing things out rather than Wein/Wolfman’s take wherein Peter was just naturally a loner. Even if Spidey in costume should lean towards being a solo act, Peter as a person is not asocial.

Finally lets talk about Robbie’s little speech. Robbie tries to counter argue Jameson, when the latter explains his dislike for Spidey. JJJ’s argument is that the glorification Spider-Man gets comes at the expense of everyday heroes, normal people. Robbie’s counter is that a normal person is who is under Spider-man’s mask, and he could claim fame and glory by revealing himself if he wanted. He elaborates that the reason Spidey doesn’t is because so long as he wears the mask Spider-man can be anybody, a symbol of any man who hates injustice and who fights for the good can become.

This speech is another example where Wein and Wolfman’s sentiments have grains of truth in them but do not come together.

An important part of the whole point of Spider-Man IS that he is (relatively) ordinary. And on a meta level his costume totally covering his body does indeed allow the audience member a certain amount of wish fulfillment.

But there are several problems with this passage.

To begin with Jonah’s objections contradict the novel because Spider-man is a public pariah, not a glorified hero. In fact a great bit of the novel is where Spider-Man encounters a group of secrtaries who’re initially frightened of him due to his reputation, only to be taken aback when they realize he’s a lot younger and gentler than they believed.

Secondly, it’s very clear that the novel isn’t trying to zero in on a particular aspect of Spider-Man and talk about it metatextually. It’s obviously tyring to deliver some grand summation of Spider-Man’s character as a whole and what his appeal is. And the fact that he is a symbol or has a full body outfit has nothing to do with that. Spider-Man’s appeal lies primarily outside of his costume and his specific and particular life struggles. He really isn’t a symbol. BATMAN is a symbol. Superman is a symbol. Wonder Woman is a symbol. Peter Parker is a man.

Finally, the speech is just not great in the context of the novel. The dialogue is clunky and because Robbie hasn’t been shown to know Spider-Man (or Peter) all that well and has even been stated to be actively indifferent to him, it just comes off as disingenuous. Robbie isn’t Wein/Wolfman’s in-story mouthpiece, he is randomly possessed by their spirits and forced to speak their words.

It’s a nice to see Robbie doing Spidey a solid, but the sentiments are problematic.

And problematic just about sums up Peter’s handling in this whole novel.

Hell the novel resolves Spider-Man’s retirement angst practically off page and well before the climax of the story. Even by the standards of the time, that’s just incompetent.

Audio Adventure

Finally we come to how this audiobook adaption holds up.

It is…serviceable.

The narrator, Tristan Wright, is at his best with Doc Ock but his voice doesn’t suit the old fashioned dialogue. It comes off as an impersonation of how people talked in old timey movies as opposed to genuine. Jameson is the worst offender, although the dialogue would make anyone struggle.

His female and black voices are….eh….I don’t like them.

And as for his Spider-Man. Well, he skates the line between falling flat and just about getting the job done. But it’s never good. I know this is weird to say, but given how dated the novel is Wright just sounds too modern. They should’ve gotten someone who either sounds more old fashioned or was just an older person. Dan Gilvezan, voice of the 1980s Spidey cartoons, might’ve been a good choice.

Beyond that there is just nothing to really write home about this audiobook. It doesn’t have multiple actors or a soundscape, the only music involved is for the title sequence.

It gets the job done but does little else.

Conclusion

Over all, I must confess to being rather disappointed in this novel and even would kind of prefer it to be non-canonical given the continuity errors it creates.

It’s more valuable as a historical curiosity than an actual story and has perhaps lowered my (already not great) opinion of Wein and Wolfman as Spider-Scribes.

I’d advise checking it out if you want to be a completist or if you want to appreciate how the standards for Spidey novels have improved.

*Hot take: Aside from Conway’s work, 1970s Spider-Man was in general not as good as 1960s Spidey stories, let alone those from the 1980s.

**See why Stan was the GOAT?

#Spider-Man #Marv Wolfman #Len Wein #Peter Parker #doc ock #doctor octopus #otto octavius #J. Jonah Jameson #Joe Robertson #Joe Robbie Robertson #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #Aunt May #May Parker

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jumin-is-secretly-gay · 6 years

Text

MysticMessenger Misconception

Myth: Rika is evil.

It's more of her being misunderstood and going down the wrong path unknowingly. She suffered from multiple mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and hallucinations. This causes her to lose touch with reality, also known as Psychosis. People who have Psychosis have inappropriate thoughts, feelings and behaviour and are disconnected from the reality around them without knowing the disconnection. This is just a theory, but there are many strong evidence suggesting this.

Due to her anxiety, the hallucinations started and she began to believe that she needed to save people from what she perceived as a bad world. Her anxiety was excessive, causing her brain to have too much stimulation, flooding the brain with "sensory imput".

In her case, the circuit's in her brain got jammed. Her brain couldn't make sense of the current environment, so it generates its own sensations, it starts hallucinating.

Rika started dating V after V noticed her looking at his exhibited picture in a museum, stating that she love the picture because she feels that "all my (her) fears disappear" and she feels the "consistent love and warmth" emitting from his piece.

While this may seem normal, it could help explain her experience from her past. Being adopted, only for her adoptive mother to regret doing so, would have given her a huge blow. It would have lowered her self-confidence greatly and have no parental figure to look up to. In the “R.F.A Top Secret” book located in the Character concept section, Rika was stated to be (see below)

If she absorbed what her adoptive mother said when she was young, what type of damage would she have faced? Not loved that much in her childhood, with her real mother committing suicide, there's very slight doubt that she slowly went beserk.

Parents are important, they play the biggest role in life and greatly affect mental, physical, financial and career development. When dealt with a tough situation (such as Rika being bullied in school), a child usually can confide into his/her trusted adult. However, Rika dealt with those problems alone. She couldn't balance her persistent emotional pain (distress due to factors such as prolonged anxiety, depression, guilt, anger, loneliness and fear) and thus started having delusions.

As she grew up, she knew that something was wrong with her.

If she haven't suffered from these severe mental illnesses, she would have continued being a caring and kind-natured person, wanting people to achieve happiness.

However, her mind became even more foggy with the death of her dog, Sally. Sally died after getting hit by a car. Sally was blind due to the cataracts in her eyes, and Rika refuse to pay for the surgery. Rika mourned for Sally and blamed herself for Sally's death.

Regretting about what happened, she tried to fix things. As she does so, she probably thought that she permenantly fixed her mistake of being unable to help people. Rika fell deeper and deeper into the delusion of her being a "savior", rescuing people from the pains and sins of the world, that she has great importance and power. This could have come from wanting to change her previous self in her childhood where she believed that she wasn't treasured (e.g., being bullied and Yoosung's aunt telling Rika she regretted adopting her).

Again, this is a theory that is only built on by facts that support it. I'm now going to use a theory by Freud, who's said by mordern psychologists to be a fraud. However, the theories used here are something to consider.

The Id, Ego & Superego (3 parts of the mind)

Babies are born with Id, a selfish desire that typically wants immediate gratification (e.g. wanting to be fed immediately by crying). When they're about 2 years old, they develop the Ego, which operates by the reality principle (to survive, you need to be realistic & plan for the future) & prevents people from following their desires created by Id. The Superego develops around 1-3 years after the Ego, it contains the conscience, valuing morals. The Superego merges between the Id & Ego, it makes the person feel good about doing something right and guilty for something they've done wrong.

How is this related to Rika?

There's a higher chance of a not fully developed Superego if the person doesn't have a good relationship with his/her parents. When applied to criminal behaviour, a not fully developed Superego could account for those who show no guilt or remorse for their crimes.

This could explain why Rika wasn't seen to regret injuring V after a fight they had when Rika broke up with him, even calling him a traitor and says she's glad he's blind as she'll be free to do whatever she wants. In the picture below (which I got from the internet), Rika was seen to be going crazy, hurting V, her own fiancee.

People are saying that even with the past she experience, she shouldn't have created the cult Mint Eye and brainwashed Saeran.

However, she created Mint Eye during her delusions, thinking it was the best choice, wanting to eliminate fear and pain in the world, for Mint Eye to reach a state of happiness in an everlasting party, even better than the RFA parties she hosts.

Remember, she had rejected counseling for her mental illness after taking 3 weeks of it, stating that

So how did she cope with this "darkness" inside her? I'm going to use another one of Freud's theories, the defence mechanism.

The defence mechanism provides ways to unconsciously protect ourselves from unpleasant memories or ideas. However, over-use causes problems.

Rika used a way called Displacement. To take her mind off her past, she diverts her pented up anger from her childhood into another activity. She was frustrated, she took her anger out on Saeran by brainwashing, drugging and tricking him to believe he was abandoned by Saeyoung when they were younger.

She overused this technic a lot, which eventually became what is viewed as bullying, causing Saeran to become very paranoid and angry towards Saeyoung for "abandoning" him, wanting to kill him for revenge.

I believe the reason why Rika tricked Saeran is because she originally wanted the RFA members to join Mint Eye. The anger Saeran had would cause him to better learn about hacking, so he could hack in and make members join Mint Eye (e.g. Yoosung in bad ending). In differing routes, Rika was more set on killing the RFA members and made Saeran set bombs in the apartment.

She regretted her actions (as seen in Secret Ending 1) when she somewhat break through her delusions and came back to partial reality and grieves for V, who died from a gun shot shot by Saeran.

After explaining everything, I'm not trying to justify her behaviour, there are many other people with mental illnesses such as Psychosis and they are nowhere near being like Rika. I'm trying to make people understand it and see why she wasn't trying to be evil.

#mystic messenger #rika #yoosung's aunt #v #jihyun kim #saeran choi #saeran #mint eye

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irontechdollfactory · 3 years

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Top 10 Sex Doll Movies and Series You Must See

Sex dolls are becoming more prominent in our culture for a wide variety of reasons. This manifests itself in often strange ways, and humorous ones, but their representation in Hollywood Movies is where these manifestations are made on the grandest of scales. Sure, sex dolls appear in pop-music and rap songs, but never as a figure that could be described as a central figure or main role. In this article, we will discuss the biggest and best ways Hollywood movies were inspired by the wonderful world of sex dolls! If you are a proud owner of a sex doll, you will thoroughly enjoy seeing these artists' renditions of how the future of sex dolls might grow to interact with your life! If you are still sitting on the sidelines, you will be shocked at how normal the concept of a sex doll is in movies that might be from your own childhood! Either way, life imitates art, and while sex dolls might not be a big part of your life now, all the signs point to them being very involved in your future! Our sex dolls are actually among the best-rated sex dolls in the industry, so we're here to help! At the end of the day, you will want to see all these movies on their own merit! Here is our list of movies that every owner of a sex doll does not want to miss! 1) Dummy The mediocrity and insanity of this show force our hand into giving it our first spot. Most movies and shows incorporate love drama, sexual desire, or deep philosophical questioning at humans' future with sex robots. This show, almost accidentally, creates the most realistic modern 2020 rendition of what will happen over the next few years. This one is hard to not spoil, so just imagine an angry, rebellious teenager who runs away from their oppressive family. Now, imagine that person has a friend who owns a sex doll. Ask yourself, what are the odds people are going to take, or steal, their friends sex doll and run away on an adventure with them? Even though it's a girl stealing a robotic girl, why is it that she forms a very real friendship with the device? Is it even a device at that point, if it genuinely offers support for her very real problems? This show delivers these questions and many more directly to your brain using comedy and Anna Kendrick as the leading actor. 2) Ex Machina There is exactly zero possibility that you haven't heard of this movie, and about a 50% chance you've already seen it! This 2014 classic is one of the biggest Hollywood productions ever focused around the subject of sex dolls, and it was widely reviewed as a positive concept. The popularity of this movie was for two major reasons. First, the very stunning beauty of the robots quite closely resembled that of what are now popular sex dolls in today's world. Second, the movie delved deeply into the hypothetical potential of consciousness in our robotic creations. Obviously, we aren't spoiling anything, but this movie has an interesting perspective on what the very nature of thoughts is in the CPU-based minds of these little robots. 3) A.I. Artificial Intelligence This is a movie you might have already seen, as it was so popular when it was released in 2001, but the association with sex dolls was more subtle as the main point of focus was that of artificial intelligence itself. Everyone loves the imaginative limitless potential real robots bring to our lives, both on the big screen and in real life, and the sexual nature of their presence is often so obvious and positive - it doesn't even need to be mentioned! We will not spoil the plot of this movie either, but let's just say it's about a male robot who is quite literally programmed to love. 4) Electric Dream Originally released way back in 1984, this movie was way ahead of its time. Sure, people had cool ideas about a robotic and sex doll future. However, Electric Dream forecasted the natural and competitive nature between a male human, a female human, and a robot. Not surprisingly, everything from biology to robotics wants to enjoy the attention they believe they deserve. In this first-ever "love triangle" with a robot, it takes a very unique twist! 5) Her In 2013, the movie 'Her' was released, and this movie was one of the first to make a very realistic representation of the very real and natural scenario about how a man can grow to appreciate a robot in more ways than one. The idea of men and women falling in love with their robotic partner was often overlooked, but this movie did a great job predicting what would only be just around the corner a few years later. Now, there are quite a few easily accessible stories about men and women who have formed a very real and lasting bond with their robotic better half. 6) Lars and the Real Girl Starting off the list right is Lars and the Real Girl, a movie featuring Hollywood's beloved Ryan Gosling made in 2007. This movie is actually quite sensitive and sentimental, revolving around a man who just wants to live a predictable and planned out life. Without spoiling the plot, the character suffers tragically in his personal life and he learns the true cost of even the loving side of human affection. When he discovers a particular love doll, it fulfills the exact mental and physical needs of his mind and body demands of him, while avoiding the long-term cost of that of humanity. 7) Robots While shocking, the movie Robots is actually set in a world filled with robots. This movie is so far set in the future, they seemed to forget about the entire human, and just viewed the world after the sex doll takeover. If you watch this movie, you will see how beautiful and nice their robotic-filled world actually is, and overall - it's simply a beautiful vision of our future! Maybe we become these robots who surround themselves with art, balance, and beauty? 8) Metropolis Being the oldest movie on our list, this one is truly legendary as it originally came out in 1927! This movie is also interesting because it is very close in its prediction of where we will be in only a few more years at the current technological growth we see. The basic gestalt of the film is about a mad scientist, who lives in an even madder city, decides to create a lovely robotic companion. This companion becomes larger than life herself and begins to take direct action on the mad city she finds herself in. 9) AI Rising This recent 2018 release is set into the far future when humans and androids coexist on Earth and in space. It turns out, our android phones of the future will eventually merge with the sex dolls we have today, and the combination is a thing we humans are quite fond of! This is more of an action and adventure movie, with a premier representation of the future equality we will share with sex dolls. 10) Big Hero 6 We had to have at least one movie on the list! Like all films, it avoids the more base sensations, but it does delve into adult subjects of artificial intelligence gameplay. In the film, a boy and his AI-robotic dog find themselves growing and adapting to their adult world together. Naturally, through situations of their own creation, they are forced into choosing to do acts of good or acts of evil and begin to learn to think critically.

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andrewspeedfutureworks-blog · 6 years

Text

Reflective Blog 2/2 - Evaluation

What went well and what did not?

I’m am very happy with how this assignment turned out.

From my initial first plan I wanted to create a small British village which seems isolated from the rest of the world. I first felt that the idea I wanted to achieve was just not feasible in the time frame, but after finding the village of Warnham the project moved along quite quickly. This did take me a while after numerous researching, eventually I found out about the area on a mother’s website. Someone had asked for a small village with transport direct to London, so this fitted the bill perfectly, especially since I always imagined the main character to originate from London.

The modular building took me a little bit of practice to get working right. I first created a kit in maya and then imported it in to Unreal. I found that it didn’t fit together quite right, and also the scale didn’t seem realistic.

I had already used the UE4 Guy for scale but I decided to do it again, this time creating a basic floor plan I made sure that he would have enough room to roam about the house. Once I settled on this I created a Plane 15 x 15 in Maya this comes out at 375 x 375 in unreal. I decided to build the house with this one piece to double check the proportions felt right for the height as well as the width and depth. The next Issue I came across was that the interior walls would need to be far too close to the outside wall to give the player adequate moving space which would have caused Z flickering. I resolved this by making a corner piece with height dimension of 15 matching the flat plane, but 1 x 1 in the x and y. This worked perfectly as it extended the house exterior enough to prevent overlapping geometry and also gave the feeling of depth to the walls. I probably could have gone for 0.5 to give a more realistic thickness, but I decided working with whole numbers as much as possible. Although later I did create a few panels with width half of the original. This allowed me the ability to bunch up doorways for the upstairs bedrooms, as would be found in a real house.

I think I made excellent use of modularity.

With the House kit I produced I was also able to create a post office exterior, train station and platform exterior and a Signal box interior and exterior. This allowed me to create the other buildings very quickly allowing me to focus on other aspects.

I also decided to make a modular piece for the road and train track. Although I did manipulate this in Maya to make bigger pieces rather than placing individual parts in unreal which can be tedious, particularly with how small my train piece is.

Road Piece with slight curve.

After making the first train piece I used the duplicate tool so several panels were connected I then merged them together and imported that as a whole into Unreal.

For the curved piece I once again used the duplicate tool but I also added a small rotation and set the copies to instances. This allowed me to snap the points of the new piece to the old and at the same time altering the bottom points of the original piece, meaning that every piece snapped together perfectly.

I used the same method for the road, but due to the variation in the shape I decided it was best to use the modular pieces in Maya to complete the whole road piece.

I also made variates of my Fence with 1 post, two post and no post. This is only small in size in comparison to the rest of the pieces I made but it is the most used piece in the scene so it needed to fit well together. I also produced a gate variation.

Modular Blueprints?

I’m not sure if that is a real thing or I've made it up!

For my blueprints I decided to try an use modularity.

Using the modular pieces I built a house exterior in Unreal.

I wanted to use this over again but this would have resulted in several issues. Only one house can be entered and if i duplicated the BP as difficult it means half the houses would allow the player to enter.

My solution was to create 3 Variables

2 Booleans Sams House, and Neighbours House

and a Integer

Simple if Sams House Boolean is ticked then the closed gate model will be replaced with an open gate model and the original front door will be hidden with collision disabled.

Neighbours House will also change the closed gate model to the open gate, but nothing else will change.

And the Integer sets the House number

What would you do differently next time?

I can’t think of anything I would change next time. I am pleased with how it turned out, as the outcome was better than i had originally expected.

I did play through Everybody's Gone to the Rapture to get a feel for the kind of game i was making. I felt that helped, maybe if i had of had the time to play it before starting the project i may have looked at things differently its hard to say. I think i would have been more tempted to copy things I liked rather than make my own unique game. I feel like I’ve made a good starting point and I could use this as a starting point for future projects.

If i had to pick one thing it would be to consult the module book more often, i spent too much time trying to make it look pretty for myself and to proof i could rather than to just make a nice looking white box, which of course is the main aim.

Some assets used in my game were downloaded from the internet. here is a list

Cars https://grabcad.com/library/austin-mini-cooper-s-1965 http://animium.com/2017/08/lotus-cortina-3d-model Textures

http://www.wallpaperking.co.uk/fabric-style-leather-effect/5486-frequency-teal-blue-beige-wallpaper-2625-21851.html

Music Jorge Méndez - Cold

Sound effects

I will be reusing The bird, wind and footstep sounds that Adam Whitehead created for the group project. As these were recorded to such a good standard it seemed redundant to have new recordings made.

vegetation pack

https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/30694-free-foliage-starter-kit

Final Screenshots

#fwxb2001

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extraneousdominomask · 7 years

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I don't understand the hate for Sly 4. Can you explain why you think the game sucked?

Alright. I’ll give you a summary of the major issues I have with Sly 4, and try to keep it brief. Here’s an itemized list of 30 years of disagreements (Sweet Jesus):

-First off, the first half of the game is fucking incredible. (If that sounds like a weird place to start, that’s only because it is.) The opening recaptures the spirit of the games wonderfully - and given I was a returning fan, fresh off an eight-year hiatus, that was amazing - Japan is beautiful and builds well, and Cotton Mouth Bluff is probably my favourite level in the entire damn franchise.Even leaving aside how I can’t pretend bad installments of my favourite things didn’t happen - that’s just not how my brain works - part of the reason Sly 4 irks me is because it had so much goddamn potential. It’s an updated Sly Cooper game where he and the Gang go on time-adventures. We were so close to something incredible. This should, by rights, be my favourite game in the series, and also of all time.I’m angry because I care.

-Carmelita’s redesign. She was already a very sexualized character, but she used to have sensible jeans and a sense of vaguely realistic athleticism. Sanzaru insisted on pushing the sexualization further, and since we started at a pretty advanced point, it got taken to frankly disgusting levels. Her waist terrifies me. You can see her ribs. The badass Interpol inspector is now worryingly underweight. It legitimately creeps me out.

-I don’t like the caveman level. This is the least analytical gripe, I admit that. I just… don’t like the caveman aesthetic. Never liked the Flintstones or anything similar. That’s just subjective.What’s not subjective is how the Gang ending up in just the right place and time to stumble across another of Le Paradox’s lieutenants is a strong contender for the least likely coincidence in all of fiction. But whatevs. Them improvising an escape while falling down a cliff was cool.

-Likewise, as Cooper ancestors go, Bob is very underwhelming. He’s a big ugly block who reuses the Guru’s joke. Instead of Henriette or Slaigh or anybody else in the Vault or Henriette, we got this guy. Great.

-The Grizz. Unfunny character with an awful boss fight. Complete bungling of what a graffiti is or does or sounds like. Unnervingly racist.

-The Penelope twist. Good god in heaven, what even was that? I mean, I was interested. I gave the game the benefit of the doubt, all ears for what the explanation was. Unfortunately, that explanation never came. We’re still not sure what the hell was going through Penelope’s head. She’s just evil now. A lovable character, funny and endearing and not overly sexualized (which in this series is rare), just… twisted. For no real reason.There’s zero textual information justifying her decisions. Especially because the focus is entirely on Bentley, giving her no room to explain herself. And sure! Bentley’s great, I love him, but I also love Penelope and I also love(d) their in-practice painfully brief relationship. I want Geeks in Love doing Crimes Together, not a half-assed betrayal twist.

-Ms Decibel. Irritating to watch. Retread of both Octavio and the Contessa. Has no reason for having mind control powers. The fact it’s just “ha ha there is a trumpet in her nose” genuinely irritates me. This isn’t hard sci-fi, but it ain’t Looney Tunes either. Try harder.The Joke Is That She Is Fat And Ugly. Ha Ha Ha.

-The Carmelita belly dance. Sweet CHRIST. If I keep coming back to this, it’s because it’s gotten me progressively angrier ever since the first time I played it and felt an uncomfortable churn in my gut.This shit is genuinely disturbing. She is coerced. Why did Sanzaru think this was a good idea? Everybody in the writer’s room signed off on this; anyone who may have wanted to stop it didn’t manage to. Then it got animated and designed and Grey DeLisle was called into the booth to voice how beloved strong-willed icon of my childhood Inspector Carmelita Fox was deeply uncomfortable with this sexual act three men she was close to were forcing her to perform. I don’t find this shit amusing. Kids play these fucking games, man.

-Carmelita’s (lack of) use in general. She gets some good moments when she’s first dragged along, again making Tennessee’s level the best. Then she storms off during Bob’s. Then, after wandering back and calming down? Next to nothing. She’s barely there.Bentley shutting down over Penelope’s betrayal was a perfect opportunity for her to take charge and show off her tactical prowess as an officer. What did we get? “Uh… let’s go with Galleth’s plan, then walk forward through Penelope’s front gate. idk guys” Outside of objectifying her, Sanzaru had no idea what to do with her, and it shows.

-The underwhelming climax. The finale of Sly 2 felt earned. The original three all had great final acts, but I bring up the second because it resembles the fourth. In both, there’s a last-minute upset where everything the Gang has accomplished so far is suddenly snatched away.But Sly 2 built that feeling. From the moment Jean Bison sees through the Gang’s disguises, things get worse and worse. The time they spend in stony silence, hiding in that battery, really creates a sense of encroaching dread. Things are going wrong, but they’re going wrong slowly. And that’s worse.Sly 4 - perhaps due to a dwindling budget - rockets through where that suspense should be. “Le Paradox showed up and stole Carmelita and then his plan worked and he was king of everything and we were sad but we went to fight him anyway.” wow. my emotions. i’m so invested.One of the lines I can particularly remember is “I don’t ever remember feeling so defeated.” Oh, you don’t, Sly? Not when you lost every Clockwerk Part at once? Not when Clockwerk was reassembled and Neyla merged with him? Not when you watched your parents be murdered in front of you?It’s 100% Tell, 0% Show. That’s not how you do a finale.

-Le Paradox. God. Just… god. Obnoxious in a way that isn’t entertaining. An awful, nasty character who does not receive an adequate level of comeuppance for his overblown, overwrought crimes. Rapey. He hates Sly for something Conner did; Sly has no agency here, he’s just a victim, pulled into the story because he’s directly threatened over something he had no part in. That’s bad writing. Bad writing which retreads other, more interesting antagonists.Doesn’t hold a candle to Clockwerk, Arpeggio, Neyla or Dr M. Unlike them, Le Paradox survives his game, which a) feels like too light a punishment if everybody else got a dramatic death and b) creates the worrying prospect they intend to bring him back. Ugh. Would work fine as an insignificant filler villain; instead, has means, power level, and (intended) gravitas outstripping Clockwerk. Total disconnect between his persona and his stupid, childishly powerful plan.Bigger =/= better.Skunks don’t come from France.

And, of course, the grand finale. The last thing to happen to Sly Prime. To this day, four and a half years later, the current state of the original series, and what may well be the overall ending at this point no matter what Sanzaru originally intended long-term. Everybody sing along at home~!

-A terrible cliffhanger ending with no sequel greenlit!

There. That about covers it. For me, anyway. Everybody has their own take.For the record, every box in that brain meme is a genuine opinion of mine. Sly 4 is most certainly a Sly game. It has amazing art and great moments. It brought in a ton of new fans, and kept the franchise going. That can’t be undervalued.But it’s the most flawed installment by a wide, wide margin. Sly 1 was rough, but a lot of that feels like beginner’s jitters. 4′s flaws feel more like huge, enthusiastic strides in the wrong goddamn direction, made by well-meaning people who are super excited to bring the franchise to places I do not want it to go. Like Sexual Objectification Town.

I don’t hate it blindly, but I can’t pretend I love it. I’m not gonna repress my negativity. This is my blog where I talk about Sly Cooper. And when I talk about Sly 4, I won’t skip over its flaws. In the vague hope that maybe, if I explain how and why these things don’t work, there’ll be less of these mistakes in the world. For my own writing, if nothing else. Straightening out my emotions into coherent, rational analysis. Looking toward the future.

…that and because it’s cathartic.

#iamkel14 #sly 4 #long post #Skunks don't come from France #I will not equivocate on my opinion #I have always worn it on my sleeve #rant

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nyxelestia · 7 years

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I think I'm going to merge two of my AUs into one: "Everyone Has a Story" and "Winter Wolves.

My most popular series is Winter Wolves. But, believe or not, that wasn't originally the AU I prioritized the most. No, my most valued AU was Everyone Has a Story - a rewrite of the show as I wish it'd gone, with a lot more attention to character development and less fridging.

The thing is, a lot of the Teen Wolf worldbuilding of Winter Wolves is just stuff I originally thought up of for Everyone Has a Story, adapted to a world with the MCU in it. I actually still have twice as many notes for Everyone Has a Story than I do Winter Wolves! I did a tremendous amount of supernatural worldbuilding for the Everyone Has a Story series, but at the rate I'm going, it'll be literal decades before I get to use them in EHAS, and meanwhile, I keep using those ideas for Winter Wolves.

I detail some of the reasoning for it under the cut, but tl;dr version is that the plots would combine really well, and it would give a lot of story to some characters in Winter Wolves that I didn't originally have as much planned for. Granted, a lot of EHAS story would get lost when combined with WW, but honestly, that AU wasn't that popular, anyway, so I wouldn't call it a huge loss.

Plot(s)

The general plots of Everyone Has a Story and Winter Wolves are the same - in that neither of them were contingent on a dramatic change of the plot of Teen Wolf. For both of them, I was going to follow the plot of Teen Wolf while changing it for the purposes of that AU (though both would also diverge further away from canon as time went on).

And ironically, while I'd originally planned for them to both go completely off the canon rails by Seasons 5 and 6 (since most of this was getting planned back during and after Season 4). But Season 6B has actually ended up playing right into the themes I have planned for both those series. *shrugs* Go figure.

Honestly, a lot of my "season"/Teen Wolf plot rewrites for Winter Wolves are watered down versions of what I'd planned for Everyone Has a Story (mostly watered down for breadth/space in the story, rather than depth/complexity).

I'm thinking of sort of abruptly ending the Everyone Has a Story "series' where it is, and instead re-establishing "Everyone Has a Story" as a fic/sub-series within Winter Wolves. The "plot' of Everyone Has a Story would get cut out, focusing primarily - almost exclusively - on character development. The "actual" plot would be Talking Cure, and Everyone Has a Story would be wrapped around that.

I think it says something that it would take very little retconning and editing of Everyone Has a Story, as it currently is, to make it "compliant" with Winter Wolves.

I feel like this would also be easier on readers. Partially because if I kept them as two separate stories, then reading them would get repetitive. But also because, weaving them into one story would make updating them easier.

Character Development

This would involve a lot of greatly expanded and nuanced expansions of characters who I didn't have much planned for in Winter Wolves. Jackson and Danny would take a much more prominent role, especially. Danny's story from EHAS involved, among other things, a sexual assault subplot that was gonna go to some pretty dark places, which could either match up perfectly with the hints of a Rising Tide background for his WW story, or completely work against it. Not sure, yet.

Though this merger would probably mean cutting out a pretty funny abortion subplot. I mean, hopefully I'll find a way to work it into the merger, but I'm not exactly counting on it, either...

The downside is that that I'm probably going to lose Cora. She was barely in EHAS, and not in WW at all. Since I'm keeping Erica alive, I was going to 'keep' her dead/not miraculously bring her back to life for just a few episodes and then pretend it never happened. *side-eyes Teen Wolf* But her plot from EHAS was already incongruent with the story as it was (I wasn't too happy with it), and 'keeping' her dead works out a lot better for Derek's story and the worldbuilding in general. Kinda sorry, but I don't want to include a character just for the sake of it when I don't have much of a story planned for her.

The other confounding factor will be the twins, especially Aiden. I guess I'll wait and see what happens to Ethan in 6B to be sure, but Aiden's EHAS story and WW story don't mesh together very well, or even outright contradict each other, even though they ironically end the same way. Ethan's EHAS story will either fall on one extreme of really not working well with the Winter Wolves universe, or will work really well with it.

The downside is that some characters' stories would be pretty fundamentally incompatible. In particular, Everyone Has a Story was originally built around Scott, Stiles, and Allison as a "core" of the AU, so their stories would get subsumed to Winter Wolves, and most of my EHAS plans for them would be lost.

Gender and Sexuality

I guess I also have mixed feelings about the taking the greater role of gender and sexuality from EHAS and introducing it to Winter Wolves. But overall, I think it would be a good move. All too often, trans characters and queer characters (outside of gay white males/queer fetishization) tend to not be included in fanfic that much, or they appears predominantly in fanfic that is about someone being trans or non-binary or a asexual or whatever.

A big theme of EHAS is that, being teenagers, a lot of the characters are sometimes exploring their gender or sexuality - but at the same time, it always takes a backseat in the story, not because their identities aren't important, but because life-and-death supernatural shenanigans are the main focus. Trans and non-binary and queer characters can have stories that aren't about their identities just as much as straight/heternormative characters do in mainstream media and cis-slash/gay ones do in fandom.

I like the idea of furthering this with Winter Wolves - i.e. teenagers exploring gender and sexuality in the context of not just supernatural drama, but the politics and chaos of the MCU as well. I just don't want those stories to get too marginalized or underwritten, either. This will be a pretty tricky balance to maintain.

Jackson's is going to be the most confounding. His plot was heavily dependent on Season 3, and involved him coming to terms with his asexuality (and still working out a relationship with Lydia who had to come to terms with being aromantic, yet still having quite a libido). In Winter Wolves, though, he's not going to be around for Season 3. I hope I can work it into Season 4. I enjoyed this arc specifically because they were portrayed as highly sexual or romantic in the first two seasons. While not true for everyone, some aces and aros "overcompensat" for their lack of the attraction in their youth, so I wanted to explore these characters from that angle.

Kind of a mixed bag on a trans arc. The only real story I had planned for Cora, herself, was about her being trans. But as I mentioned, a big part of EHAS was that while exploration of sexualities and gender identities was a huge part of the characters' stories, it wasn't the center or entirety of their stories - but I didn't have much of an arc for Cora. I don't want to keep a character around just for the hell of it, or tokenize a trans characer. On the flip side, while I do have a story planned for Hayden, it's a little shallow - mostly just because I was waiting to see how her story would end (I hadn't known until 6B started that she wouldn't be in it), so I hadn't gotten around to it, yet. For a variety of reasons, her being trans would actually work pretty well with the story, and this way, I wouldn't just have a 'token trans character', and could have a pretty solid story about Hayden being a trans girl that isn't contingent on her being trans. (Not to mention that while Hayden's story isn't dependent on Liam, her having a trans arc would actually play well into Liam's arc.)

I've got mixed feelings on how I'm going to include Stiles' story. He's pretty firmly bisexual and that's never really a question for him. But in EHAS, a pretty dark consequence of the nogitsune so thoroughly mind-raping him is that Stiles basically loses his sense of bodily autonomy, which leads to some pretty unhealthy sexual practices and attitudes towards his own body. It fit well with the themes and structure of EHAS, but I'm not sure how well it would work in Winter Wolves, which is a lot more plot-oriented than EHAS, and in which Stiles' arc is a lot more specific to his mental state, rather than his 'relationship with his body' so to speak. Not sure how well I can keep both of these balanced, but I think I can work something out. The downside is that this subplot for Stiles in EHAS was also heavily dependent on Derek, whereas right around the time it's happening is right around when Derek leaves Beacon Hills for a bit in Winter Wolves. (Don't worry, he comes back, and a lot sooner than in canon!)

Gonna be interesting to try to work demisexual!Scott into Winter Wolves, though. His love life in Winter Wolves is, in style, kind of a mish-mash of Bucky's and Steve's comic-book love lives, so it'll be simultaneously very easy and very difficult to rework that around demisexuality.

For most of the other characters, though, my plans for them in EHAS should work out nicely with WW.

Politics

I guess one downside is I'll lose a specific element of worldbuilding with this merger - supernatural politics.

A huge element of the worldbuilding, and the "expansion" of the plot, from EHAS, involved some nuanced supernatural politics...especially a somewhat more realistic take. I've seen a lot of urban fantasy politics, including in Teen Wolf fanfics, that read an awful lot like high fantasy politics jam-packed into a contemporary environment. It's a bit like fitting a square peg into a round hole. I wanted to take on what supernatural politics would look like in the modern world.

But the MCU already has so much politics as it is, that while I could "start" the political storylines from EHAS in Winter Wolves, the reality is most of them would get subsumed pretty fast by the superhuman politics of Winter Wolves/the MCU.

That said, I'll definitely preserve one of those 'political' subplots: the Hunters. Specifically, when Allison changes the Code, she fucking changes the code. While the Argents aren't the only Hunting family, they are the most prominent and longest-lasting, and the leader of the Argent family is often an implicit leader of Hunters as a whole. But that doesn't mean they are the leader, and Allison still has a bit of an uphill battle in effecting real, systemic change. At the same time, Hunters aren't a monolith - even as a lot of people oppose the changes she's trying to make, many Hunters support it, and have been quietly shifting in that direction for a while, anyway. This merges quite nicely with what I have planned for Winter Wolves.

Similar deal with Scott. While not at all a leader like Allison is, being a True Alpha does give Scott some unique abilities even for an alpha, and does get him a lot of attention and a certain amount of wary respect among werewolves, and supernatural creatures in general. He does have to deal with that a lot, which I can carry over from EHAS to WW - though WW actually turns this up to 11, which means the actual, original EHAS story of him dealing with it will likely go out the window.

Stiles' political subplot also goes out the window, but mostly because magic takes a greatly reduced role in WW compared to EHAS. In WW, I'm taking a very scientific bent on the supernatural (as anyone who watches Thor or Agents of SHIELD has likely already started to suspect), whereas in EHAS is was still much closer to the 'fantasy' part of Urban Fantasy. On top of that, Stiles already has a superhero-related political arc in WW, one which is pretty incompatible with his supernatural/magic political arc from EHAS.

#winter wolves #everyone has a story #nyxie talks about her writing

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timeclonemike · 7 years

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Time to reinstall it again.

So. There’s this thing about Deus Ex that’s been rattling around in my head for a while.

The original game was iconic because despite its flaws and the limitations of the engine, it existed in a sweet spot of storytelling narrative, world exploration, stealth, combat, and strategy. It wasn’t the first First Person Shooter / Role Playing Game hybrid, but it was one of the best for a long time and still holds up today.

But I think some games that tried to follow in its footsteps, including the later installments in the same franchise, missed the mark when aiming for that sweet spot. I don’t necessarily mean choices to port to consoles or not, or engine limitations, or anything that exists on the technological side of the game design process. I mean the stories that these games are trying to tell.

In the original Deus Ex, there was some optional dialog when talking to one of the members of the old guard Illuminati where he explains the whole psychological aspect of secrecy and inducting recruits into a multi-tiered conspiracy; the prospect of learning increasingly valued and restricted information is the biggest incentive for the new guys to do well by whatever standards the group uses to evaluate people. (I think it was Stanton Dowd but don’t hold me to that.)

Whether or not the writers intended to or not, they were also describing the progression of a player through the game itself. Every new objective met and mission accomplished and note found and computer hacked filled in another blank, completed more of the jigsaw puzzle, until by the time the endgame starts if the player has been playing attention, they know what’s going on and how high the stakes are.

The focal point of the original Deus Ex was secrecy and trust. You start out working for a top secret task force that holds its cards very close to its vest by design. When you find out that they’re the fox guarding the chicken coop and switch sides, you end up working with... more groups that hold their cards close. Do you trust these organized crime guys to help you and not stab you in the back? Do you believe this lady whose apartment is filled with the telltale sound of security lasers? Do you take your pilots advice? Do you listen to the voice in your head? If you’re working with organized crime now, maybe you’re the bad guy after all. Maybe your old bosses were hardcore hard-asses because the sociopolitical situation is that fucked up. Maybe society really does need an invisible hand on the steering wheel, if ordinary people are just going to panic and turn on each other. Or maybe there are no good guys in this war, just competing assholes with different outfits.

These are the questions that a first time player had to ask themselves, and it isn’t until you start screwing around in the VersaLife facility that you start to find evidence supporting what your allies are actually telling you in dialog, emails, and infolink transmissions. You find the Dragon’s Tooth blueprints and spread that around. Doing that, you find out about the Universal Constructor and its role in the creation of Grey Death and Ambrosia. You blow that up (and according to newspapers most of the VersaLife building) and you find out about the supertanker. Scuttle that and both before and after you learn more about the Illuminati and Majestic Twelve, so you head to Paris and so on and so on and so on... every step fills in more of the blanks. Honestly a conspiracy thriller is the perfect story to tell using a video game because the pacing is so compatible.

Now let’s look at what was not the focus of Deus Ex: Questions about the human condition and the socioeconomic implications of technological assistance. Mechanical augmentation is old school by the time JC Denton gets dumped out of the incubator tank with his cutting edge nanotechnology based augments. There’s two other mechs working at UNATCO, the bartender at Underworld, and maybe Jojo Fine, even if his are cosmetic. The MJ12 Commandos are, according to one email, outfitted with “off-the-shelf” hardware that turns them into walking weapons platforms with enhanced vision and hearing, and running off of standard power supplies. The questions of how this technology would change the human condition and society didn’t get directly addressed during the main plot because for the most part, they didn’t matter; the world was literally falling apart and everyone had much more important stuff to think about. Like not catching an incurable disease. Or finding enough food to live another day.

The implications of what the technology could do to or for people did get addressed in the endgame, but in service to the game’s central theme of trust and secrecy. Technology is a force multiplier and by exploiting the developments in nano augments, artificial intelligence, and the Universal Constructor, Bob Page was turning himself into God. Omniscient, able to manipulate information on a global scale through Helios and the Aquinus Protocol, immortal, and theoretically invincible through his armies of mass produced robots, engineered life forms, and loyal followers. And Bob Page would certainly not be a just and loving god, because he’s an asshole with a massive ego. So he can’t be allowed to become One With All Things. Aside from that, the game is open ended in what happens next, and it comes down to trust in the end; you can trust humanity to steer its own course with nobody in the shadows trying to pull strings, you can trust your fellow conspirators to steer humanity in the right direction behind the scenes... or. You can say “fuck this” and do it yourself by merging with the Helios AI before Page does and becoming a much more benevolent higher power than he would ever be, no matter how much of a dick you were in game.

This is the problem I have with Invisible War, Human Revolution, and to a lesser extent Mankind Divided because I haven’t played it (waiting for a Steam Sale) and I don’t know how much it takes its cues from the other two games. Basically, the dichotomy between augmented and non augmented humans is given center stage, driving the conflict between different factions even when engineered by a third faction behind the scenes. Even within the context of it being another attempt by conspirators to guide human society in a direction that they want it to go, it dominates the philosophical landscape of the plot as well. This is especially true when both sides are presented as having good points, and both sides are shown being supported by assholes who will do anything to further their ideals, and other assholes who use the ideals of their action as an excuse to be assholes. The entire narrative tension becomes a never ending circle jerk until the player picks a side and kills key members of the other one.

Not that anyone’s asked me, but I think the Deus Ex franchise needs to return to its roots of secrecy, trust, and open ended philosophical meandering. And to a limited extent, I have some ideas on how to do this.

First, focus on a plot that really emphasizes the idea of a conspiracy seizing power purely for the sake of power itself. This disconnects the main antagonist, whoever they are, from whatever philosophical arguments get made in the rest of the game.

Second, the question of “what it means to be human” needs to go back into the setting background again. Have it crop up in newspaper articles, blog posts, books and ebooks, have it be something that academics can make tenure arguing about, and (this is important) only have NPCs bring it up when it directly affects them. And have most of the NPC banter and dialog be entirely based around stuff that people today can relate to; incompetent politicians playing fast and loose with the rules, the rising costs of health care, climate change and deniers of the same, economic uncertainty in all of its many many flavors, natural disasters, and mixed in with all of that is a little bit of concern about augments and how it affects their lives specifically. Hell, include a parody news article where augment producing companies complain that post-millennial generations are “ruining” the augmentation market.

Third, bring back skills all the way. Deus Ex started you out with a flashlight in your eyes and a radio in your skull, with options for upgrades later, so you had to get by with your wits, planning, and whatever you put your skill points into during character creation. In Invisible War Alex starts with just the flashlight, but their entire genetic structure has been developed from the ground up to prototype universal genetic alteration and biomod integration. Adam Jensen kicks a reasonable amount of ass with just his tricked out gun during the opening interactive cutscene / tutorial of Human Revolution, and does real well right up until he gets bushwacked by Team Asshole, after which his boss has them put literally everything in the Serif Industries catalog into the guy’s body. No Deus Ex protagonist can ever realistically be expected to align themselves with the anti-modification side in any conflict without invoking emotional manipulation, delusion, a suicide mission, or a vendetta against whoever wired them up without their consent. So either the mods have to be completely optional, or the social dichotomy has to be completely optional. (Or a completely unimportant background detail compared to the rest of the plot.)

Fourth, if you have to keep some sort of dichotomy, make it more complicated than just two sides, for and against. Make it like real life. Make it complicated as different people go “well I agree with this part but that other thing is a deal breaker” and mix and match until the whole human augmentation position exists on a grid system just like political ideologies do, measured using two different X and Y axes. Or (I cannot believe I’m saying this) take a page out of Civilization Beyond Earth’s book with the Affinities, especially the Hybrid Affinities from Rising Tide:

Purity: No augments at all. Skills only

Harmony: Biotech and genetic engineering.

Supremacy: Mechanical augments.

Purity / Harmony: Genetic engineering, but only to wipe out disease and increase humanity’s natural abilities.

Purity / Supremacy: Cybernetics as a matter of utility and tool use, no AI research or enhancing the brain beyond what’s needed to interface with the augments.

Harmony / Supremacy: Transhumanism or bust!

This also lends itself to different abilities and how they get developed. So instead of just mech stuff added by surgery, there’s also retroviral gene therapy, and with skills that makes a trinity of abilities that all need to be balanced. Or at least, if a player goes all in with one group, it requires a certain play style to do (probably with an achievement for beating the game that way). If skills are about what you can do in the world and how well you can interact with objects in that world (five different weapons skills to choose from, hacking, picking locks, etc) then it would make sense for genetic engineering to add passive upgrades and abilities like health regen, improved strength and reflexes, resistance to toxins and knockout darts, and so on. Meanwhile mechanical augments go straight for adding functionality and integrating technology, as with the infolink and seeing through walls. Having all three of these categories be open ended, without any artificial mutual exclusion and railroading along a specific path, means that a player is limited entirely by the circumstances they find or expect to find, and the opportunity cost of making one choice at the exclusion of others. Presumably the requirements for skill progression involved going out and doing things, while mech augments need at least outpatient surgery, and gene therapy requires some convalescence and has a nasty debuff effect while the virus is playing with the PC’s DNA, so there’s that tension going on. Also, augments probably require money while skills can be improved for free, but upgrades for the equipment that skills use, ammunition, and supplies also cost money, so there’s that resource management aspect.

This also means that the players allies and enemies can be more varied as well, because no group is defined purely by adherence to one type of ability or another. The groups are defined by where they stand in relation to the conspiracy driving the main plot (part of it or not, supporting it or not, aware of it or not) and possibly a completely tangential goal or mission like money for a mercenary team. This means that allied groups have more room to have memorable characters, and so do enemy groups as well. It also means that fighting against a specific group requires a lot more planning and tactical thinking, if they have a team made of different people whose abilities compliment each other.

And that’s about all I have on this subject, at least for the moment. It’s getting late and I have to peel potatoes in the morning.

#game design #deus ex #conspiracy #artificial dichotomy #holy smokes #they're savioriffic #that was an actual billboard in Deus Ex #I am not kidding #long post is looooooong #I really need to learn how to do that Keep Reading thing

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skaylanphear · 8 years

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Voltron/Avatar AU

Okay, okay, okay, so I know this has been done a million times by now, but I wanted to tackle the idea from my own personal narrative perspective. So, here we go –

Characters:

Shiro – Gifted earthbender that was raised inside Ba Sing Se and was being trained as a member of the Dai Li before he was abducted by firebenders and taken prisoner. His abduction was a result of a plan by the Fire Nation to secretly infiltrate the Earth Kingdom and take down its most gifted benders. Before he was realized as being talented and brought in to train for the Dai Li, he lived in the lower ring of the city with Keith, who’d he’d long since adopted as a younger brother. They found out during their youth, however, that Keith was a firebender, which Shiro told Keith had to be kept secret. He encouraged Keith to learn his talents nonetheless, if only for self-defense. After he’s kidnapped, he loses his arm and his tortured, etc, and eventually develops metalbending out of sheer desperation to escape. Metalbending is what allowed him to create and use a metal arm as replacement for the one he lost. He eventually gets away—after learning that the Dai Li has been corrupted and secretly overtaken by firebenders—and goes back to the city to find Keith. But when he returns to Ba Sing Se, he comes home to find that Keith is gone and clearly has been for some time.

Keith – Firebender. A very good firebender, in fact, but too ashamed of his talents to really do much with them. He grew up with Shiro in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se—basically poor—and grows so distressed when Shiro disappears that he lashes out at the Ba Sing Se law enforcers. His status as a firebender is revealed and he has no choice but to flee the city. He’d planned on leaving anyway to go looking for Shiro, and so it becomes his mission to find his older brother—even if he has to search the entire world. Unbeknownst to Keith, however, he was tossed out of the Fire Nation palace as a baby because he was an unwanted bastard son to the Fire Lord. Also, spoilers, he’s the Avatar as well, but is unaware of the fact due to how subdued he’s been forced to keep his talents his whole life. Lots of drama for Keith, haha. Poor child just wants his brother back. Oh well.

Lance – Waterbender from the Northern Water Tribe. Prince, though he’s nowhere near being in line to become chief. Still, there are plenty of responsibilities he has, but he decides to run away in search of adventure instead, wanting—more than anything—to be a hero and stand out, basically. He’s had this plan since he was a child—was his dream to see the world—and so he spent a lot of time not only mastering waterbending, but the spiritual connection and teachings of the Northern Water Tribe, as well as healing despite the fact that, as a male, he wouldn’t normally know how to heal. Though he wasn’t the most gifted waterbender, he spent most of his youth studying and practicing in preparation for his big leap out into the world. As a result of being a healer and having studied the spirits extensively, he’s very knowledgeable, but generally keeps these things to himself (wants to be a lady’s man, not a nerd, basically). He is a bit spoiled nonetheless, and doesn’t have a real realistic idea of what’s going on in the world. He and Keith are both opposites and foils as a result of their upbringing and positions.

Pidge – Waterbender from the Foggy Swamp Tribe. Her father was an inventor from the Earth Kingdom, however, who found himself studying the energy levels of the swamp area before meeting her mother and promptly falling in love. Her brother and father are earthbenders, while she and her mother are waterbenders. And while she is trained in the techniques of swamp people waterbending, Pidge is far more interested in technology and the things her father studies. Her father and brother make regular trips into the earth kingdom—for research supplies, etc—and eventually end up abducted by the Fire Nation for being meddlers or something. Which inspires Pidge to leave her home in search of them, determined to rescue them much like Keith is aiming to rescue Shiro. She isn’t one to be trifled with, however. While she doesn’t have much interest in bending, she is trained and is more than capable of defending herself, as well as using the plants around her to her advantage. She and Lance practice very different types of waterbending as a result, but this doesn’t come between them or anything. They probably bond over it, actually.

Hunk – Earthbender. He’s from a small village to the north that is occupied by the Fire Nation and generally has no interest in getting involved with business outside of it. However, when Lance shows up and causes a ruckus (no doubt by accident), he gets caught up in it and ends up wanted by the fire nation and unable to return home because, if he did, he’d be putting his family in danger (they’re already in danger from the Fire Nation, but Hunk is kind of sheltered and naïve). So he ends up tagging along with Lance, deciding that he’d simply go to the Fire Nation higher ups and explain the misunderstanding, thus clearing his name and allowing him to go home. Obviously, he learns that this isn’t really going to work and that the conflict is much larger than he and Lance really realized. Upon seeing how people are suffering because of the Fire Nation, Hunk vows to do all he can to stop it.

Allura and Coran – The last two airbenders in the world. They were originally part of a secret society that—after the airbenders were basically destroyed—vowed to find the new avatar (who was murdered during the airbender raids) and return balance to the world. However, the society has basically died out and so Allura and Coran are all that’s left. They’re still going around the world, searching, but to say the mission has kind of become hopeless is a bit of an understatement. Still, they’re determined, convinced that if they can find the Avatar, they can stop the Fire Nation.

Story:

And so we have our misfit team of heroes whose paths eventually cross. Lance and Hunk come together first, and then probably end up with Pidge as a result of trying to help her (likely when she doesn’t need help), before those three maybe meet Keith in a prison where he’s searching for Shiro (they’re there because Pidge is looking for her family in the same place). Meanwhile, Shiro is hunting for Keith, knowing more about him than he realizes (Shiro knows Keith is the avatar, which is half the reason he was so protective over him. He probably saw him accidentally bend earth or something, but then lied and said he’d done it instead). He meets up with Allura and Coran, and as they have a shared interest in finding the avatar, they team up. Likely the two teams meet up as the finale of season 1 or something, where it’s revealed during a dramatic battle or something that Keith is the avatar before they all make a break for it.

Hunk and Shiro end up as Keith’s earthbending teachers, Allura is his airbending teacher, and Lance is his waterbending teacher (though neither are happy about it. Pidge doesn’t really have the knowledge to teach waterbending, or so she claims, though she does end up teaching Keith a thing or two as well). Water ends up being the element Keith has the most trouble with, which of course spurs antagonism between him and Lance. And when it’s revealed that Keith is actually a bastard prince from the fire nation, this makes things between him and Allura rather tense as well. While all this is happening, Lotor is around causing trouble like Azula did and we’re getting a more in-depth look at what Fire Lord Zarkon is really aiming to do. Basically he not only wants to take over the world, but the spirit world as well (which Haggar, his right hand lady and spiritual expert, thinks is silly—he should be content with the normal world, obv). Zarkon is looking for the avatar not to kill them, but to somehow remove the spirit of Raava and merge with it himself. This is becoming increasingly more difficult for him to do, however—especially with Keith getting stronger—and so he learns instead (maybe from the owl library that he forced his way into) about Vaatu being imprisoned and decides to instead merge with that spirit. Which is kind of what brings us to the season 2 finale. Probably the main group has split up because they’re fighting and they all get reunited in the end, where Keith tries to fight Zarkon and fails. And it’s Lance, who maybe shows up last, that uses his knowledge of spirits (which has basically been lost to Allura and Coran, despite them being airbenders) to separate Vaatu from Zarkon before a dark avatar can really be created. But as a result, he, Lance, ends up attached to Vaatu. Why? Because he and Keith were painted as foils for a reason, that’s why.

So basically Lance is all sorts of fucked up now, and is dealing with some pretty dark shit that Keith has to help him with, which kind of allows a friendship to form between them where there previously hadn’t been one. Through a lot of interaction and development between all the characters, they eventually come to understand that Vaatu being attached to a human is similar to having him imprisoned and that, so long as Lance remains uncorrupted, he should be able to function as a second avatar. After all, it’s about balance in the end, dark and light, yin and yang, and so while Keith and Lance seemingly oppose each other, they also complement each other. Thus Lance is the first Dark Avatar, a new avatar that will be reborn along with the original and will need to be trained in how to master the evil inside them or something like that. He gets to learn all the elements too, but probably isn’t a master by the time we reach the end of season 3, unlike Keith. Meanwhile, Zarkon is pissed and is like, fine, I don’t get an avatar spirit, I’ll create my own and he basically uses secrets taught to him by Haggar to harness raw spirit power for his own gain. Now he’s really dangerous and threatens all the worlds with potential destruction. And yeah, all of team avatar(s) have to work together to stop him!

I can’t decide if I should do a more in-depth outline for this or not. Like, one that reflects the importance of all the other characters, not just Lance and Keith, haha! Because, obv, they’re all crucial. I mean, clearly Shiro needs to have a personal connection to Zarkon, maybe even some kind of connection to the spirit world. And, like, I was thinking of trying to incorporate the lions as spirits of some kind too. I dunno--we’ll see XD

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld #avatar #avatar the last airbender #atla #there's some korra in there too #legend of korra #lofk #voltron/avatar au #keith #lance #shiro #pidge #hunk #coran #allura

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nrip · 5 years

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The Rise of the Social Media Doctor

Your doctor is probably using social media at some point in their day. Some people (many of my patients included) are often quite surprised when they hear me talk about being on Twitter, Instagram, or sometimes even just the Internet in general.

Granted, being online wasn’t always typical for me. I used to shy away from it completely. In fact, I was worried that there was no place on social media at all for health care professionals like me.

Until one day the light bulb clicked on inside my head. Or maybe it was more of a dimmer, but growing brighter over the course of several months. I started to see value in tapping into social media from both a health-care and personal wellness perspective. I could actually make a difference, I imagined, by bringing the connections I made with patients behind closed doors out into the public eyes

But that wasn’t solely what drew me in. I also felt like I had to be on it—like I had an obligation to science. It stemmed from what I was reading online, my reactions spanning a range from surprise, to confusion when I checked out my feed.

For instance, I’d feel an explosive mix of amusement and fear as I read medical falsehood after falsehood, all in the span of a single morning’s scroll. Worse, I’d be horrified when I would see what was actually trending in the health conversation (Coffee enemas! Raw water! Jade eggs!), what people believed and were talking about, as if they were Real Things. I’d stare at Twitter with pseudoscience laughing maniacally back at me, daring me to make my move.

At first, I didn’t do anything. Many of us didn’t; we remained quiet, laying low and uninvolved, while a few other physicians dipped their toes into the virtual water. For instance, in 2004, internal medicine physician Kevin Pho, M.D., founded the popular website KevinMD, taking the lead on existing as a physician in the virtual world. And by 2016, ob/gyn and pain medicine physician Jen Gunter, M.D., was dubbed “Twitter’s resident gynecologist” by the Cut for her work debunking nonsense on her blog and her Twitter feed in a no-holds barred way.

So I decided to jump right in and take a stab at things—even if it wasn’t necessarily a precise incision like we physicians are used to. I felt that I needed to—many of us did—as we found ourselves defending evidence-based medicine more and more. Even within the confines of our very own office spaces, it started to feel like doctor and patient were not on the same team.

I created my own brand (@drcorriel), purchased a domain, and started to write a blog. Other doctors did it too, and some of them started to reach out to each other, looking for a way to amplify their voice. That’s when I created a Facebook group, called Doctors on Social Media (or SoMeDocs for short) for which I recruited other physicians to join. If other professions did it with such ease, why couldn’t physicians do it too? The original goal was to learn the tools needed to build a strong presence of physicians on social media, and to conquer it together. But it has since evolved into so much more.

Today, we are over 3,300 physicians strong and growing in number each day. Every one of us SoMeDocs may have our individual pursuits, but we all work as a team—as many other nonmedical groups on social media do—to support one another and accomplish our goals. We have now expanded to other platforms (on Twitter, we communicate using the hashtag #SoMeDocs) and have a website where we share our work. We also have in-person meet-ups called SoMeDocs Engage, in order to network with one another and grow even more. The project, for me, has turned from a leisurely pastime into an international platform, garnering attention beyond what I could have ever imagined.

Here are a handful of responses from physicians within the SoMeDocs community—with followings both big and small—on why and how they use social media, the challenges of it, and why the merging of health care and social media is crucial for patients and their well-being.

1. “So many women use this space for health searches; I want them to have accurate information.”

“The thing I find most frustrating with social media is how products or stories that don't work or are false can spread like wildfire, but other things that are useful and helpful sit in cyberspace.”

—Dana Rice, M.D., urologist (@Dr_DanaRice)

2. “I hear many patients' perspectives on social media and find that many have had horrible [health-care] experiences. I try to learn from those and make myself a better doctor.”

“Doctors need to speak out on behalf of patients, and social media is an effective way to do that. I use it to get my message and the work I am doing out [there], and to network with people who have a similar mission.

“People are going to disagree with you, and not everyone is so nice about it. If you are speaking on a controversial topic, people may attack you. While debate is important, being attacked helps no one.”

—Linda Girgis, M.D., family medicine doctor (@DrLindaMD)

3. “Doctors belong on social media so that they may expand their influence and give a more realistic picture of the medical world.”

“I use social media to promote my new podcast episodes and to inform my groups of new ideas and relevant articles. I am on social media to help promote my brand…and [to help] patients navigate the world of pain management.

“Doctors belong on social media so that they may expand their influence and give a more realistic picture of the medical world—a picture that is not painted by the pharmaceutical companies or Hollywood over-dramatizations.

“Social media has taught me that doctors need to be flexible and capable of relating to the changing environment. If physicians do not adapt to new technology and ways of doing things, they will be surpassed by their younger and more flexible colleagues, who may know how to better utilize social media.”

—David Rosenblum, M.D., pain management specialist (@algosonic)

4. “I want to reach more than just the patients I see in the hospital or my office.”

“There is still significant stigma and lack of knowledge about mental illness; social media allows me to do my part in educating and reducing stigma with the ability to reach more people. Doctors belong on social media to provide evidence-based knowledge in the midst of trends and misinformation.

“The majority of people who follow me are not my actual patients, but I still feel obligated to provide the same quality of info I would provide to someone sitting in my office. I am not looking to gain new patients, but to help the general public feel comfortable seeing a psychiatrist—because this psychiatrist on Instagram or Facebook that they follow is ‘normal,’ knowledgeable, and approachable.”

—Danielle J. Johnson, M.D., F.A.P.A., psychiatrist (@drdanij)

5. “I am on social media because it is the future.”

“We can’t deny its increasing role as a forum for discussions and a medium for sharing of information and knowledge. I believe physicians need to have a strong voice so that the public can have access to hard facts rather than anecdotes. I also believe that by having a strong physician #SoMe presence, the public will get to know truly how much we care, and how much we want our patients to be well informed and to have the best outcomes possible, especially in this era of shrinking face-to-face time.

“I use social media for what I am passionate about, and that is sharing tips to help people learn to be fierce self-advocates on their medical journey. I also share my love of books, history, and nonfiction. Further, I write to highlight the experiences of the working mom.”

—Uchenna O. Njiaju, M.D., specialist in cancer and blood disorders (@drucheoncology)

6. “I'm on social media to broaden my audience and patient base, and to help dispel medical myths and false news.”

“It can be frustrating when you don't feel like your message is reaching your intended audience or getting the engagement you want.

“With my inclusion of telemedicine, I've learned to direct patients to these services more easily. I've also learned how to use social media to get more speaking jobs and clients for my outside businesses.”

—Nicole Swiner, M.D., family/general medicine (@docswiner)

7. “I am on social media to inspire underrepresented students to pursue a career in medicine.”

“I am on social media to inspire and motivate others to lead healthier lifestyles in order to prevent chronic disease. I am on social media to inspire underrepresented students to pursue a career in medicine. As a first-generation American whose parents were born in Ecuador, I want to show them it is possible to become a physician. I use it to educate, motivate, and inspire others. I provide health information as well as mentor students who want to be physicians. I also use it to coach people who want to lead healthy lifestyles by providing nutrition information, meal plans, and exercise routines.

“Doctors need to be on social media to make an impact in the lives of those who use it as a means of obtaining information, whether it be education on vaccines, illnesses, or nutrition. It is a way to reach a wider audience and have our voices heard. This is our future and we need to have enough representation to dispel false information.

“I have learned that, with so much information that is out there on social media, many patients believe much of what they read. They look to social media to educate themselves and obtain information on their conditions. That's why it is so imperative we have representation so we can continue to educate our patients not only in our offices but on social media as well. There are many on social media that say they are knowledgeable in a certain topic, [and] it is hard to discern who is telling the truth and actually providing safe and accurate information.”

—Veronica Contreras, M.D., family medicine and urgent care physician (@DrVeronicaContr)

8. “I believe doctors still have a powerful voice. We just need to practice harnessing it better for people, and social media does just that.”

“Whether we love or hate social media, we have to understand that it is here to stay and we need to leverage the advantages of it. ‘If we can't beat them, join them.’ Ring a bell? We can use it to convey positive or negative messages. I believe doctors still have a powerful voice. We just need to practice harnessing it better for people and social media does just that.

“I think what is frustrating about it is being a victim to the negativity that is pervasive on social media; that is the flip side of the coin. In general, I also believe social media disconnects people when we actually need more connection in our current era and society.”

—Colin Zhu, D.O., family doctor and chef (@thechefdoc)

9. “My presence on social media morphed into an outlet to share fitness, wellness, and healthy practices.”

“Today, I use social media to share pertinent information, medical education, encouragement, fitness, physician wellness, and entrepreneurial pursuits. My presence on social media morphed into an outlet to share fitness, wellness, and healthy practices.

“Focusing on positive content, uplifting others, exchanging ideas with colleagues, educating patients, and exploring gratitude have taught me a great deal about using social media for positive effect. Information shared and discussions had on social media with colleagues have definitely impacted my patient care.

“Developing content that is pertinent has also taught me to explore the impact of my own wellness on my patients. Patients benefit from being cared for physicians who are invested, happy, and well.”

—Charmaine Gregory, M.D., emergency medicine (@CharmsFitDoc)

10. “We have to take public health education back, and it starts by going where the masses learn.”

“Social media has become the gateway source of most public health information these days, whether it’s searching for answers to common health problems or just simply finding a new doctor. Physicians have unfortunately been slow to embrace social media, and because of this reluctance, this void has been filled by numerous health-care frauds peddling everything from essential oils to coffee enemas and countless alternative medicines—from untested cancer therapy to the spurring of tried-and-true basic treatments for easily preventable deadly diseases.

“We have to take public health education back, and it starts by going where the masses learn—and that is in the world of social media. I try to use social media to teach my readers about issues that will resonate with them and perhaps will help them, whether it’s drug abuse, end of life care, or aging veterans. That’s my mission—to use my writing and public speaking as an adjunct to my basic mission of being a doctor. To help people live a long, happy, healthy, and productive life.

“It’s not for everyone. You have to have a thick skin to wade into the cyber-sewer. But when your writing resonates and moves people for the better, it is amazing.”

—Louis Profeta, M.D., emergency physician (@louisprofeta)

11. “I use the information [on social media] to formulate ideas.”

“I’m on social media to connect with like-minded individuals who are struggling to provide good care for patients while keeping up with the increasing headaches in health care. I’m a family physician who's worked in multiple health care settings over the last two decades.

“I use the information [on social media] to formulate ideas. Last year, I started a webcomic called Doc-Related that provides a satirical view of practicing medicine within a typical U.S. health system. My comic strips resonate with clinicians, staff, administrators, and anyone else interested in the daily happenings of health care providers.”

—Peter Venezuela, M.D., family doctor (@doc_related)

12. “It has allowed me a platform from which to share my knowledge and expertise on my favorite topic: vaccinations.”

“My personal passion is for preventive medicine, specifically the way in which vaccination can improve life and health and help us to preserve our wonderful human potential. As a family physician, it has been extremely frustrating seeing patients who are very well-intentioned fall prey to the misinformation and ‘fake news’ that abounds on the Internet. I use social media as a means to amplify voices of science and reason.

“For someone [like me who has] a lot of ideas in her head about how to make things better (at least in my humble opinion), it has allowed me a platform from which to share my knowledge and expertise on my favorite topic: vaccinations. When someone searches up a vaccine question, I want physician and scientist voices to be the voices they are hearing. Social media is an unparalleled way for physicians to reach hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Without it, we are relegated to a one-on-one message in our exam rooms.

“Social media can be a blessing or a curse. It can be isolating but it can also bring connection. It is a tool like any other. We just have to know how to use it properly and it can be a wonderful thing.”

—Gretchen LaSalle, M.D., family medicine (@GretchenLesalle)

13. “Social media certainly helps me keep a finger on the pulse.”

“I’m on social media because I want to be part of the conversation! Doctors must be on social media to dispense information to fight (or hopefully at least balance) some of the dangerous misinformation about health issues, from vaccines and medications, diets and supplements, to the ever-evolving preventative care screening recommendations.

“Additionally, I use social media to start conversations and share health information with my patients and community. I have a particular passion for adolescent issues, and social media allows me to connect with other parents and tackle the awkward, scary, and intimidating issues that teens face today. I blog about the topics that I see over and over in the exam room, many that no one want to bring up but many want to hear about (like STDs, drugs, alcohol, vaping, ADD medication abuse, etc.).

“Social media certainly helps me keep a finger on the pulse of breaking medical news, from food poisoning outbreaks in my community to new national guidelines for hypertension. Knowing what health related news (both accurate and ‘fake’) that my patients are reading, hearing, and discussing offers me fresh, more engaging angles to bring up and to address health issues.”

—Jill Grimes, M.D., family doctor (@JillGrimesMD)

14. “With a physician social media presence, we are able to add valid, science-based information to the overall narrative.”

“I think it’s important for physicians to be on social media because there is a lot of bad medical information being shared out there. With a physician social media presence, we are able to add valid, science-based information to the overall narrative.

“I am on social media because [I was] a physician who became a patient negatively impacted by benzodiazepines. I use my personal Twitter account to share my experience in order to spread awareness about the difficulty of tapering. I’ve learned through my numerous social media interactions with patients undergoing benzodiazepine withdrawal to be more empathetic and caring. This is partially because I experienced it myself but I’ve also taken the time to truly listen to what they are going through.

“The most frustrating part about social media is running into people who disagree with your opinions and express themselves in a toxic manner. I am all about civil discourse and I have a natural urge to appease everyone, but I’ve found that’s not always possible.”

—Christy Huff, M.D., cardiologist (@christyhuffmd)

15. “If we can make complicated topics simpler to understand, we can help countless numbers of people across the globe.”

“I was frustrated with the amount of misinformation out there. My oncology patients would bring articles on unscientific, sometimes dangerous treatments. They would believe this information was true because it was published online, or stated by a celebrity. As physicians, a part of our job is to educate and engage with patients and the community. Social media provides a wonderful forum for this.

“We are able to reach a large group from around the world, share evidence-based science, and answer questions. We are able to help individuals become more informed patients or advocates. Doctors have always educated individuals in their communities, and now we have an international community that depends on us for facts, science, and education. If we can make complicated topics simpler to understand, we can help countless numbers of people across the globe.

“Without the benefit of tone of voice or inflection [on social], statements can be taken out of context or misconstrued. There are also individuals who like to troll. Those interactions can be frustrating. I have also seen discussions devolve into arguments. As physicians, we must remain professional when engaging on social media.”

—Shikha Jain, M.D., hematology oncology physician (@ShikhaJainMD)

16. “Physicians are still the repositories of medical knowledge.”

“I use social media to disseminate information about celiac and other diseases, advocate for those with celiac, enhance professional connections, and advocate for our profession. I also use it to make connections within the writing community.

“Physicians belong on social media because we are uniquely able to disseminate accurate and timely medical information to the general public, improve the quality of medical dialogue and advocate for our profession. Although journalists and bloggers do this as well, physicians are still the repositories of medical knowledge. Together, we have the opportunity to change behaviors and policies.

“I've learned countless ER tips and tricks and read fascinating cases. Within social media groups, I've learned about creating a website and an online persona. Within the food allergy/celiac groups, I've found resources for my own child and for my patients.

“Information-sharing is one of the greatest benefits of social media. Medicine can be an isolated profession: We go into patient rooms alone, make decisions alone, and stew over clinical conundrums alone. Social media has changed that, enabling us to discuss cases and learn from each other.”

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nazih-fares · 6 years

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Back in 2014, a studio owned by Ubisoft was known as Ivory Tower launched quite an interesting take on driving games. An open-world racing game set in the United States, The Crew had innovative mechanics merged with MMO elements that worked over the years (you can click here to read my review of the original The Crew). While we reviewed the game and quite enjoyed it, the developers are back at it with The Crew 2, aiming to expand the experience to not just driving cars, but also planes, boats and finally motorcycles. So how is it? Let’s find out.

The original The Crew was set behind the story of Alex, and his mission to build… Well, a crew, to go inside the 5-10 motor club and avenge the death of his older brother. This time, The Crew 2 is not linked to any backstory, and your character will be built from scratch, unnamed, with a main goal to build his reputation as the best Crew driver in the country.

For that, you’ll have to drive like mad in this large open world set in different corners of the United States of America, to gain followers (or fans) and earn enough to participate in larger and more complicated events of what is known as the Live XTREM Series. The universe of The Crew 2, is therefore somehow realistic, with a bunch of fake brands, a TV show that follows the trials of numerous drivers and a race for the highest amount of followers, which should be appeal to all of you social media influencer wannabes (including myself). The whole is split with some scripted scenes supposed to highlight the affinities or rivalries of the different racing style’s characters, but in an atmosphere that sounds so much like a bad reality TV show (think modern Discovery Channel blended with trashy E!). I’ll be honest, after couple of these cutscenes, I just couldn’t handle, and skip most of them due to the cliché conversations and just a general lack of interest.

Nevertheless, the game isn’t bad for what it offers, and feels like an upgrade from the original The Crew. The car handling is much more responsive, even if it’s still a very arcade gameplay, yet still fun. You do not have to be a driving pro to win a street race, but there’s obviously some special cars that feel different and require a bit of learning like the crazy Supercars. On the other hand, motorcycles also have different feel depending on whether you are using a roadster or mountain bike, plus the planes and boats are a whole different ball game, but necessarily a good one.

You see, while I liked the idea of sea races, the boats lacks the thrill of speed, even while playing in cockpit mode, which doesn’t help considering maneuvering it is really simple. On the other hand, the aerial challenges with planes are more dynamic, with real sensations of vertigo, and a gameplay that relies on tricks which is complicated to master, but that’s not an issue.

You’ll eventually learn to drive all these vehicules thanks to four main categories of events, which are Street Racing, Pro Racing, Freestyle and Offroad. Once you get deeper into these categories, you’ll also discover the depth of challenges, which could rely on tricks, dragsters, street races, aerial acrobatics and eventually beat the categories’ leading figure. But once you get 3-4 same challenges in a row, you’ll start falling into the trap of repetition, but that’s pretty much the curse of all racing games.

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When The Crew came out in 2014, my main reproach for the game was that it didn’t look visually like a next generation game. When it comes to The Crew 2, the tech is definitely upgraded but not on all front, which results with weird mixed experience. While admiring the countryside, you’ll really enjoy the lush colors, animated skies and close to perfect water of rivers and seas (still believe they are the best publisher when it comes to wave animations since Black Flags). But once you are zipping through races, you’ll discover how heavy the game runs on a console – even on the Xbox One X – with a pronounced motion blur, lots of clipping in 3D models of buildings, and some strange choices of physics. But at least, we finally got dynamic weather, which even if it has a small effect on the driving, makes the whole experience magical especially when you get to the extreme like snowing or thunderstorms.

Finally like the original, The Crew 2 is an open world MMO game, and while Ivory Tower has clearly not skimped on the content front, there’s the disappointing fact that the PvP mode is not live at the moment of writing this review. You’ll have to wait until December – according to the announcement from Ubisoft on post-launch content – but that’s a bummer for those that are fans, as it’s without any doubt one of the best features of the franchise. Nevertheless, the developer is planning major content updates every three months, which will be free to all players, including new vehicles, and a hovercraft in September.

Otherwise, The Crew 2 is still repetitive like its predecessor, despite the diversity of the challenges. This is probably due to the completely banal scripted story, that does not encourage the player to advance in the game, and simply toss him in the void to drive and feel thrills of the race. It’s still a fun game for players who enjoy wandering in an open world, or fans of the original.

The Crew 2 was reviewed using an Xbox One digital download code of the game provided by Ubisoft Middle East. The game is also available on PlayStation 4 and PC via digital and retail store releases. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published (click here for more information about our review policy).

There's definitely good intention with this sequel, even if The Crew 2 is not the groundbreaking upgrade we expected from Ivory Tower. While the game is still solid in terms of mechanics and gameplay, some weaknesses might not appeal to newcomers, and fans of the original will be disappointed by the lack of PVP at launch. Back in 2014, a studio owned by Ubisoft was known as Ivory Tower launched quite an interesting take on driving games.

#Featured #Ivory Tower #MMO #Multiplatform #Multiplayer #Online Only #Racing #Ubisoft

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greggory--lee · 7 years

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Coordinating Protocol Upgrades in the Future

Make no mistake. We are witnessing a high-stakes protocol standards battle play out in real time. And it is just as important as last century’s battle for the internet’s TCP standard.

Current capacity constraints on the Bitcoin blockchain have brought us to this impasse.

The Bitcoin protocol, as the dominant value transfer “network effect” leader, battles against upstart cryptocurrency protocols like Ethereum and Monero. But it also battles with itself as divergent forces push for either on-chain scaling or off-chain scaling, hard fork or soft fork, SegWit transaction format or original transaction format.

The so-called nuclear option is a prolonged, contested hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain because it risks splitting the network into two competing chains, which is to no one’s benefit. Therefore, it should be reserved as a planned formality or a last resort for extreme situations rather than a perpetual form of “live” dispute resolution.

With so much individual and institutional wealth essentially stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, it can be extremely disconcerting when others try to “fork” around with your money. Chronic forking is not synonymous with wealth management and prudent capital accumulation, which require stability and predictability. Importantly, smart contracts and non-monetary applications will also rely upon relative stability since the same native digital token also facilitates the proof-of-work security model.

This article will examine how open-source governance was designed to work within the Bitcoin protocol and how users, miners and developers are locked in a symbiotic dance when it comes to potential forks to the immutable consensus. Solutions will be proposed and analyzed that maintain the decentralized nature of the resulting code and the blockchain consensus, while still permitting sensible protocol upgrades. Governance is not only about the particular method of change-control management, but also about how the very method itself is subject to change.

Let’s not deploy the nuclear option for every protocol upgrade.

Open-Source Protocols and Bitcoin

Generally referred to as FOSS, or free and open-source software, this source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to use the software and to voluntarily improve its design, resulting in decreasing software costs; increasing security and stability, and flexibility over hardware choice; and better privacy protection.

Open-source governance models, such as Linux and BitTorrent, are not new and they existed prior to the emergence of Bitcoin in early 2009; however, they have never before been so tightly intertwined with money itself. Indeed, as the largest distributed computing project in the world with self-adjusting computational power, Bitcoin may be the first crude instance of A.I. on the internet.

In “Who Controls the Blockchain?” Patrick Murck confirms that Bitcoin is functioning as designed:

As a blockchain community grows, it becomes increasingly more difficult for stakeholders to reach a consensus on changing network rules. This is by design, and reinforces the original principles of the blockchain’s creators. To change the rules is to split the network, creating a new blockchain and a new community. Blockchain networks resist political governance because they are governed by everyone who [participates] in them, and by no one in particular.

Murck continues:

Bitcoin’s ability to resist such populist campaigns demonstrates the success of the blockchain’s governance structure and shows that the ‘governance crisis’ is a false narrative.

Of course it’s a false narrative, and Murck is correct on this point. Bitcoin’s lack of political governance is Bitcoin’s governance model, and forking is a natural intended component of that. “Governance” may be the wrong word for it because we are actually talking about minimizing potential disruption.

Where Bitcoin differs from other open-source protocols is that two levels of forking exist. One level forks the open-source code (code fork), and another level forks the blockchain consensus (chain fork). Since there can only be one consensus per native digital token, chain splits are the natural result of this. The only way to avoid potential chain splits in the future is to restrict the change-control process to a single implementation, which is not very safe nor realistic.

“Collaborate or fork” has become the rallying cry for Bitcoin Core supporters. L.M. Goodman, author of “Tezos: A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger Position Paper,” writes:

Core development teams are a potentially dangerous source of centralization.

When it comes to Bitcoin Core, the publicly shared code repository hosts the current reference implementation, and a small group of code committers (or maintainers) regulate any merges to the code. Even though other projects may be more open to criticism and newcomers, this general structure reminds me of a presiding council of elders.

Making hazy claims of a peer-review process or saying that committers are just passive maintainers merely creates the facade of decentralized code. The real peer-review process takes place on multiple community and technical forums, some of which are not even frequented by the developers and Bitcoin Core committers.

The BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) process is sufficient and it’s working for those who choose to collaborate on Bitcoin Core. Similar to the RFC (Request for Comments) process at the IETF, BIP debates about a proposed implementation can provide technical documentation useful to developers. However, it is not working for many involved in Bitcoin protocol development due to the advantages of incumbency and the false appeal to authority with core developers. If Bitcoin Core no longer maintains the leading reference implementation for the Bitcoin protocol, it will be 100 percent due to this intransigence.

Sensitive to the criticisms of glorifying Bitcoin Core, Adam Back of Blockstream recently proposed an option to freeze the base-layer protocol, but at the moment that will only move all of the politics and game-playing to what exactly the base-layer freeze should look like. It is a nice idea for separating the protocol standard from a single reference implementation and for transitioning the Bitcoin protocol to an IETF-like structure, although it’s extremely premature for now.

Therefore, by default, that leaves us with several alternative Bitcoin implementations in an environment of continual forking.

Even Satoshi Nakamoto was critical of multiple consensus implementations in 2010:

I don’t believe a second, compatible implementation of Bitcoin will ever be a good idea. So much of the design depends on all nodes getting exactly identical results in lockstep that a second implementation would be a menace to the network.

That prevailing standpoint, however, may be changing, which Aaron van Wirdum addresses in “The Long History and Disputed Desirability of Alternative Bitcoin Implementations.” Wirdum cites Eric Voskuil of libbitcoin, who argues that there should not be one particular implementation to define the Bitcoin protocol:

“All code that impacts consensus is part of consensus,” Voskuil told Bitcoin Magazine. “But when part of this code stops the network or does something not nice, it’s called a bug needing a fix, but that fix is a change to consensus. Since bugs are consensus, fixes are forks. As such, a single implementation gives far too much power to its developers. Shutting down the network while some star chamber works out a new consensus is downright authoritarian.”

Multiple alternative implementations of the Bitcoin protocol strengthen the network and help to prevent code centralization.

Politics of Blockchain Forking (or How UASF BIP 148 Will Fail)

Contentious hard forks and soft forks all come down to hashing power. You can phrase it differently and you can make believe that two-day zero-balance nodes have a fundamental say in the outcome, but you cannot alter that basic reality.

A BIP 148 fork will undoubtedly need mining hash power to succeed or even to result in a minority chain. However, if Segregated Witness (SegWit) had sufficient miner support in the first place, the BIP 148 UASF itself would be unnecessary. So, in that respect, it will now proceed like a game of chicken waiting to see if miners support the fork attempt.

Mirroring aspects of mob rule, if the UASF approach works as a way to bring miners around to adopting SegWit, then the emboldened mob will deploy the tactic for numerous other protocol upgrades in the future. Consensus rules should not be easy to change and they should not be able to change through simple majority rule on nodes, economic or not. Eventually, these attempts will run headfirst into the wall of Nakamoto consensus.

As far as the network is concerned, it’s like turning off the power to your node.

There is no room for majority rule in Bitcoin. Those who endorse the UASF approach and cleverly insert UASF tags in their social media handles are endorsing majority rule in Bitcoin. They are providing a stage for any random user group to push their warped agenda via tyranny of the nodes.

The prolific Jimmy Song says that having real skin in the game is what matters:

Bitcoin doesn’t care if you post arguments on Reddit. Bitcoin doesn’t care if you put something clever in your Twitter name. Bitcoin doesn’t care if you educate people, write articles, or make clever Twitter insults. Bitcoin doesn’t care about your wishes, your feelings or your arguments.

Let’s keep “majority rule” antics out of Bitcoin. There is no protocol condition that activates “if we are all united” and that is a good thing.

With enough hashing power, the mob-induced UASF BIP 148 will lead to a temporary chain split. However, the probability of a Bitcoin minority chain surviving for very long is extremely low due to the lengthy difficulty re-targeting period of 2,016 blocks. Unlike the Ethereum/Ethereum Classic fork, that is a long time for miners to invest in a chain of uncertainty.

Responding to a Reddit post for newbies who are scared of losing money around the 1st of August due to UASF, ArmchairCryptologist explains:

Your advice is sound, but realistically, the most likely scenario is that the UASF either wins or dies. If it gets less than ~12% of the hashrate, it will not be able to activate Segwit in time, and it will almost certainly die. If it gets less than ~20% I also wouldn’t be surprised to see active interference with orphaning to prevent transactions from being processed.

If on the other hand it gets more than ~40% of the hashrate, the chance for a reorg on the other chain is large enough that most miners will likely jump ship, and it will almost certainly win. At over ~20% block orphaning attacks won’t be effective, as it would split the majority chain hashrate and risk tipping the scale. Which means that the only situation where you will realistically have two working chains for an extended period is if you get between ~20% and ~40% of the hashrate for the UASF.

The collectivist UASF BIP 148 strategy will ultimately fail and that’s a good thing. It is driven primarily by those with very little at stake expecting the miners to stake everything by supporting a minority chain. Pretty soon, you run out of other people’s money. This commenter on Reddit understands:

The entire premise was that it was very cheap to switch, but very expensive to stay. That’s when I realized the folly of it all; [it’s] only cheap because they’re not staking anything. But someone has to stake something.

And that’s what is going to cause it to fail. That and the lack of replay protection. People like this guy flip it around and genuinely believe the mining problem will be solved by massively increased value. If they do somehow put enough pressure on exchanges that list UASF, despite the lack of replay protection, and if we take his logic a step further, UASFers are going to be pushing everyone to “buy, buy, buy” UASF and “sell, sell, sell” Legacy Coin. But without replay protection, they’re going to be obliterated by a few smart people who realize there are huge gains to be had.

Alphonse Pace has an excellent paper describing chain splits and their resolution. He walks us through compatible, incompatible and semi-compatible hard forks, arguing that users do have power if they truly reject a soft-fork rule change:

… users do have power — by invoking an incompatible hard fork. In this case, users will force the chain to split by introducing a new ruleset (which may include a proof-of-work change, but does not require one). This ensures users always have an escape from a miner-imposed ruleset that they reject. This way, if the economy and users truly reject a soft fork rule change, they always have the power to break away and reclaim the rules they wish. It may be inconvenient, but the same is true by any attack by the miners on users.

The Future of Coordinating Protocol Upgrades

What group determines the big decisions in Bitcoin’s direction? Ilogy doubts that it is the developers:

Theymos almost completely foresaw what is happening today. Why? Because Theymos has a deep understanding of Bitcoin and he was able to connect the dots and recognize that the logic of the system leads inevitably to this conclusion. Once we add to the equation the fact that restricting on-chain scaling was always going to be perceived by the ‘generators’ as something that ‘reduces profit,’ it should be clear that the logic of the system was intrinsically going to bring us to the point we find ourselves today.

Years later these two juggernauts of Bitcoin would find themselves on opposite ends of the debate. But what is interesting, what they both recognized, was that ultimately big decisions in Bitcoin’s direction would be determined by the powerful actors in the space, not by the average user and, more importantly, not by the developers.

The developer role can be thought of as proposing a variety of software menu choices for the users, merchants and miners to accept and run. If a software upgrade or patch is deemed unacceptable, then developers must go back to work and adjust the BIP menu offering. Otherwise, mutiny becomes the only option for dissatisfied miners.

In “Who Controls Bitcoin?” Daniel Krawisz says that the investors wield the most power, and because of that, miners follow investors. Therefore, the protocol upgrades likely to get adopted will be the ones that increase Bitcoin’s value as an investment, such as anonymity improvements being favored over attempts at making Bitcoin easier to regulate.

In the future, miner coordination via a Bitcoin DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) on the blockchain could be the key to smooth and uneventful forking. Self-governing ratification would allow diverse stakeholders to coordinate protocol upgrades on-chain, reducing the likelihood of software propagation battles that perpetually fork the codebase.

Attorney Adam Vaziri of Diacle supports a system of DAO voting by Bitcoin miners to remove the uncertainty around protocol upgrades. He readily admits that he has been inspired by Tezos and Decred.

Prediction markets have also been proposed as a method to gauge user and miner preferences through public forecasting, the theory being that these prediction markets would yield the fairest overall consensus for protocol upgrades prior to the actual fork.

The question remains: Is coin-based voting based on allocated hash power superior to the informal signaling method utilized today? Are prediction markets or futures markets a viable method to gauge consensus and determine critical protocol upgrades?

I’m not optimistic. On-chain voting and “intent” signaling are both non-binding expressions while prediction and futures markets can be easily gamed. Therefore, while Tezos and Decred represent admirable efforts in the quest for complete resilient decentralization, I do not think Bitcoin protocol upgrades of the future will be managed in this way.

The Bitcoin ecosystem doesn’t need to achieve a social consensus prior to making changes to the protocol. What has clearly emerged from the events of this summer is that Bitcoin has demonstrated an even stronger degree of immutability.

Bitcoin has shown every indication that it wants a degree of immutability beyond what any of us expected.

Btw Bitcoin is an AI, not a mkt https://t.co/OcQ9ID3aL6

— Pierre Rochard (@pierre_rochard) July 16, 2017

There is no failure of governance and there is no failure of the market. The non-authoritarian forces at play here are functioning exactly as they should. Protocol upgrades in a decentralized environment are an evolutionary process, and that process has matured to the current six stages of Bitcoin protocol upgrading, with some optional variances for BIP 91:

(a) BIP menu choices competing for mindshare, strategic appropriateness and technical rigor;

(b) Informal intent signaling based on miners inserting text into the coinbase for each block mined;

(c) Block signaling period where miners formally signal a designated “bit” trigger for BIP lock-in, based on “x” percent over a “y” number of blocks period;

(d) Block activation period after BIP lock-in, which sets a secondary period of “x” percent over a “y” number of blocks for activation;

(e) Primary difficulty adjustment period (2,016 blocks) where “x” percent of miners must signal for the upgrade to lock in;

(f) Secondary difficulty adjustment period (2,016 blocks) required for the protocol upgrade to activate on the network.

Conclusion

This would not be the first fork in Bitcoin and it won’t be the last. If we believe in the power of Nakamoto consensus and probabilistic security, then the secret to uneventful protocol upgrades is smoother and more reliable signaling by miners.

July has been a tough month for Bitcoin, but it has also been pivotal. Even though I doubt the probability of success for UASF BIP 148, some may say that the threat of the reckless UASF on August 1 played a role in the rapid timeline for SegWit2x/BIP 91, and I agree with that. Game theory is alive and well in Bitcoin.

The design of Nakamoto consensus provides the ultimate method for decentralized dispute resolution by placing that decision with the hashing power and the built-in incentives against 51 percent attacks. In fact, Tom Harding considers miners to be the only failsafe in Bitcoin:

Miners are the only failsafe when the fiat and altcoin incentives corrupt the dev machine.

— Tom Harding (@dgenr818) April 13, 2017

Nakamoto consensus for the win. See you in November.

The views expressed in this op ed are those of its author, Jon Matonis, and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Media.

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Source: http://bitcoinswiz.com/coordinating-protocol-upgrades-in-the-future/

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