#Bombastic Bot

[brucenorris007]

Omega takes any and all opportunities he can to give Metal shit. He refers to the period prior to its redemption as its Cringe Era

Knuckles at one point asks a mechanical question about Metal's Neo form; Omega engages his jet engines from an entire zone away just to ask

"ARE WE DISCUSSING METAL'S CRINGE ERA?"

[pinkanonwrites]

Gotta get my head on straight so I can write the G1 Hot Rod/Car Wash Attendant Reader I've had buzzing in my brain for literal months.

Like imagine you work at a car wash near Autobot city and have had a few bot customers in the past, typically bots like Pipes and Beachcomber after they got a bit too dirty roughing it around the open terrain. But today it's Hot Rod, and boy does he live up to his name. Perfect paint, golden flame decals, a slick spoiler? He's quite a looker, that's for sure.

And you'd heard about Hot Rod from his teammates before, but he's surprisingly.... Not as bombastic as you may have expected? He's definitely chatty, but it's more of a long-winded, almost anxious string of babble. His wheels shift back and forth like nervous feet as you smooth the wax across his hood, and at one point your fingers trace the edge of his spoiler and he responds by nearly jumping out of his wheel wells, joined by the loudest HONK you'd ever heard come out of a sports car.

Meanwhile, from Hot Rod's perspective, he's cursing Beachcomber for telling him what a nice place this was to relax. How can he relax when the human feeling up his door jambs and hubcaps is so cute? Hot Rod doesn't do embarrassed, but something about you just makes his tanks turn in the best possible way. He's not even sure what he's talking about, just that the act of running his mouth is distracting enough that you don't notice the way his engine revs every time your fingers dance along the seams of his panels. He's sparkling clean on the outside when he finally trundles out of your car wash, but in his processor he's an absolute MESS.

You don't even notice the pinkish puddle on the concrete right below where he'd been parked, as it's quickly washed away by the hose.

[seytazen]

Panel 1 (referencing Rescue Bots: S2E37)

Heatwave: The humans made it. Don’t ask me why…

Optimus: hmm…

Panel 2:

Miko: Bossbot! Watch this! *does a bunch of sick pogo tricks*

Panel 3:

Optimus: What is this device?

Miko: It’s a pogo stick!

Optimus:… it doesn’t seem like an effective transit option. Miko, what is the purpose of a “pogo stick?”

Miko: I dunno. For fun?

Optimus: Why would someone build such a contraption?

Miko: Why not?

Panel 4:

Optimus: Likely the same logic that went into the pogo stick.

Heatwave: *bombastic side eye… pogo stick?*

[innuendostudios]

new video about Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, and how everyone* keeps getting them wrong! this video is sponsored by Nebula, a place where you can watch the original version of this video before I had to tweak it for YouTube's copyright bots. (by clicking that link, you can get an annual subscription for 40% off.) or you can just back me on Patreon, which is also cool and good.

transcript below the cut.

I adore Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy. I flirted with making a video about it ages ago, had a draft of a script, but ultimately decided it wasn’t about anything except “here’s a thing I like, and here are its (I thought) very obvious themes.” So I shelved it. But, in the years since, I have seen multiple video essayists on this here website claim that these movies are about growing up and taking responsibility. (I say “multiple.” It’s not a lot. But it’s more than one! And that’s enough.)

These people are 100% wrong.

Lemme lay it out: the Cornetto Trilogy is not about growing up. It is not about taking responsibility. It is the exact opposite, and that’s not subtext. It is three movies about stunted manchildren thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and each, in the end, is saved - is redeemed - by abandoning his character arc and failing to grow or change. It is a three-part love letter to immaturity.

And I guess I have to set the record straight.

Sometimes making a video about a thing you love is an act of appreciation. And sometimes it’s out of spite.

The Cornetto Trilogy is three movies: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. All three are written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright; Pegg stars, and Wright directs; all three center on a relationship between Pegg and real-life best friend Nick Frost, which makes each film a reunion of the core team behind Spaced (excepting, but for a small role in Shaun of the Dead, Jessica Hynes). The three films span three genres: zombie apocalypse, buddy cop, alien invasion; each features a Cornetto ice cream cone: strawberry to represent blood, original blue to represent the police, and mint to represent little green men; this is a joking nod to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois Couleur films, Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge, which were based on the colors and themes of the French flag (I don’t care what you say, Emily: #TeamRouge); that nod is funny because Trois Couleur is high-art drama and these are comedies. All three are parodies of, tributes to, and actually surprisingly good executions of their respective genres. And the hook, the gag at the center of all these movies, is that Simon Pegg plays a character wholly unsuited to be starring in this kind of film.

Shaun, the burnout, is the wrong person to survive the zombie apocalypse; by-the-book British bobby Nicholas is the wrong person to lead an American-style bombastic actioner; and alcoholic asshole Gary is the last person to save the world from aliens.

And I think that’s where people get stuck. Because “schlub finds himself protagonist of a genre film” is the elevator pitch for like a dozen Adam Sandler movies. The genre trappings may be as mundane as parenthood or mandated anger management classes, or as high-concept as action movie, whodunnit, or time travel It’s a Wonderful Life if Clarence were Christopher Walken as the angel of death (that… that makes it sound good, it’s not, don’t see Click; leave Frank Capra alone, Adam). But all these movies have the same basic shape: an extraordinary situation forces a guy to confront his shortcomings, which always stem from having never grown up. And you probably haven’t seen all of these movies, but if you’ve seen any, I bet you have assumptions about how the rest end: even though “Adam Sandler acts like a child” is generally the selling point of an Adam Sandler movie, they all end with some lip service toward becoming an adult: hey man, grow up a bit; appreciate your family a little more; square your shoulders; clean your room. This is so standard, it was parodied mercilessly in Funny People.

And this was a formative microgenre for my generation! Whole universe turns itself upside down to teach some shitty dude to, like, do the dishes and pay his wife a compliment now and then - Liar Liar, Bruce and Evan Almighty (all directed by the same guy, by the way). So I don’t blame people of a certain age for seeing the first act of Shaun of the Dead and thinking “I know where this is going.” And when, at the last minute, it swerves and goes someplace else, you could read that as a gag, a final subversion of expectation, still the same basic shape. But no! No! Once is a gag - thrice??? Thrice is a thematic statement!

So lemme make my case. I’ma take you through these movies one by one - we’ll talk about the manchildren and the expectations set by the genre, and then we’ll talk about that last-minute swerve and what it means. And then you’ll tell me I’m right and apologize!

Shaun of the Dead:

Shaun is a man in his twenties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the slacker.

What is his problem? He needs to sort his life out. Shaun doesn’t know how to take action. He hasn’t advanced since college - he’s been working the kind of job a teen takes over the summer for like a decade, lives with the same best friend, has the same petty fights with his stepdad, goes to the same pub every week with the same group of people. He can’t make a reservation, he can’t manage a calendar, he’s a washup. This makes his girlfriend, Liz, feel stifled, trapped; he is a weight around her ankle, taking her on the same date week after week, keeping her from living her own dreams, having her own adventures. She gives him one last chance to prove he can sort his life out, and he blows it, and she dumps him.

And then: a zombie movie happens.

The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: to survive, and save his loved ones, he’ll have to take action, make plans, be decisive. This is a common fantasy: when you feel ground down by the mundanity of life, you might imagine, oh, if only a crisis would happen, like a zombie virus outbreak, where my normal-life problems like “am I gonna make rent,” “is my girl gonna take me back,” “is my roommate gonna kick out my stoner buddy who’s crashing on the couch” become meaningless, and it’s immediately clear what’s really important, what matters. Then I’d know exactly what to do. It’s why disaster movies work as escapism: a necromantic plague - or at least the fantasy of one - is sometime preferable to normal life.

Hot Fuzz:

Nicholas is a man in his thirties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the hall monitor.

What is his problem? He can’t switch off. He is a hypercompetant police officer with a rulebook where his brain should be. He’s so good at being a cop that he’s spotting and unraveling crimes even on his day off. He can’t maintain a relationship, has no friends, all his coworkers hate him because he keeps finishing their work for them, and his stats show up the rest of the force so badly that they scuttle him out to the country.

Now you might be thinking, “Mmm. A fastidious police officer who can’t have fun? How is that a manchild? Sounds pretty grown-up to me. You’re reaching, bud.” Ohhhh ho ho, smartass, do you remember this scene? [bar scene] Yeah! Nicholas Angel has a five-year-old’s notion of law and order. He’s still playing cops and robbers.

And that’s a problem, because then: an action movie happens.

It doesn’t happen all at once: he goes out to the country and finds they do things a bit differently there. They are (ostensibly) less concerned with rules than what than the rules are for: if the purpose of drinking laws is to keep the streets safe and orderly, and letting some people off with a warning or allowing kids drink so long as they do it inside achieves that end, the rule can be bent. That’s a judgment grown-ups can make; I mean, they’re the ones who wrote the rules in the first place. So be lenient with shoplifters, don’t hassle people for speeding; this isn’t the Big City, you can use your better judgment. But Nicholas never got past doing whatever Mom & Dad said; obedience, and trusting whoever’s up the chain, is his entire moral framework. He can’t accept that bending the law could be more righteous than following it.

But also maybe there’s a criminal conspiracy murdering people and writing it off as accidents and the police chief might be in on it. Or maybe Nicholas is so desperate for a big case with no moral ambiguity that he’s seeing things where they aren’t. 

The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: either there’s nothing going on and he needs to chill out about procedure, or the department is corrupt and he’ll have to go rogue like it’s Point Break - and this is how he experiences Point Break. [“paperwork”]

No matter what, he’ll have to bend the rules, which he constitutionally cannot do.

The World’s End:

Gary is a man in his forties. What kind of manchild is he? He’s the delinquent.

What’s his problem? Pfffft. What isn’t his problem? Gary is a manipulative, narcissistic, lying, self-destructive, ignorant, violent, thieving, shit-talking, unapologetic asshole who peaked in high school when being all those things was still kind of badass. The greatest night of his life was the drunken pub crawl after graduation he and his friends didn’t even finish, and he’s been tumbling downhill ever since. He’s spent his life ruining everyone who knows him until there’s no one left to ruin but Gary King. So now it’s time to bully the old gang into going back home with him to relive that night by finishing the pub crawl, because, in his own words, it’s all he’s got. And he and his friends have to confront how home has changed since they left - the bars have gentrified, not everyone recognizes them; the defining, epic deeds of Gary’s youth have been forgotten. You can’t actually go back because that place doesn’t exist anymore.

And then: a sci-fi movie happens.

Turns out the town’s been taken over by aliens, and all the people who couldn’t conform to their new order have been replaced with robots! That’s why no one recognizes them! And that’s why the pubs all look the same: the aliens are homogenizing everything! And it’s clear, if they can’t get Gary and his friends to play ball, they’ll roboticize them as well! The obvious move is to get the hell out of town, but Gary keeps inventing excuses to stay and finish the pub crawl, and they sound pretty sensible because the group’s already five pints in. The genre forces him to confront his shortcomings: sooner or later he’s gonna have to give up on recapturing his youth and do what’s best for him and his friends now, even if it means running back to the city where all his problems live.

So there we have it: the characters cross the threshold into an unfamiliar world where an external conflict cannot be addressed without resolving the tension within. The slacker will have to get his shit sorted, the hall monitor will have to break the rules, and the delinquent will have to do what’s good for him. And, to an extent, all three know this! The movies Wright and Pegg pay homage to exist in these stories - Shaun knows what a zombie is, Danny keeps Nicholas up watching Point Break and Bad Boys II, and Gary and friends know bodysnatcher movies so well they have philosophical debates with the robots about whether “robot” is the PC term.

So, yeah, if you turned the movies off there, I could forgive you for thinking that’s where they’re headed. But you goofballs watched them to the end and then made content about them, what is wrong with you???

What actually happens in the second halves of these movies?

Shaun twigs that he’s in a zombie movie and, at first, tries to play the part - his survival plans are miniature hero’s journeys with him as protagonist, wherein he’ll save the day by neatly confronting all his flaws. He’ll resolve parental conflict by saving his mom from his zombified stepdad, resolve romantic conflict by showing his girl he can come through when it counts, and resolve internal conflict by being a man who saves the day. And all his plans suck! It’s just the same plan he always comes up with! Dragging around the same useless liability of a bestie, collecting the same group of people, and holing up in the same pub! He doesn’t save his mom: his stepdad apologizes, resolving their conflict for him, and then survives in zombie form but Shaun’s mom gets killed; most of the friend group gets killed because the crisis does not actually suspend but in fact amplifies their personal grievances; and he doesn’t save the day, just manages not to die long enough for the military to show up.

But… well, Liz wanted adventure and now she’s had enough for a lifetime, so… she’s down to just be boring with him for a while - sit on the couch, watch TV, hit the pub. Beats running for your life. Tensions with the roommate are gone cuz roommate died, but rent is covered cuz Liz moved in. Zombies don’t get eradicated, just folded into normal life, so Shaun can mindlessly play video games with his bestie forever, and it’s not a problem that bestie doesn’t have an income cuz he doesn’t need food or shelter.

The zombie apocalypse doesn’t make Shaun sort his life out, it changes the world til he doesn’t have to.

When Nicholas discovers that, yes, there is definitely a murderous criminal conspiracy inside the police department, he recognizes the only way to bring about justice is to become what Danny has always wanted and go Dirty Harry on the town. It’s either that or just swallow the crimes. But he does neither. He and Danny go on an epic shooting spree, recreating famous movie scenes, taking out the entire criminal organization against all odds, and spouting badass one-liners… but everyone who helps them is a cop, they don’t actually kill anyone, all perps are formally arrested, and they fill out all the paperwork. I think he even properly signs out the weapons. He never switches off, never breaks a rule, does absolutely everything by the book, only… louder. And this violent showdown saves him from the chill town with lax rules he thought he’d moved to. Now he, with his five-year-old notion of right and wrong, is in charge of the police department.

The buddy cop actioner doesn’t make Nicholas bend the rules, it changes the world til he doesn’t have to.

Gary knows exactly how a movie of this sort is supposed to go and spends the whole movie running from it. Friends and secondary characters keep sharing these poignant moments with him, because they know this story, too: yeah, he’s gonna reject help at first, but sooner or later he’ll hit rock bottom and then someone will get through to him. And, as the night goes on, and the characters get drunker and drunker, and Gary passes up more and more opportunities to abandon the pub crawl and go home, these moments take a tone of desperation. They start to sound more like interventions; like, Gary, we all know you’re going to come to your senses but could you hurry up with it??? How many of your friends need to literally die for you to shape up? Are you gonna get them all killed?

And the answer is: Gary will never shape up! To Gary the Human Dril Tweet, his friends trying to save him, psychiatrists trying to treat him, and aliens trying to assimilate him are all the same thing. He doggedly makes it to the end of the pub crawl and confronts the alien overlord who tells him all the technological advancements of the past few decades - all the efficiency and homogenization that’ve changed the face of his home town - are their doing. The Information Age is an intervention on behalf of Earth, a pan-galactic effort to save humanity from itself. And the reason they’ve been replacing people with robots is some people are too fucked up to go along with it.

And here’s Gary, King of the Fuckups, brashly declaring that fucking up is what makes us human. There is no freedom without the freedom to ruin your life. We are endowed by our creator with the right to be drunken, ornery pieces of shit.

He tells the aliens to piss off and he’s so fucking annoying that they do, and they take the Information Age with them.

Now… I know… ugh… I know a lot of people love this movie, say it’s the best of the three. Some friends who’ve struggled with mental health or just being an adult under late capitalism really identify with Gary, and the valorization of being a mess. I see you, you’re not wrong, I get it, I really do. But can we just… not “but” but “also” can we… can we also admit that this ending is… this is Space Brexit.

Like, literally it’s an alien invasion but symbolically this is Gary rejecting the adult world of rules and authority and doing what’s best for the community and that’s how Brexiters view the EU. And people keep telling him “Gary, this is in your best interest” and Gary says, I don’t want my best interest! I am registered in the anti-Gary’s Face Party and I will cast my vote by cutting my nose! I choose to do what’s bad for me.

And, like a true Brexiter, he chooses for everybody.

Now tell me that’s a movie about growing up. Gary collapses human civilization in its entirety rather than change, and in the world that follows, he thrives… by being an immature, irresponsible bag of garbage.

To Wright and Pegg, growing up is death, and these are movies about being alive. These characters don’t cross the threshold back into the ordinary world with the ultimate boon of character growth; all three stay in the extraordinary world. The zombies remain, the robots remain, Nicholas is offered his London job back and chooses to stay in the country. These are stories about normal life spontaneously turning into a genre film, and they are made with deep love for those genres; why would they end with leaving those genres behind? Because it’s what Adam Sandler would do?

So there you have it. I rest my case.

“Okay Ian. Why does this matter?”

…what was that?

“You’ve made your point: these movies aren’t about growing up or taking responsibility. So what?”

Uhhhh.

“Bring it home for us.”

…

“Why do you care so much?

[breath]

I wrote the first draft of this script when I was around Shaun and Nicholas’ age, and “so what?” is why I shelved it. Now I’m Gary’s age, this video’s been in the back of my brain the whole time, but I got this far and “so what” is where I got stuck, again. This is why the CO-VIDs came out quicker, cuz I let myself end with “so that’s interesting!” and got on with my life. But there’s clearly something sticky here, more than “someone is wrong on the internet.” (Also, to the YouTubers I’m vaguebooking, who said these were movies about growing up - I’m way more annoyed at the folks I’ve argued with on Twitter about this, you just made a better rhetorical device; you do not owe me an apology!) (Also, to the commentariat: I am not extrapolating this from like two data points, this is chronic and recurring and has been bothering me for years.)

There are a few directions I could take this to give it some “cultural weight.” I could put on my social justice hat and talk about how the “crisis of adulthood” doesn’t play as broad comedy unless you look like Adam Sandler or Simon Pegg, or put on my class analysis hat and talk about how signifiers of adulthood are, traditionally, ways of spending and accruing capital which are, today, often inaccessible to people under 40.

And that’s all legit, but here’s the real deal: I’m just mad at Gary. The world changed around Shaun such that he could stay a child. And Nicholas ended up somewhere he could stay a child. If you missed that, you’re wrong, but whatever. But to say that Gary grew up grinds me, because Gary chose this. The whole movie is people telling him to grow up, and he says no! He says it out loud! He says it to the literal end of the world. To walk out of the theater and say “that’s a movie about growing up” is more than a mistake, it’s a refusal. It’s trying to “fix” the movie by fitting it into a more familiar shape, so it doesn’t say what it says, so Gary isn’t who he is, who he chooses to be.

I’m being cheeky when I say this because he’s a fictional character, but saying Gary grew up is enabling.

Gary says there’s no freedom without the freedom to ruin your life, which is the problem with alcoholics and libertarians: it’s not just your life, Gary! You live in a community, a culture, and an ecosystem! Your actions - everybody’s actions - impact other people! That’s just the way the world is! You can’t shit yourself at the bar without other people having to smell it. We’re all fuckin’ connected, man! You don’t want anyone’s will imposed on you; you spend the whole movie imposing your will on everyone else! You say humans don’t wanna be told what to do, and then you decide humanity’s future by yourself with no input or consent from anyone!

People point to Gary ordering water in the last scene instead of beer as evidence that he got sober, like that’s proof that he did grow up in the end, which are you fucking joking??? Getting sober is a shorthand for maturity the way buying a house is, it doesn’t signify anything in and of itself! Gary drank to escape the adult world of rules and responsibilities! So, yeah, under normal circumstances getting sober would mean he’s made peace with that world and is ready to integrate. But that’s not what happened! The thing he was escaping doesn’t exist anymore! He literally destroyed it!! People died! Probably millions! Now he lives a happy life LARPing as Omega Doom - no I don’t expect you to catch that reference! He doesn’t need to drink! He is literally reliving the best day of his life forever. And even if it did mean personal growth, the idea that a person could make what would be, unequivocally, the most selfish decision in human history, and then spend his life celebrating the outcome, oh but if he overcame a personal demon in the process then on balance that’s maturity? That is lightspeed solipsism! Who are you if you think that way? Are you all Adam Sandler???

And none of that makes this a bad ending, or Gary a bad character. I mean, he is the reason The World’s End is my least favorite, and I don’t like the ending, but I don’t think it’s bad that I don’t like the ending. Rather than watch another addict pull his life together or destroy himself, we watch a downward spiral with so much gravity the whole world self-destructs alongside him. And that’s why The World’s End is the most interesting of the three: it is a bold choice, and I think we are free to feel however we want about the conclusion Gary engineered for himself. I don’t think it’s valid to pretend it didn’t happen.

In the context of the trilogy, we see that Shaun’s immaturity is mostly a problem for Shaun: he would be, at worst, a footnote in the lives of the people who love him; “yeah, I liked Shaun a lot, but I couldn’t carry him through life anymore.” Nicholas is the kind of overachiever that is useful if pointed in the right direction; juvenile code of ethics aside, he is, empirically, helping the community (within the entirely fictional framework where that’s a thing police do). If the world hadn’t changed to turn their flaws into strengths, they would still be relatively harmless. Gary is what happens when immaturity isn’t harmless, and shows us how a world built by that immaturity would look.

There is an appeal to Gary King, a wish fulfillment. Letting your id fully off the leash because you no longer care what anybody thinks - it’s why some people drink, and it’s why some people would like to drink with Gary. But if that’s not just your Friday night, not just your twenties, but that’s your life? There is a destination at the end of that road, and it’s Gary doing something truly ugly. And we see that ugly thing the way Gary sees it: as awesome. But then you see the reality: the Monday morning after the Friday night. We went out with Gary and he did something terrible.

And I’m not telling you to hate Gary for it; I’m not saying Gary can’t be forgiven. In fact, seeing it for what it is is the only way Gary could be forgiven, because, if he “grew up and took responsibility,” there’s nothing to forgive.

I think this is the only way the trilogy could have ended. I mean, you make stories about boys who get older and older and don’t grow up, it eventually becomes a problem. There’s only two ways to resolve it: you either end with a guy actually sorting his shit out, or you go for broke and show what happens if he doesn’t. And I think some of us boys saw that and said, “no, noooo, they did grow up! all three of them!” rather than say, “haha! hahaaa! ……………shit.”

[mychlapci]

https://www.tumblr.com/mychlapci/772139527459504128/i-love-it-when-people-call-the-baby-big-b-its

Bots find ticktok or some other video site and they post a short of them puppetering Big B to the song MR BOMBASTIC (they’re just making his belly fat jiggle as they slightly bounce him to the song)

aaaaah you're so fucking right. that's fucking cute

[rosesmusicandaloeveraplants]

from eazySpeezy's video, a compilation of hiding spots featuring emotes while i intermittenly watch the video while doing homework (keep reading)

i think the tldr is i find the flop on the floor emote is so funny

"you think fir is just hiding in the sand again" - smallant

why is this me but irl tho

oop we on the exhaust now (later shmoved but still)

shenanigans ("crafty he killed me come quick")

another one

this one isn't an emote spot but how the fuck

and the flop strikes again (featuring evolution below)

he's twinning with the other bot <3

talkatoo bombastic side eye

smant impacted that button hard huh

[blazehedgehog]

What did you think of the Game Awards this year?

It was... a little better this year than Geoff's previous shows. The preshow actually had a segment that talked about climate change and featured a game about the topic (even if it looked a bit basic visually) and I genuinely liked Statler and Waldorf heckling Keighley. It was the sort of thing where it was really surprising how they did not pull their punches. ("Hey, look, it's Hideo Kojima! Did you know Geoff Keighley is friends with him?" "Does Kojima know that?")

And like, I find myself wondering if that was the point, if having them heckle the show was a way to sort of break the ice and blow off some of the pressure... which makes you wonder how much of it was scripted. But considering a couple of the reaction shots, I guess I don't know. There were mild looks of shock to be sure, and there were other things that felt like changes based on past Geoff shows (like giving developers room to speak if they wanted to).

The rest of the event was mostly fine. Games that caught my attention:

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound was kind of surprising. It's got Dotemu's name attached, which is funny, because Dotemu + Lizardcube is who did Streets of Rage 4, and Lizardcube is off doing Shinobi for Sega now.

It's extremely reductive, but I see Rematch and my only thought is "So Rocket League is soccer with cars... and this is Rocket League with human people?

Dispatch looked cool. It actually looked like FMV, to me, to be honest. I wonder if that's live gameplay or not.

It's very funny to me that Borderlands 4 completely avoided showing any humor at all. I am not asking for Borderlands style humor, but it is kind of one of the franchise's signatures.

I'm excited for Onimusha to be next in Capcom's remake series, but I'm bummed for no Code Veronica or Dino Crisis.

I'm happy to see something more bombastic from Naughty Dog with Intergalactic. I saw some people being reductive that it's just their take on Guardians of the Galaxy, but that's not the vibe I got at all. Very weird it's so big on brand deals though.

Kind of wild to see Geoff seemingly get legitimately choked up at the teaser for Okami 2.

Trying to look for the climate change game on their Youtube channel and I'm surprised there's no video for it.

Happy to see Astro Bot win the big final award, mainly because the guy (Nicolas Doucet) took a moment to just, like, be "yeah we won an award, but a lot of outside people helped us make this game, and there are a lot of great platformers out there besides Astro Bot, too." Cool guy.

Interesting show. A little long, but I'd rather it be long than cutting speeches off.

[weirdunclegamer]

Here's a boi who, despite going through a few revisions, always had one core idea that never changed; DOUBLE CHAINSAWS!

Fiddling with my 30MM bots makes me better internalize the sheer raw power of drafts. Everytime I fiddle with a bot and revise the design or even just re-engineer how a thing is put together, they get better, no fail. I'm someone who's usually so scared of fiddling with stuff after initially feeling done cuz I'm concerned I'll just screw it up.

I don't think anyone read's em but story bit under the cut:

The Family is known amongst mercenary companies already for being eclectic as well as highly skilled, lending the pilot's machines towards far more narrow and esoteric designs aligning with the pilot's preferences, both functionally and aesthetically.

Even amongst their own pilots and machines however, this one stands out particularly for its bombastic double chainsaw design. Registered with the name Hornet, the machine is exactly what a first glance gets out of it; a high speed, high maneuverability, close range line breaker. A combat design that is sometimes called by the unflattering nickname of "hangar killer", the Hornet excels with its highly tuned backpack at both straight lines and abrupt angle changes, easily chopping up lower performance defenders, and keeping toe with potential ace opponents. The unit's only trick is the almost mandible like sub arms coming from the back of the waist, which while appearing to be extra melee options, actually fire damage low but stun high shots to aid in keeping the Hornet's opponents slower then itself.

The pilot is also known to be just as excitable and highly energized as you may expect of a person who foregoes the military conventions of just about any era, let alone space life, in favor of chainsaw swords.

[doldrumcalamity]

The sad (and kind of funny thing) about guys like Adin Ross, Jynxzi, Ishowspeed and any other twitch streamer/entertainer which has a mass following of gen alpha and young zoomers (12-17 boys mostly) is that they never mentally matured whatsoever so they never internalized literally anything at all in regards to the way they act and how that has an affect on the people around them. Like, I enjoy Jynxzi but none of his fans actually fuck with him, same for ishowspeed and adin ross. Their fans are young impressionable boys who see these loud, bombastic, screaming, belligerent guys as the figures to base themselves off of and what that translates into is "Fuck you, youre a fucking bot, youre fucking stupid compared to me, you aint shit, even if im your fan if you change in any way I will fucking cannibalize you." and the best example of this is Idubbbz, your typical man who never had to internalize anything because he went through life having everything he said affirmed at every turn. It's like you go to a zoo and hang with the apes riling them up constantly tossing bananas around roughhousing with them and then get really shocked and start freaking out when one of them rips your hand off and starts gnawing on it. That was always going to happen as long as you encouraged the worst in the apes, bro, sorry.

[kingfakey]

i open the app, i block 4 porn bots, i blow a kiss to my beloveds and give bombastic side eye to the friendless behavior i witness, i close the app.

[brucenorris007]

Valid concerns came up about my phrasing in this post and therefore I shall clarify and amend:

Omega's mindset re: the world and Eggman in particular stem from how he spent his infancy (that is, in the basement with Shadow) rather than actually being an infant (in the same way that Sonic is, in canon, still fifteen years old after several decades). He's no longer in infancy, but just in the sense that his foundational development occurred within the confines of that basement and how that environment and the criminally few stimuli available to him shaped his development were what I was getting at.

He's like . . . three, now. Or at least young enough for Rouge to get discounts on movie tickets. In the way that being a machine means he can indulge in far more violent pass-times than any child should be allowed to indulge in, he has a vastly precocious vocabulary, but he's stubborn in his relatively black-and-white perception of the world and covers for his insecurities by being bombastic and loud.

New brainworm gonna think as I type again:

one good friend recently posited the question of wherefore one Bombastic Bot-that is, E-123 Omega- puts up a front. Similar to his teammates on Team Dark; Rouge with her appearance and flirting, Shadow with his standoffish attitude

To figure that out, one has to examine and tease out exactly what took place during the indefinite length of time Omega was sequestered on his own in the chamber with Shadow prior to Rouge releasing the hedgehog at the start of Sonic Heroes

It's not hard to see why Omega would end up a very angry robot. How long did he, an engineering marvel capable of destruction, learning and computation only Tails and Eggman himself could compete with, remain in an environment entirely static and unchanging? What Nth repetition of his routines and subroutines served as the catalyst for his change from Strongest Eggman Robot to Strongest Eggman Enemy?

It just hit me now, but while it seems weird to assign things like age to a machine that's essentially come out of its creation process fully formed and, at least physically, as complete as it will ever be, one should also consider that Omega is essentially an infant.

Puts a new perspective on his rage and general outlook, right? Gamma, Omega's predecessor, received significant attention from Eggman, to say nothing of praise, in the short interval before he turned against his creator and chose to save his E series brothers. Or even Shadow, who was bioengineered as a teenager from the outset to be roughly the same age as Maria (presumably), and, while obviously burdened with his own baggage prior to his canon introduction, was never ignored by his sister.

Omega-again, infant-got none of that. And newborns who are neglected of attention, as is well documented, act out, get angry, and do not form attachments easily

And given how long Omega was presumably left to that chamber, only avoiding gathering dust by his own power of patrolling the small quarters, it stands to reason the abandonment changed him irrevocably; though he clearly does show capacity for more growth, else Team Dark wouldn't still be around to this day (Shut up, SEGA)

Circling back, though, his period in isolation: what conclusions did he draw for himself once he began to change?

He possessed limited data, yet he must have established some thoughts about the outside world.

He clearly focused all the hatred in his circuitry toward Eggman; and by proxy any of his other creations.

There's art of Tails on Omega's head riiiiight. . . here! Wherein Omega casually drops that he's always assumed Tails hates him while Tails is in the middle of running a debug on him and Tails is just "What?"

Did Omega, through some convoluted process of thought, come to think that all who oppose or have opposed Eggman also hated him? In the sort of thinking someone even younger than Charmy or Cream might come up with? Did that also contribute to his hatred of Eggman?

And, while I don't always subscribe to the idea that Omega feels strongly enough about Sonic to hate him, does his dislike/friction with the one specific hedgehog stem from the fact that Sonic never fails to capture Eggman's attention? Again, this idea stems from the new perspective of Omega as an extraordinarily deadly and angry infant; also, given that the supercomputer CPU serving as his brain is at least as complex as any other character, it's likely that even if that is the case, he's buried anything that might prompt him realizing it-let alone acknowledging it-real deep

More paragraphs spawned out of this than I anticipated, but ultimately I think to answer the question we'd have to find out exactly what was running through Omega's CPU during his isolation to really know the finer details.

@generic-sonic-fan

[ofthepuzzle]

Bombastic side-eye, criminal offensive side-eye

went through this bot's posts and people are livid in the comments Watch out, it's a scam

[phoenixtakaramono]

I gave into temptation and liked and retweeted The Boys S4 promo posters, etc 😔 this doesn’t help the recommended period of inactivity where Twitter unshadowbans your account but what’s one more week of inactivity there?

At this point, it’s already been two times X has put my account on Search Suggestion Ban immediately again after retweeting/ liking/ or posting something 😑 I have accepted my fate. At the very least for logged in users, you can access the threadfics so that’s the silver lining. I’ve also seen people liking, commenting, and retweeting some of my things there which makes me happy because supposedly engagement will help. I’m in the process of looking for more accounts to follow since that apparently also plays into the Twt AI deciding if I’m a spam bot account.

I’m gonna give it one more week of inactivity to see just in case the last search suggestion ban does lift again (🙄). But I have pretty much accepted my fate that my account is probably gonna be forever Search Suggestion Banned. You’ll just have to log in to be able to see my content there.

We’re gonna do one more test where I’m gonna tweet Part III of the Sugar Baby AU threadfic (likely 25-50 tweets update)—and see if that lands me in hot water again. If it doesn’t, good; we’ll continue as usual. If not, whelp, “porting to AO3 time as part of a series earlier than I’d planned to” we go.

Expect the threadfic update^ sometime around the week of 11/17-11/26.

Lastly, the next work of mine to be updated will be Truce ch3. I’m gonna spend maybe 1 more week or 2 of my writing break to catch up on reading a fellow writer friend’s work as a lil comment exchange we promised each other (you know who you are 🥰) and maybe 1 other writer’s work if they publish their last chapter within this period of time (you also know who you are 😘), but after my break is over I’ll resume writing Truce. Sneak peeks will be posted here & twitter.

I think I have PTSD from the page count from the previous chapter /hj. It’s just something about writing in Billy’s POV that makes me unintentionally write longer than expected (he’s toppled Luo Binghe’s crown of the ML Who’s Made This Author Spit Blood at the Final Pagecount Just Because the Chapter is in His POV). And ch3, surprise surprise, is gonna be in Billy’s POV again. It’s also literally my favorite chapter because we have an Outerspace “Date” (it’s a satire of Superman/ Lois Lane; this scene may or may not also be illustrated depending on my mood), a chapter illustration for the official NS/FW First Time Together for our lads, and the “twist” with the bombastic ending of ch3 where Billy joins the Seven.

My hope is that Truce remains 4 chapters only—but it depends on the final pagecount per chapter. *knocks on wood 3x*

I’m gonna try to update ch3 by the time the Christmas holiday rolls around, if not then it’s the New Year like we had for the previous chapter. The reason being: I have two new scenes that have to be added to ch3 and I’m putting in perhaps a couple kernels of S4 things. If I can keep Part II to below 113 pages, it will be a gosh darn miracle—but we’re gonna try. I’ll keep y’all updated on the status, especially when I start writing again.

[cassynite]

Genres of reddit drama posts (stuff posted on r/relationships, r/maliciouscompliance, AITA, etc.) ranked by believability

This absolutely happened: Without a doubt this is a real thing that happened to a real person. The issue discussed in the post is detailed, unique but familiar, and grounded in reality; the "villain" of the post exhibits behaviors you'd actually see a real person do, and oftentimes there can be a question of who is actually in the right (especially with AITA posts). The issues discussed might not be all that entertaining at the end of the day, and/or the resolution ends up being unsatisfying. Entertainment value hovers at 5/10, give or take a point depending on what's going on.

This might have happened, and boy do I hope it did: The creme de la creme of reddit posts--bombastic, can't-turn-your-eyes-away drama, but with such a unique situation or such granular detail that it has to be based at least a little bit on a real thing, and if it's an exaggerated retelling of events you're willing to let it slide. Often told in a very distinct voice as well, with satisfying but realistic resolutions. Almost always has a well defined 'hero' of the narrative (not always the narrator; a lot of AITA posts where the poster is TA falls into this category in my experience). If it's not one of the top voted posts recently it should be.

The Soap Opera: There's a 90% chance this didn't happen at all, and if it did the version of events being told is so exaggerated it still might as well just be made up--but damn if it isn't entertaining anyway. Always has very clear heroes as well as villains, and those villains are mustache-twirling cackling caricatures with unhinged personalities and behaviors that you would never see in real life. A lot of Karen stories as well as mom-in-law stories fall under this umbrella. However, it's still unique enough and interesting enough that you want to know what's going to happen next in what is definitely going to be a multi-update saga. It's a soap opera--you know it's fake, but you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

The 2014 fake tumblr post: This tries to be a soap opera but overshoots by a lot; the name I give it should tell you the kind of "and then the whole bus clapped" energy these posts tend to give. The villains of the drama are even more villainous and more over-the-top with their behaviors, and their comeuppance is even more extreme. These Karens end up going to jail for berating services workers; these mom-in-laws get disowned by their families for the way they try to wear their wedding dresses to their sons' weddings to OP. Most likely you find these on those minimum effort garbage robo-voice tiktok accounts that plague my for you page.

The Trained Algorithm: This is a soap opera/tumblr post story that is a little too...similar to something you've already read. It could be the details given or even just the way it's written, that certain style or word choice that if you read/listen to hundreds in a row you can catch on to, a subtle but present sign that this wasn't even made by a person but by machine learning trained on these posts for the purpose of content farming. Tend to be mid to okay as entertainment but ultimately depressing because you can't even pretend it's a little bit true, and having to face the fact that people are so bent on Creating Content for Consumption that they'll resort to getting a bot to right a fucking AITA post of all things makes me have to face the existential horror of capitalism, which is something I read AITA posts to get away from.

The Trash: This is also a bot-churned post, but it's not even hiding it--words are used in teh wrong places, or completely mispelled, and it's obvious that after chatGPT spat this one out it wasn't even proofread before it was shat onto a message board or fed into a robo voice to be posted on tiktok. You can spot these from a mile away, and I imagine that there's a circle of hell that just has to read these as punishment.

[deeisace]

4 and 33?

This is from September last year, apparently, for an ask meme long forgotten - I'm sorry for never answering whatever questions you originally had, but today I'm pretending they're dictionary pages to distract myself

Both in A, clearly, let's see what we have

From page 4, we get -

Within "Abraham" - Abraham-men npl, itinerant beggars discharged from the Abraham lunacy ward at Bedlam and licensed to beg, in lieu of any system of poor relief. --- to sham Abraham, to feign lunacy, a sailor's expression due to the many sturdy vagabonds who claimed to be Abraham-men. --- Abraham's eye, a charm once currently believed to render a reputed thief temporarily blind if really guilty.

"once currently"? An argument between editors? Lmao

abreuvoir (a-broov-war) n. the space between two stones left by masons to be filled with mortar; a watering-place for animals. Also abbreuvoir. [French]

abricock (ab-ri-kok) n. an obsolete spelling of apricot

Abscind is to cut off or rend apart, and abscond is to "take one's self off, to flee from justice"

Absit (ab-sit) n. permission to be absent from university or college [Latin = let him be absent]

. What do we have for page 33? Hm

amphisbaena (am-fis-bēn'-a) n. a genus of serpent-like reptiles, supposed by the ancients to have two heads and to move forward with either end [Greek, amphis, on both sides, bainein, to go].

amphitype (am'-fi-tīp) n. a photographic process producing simultaneous positives and negatives [Greek, amphi, on both sides, tupos, type].

ampulla (am'-pūl'-a) n. a slender-necked, globular bottle used by ancient Romans for holding perfumes, oil, etc.; a sacred vessel for holding oil, used in ceremonies such as coronation; a kind of cruet holding wine and water for Mass; (Biol.) a flask-like dilatation, as in semi-circular canals of the ear; (Bot.) a hollow flask-shaped leaf. ampullaceous, ampullar, ampullary, ampullate a. bottle-shaped. ampullosity n. bombastic language

How odd, that last compared to the rest, I don't follow how

amurcous (a-merk'-us) a. full of dregs; dirty. --amurcosity n. [Latin, amurca, the lees of olives].

anableps (an'-a-bleps) n. a South American fish, having projecting eyes with two pupils for seeing both in air and under water [Greek, ana, up, blepein, to see].

And, because I can, from page 33 (page 4 is Rhagymadrodd, introduction) of my 1950s Welsh dictionary -

in pencil in the margins -

di = has negative force

-

di-alw-amdano: uncalled for

di-asgwrn-cefn: without backbone

dibris: heedless, reckless. di-bris: without value, of no account; -io vn to depreciate, despise; -tod nm contempt.

di-chwaeth: a. lacking good taste. (so 1950s lmao)

di-daro: a. cool, unconcerned. (in pencil in the margin - didaros casual

.| did.)

That .| might be like a } referencing these three, tho I can't follow the previous owner's logic:

di-deimlad: a. unfeeling.

diden, -nau: nf. nipple, teat.

di-derfyn: a. endless, infinite.

[thexbox]

It's why he came.

Nobody should go there alone.

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It's funny I made the underworld playlist the day time froze

Jessa said her friend just died and was like don't contact me u annoying bot

The only thing holding things together

Dragon's blood