#I’d love to deconstruct how much money he actually had and lost

[divinekangaroo]

I’m intrigued at the season 5 shock at Brilliant Chang walking into the Garrison —> not only did season 1 episode 1 open with Tommy in the Chinese Quarter knowing enough about the Chinese to use the Chinese to add (drama) to his racing scam, demonstrating clear communication with them, there are also elements of awareness/peripheral mentions of the Chinese enterprise/s featured multiple times, and these half-comments increase notably through Season 4.

So my theory is that Tommy always had a watch on them, as a market force, even if Arthur and co were unaware, and Tommy pulling out that hilarious little notebook on Chang clearly shows this; by counter they always had a watch on him and correctly identified a time when he’d be open to a very risky opportunity. Operating adjacent and mostly in parallel but rarely converging.

Now Arthur was surprised because ~~fucking hell it’s the Chinese where did this come from and how do they have the guts to walk in here like this~~; Tommy was only surprised because (?) it was someone as high ranking as Brilliant Chang (?) and they went so absolutely balls deep (!) on the first real play.

A play of both desperation on Chang’s part (what do you do when you have 7t of opium on your hands and no way to move it or liquidate it=mild panic) but also a sense of ‘just because you think we might be desperate for your canal network to move our shit, just be aware 1) you don’t have the option of saying no even if you think you might and 2) we will destroy you if you fuck us around’

And would BC have even come in to the Blinders, if Tommy hadn’t laid breadcrumbs in some way shape or form indicating he might’ve been interested in the opportunity, even if those breadcrumbs were simply letting it be seen that he was watching/counting/aware of their actions.

[venus-says]

Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart Episodes 25-47

Light and Darkness are more alike than you think.

I know, I broke the promise I made last time, but as you can guess things didn't work the way I wanted so I couldn't put this out earlier. But that doesn't really matter that much because I'm here, and this finale was amazing, and I'm more in love with this series than I ever was and this is what matters!

After this first paragraph is not a surprise if I say that I enjoyed this second half of Max Heart. Writing this post will be a little hard for me without being way too repetitive from what I wrote for the first half because this is a pretty solid season and most of my feeling from the first half got carried away through here. The show kept on an amazing level of quality all the way through and the way they slowly started to escalate things to culminate in such a high point at the finale didn't leave that much room for a very low or very high point that needed to be discussed on a certain way that I already haven't touched on the first post.

I have barely anything negative to say about this part, but I did have a few nitpicks here and there that don't necessarily ruin my experience or anything but that were things that got me thinking about in the afterward that I feel like I need to discuss about briefly just so these thoughts can leave my head.

My first problem and the only one that is exclusive to this part is, surprise surprise, Lulun. I feel like Polun gets a bad reputation for having a somewhat rough start in season 1, but trust me, Polun is amazing, it's Lulun who -is the problem. And Lulun is a problem for two major reasons, the first one is that she's kinda useless, like, yes the show gives her a purpose but it's not something that could've been done for Polun, for example. I feel like if Lulun was written out with Polun inheriting her powers very few little of the show would change, Polun would lose those episodes where he learns about siblings love but then those wouldn't be necessary since he wouldn't have a sister and they could use that time to work with something else for him. And the other reason why she ends up becoming a problem is the fact that, different from her brother, she didn't get any development, she ended the show more or less the same as how she was introduced so there's very little to remember about it that isn't her crying and clinginess.

My next two points are kinda intertwined and they aren't specifically related to this portion of the story but for the season as a whole. I got a problem with the Heartiel and with how they just appeared whenever the show thought it was the time. The point I made in the first post about liking them remains, but it was really awkward how this was supposed to be a quest but had no quest element to it throughout the whole season but then the final Heartiel appeared because they "filled a condition" like if it was a quest so... I think they could've written them in a better way.

And this ties in with my problem with the villains, they had a similar quest where they had to watch the Boy in the mansion and make him grow, but they didn't have anything to collect and even if they did it wasn't shown to us so it always felt like the villains attack for the most part were just random, arbitrary, and without a purpose. Of course, after a certain point this wasn't more the case, in fact, after Hikari and the Boy meets for the first time Viblis start to get very overprotective of the kid so she's always ready to go all out if it meant it could keep the Boy safe, but when it comes to Circulas and Uraganos it felt like just tossups that were there just to fill a quota. Yeah, they created a lot of cool and interesting fights, but they felt very lost in the middle of all of this.

My other problem, that is more like a disappointment rather than anything else is the fact that Nagisa's story with Fujipi didn't reach a proper conclusion I feel. Like yes, they had a lot of times where they bonded on the season, and it was great as a side development for Nagisa, but I feel like this story was finished without an end. If they had made this point of the story happen a little sooner and we had the opportunity to see Nagisa actually showing signs that she's more chill about this situation it would've been a more concrete way to feel like this chapter of the book has ended rather than how it happened and it made me feel like the show ended without giving this plotline a proper conclusion.

My final nitpick is that because this is a show that happened at the same pace almost matching with the same time frame of the original show a lot of plots felt reused. Like in this second half only we had the training camp, we had an episode where they helped on a farm, we had Nagisa's birthday, Fujipi's birthday, Christmas, the school trip, the school play, another story of the girls potentially getting apart, and a few lacrosse games that were part of the tournament season I believe. I know that some of these are inevitable to change, and each one of the episodes was different from its "counterpart" from season one so it's not like a blatant copy and paste, but at certain times it gave me that taste of reheated food, which it's not bad on itself but you can still feel the difference from something fresh.

With that being said, I still enjoyed the hell out of this season. As I said, these were nitpickings I had after I already had finished the show and I sit down to think about it and think about what I'd write for this post, not something that took my entertainment or anything like that.

One thing I think this part has done very well was mixing the understand people's feelings theme they had during the first half with the theme of hope that was present through Season 1 in a way that didn't feel weird and inconceivable and without making it feel like it was forced. I'm not gonna lie, I wish that they had stuck only with the understanding theme, but that's just because I was oversaturated by all the talk about hope in Kamen Rider Wizard and I was in need of something different and not a fault of the show itself.

Something tells me I have talked about them in every post about Futari wa, but I couldn't wrap up this series without mentioning how great Akane and Sanae were in this show. I'm gonna sound repetitive but their presence as mentor figures is so strong, I'm so glad the show didn't just forget about them. Even though I feel like they didn't take all the mileage that they could with Sanae, she provided some gorgeous moments that made me feel warm inside. This season was Akane's moment to shine, having her as Hikari's "caretaker" opened up more opportunities for her to appear and all of her interactions that got the chance to go beyond the trivial stuff always yielded fun and touching moments that gave an extra flair to the season.

Putting plot aside for a little bit, it's impossible to talk about Max Heart without mentioning how great the action is. No joke, in almost all episodes of this second batch I've written on my notes "this was a great fight", I don't know what happened in between Season 1 and Max Heart that made the higherups allow for a bigger budget, but you can see that the money was spent on a very good way, especially after episode 40 or so. Watching the Max Heart fights makes you go "YAS, THIS IS WHAT PRECURE IS ALL ABOUT at least in regards to the fighting magical girl portion of the thing XD"

And I think what crowns such a wonderful and memorable season was the ending, those final 4 episodes were magnificent. They deliver on the plot, they deliver on the action, they deliver the hype, they deliver on the characters, it's just awesome. My vocabulary isn't vast enough to describe everything I felt while watching it, it was just like I was in a trance, watching it, absorbing it, being enchanted by it, and becoming an emotional mess. Like, I knew they wouldn't kill Hikari, this is precure deaths don't happen like that, but I was really apprehensive for her during episode 45, and having her "sacrifice" herself in order to revive the queen broke me, especially because I few minutes before Nagisa and Honoka were already punching me with the feels with those scenes of them looking back at moments where they felt desperate but their family was there to give them hope.

And it was also great to see a tradition being born when they started the fight against the Dark King that had possessed Baldez and the power of the people of the city brought the Sparkle Braceletes back and while the fighting was going on they had that very emotional speech that he wasn't fighting just the Precure, he was fighting EVERYONE. Like, I know at this point this is a staple, but seeing the first one happening, after everything that was build up during those 96 episodes, was just EPIC and very hype.

Rewatching Max Heart was magical and even though it irl it was a more bumpy of a road as I would've expected and wanted, I'm very glad I decided to embark on this crazy journey to rediscover this series and deconstruct a lot of silly and shallow thoughts I've carried for years about this show. This can change as a continue to go down on this franchise and I rewatch other seasons but Max Heart has definitely become one of my favorite precure seasons of all time. Pure gold.

The Splash Star post that was due to come out tomorrow will only be released on Friday because of logistic reasons, but before that, I'll release a post on the Max Heart movies that I thought of including here but 1, this post is already very long; and 2, I didn't feel like it belong with the other things I discussed in this post. In any case, thank you all so much for reading through all of this, it means a lot to me. I'll talk to y'all another time. Bye-bye~

[kalinara]

Rip Week #1  The Many Faces of Rip

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything positive about Legends of Tomorrow.  However, it’s Rip Hunter Appreciation Week, which is a time meant for positivity!   At one point this show, and this character, had me blogging meta on a daily basis for almost two and a half years and introduced me to some great people! And I will always be grateful for that.

So the topic for Day 1 of Rip Hunter Appreciation Week: The Many Faces of Rip Hunter.

One thing that still fascinates me about Rip as a character is that, even though he’d only been a central character on the show for 1.5 seasons, we’ve gotten to see so many different sides of the character.  He’s been deconstructed so thoroughly and so fascinatingly, allowing us to really appreciate what makes the character tick.

Let’s start with Rip himself, the baseline number.  The guy who kidnapped a bunch of assholes, brought them to the roof of a tall building (and I still wonder how the stringy little bastard actually managed that) and gave them a sales pitch of a lifetime.

From the opening scene of the pilot, to Rip’s almost goodbye into the sun in Legendary, season one was first and foremost the story of a man broken by grief and betrayal, who slowly, and reluctantly found a reason to go on, and people to share it with.  Rip spent season one a raw, open wound, ugly in his pain and rage.  He tried very hard not to stay focused on his goal. He tried very hard not to care about his team.

He failed pretty much on day one, when he saved Martin Stein’s marriage.  He failed again not too long after that when he abandoned the closest thing he had to a working plan to get Carter’s body back for Kendra.  And he kept failing over and over again.

And they saved him.  They challenged him.  They forced him to look outside of his single-focused obsession and look at the people that they could save around them.  They forced him to take a long hard look at what he was doing when he started to go too far.  And he very clearly and very obviously loved them for it.

I still can’t believe that fandom still tries to claim that Rip didn’t care about his team, when we saw how broken he was after each major loss: Carter, Leonard, even Jax (almost).  That’s not a man who is unfeeling.

We saw Rip as a child: a tiny savage creature who, even when warm and fed, was still ready to stab the nearest adult who threatened him.  It gave a new, fascinating insight to the tension Rip had with both Leonard Snart and Mick Rory.  As well as possibly another reason that he’d bonded with Sara so strongly.  Rip is someone who understands what it means to become a monster in order to survive, and what it means to have to live with that afterward.  It likely does make it difficult when face to face with people who represented the worst of that time (and that’s not even touching on how child Rip probably met a number of people who looked and acted similar to our lovable Rogues, and it likely would not have ended well.)

We’ve never really seen the man Rip was before he was broken.  Except perhaps for a giddy romantic moment with Miranda and that horrible humiliation when they were caught.  We’ve heard a bit more: from that pirate in Marooned, from Magister Druce and Jonah Hex.   We can draw inferences: a man who was capable and skilled (though perhaps not as skilled as his wife :-)), who never the less was a rulebreaker at heart.  Someone who fell in love with the idea of heroism to the point where he almost left the Time Masters entirely.  Someone who, while loyal, wasn’t quite willing to trust his masters with the tool to unmake reality.  But at the same time, someone whose fundamental trust in INDIVIDUALS like Mary Xavier and Magister Druce, survived even when his world fell apart.

At the end of season 1, we got a Rip Hunter who was ready to finally move past his grief, and it will forever be something of a disappointment to me that the series decided to give us a time jump instead of actually showing us Rip learning to be part of a real team.

But season 2 did give us a truly fascinating deconstruction of Rip Hunter as an individual.

One very common plot in almost every superhero’s story is the depowerment story arc.  Who is our hero when he doesn’t have what makes him a hero?  It’s most common for men like Superman of course, but we even get it for folks like Batman or Green Arrow.  What are these men without their money, or their physicality?

What is Rip Hunter without his knowledge, his memories, or his time machine?

Well, we saw him.  And he was adorable!  Phil Gasmer was a hilarious story beat, but unlike maybe certain other storyline elements that we see in later seasons, there was also a point to Phil Gasmer.  Phil Gasmer showed us the kind of man that Rip Hunter is deep down.

He’s creative.  He’s clever.  He’s determined.  He’s a little whiny.  And definitely high.  Rip is a man who would benefit from a little unofficial pharmaceutical help.  He’s a man who, when the world suddenly goes sideways, will first attempt to protect his friend.  He’s a man who, when face to face with a stranger with scary abilities, will try to hit him with a script.  He’s a man who loves his team so much that even when he has no conscious recollection of them, he made them the basis of his movie.  And he’s a man who walked out to face the Legion to save a bunch of strangers who kidnapped him, because it was the right thing to do.

I’d like to think in another universe, Phil didn’t get kidnapped by Eobard Thawne there, but instead made it back on the ship, where the crew actually got the chance to get to know Rip without all the baggage.  I think they’d have gotten along.

And then there’s evil Rip.

“Teammate goes evil” storylines are a dime a dozen, in superhero lore, but there’s a reason for that.  When done well, they can be amazing.  And ultimately, I think the evil Rip storyline was done very well.

One of the things that I always liked about the evil Rip storyline is how it utterly destroyed that pervasive (and wrong!) fan idea that Rip never cared about his team.  Because they showed us a Rip who didn’t care about his team, and he was a fucking scary son of a bitch.

He also showed us how Rip’s best worst enemy was always going to be himself.  Because holy shit, Rip is competent when he’s not tripping himself up.  Turncoat was terrifying in all the best ways, and even that opening of Land of the Lost was amazing.  It’s still very amusing to me that the most effective member of the Legion of Doom was the one Eobard brainwashed into it.

One thing I always found fascinating about evil Rip is that, for all that he lacks Rip’s compassion, empathy and love, he didn’t go the usual scenery chewing sadist route.  He’s a monster, of course.  He was perfectly happy to murder Sara, to carve the spear piece out of McNider, and brainwash the entire knights of Camelot.  But it was always a measured sort of evil.

Evil Rip had a goal, and evil Rip pursued his goal.  And if he could get what he wanted in a relatively non-disruptive and non-violent way, he was willing to try it.  He had no interest in terrorizing the Waverider crew once he had the spear piece from them, even when he saw that Sara had survived her murder.  He tried to trick McNider, only resorting to violence when McNider saw through it.  When he had control of the knights, he just had them stand there, much to Darhk’s boredom, rather than playacting some farce for his amusement as some of the others might have done.

Evil Rip was our chance to appreciate how truly formidable Rip could actually be, and also appreciate those qualities that kept him from turning into that monster again.

My biggest disappointment in this story arc was how little we got to see Rip interact with the other members of the Legion.  His interactions with Eobard and Darhk, in what little we had, were very entertaining.  But we never saw him interact with Malcolm at all (I admit to being intrigued by this, because I thought Malcolm had actually had the most interesting dynamic with Phil in Legion of Doom), and we never saw Eobard react to his capture.  Missed opportunities or food for fanfic?

I don’t know if Doomworld Rip really counts, but I have to admit that, compared to some of Rip’s other coping mechanisms, baking cakes to deal with a year of solitary confinement (Gideon sort of counts, but she’s just a voice at this point), is pretty good for him.  I hope he actually got a chance to eat them.

The idea behind Rip at the Time Bureau really was a good one.  The idea that Rip would have created this organization, but specifically designed it to be the antithesis of the Time Masters: open, transparent, and accountable, is a good one.  But unfortunately, season 3 never really explored that to the extent I would have liked.  

It’s hard to imagine the Rip who recruited Sara before she could die with her sister to Damien Darhk would be okay with leaving Zari in a prison without a very good reason.  But we never got that reason.  Of course, maybe he wasn’t.  He wasn’t in that episode.  We know from Ava that he didn’t want her chasing the Legends, and wanted them given “lenience”.  But if he’s not on board with that, how much of the Time Bureau is actually under his control?

Considering that Return of the Mack told us that Rip allowing Darhk to be resurrected in order to confront him with agents was a “sanctioned” plan (that Rip still ends up in prison for, because Rip is just that good with people), that implies a certain level of oversight.  His and Bennett’s dynamic seemed just shy of outright antagonistic.  And certainly Rip seemed a lot more blase about seeing Bennett meet a grisly end than seems warranted.  This is a man who dismantled the team after Leonard Snart died.

I mean, trying to work out coherent characterization for ANYONE in season 3 is a bit of a problem, but I feel like if the Time Bureau had gotten the same level of focus that it gets much later, perhaps some of these things could actually work.  If, for example, there are multiple factions within the Bureau with their own ideas on what the Bureau is supposed to do, (perhaps tied with the oversight that Rip specifically put in place, because there’s nothing more Rip Hunter than getting hoisted up by his own petard), then a lot of the more confused behavior by the organization could make more sense.

In the end though, Rip is still a secretive, scheming bastard who cares very deeply for his team, and I wouldn't give up that wonderful, almost baggage free friendship with Wally for anything. So it does have its good points.

Ultimately, I think that all of these facets make Rip one of the most well-developed and defined characters in the CW-verse, even when compared with others who have had years and years of screentime.  It’s fun to poke around and explore all of these layers and see how they fit.  And it definitely is food for some great fanfic.  I’m told some other Rip fans will be writing some great fic for #RipWeek.  You should go check them out!

[dgcatanisiri]

Yes, it’s that time again.

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

Our installment today is the natural follow-up to our last installment. That was Knights of the Old Republic, this is Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. 

Housekeeping matters here are simple: We all know this game shipped in an unfinished state, and mods have been a major step in the way of getting to play this game the way it was intended. So we’re going to assume that the effects of the Restoration Mod are to be considered base game so far as this is concerned. 

There would likely be other ways of cleaning up the game from this point, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this series. We’re sticking to DLC proper.

The Forgotten Ones

The Jedi Civil War left many lost. But none were quite as lost as the children of the Jedi, the ones promised to the Order, yet left aimless with the Jedi’s disappearance. Several have found their way to the planet Bandomeer, where an Agricultural Corps outpost was established. These children are particularly vulnerable, not only to the dark side, but to those who would exploit their abilities...

(Available after leaving Telos)

The Disciple is just one of the many people who were hurt by the loss of the Jedi as an establishment. And while I certainly, absolutely, entirely, and wholly take issue with the fact that the Jedi are, in effect, taking children with a promise of them having a “grander destiny” to indoctrinate them in the Jedi’s way of life, a way of life that is easily viewed as child abuse... What happened to these children when the Jedi Order fell apart in the wake of the Jedi Civil War? Hell, based on the Disciple, what happened to them during and after the Mandalorian Wars?

This is a tie into one of the core themes of KOTOR 2, which is that on the ground level, no one cares who won the war, because they’ve lost. Whatever side you’re supporting, once your home has been burned to the ground, it doesn’t matter who wins. And the next generation are always the ones left with the pieces to reassemble.

With the Jedi gone, there are countless kids out there who were taken from their homes, and so have nowhere to go, and, like the Disciple, get none of the training that they were promised would come their whole lives. Given how powerful Jedi can be, this is potentially very dangerous.

Throw in the resentment that can easily come from a Jedi recruit who ended up being washed out... You get one of our antagonists for this. A student who had various issues preventing the Jedi from letting them be taken as a Padawan, grew up in the aftermath of the various wars, and now thinks “the Jedi are gone, the Sith are still out there... Don’t we have a responsibility to assemble what knowledge we can and protect the Republic?” Which is a noble goal.

But it’s easily twisted by those who’d take advantage of them to create their own force of soldiers, imposing their idea of “order” to the galaxy (think Goto with... well, I’d say “less noble motives,” but I can’t exactly say Goto operated out of the goodness of his processors...), not to mention their own failings – they weren’t selected for Jedi training for a reason, because they’re vulnerable to the temptation of the dark side, particularly on the ideas of noble intentions leading to questionable actions.

If KOTOR 2 is a deconstruction and reexamination of the Jedi Order as a whole, then a vital part of this has to be examining how they treat not just the children who come to them, who they proceed to effectively indoctrinate into their ways of thinking and beliefs, but also the children who don’t live up to their standards, to expound on why, if the Force is so valuable and rare a gift, these children are dumped because someone decides they’re not worth the effort.

Plus, imagine the companion conversations to be had here once they become Jedi – they managed to slip through the cracks and not be located “in time” for the Jedi training (or, in the case of the Disciple, chose to leave, or the Handmaiden, who wasn’t given the chance, despite her heritage). Not to mention the tearing a new one that Kreia could do about the fact that the Jedi act as a cult, brainwashing these children into their way of thinking, one that rebels against the critical thought of the Jedi themselves.

 The Empty Temple

The Jedi Temple on Coruscant has been abandoned. As a symbol, it means much to the Jedi Order. As a beacon, it could bring the surviving Jedi out of their hiding places. The Exile and company journey to the former home of the Jedi to find an answer to the question: Where do the Jedi now dwell?

(Available after leaving Telos)

The Jedi Temple gets an appearance in the game as it is, and is there for all of five minutes, in the recording of the Exile’s trial. It’s this major location from the movies, but we don’t actually get to explore it. From a personal standpoint, I want to see more of it – the Room of a Thousand Fountains, the Jedi library and the busts of the Jedi Masters considered “lost” for having left the Order, the various spires and countless spaces that were completely unseen by us as an audience (except if you’ve played other video games that came after KOTOR 2, like the Force Unleashed, showing the temple in ruins, or the adaptation of Revenge of the Sith or the original Battlefront 2, which showed the actual assault on the temple by Darth Vader and the clone troopers – nothing of it in its heyday).

And, realistically, it’d be a place to go to find out what has become of the Jedi – where have they gone, are there any other Jedi Masters, those who weren’t on that recording, out there, or even just those Jedi who have turned off their lightsabers, who could rebuild the Order – whether or not the Exile is out to kill the Masters who exiled them or reunite them to fight the Sith, it’s easy to justify a belief that SOME FORM of the Jedi should be ensured to be kept alive. Just because the leadership need to be removed, the head lopped off, that doesn’t mean that the whole thing needs to die.

Honestly, this is one of the more “concept” level ideas on this list over something with serious substance in terms of being fleshed out – I don’t know what I want to happen here, beyond an exploration of the more day-to-day Jedi, considering that we usually only get the chance to see Jedi mid-adventure.

Maybe the idea here is more about understanding why the Jedi decided not to rebuild in the wake of the Jedi Civil War. Sure, the ostensible answer is that they were threatened by the Sith, but the Sith are always a threat for the Jedi. That’s no reason to switch off all the lightsabers and run away (I have issues with Yoda adopting this strategy – at least Obi-Wan had the excuse of acting as Luke’s guardian on Tatooine). So for me, I want a greater explanation to exist of WHY this was the solution so many Jedi saw, even before Katarr happened. They might be concerned about a repeat of that, but for them to just completely go silent in the five years between games, when the galaxy actually kinda depends on them...

I mean, this was the Jedi effectively leaving the whole galaxy in the lurch. The same crap they did in the Mandalorian Wars, now on such a scale that they withdrew entirely from the greater galaxy. The Jedi keep falling into this pattern of withdrawing at times they’re needed, and only excusing it with some BS about waiting for a sign from the Force. If, as Kreia says, the Jedi Order did this because they no longer had faith in the Jedi Masters... Why vanish entirely? Why are none stepping forward to act in their stead?

That feels like a mystery that the main plot of KOTOR 2 is a little too focused in on itself to spend time on – we’re busy with understanding the Exile’s story and their focus on the Jedi Masters who declared them to be exiled, rather than what the story of the Jedi metaphorically on the ground was. So that would be the focus here, getting this chance to explore things on a different scale.

 Ashes

Katarr was where Jedi gathered and were consumed by Darth Nihilus. Katarr was Visas Marr’s homeworld. In order to find a way for the Exile to stand against her former master, Kreia tells the Exile to journey there, to discover more about their enemy, and to learn about just why the Jedi Council must face this damning hunger.

(Visas has joined)

The problem of Darth Nihilus in the game proper is that, because he has no voice that is understandable by the player, we never really get to comprehend him. All exposition regarding him, all explanation about who and what he is, comes from Visas, Kreia, and Colonel Tobin. Now, I understand the concept here – Nihilus is no longer a man, just a hunger, a hunger that Visas views as a god, with her arc revolving around him being brought to earth (hence her statement upon looking upon him, that he is “just a man”).

The problem is that the first two have their dialogue locked by approval gates, while the later can be missed on the Ravager. As he exists in the game itself, Nihilus is a lot of mystery – which is part of the character himself, as he is a god Visas must see brought down to earth, the man he once was is gone – and, unfortunately like much of the base game proper, no solutions or pay off.

So we journey to Katarr, to the site of the Jedi gathering that led to the deaths of so many Jedi. This also shows us the results of Nihilus consuming life – this is something of a vague and unexplored threat as it is, Katarr was created for this game, so its devastation means nothing. It’s also a Miraluka COLONY, not their homeworld, so it’s not even like this has caused the Miraluka as a species to become endangered. So Nihilus is a vague threat that really doesn’t feel like it has an impact on us as players.

So we walk upon the ashes of Katarr. We see the devastation he brought. We see the ruins of life so brutally snuffed out. We see the hollow shell he left behind. And we know the horrors he inflicted once and will again. This gives Nihilus a more tangible existence in the game itself, someone that exists in the player’s experience, and get a more full idea of what the threat that he poses actually is.

There does need to be more, of course, some goal, some hope from all this. How can life endure, right? So I’m thinking some major Sith creature, or a series of them – the dark side is trying to claim Katarr for its own in the aftermath of Nihilus consuming its life, and, in an effort to heal it, the Exile faces a gauntlet of creatures that formed by dark side powers and try to kill them. Even ties into the central concept of the base game, by showing a wound left by the Sith, and trying to heal it. Banish and slay the Sithspawn that crawl over the planet, and you leave room for something new to grow in its place, or allow them the strength to grow and take the planet as their own, snuffing out a light in the dark.

And Visas? I say that she needs to be a requirement for getting this particular story, since the Exile has no reason to suspect Katarr has any relevance without her appearance on the Ebon Hawk, but... Honestly, I think that she’d be unwilling to walk the ashes of her once home. That this pain is still too raw, too real for her at the time. But without Visas joining the crew, the Exile has no idea that Katarr has any connection to matters involving the Sith, so she must join in order to let the Exile know to travel to Katarr in the first place. And, indeed, I see her as feeling that the Exile needs to go to Katarr, needs to see it, needs to understand why she serves her master, why she fears for their safety, why she lost all hope when she heard him speak.

I also see this as an opportunity to clean up Visas’s characterization a little – let me just quote Scorchy’s Let’s Play of KOTOR 2: “I don’t really know what’s going on with Visas’ writing. 10% of the time she’s hopelessly naïve, as Kreia points out; another 10% of the time, she’s more worldly and Sith-ish. The other 80% of the time she’s mumbling something about Force echoes. Her confused characterization carries over to her influence gains as well; she and Atton are the only ones who get influence increases from both light side and dark side actions. Make up your mind, woman!” So having a story segment that offers her some highlights can help to clear the fog that surrounds her characterization. Plus more opportunities for Kelly Hu’s phenomenal performance is never a bad thing.

 Planet of the Droids

M4-78 considered is a myth, a planet of only droids, hostile to all organic life. Yet a mystery signal lures the Ebon Hawk here, as the droids of the planet are coming to life. HK-47, T3-M4, and G0-T0 are called upon to defend the crew, before the droids of this world come to execute them for defiling their home.

(After Nar Shaddaa and gaining Goto as a companion, must have activated HK-47)

Was there really any doubt that this would make the listing of DLCs? The lost planet of KOTOR 2, and I already said back in KOTOR 1 that I wanted to include that game’s lost planet, which didn’t even have much in the way of remaining content. M4-78 has enough to get a rough idea of the plan involved here, but, considering that the core concepts were removed from the planet’s data and transplanted, it’s probably best to keep it from the realm of main plot, right?

Obviously, there are some details that seem like they’d still be able to fit – droid companions going out into the toxic atmosphere (since the planet looks industrialized, and was supposed to have this toxic haze, giving the impression of a planet with out of control industrialization that drove off all organic life), reactivating the planet and its droid intelligence, the basics. But the puzzles have to be replaced and as for Master Vash... Well, we’ll get to her later, so suffice to say, she’s not gonna be here.

I almost want to say I want to bring in elements of the HK factory into this. Working with the idea that most if not all of the Restoration Mod is to be considered “base game” here, I think I’ll leave the factory on Telos where it is, but perhaps feature an offshoot element here – perhaps this is where the HK-48 and 49 models have been relegated, dubbed equally “obsolete” as their progenitor among our crew, and show the ways that the programming went from “single target assassination” to “wanton slaughter.” I mean, the HK factory has nothing that includes that particular change in priorities, and in the span of three models, we went from Revan’s personal assassin to what could almost be dubbed droid supremacists. Big jump, is what I’m saying.

That would, in fact, give a clearer light/dark path – because reactivating the droid intelligence seems to be something of the endgame scenario, especially with being drawn in (like the synopsis says), it would be a question of what kind of intelligence is activated. Do we go with the peaceful droids who simply want to live alone – perhaps setting up some kind of defense network in orbit that would block their planet from recognition in navicomputers and such – or the malicious droids (like HK-48/49) who’d offer a pledge of working with the Exile (a dubious offer, most likely, but one they’d make) and be a potential threat to any future organics who entered their airspace.

I’m still debating this one in terms of its story, but that seems like a reasonable approach to take the pieces that remain of this quest that was cut out of the game entirely, and the only thing we have to show for it are unfinished maps and scattered dialogue, with the actual content shifted around. It obviously can’t be what it was planned to be, can’t house our Jedi Master and lead to the conclusion of the reuniting of the Jedi Council, but it can be adapted into something new.

 Mandalorian Rage

Mandalore has called for the scattered clans to rebuild. Not all of his fellows, however, believe such a thing is possible, instead planning a suicide rush on the weakened Republic, one lacking a Revan to stop them, perhaps even to take the shattered remains of the Republic and rule with an iron fist, staging from the conquered world of Serroco. They weren’t counting on the Jedi Exile, however...

(Post-Dxun/Onderon)

Call this a reaction to the fact that Mandalore’s influence in the game is screwed up and you basically have to hack the game to get a lot of his dialogue because the influence gains just aren’t there. Obviously we could just add some more influence gains for him, but why go the simple route when this whole business is about adding story DLC ideas, not to mention the fact that the whole game is set in the aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars and utilize that?

The Mandalorians prize battle and combat. They can accept an honorable defeat, which was given to them – by Revan. By Jedi who turned to the Sith. I think it’d be pretty easy for there to be Mandalorians left unsatisfied by that, because they’d wanted to test themselves against Jedi and the Republic, then ended up facing what amounted to Jedi heretics, who then turned on the Republic. Maybe, they figure, those weren’t actually the Jedi, maybe they didn’t get a proper test.

I mean, this is all rationalization, and Mandalore would be sure to dismiss the rhetoric as such, but it’s still the reality that they have to deal with. If the Mandalorians are massing again, then he has a vested interest in doing something about it. If there’s a pretender, attempting to claim that they are the “true” Mandalore, he DEFINITELY needs to do something about it. It’s a threat to his authority. And if we want to keep a connection to the Exile, the leader of this group of Mandalorians can be someone who they personally clashed with during the war, someone with some kind of relationship variable with the Exile – were they a worthy adversary, a pain in the rear, someone that the Exile doesn’t even remember... I think there’s an interesting way to come at a character who can be responsive to how well we want to play the Exile remembering him.

I think actually that’s no less than three birds with one stone – more content/characterization for Mandalore, who is sadly lacking it in the game as is, exploration of the Exile by way of presenting an element of their past, AND a tie in with the themes of the game. Not to mention some exploration of the site of a battle of the Mandalorian Wars. Dxun offered some, but it was basically overrun by the jungle reclaiming things and the Mandalorians setting up shop. This would be set in the midst of a wound still festering.

I also see a place for Mira in this (I take Dxun after Nar Shaddaa, personally, so that’s got some influence here). Considering she was raised by Mandalorians, went from slave to a soldier, picking up their skills, I can see some exploration of her past here. Especially considering Kreia’s cryptic remark about her: “She was not born to be a predator, despite her true father.” This is something that doesn’t even come up until Kreia’s fortune telling at the end of the game. Let’s explore this some – is Canderous supposed to be her father? Another Mandalorian leader? Someone else? This is something worth exploring.

As for Canderous, Mandalore, whatever you call him, this is his chance to really get to shine as a character, considering that he decides to join the Exile’s crew, then pretty much just stands around until the endgame and the Mandalorians joining the fight at Citadel. Especially to explore who he is in the face of Revan’s departure, how they impacted him and how he has changed because of their involvement in his life. (Remember, in my KOTOR 1 DLCs, he’s a romance option – yes, you should expect that sort of thing to carry over here.)

Actually, throw in Bao-Dur into the mix, as well. He barely gets any sort of response to the Mandalorians in game as it is, despite how he blames himself for the horrors of Malachor V. I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, “The Wounded,” where recurring character Miles O’Brien faces a Cardassian, a species he fought against in a war prior to the series proper, and says “It’s not you I hate, Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you.” That sounds a lot like what Bao-Dur should be experiencing while travelling with a Mandalorian, but aside from a banter that may or may not trigger, this isn’t explored, not even with a dialogue option with him. Sometimes I almost get the feeling Bao-Dur was forgotten about halfway through. This would be an opportunity to put some more tangible interactions into his character arc.

If KOTOR 2 proper is about exploring the wake of the Mandalorian Wars, the aftermath of war, this seems like an opportunity to examine that head on.

 The Path of the Exile

The Exile’s wanderings were far from the Republic’s heart. Yet in those wanderings may lie the answer to the new question – where now does Revan wander? The Exile leads the Lost Jedi on a journey into their past, their journeys through the Outer Rim worlds – in particular, one called Kerobas - far from civilization to create a path for the future!

(Available after Korriban)

Hey, I said I was curious about the Exile’s past, right?

Seriously, though. One of the things that comes across as important (to me at least) is that the Jedi Council could not truly enforce the Exile being exiled. The Disciple points this out, the Jedi have no real mechanisms in place to make sure that those they exile (a rare punishment in the first place) remain exiled. And the Exile wandered, apart from galactic civilization for ten years. Considering that, it seems like they not only followed that ruling, they didn’t just exile themselves from the Jedi but the galaxy as well.

I may have my issues with being a part of society, but I don’t know about spending ten years in self-imposed isolation. Apart from anyone, not even interacting with them through a screen (because we have to imagine that the Exile was not connected to the HoloNet or anything in that time). And, ultimately, what drove them to break this isolation and return to the Republic? After all, they were cut off from the Force at the time, so it’s not even like we can say “the Force moved them.”

In some ways, I suppose this could be an extended version of the Tomb of Ludo Kressh, where the Exile sees visions of their past, but I’m not sure about that – the visions there told of the Exile’s choice to go to war and a major conflict where they risked themselves, which are pretty key things about their decisions. Though there are still other things – how did they feel about the war itself, once in the thick of it, interactions with Bao-Dur in the past (because why would I pass up the chance to expand on this relationship that should mean more in the game proper?), see what led to the Mass Shadow Generator’s construction, why did the Exile return to face judgement when all others followed Revan to the Unknown Regions, get to explore why the Exile followed the exile, and what made them return.

Kerobas is a complete fabrication of my own, by the way. If the Exile was wandering the unknown corners of the galaxy, then I’m gonna give them their own place to do that in. I envision here a planet that was abandoned – perhaps it’s one of the war-torn places from the Mandalorian Wars that was never reclaimed in the aftermath, a place ceded by the victorious Republic and ignored by the defeated Mandalorians. A planet of ghosts, a planet where what surrounds the Exile is the empty voices of the dead.

Not that I think they’d have spent all their time here, but it would be a place that connected to the Exile, more than just some place they passed through randomly. Like we mere mortals without the Force often feel drawn to certain places, so this would be a place that the Exile felt drawn to.

Those lingering ghosts are also a way to have more flashbacks like the Korriban Tomb visions, where we get to have the Exile reexperience their past and speak their opinions then. Yeah, it’s running over the same gimmick and attitudes from there, but they were GOOD gimmicks and attitudes. Why not give them more time in the sun?

 Broken

Darth Sion has revealed himself. Held together through sheer force of will, he is a powerful foe. Kreia knows him, as a teacher knows a student. To that end, she encourages the Exile to seek out his origins, taking them to the planet Eriadu. He may be able to restore himself in a fight against a blade, but the cruelest cut can come from the knowledge of his greatest source of pain – himself.

(Available after Korriban)

Hey, we gave Nihilus a focus in DLC, it’s only fair that Sion gets it too. And in this case, I see it as stripping away the mystique, something that, really, we could use thematically.

Sion’s a mystery, but he really shouldn’t be – that’s Nihilus’s purpose. Sion is the brute force, the guy who really should need no explanation, but, let’s be real, a guy who’s holding himself together through sheer force of will, there’s a lot to dig in to there. Especially because, if we examine the Sith Triumvirate as different reflections of the Exile themselves, some element of who he was before coming into play seems like it’d be important.

That’s why I picked Eriadu for where this takes place. Whether or not he once called this planet home, I feel like it could be a place of significance for him. This is an industrial planet, one its inhabitants have tried to make “the Coruscant of the Outer Rim.” I feel like that kinda ties into Sion’s characterization – to Kreia, he is the pale imitation of the one student who truly embodies her teachings, as really any planet in the Outer Rim would be considered in direct comparison to Coruscant.

But how did he and Kreia cross paths? Kreia has lived a long time, and Sion could easily have lived just as long. Was he her first student? Was he cut down for the first time during the war against Exar Kun? (This is apparently part of what little backstory he was given in the Campaign Guide for KOTOR.) How did the alliance between the “Sith Triumvirate” even come to be in the first place?

These questions linger through the game, and this would be some of the kinds of things that I’d see included here – not just his past before he became the Lord of Pain, but his history in the time since taking that “Darth” title. I mean, you’d think a guy surviving mortal wounds for years would at least have drawn some rumors – Sith are seldom subtle.

Perhaps in finding more about him, we learn about the Force technique he’s using to channel his pain into the power that keeps him alive – this is another one of those Force abilities that would probably be of some kind of use later, and it does sound a lot like the description of some of Vader’s later attempts to heal up his body, but Vader couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds.

As for the end result of this, I feel like it would be more a matter of a verbal joust (Obsidian does love those, especially in this game – battlegrounds are as much a verbal minefield as a straight up brawl). Perhaps even one with Kreia herself – the Exile knows that Sion and Kreia share a history, so this is a confrontation between the two of them about the things she hides, the secrets she’s keeping. Because if she wants the Exile to be her prize pupil, they SHOULD have a point where they can stand against her teachings, argue with her in a true fashion.

I mean, that’s one of the problems in the base game, that Kreia, after all this time talking philosophy, ends up in just a straight up brawl at the finale, so let’s learn about Sion, about her former student, and see a confrontation between her and the Exile, one that, unlike normal, we might actually manage to win against her. Because it’s the same lesson she wants to teach to the Council – there is often some element of failure that the teacher must own when the student fails.

Yeah, okay, I’m moving off of Sion at this point, but you can’t really explore Sion’s past and character without exploring how Kreia plays in to that. And whatever sort of history they have will be important for the ultimate confrontation on Malachor – the Exile’s dialogue in their fight shows an understanding that I don’t know if I feel is fully earned in the game as is, isn’t fully justified where the Exile’s insight comes from. Let them learn about Sion, this to an extent expands on that.

 Prophecy

They will be known as ‘the Lost Jedi,’ the ones who followed the Exile after the Jedi Civil War denied them their birthright as Jedi. Yet there are those strong in the Force who would sooner see them dead than to bring about a new path for the Jedi, and attempt to stop them before they can even make the attempt.

(Available after making two of your companions Jedi)

If there’s one thing that reviving the Jedi will do, it’s stir up the ideas that the Jedi failed and need to be stopped before they plunge the galaxy into war yet again. We see it plenty on Dantooine, and Atton brings it up himself, to the galaxy at large, the Jedi Civil War was just that, a civil war, a fight between two factions of Jedi, and they were caught in the middle.

More than that, you bring back the Jedi, you bring back the same Order who sat out the Mandalorian War. It’s not just about not wanting the Jedi to not go down a new path – for some people, this is going to be as much about not wanting the Jedi period. The Jedi have been blamed for the state of the galaxy, sometimes as a scapegoat, sometimes rightfully – if the Jedi are the ones who can face these threats, someone’s bound to think that the reason that the Jedi existing are the reason they happen.

To use Sera’s words about the Grey Wardens in Dragon Age Inquisition, they’re the good thing that means something bad’s about to happen.

And the Exile is collecting Jedi Potentials, training them, making them the Lost Jedi, the ones who rebuild the Order after the Exile’s departure. That should set off alarm bells.

What I’m picturing, in fact, is that the source of the threat here is from former Jedi themselves. Perhaps even people the Exile knew, people who stayed among the Jedi, through the Mandalorian War, only realizing that they didn’t approve of how things were going after Revan, after Vandar announced that Revan was the Prodigal Knight (or, alternatively, that the Jedi hadn’t actually slain the threat they’d unleashed on the galaxy... Yeah, there’s a reason I refuse to touch on the possibility of Revan or the other KOTOR 1 gang appearing in these DLCs for KOTOR 2 – I ain’t dealing with the headache of accounting for light side/dark side endings, and you can’t make me).

These Jedi have decided that the Jedi have had their time, and that, ultimately, what comes next in this galaxy should exist without them. The Sith Empire Revan and Malak built up has collapsed either way, so to the galaxy at large, the Jedi have vanished, the Sith are gone... These former Jedi have come to believe that this is the best state for the galaxy. Go back up and reread about The Empty Temple DLC. This is the counterpoint – that was “why did the Jedi still alive just shut off their lightsabers and walk away?” This is “why should anyone pick up a lightsaber again?”

Because what value is there in bringing back the Jedi? I mean, in-universe. Out of universe, there’s a massive market for “space wizard-ninjas with a big glowstick that hums.” But to the denizens of the galaxy far, far away, the simple fact is the Jedi are easily painted as a menace to the galaxy they claim to protect, with the ideological civil wars devastating the galaxy practically once a generation. If the Jedi try to come back, then eventually, the Sith will come back too.

I’m setting this on Ossus, a planet that has a lot of connection to Jedi history – it was featured pretty heavily in the various Tales of the Jedi comics (where we get Onderon and Freedon Nadd and Naga Sadow and Exar Kun and the like), and I figure this connection would make it a natural place for the Exile to take the newly minted Jedi of their crew to learn. Because we should also see the Exile acting as a teacher to the others that they’ve led down the path of the Jedi. It would also be why these former Jedi are here – if you’re going to recreate the Jedi, go somewhere with a strong connection.

Ultimately, it’s another story about the consequences of the wars that preceded the game – this is a question of how can we do and act as we did before now that everything has changed? How do we return to the status quo after it was upended, and why should we pretend we even can?

 Shadows and Light

Rhen Var is the planet that fallen Jedi Ulic Qel-Droma retreated to after Exar Kun’s war on the Republic. It is a site of great reverence to the Jedi. If any Jedi have survived the Jedi Civil War, this is a place they would retreat to. But also drawn to this place are adherents of the dark side, looking to test themselves against Jedi, prove themselves to the Sith spirits that speak to them...

(Available after meeting two Jedi Masters)

Remember in my KOTOR 1 list, I said to stick a pin in Ulic Qel-Droma and how he lost his connection to the Force? Time to take that pin out, we’re here. Ulic Qel-Droma is someone I would think would have some resonance for the Exile, considering that he has such a mirror to their situation. Hell, I’d think that, with Ulic’s own redemption in the eyes of the Force (his body vanished upon death, like Obi-Wan and Yoda), it’d be something that would actively draw them in. Yet surprisingly, Ulic’s not mentioned except as flavor text, not as someone who went through something similar to the Exile’s experiences.

Nomi Sunrider, and her daughter Vima, have a connection here. Vima was even originally going to have Bastila’s role in the first game, but there were some copyright issues revolving around the Sunrider name that resulted in that changing. Since that’s not a concern for me, I’d like to see her play a significant role here, that she has gone to Rhen Var in the wake of all the things that have happened since Ulic’s death, attempting to re-center herself and reconnect after all the chaos, find guidance in the place that she started as a Jedi.

Since I brought up the Campaign Guide a while back, I should note that it says that the canon Exile trained under Vima for a time, which I’m willing to go along with here – not just as a canon tie, bridging some of the gap of the comics and the games, but also to see the butting of heads between two of the Exile’s teachers, in Vima and Kreia, and to also have the Exile play up some of the parallels to them and Revan, who the Disciple says returned to their “first teacher” to learn how to leave the Order – this is the Exile returning to their first teacher to learn how to rebuild the Order (broadly speaking, anyway – yes, yes, light side/dark side alignment, bladdy blah).

But, of course, if we’re addressing Ulic, let’s address that other bantha in the room – the Krath, the dark side cult that Ulic initially infiltrated and then joined. According to Wookieepedia, Chris Avellone didn’t include them in KOTOR 2 because “Krath” has a bad translation in French. Good reasoning, but it DOES make for a very big gap, considering they were associated with Freedon Nadd, whose tomb we loot, and the Onderon system, where we spend a good amount of time. And, since I’m not bound by the French language here, we’re bringing them back.

So the Krath show up here – maybe they still admire the dark sider that Ulic was, while considering the redeemed hero their villain, maybe they view him as a traitor to their cause. Either way, though, the remnants of the Krath have come to Rhen Var, and they’re emboldened by the absence of the Jedi, want to gain new prominence now. They aren’t Sith, they just follow the dark side, which means they’re not the capitol-E enemy that the Sith forces are – maybe there’s a way to forge an alliance with them, given the fact that the Sith will wipe out all life if they get the chance, surely they see the value in survival, right?

The Krath view the Exile as a potential ally – they may even see them as Ulic reborn, considering that they do have such a mirror. And that leads to the conflict – Vima, knowing the Krath from Ulic’s history, her mother’s enemies, doesn’t believe they’re worth allying with (a fact with Kreia can easily pounce on – Ulic redeemed himself in her eyes, yet she won’t offer those who follow the same doctrine he did that same chance?). Allying with the Krath would surely repel any Jedi who’d be drawn to the Exile’s banner. All things considered, they’re probably not the most reliable group to join forces with... But the Exile could use any port in the storm against the Sith. Alliance of convenience, a chance to draw them to the light... There’s some good reasons for the Exile to believe they deserve the opportunity.

I don’t know how this situation would resolve itself, though – this is all still a bit off the cuff. I can accept the idea that we wouldn’t be allowed to kill off Vima Sunrider, considering this is a previously established character of significance, so that’s off the table. But perhaps we could end up, based on our choices, driving a wedge so deeply between the Exile and Vima that Vima would refuse to be associated with any Jedi Order that the Exile would rebuild, which, while not necessarily the worst possible resolution in the greater scheme, it says that the Exile would be changing the Jedi into something that one of their biggest names refuses to associate with, so having serious optics solutions, and speaks to the motivations of the Exile – rebuild and reforge the Jedi into a stronger order, or shatter the Order to pieces so small it can never be restored.

 Before the Fall

Jedi Master Lonna Vash managed to escape the Sith Academy on Korriban. Her survival has led her further into the Sith held worlds – following her trail leads the Exile and the Ebon Hawk to Ziost, a long dead world. Her path has the potential to lead even the strongest of Jedi into the dark side. To find this missing Jedi Master, the Exile and their crew must risk the fall...

(Available after Korriban)

I also said above that we’d get to Lonna Vash.

What a waste of a character she is in game as is. I mean, yeah, I get it, tied to a cut planet, crunch time meaning that they couldn’t restore her somewhere else... But still, what a waste. Especially when that cut dialogue seems to sound like she was an advocate for the Exile (even though on finding her body, the Exile can say she was quickest to reject them – maybe it’s just part of the abrupt cutting of her involvement in the game? *shrugs* I don’t know, but that’s not the take I’m gonna go with anyway, so we’ll just ignore that one line).

So instead of her body on Korriban, we get a clue that took her somewhere else. I pick Ziost because that’s another one of the various supposed Sith homeworlds over the years (let’s not even start on THAT continuity headache...), another Sith stronghold that would be a place that a Jedi Master would be drawn to in order to learn more about their enemy. Plus, considering its appearance in The Old Republic, I’d kinda like to see it as a planet and a place before the ultimate destructive cataclysm that rendered it a tomb.

And, of course, there’s Lonna Vash herself. Going to Korriban? That was taking the fight to the Sith. That was actively attempting to learn and understand her enemy. That was even a little pro-active. That deserves her to get more than an off-screen death and appearing as a corpse for five seconds. So she takes the next step, and goes exploring in the heart of Sith territory. Why? Because if the Sith are the problem, let’s go to the source.

Of course, the thing about this is, naturally, that the Sith haven’t been coming from the known spaces of the galaxy as it is, but hey, we make concessions to work within the plot we have, right?

No, Ziost has hints of these “true Sith” that Kreia will later speak of come the ending. Perhaps here we have the species better known as the pureblood Sith from TOR (I may not be acknowledging the events of TOR directly here, but I can still choose to pick from it if it satisfies what I’m looking for). I mean, according to Wookieepedia, this is their adopted homeworld at this point in time.

Which provides more of the plot for this – Master Vash has attempted to infiltrate the society of Sith, trying to find any information that will act to galvanize the Jedi – she learned the lessons of the Mandalorian Wars, and is acting. Because the ground is cracking under the feet of those who would call themselves Jedi, and the simple fact is at this point, she can surely see that there will be another war, and even without the appearance of Darth Nihlius, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the Jedi will be crippled by indecisiveness after all.

Of course, searching for her is going to end up drawing attention. It’s enough to get a local Sith Lord to sit up and pay attention. Go back to the Sleheyron DLC from the last post, pull back in that mechanic of needing to keep your head down and not be seen (which I explicitly compared to Nar Shaddaa and its mechanic of getting Visquis, and by extension Goto’s, attention), at least until the time is right, that the more use of the Force you use, the more attention you draw. Same as on Dantooine, where walking among the people with your lightsaber equipped is going to get you different and colder responses from them – the Exile and company walking around with lightsabers on the belts (well, given engine restrictions, in hand, but you know what I mean) is going to mark them as someone who the Sith Lords of Ziost will want to get to.

I view this culminating in having a chance to talk with Vash before the confrontation against the Sith leader on this planet, who I’m gonna just create here: Lord Metus (Latin for – according to web translation - fear, dread, terror, apprehension, fright, which I pulled out from a synonym for anxiety), who is, if Nihlius, Sion, and Traya represent hunger, pain, and betrayal respectively, a representation of anxiety, that fear of “what if” and “what might be.” Seems appropriate for a Sith Lord to face a Jedi Council member, a body paralyzed by the thought of what they would end up facing by fighting the Mandalorian Wars.

And I say a confrontation here, but we’d of course build this Metus up (I’m seeing Metus going either way on gender, and while I did use “Lord” above, I’m kinda leaning towards Metus being female at the moment, Sith tending to use Lord as gender-neutral, but I’m not married to it), have them be a constant presence – after all, what is anxiety if not a constant weight that follows you around? Metus’s presence would be felt throughout Ziost, and we’d be fully aware of them long before they make a genuine appearance.

But this leads to fighting Metus alongside Master Vash. It’s one thing to have Kavar or Vrook join the combat at the finales of Onderon and Dantooine respectively, but I mean that she’s playable in this section, as a companion level character – I mean, I see this as a higher level unlock, even beyond just the fact that I take Korriban near the end of the game (second to last, before the return to Onderon), and I don’t think that it’s reasonable to expect the Exile to go to any major Sith held world before even the prestige class unlocks. Like, this is definite “near-endgame” level stuff.

As for Vash’s fate... Obviously, she can’t remain a party member. Likewise, the mods that restore her on Dantooine have her mostly silent, considering that the conversation in the base game exists without her anyway. Other restoration mods of her content bump her off at the conclusion of her encounter with the Exile to maintain continuity with the base game. BUT... I have grown an aversion of killing off characters for the sake of convenience. Especially factoring in how she’s now the one member of the Council who has learned anything, is willing to approach things from a new perspective.

So I’m leaning towards having her decide that she will not rejoin the Council – the Jedi have failed, and perhaps it’s time for them to forge a new path, a new direction, one free of the burdens of the traditionalist views of the Council. While their wisdom is valuable, it has come at the expense of understanding how the galaxy has changed (what do you mean, reality subtext of millennials versus baby boomers, whyever would you think such a thing, don’t be silly, I mean we’re talking about a hypothetical DLC to a game from 2004, so that’s context that wouldn’t apply then, let’s move on). Maybe the Exile can opt to kill her, like they can the other Masters, but the light side (and, in my mind, resulting “canon” choice, for a given value, since we’re talking about a non-existent DLC for an RPG... Go with it) option is that she can go, and she wants to be a part of the new Jedi, not the old structure.

 Schism

The Jedi are broken and scattered. While the Exile trained the Lost Jedi, there are many more out there, both the lost and the fallen. Now, the time comes to unite them under a single banner and be the Jedi Order once more, born from the ruins at Dantooine. But the path to that new future is not one that all will walk towards willingly...

(Post-Game)

This one is a tricky subject, mostly because I see this as something that would exist WITHOUT the Exile. The Exile has a choice at the end of the game – light side, they go in search of Revan (again, begone Revan novel and The Old Republic interpretation of events), dark side, they are seemingly rebuilding the Trayus Academy. But, like with the previous KOTOR DLC, where there the two post-game DLCs were with an assumed light sided Revan, we’re going to assume a light side ending for this game, both for the fact that the Jedi need to rebuild for this, and because this needs to focus on the way that the Jedi Order is rebuilt, and that puts us in the position of telling a post-game story without the player character.

So we are looking at a story built around the companions – Atton, Brianna, Mical, Mira, Visas, Bao-Dur – and what becomes of the Jedi after the end of the game. Because the whole idea of the game focused on the idea that the Jedi must grow, must change. Given all the philosophical screeds of the game, here’s another one: Life must adapt, or it will die.

And, in the wake of Kreia, no matter her ultimate goal, she DOES raise many actual valid points. She questions much of the Jedi as they have been, and many of her points are entirely true. As I said above, when the students repeatedly “fail” the lesson, is the problem the student for not learning the lesson, or the teachers for not imparting the right lessons. Mical brings this up in conversation, and it’s a question that the Jedi must now grapple with as the rebuilding actively begins.

Because KOTOR 2 is all about the aftermath of war. Here is where the Jedi begin rebuilding. But the problem is the fact that we must eventually get to the place where the Jedi are circa the prequels, four thousand years later, where the Jedi Council have fallen prey to the same problem as they have in the time of KOTOR, to an even worse degree, even. What brings about their ultimate doom is their stagnation, their indifference to the universe beyond the Jedi Temple.

Was this the ultimate end result of Kreia’s teachings? I somehow doubt it. The Jedi Order as it once was ends up being restored, the traditionalists win. And I don’t want this to be the fate of those from the KOTOR games.

So what I want to see here is the rebuilding of the order, and a resurgence of traditionalist thoughts – again, this is the debate that the game has not really engaged in, just allowed the platform of Chris Avellone’s calling bullshit on Star Wars philosophy, with no real room to argue against it. And here, we see that the Jedi, despite all of their efforts to resist their ultimate fate, are doomed to the same old cycle.

But, as we see in the game, Atris’s desire to rebuild the Jedi, an act that these characters are ready to do, would have been a radical change, and her change would make the Jedi into Sith. So where is the answer here, because too much change, the Jedi tip into darkness. But, not enough change, and we get the ultimate fate of the Star Wars universe, because the Jedi end up stagnating, being life that refuses to adapt.

Star Wars is, in effect, the repetitive epic, where the same lessons need to be taught to each new generation. But I want some spark of hope – that the students of the Exile ultimately decide to break away from the Jedi, form their own sect to study the Force. That the failing is not the teachings or the students, but the teachers, the teachers who will not listen. The Legends line says that there are many different sects of Force users, beyond the Jedi and the Sith, those who have broken off from the Jedi but still follow the light. And ultimately, this would be the fate of the Exile’s students.

This would not be a traditional style DLC, I suppose – there is no villain to face, no great combat to be had. Rather, this is a story, told through the player’s choices – do each of the Exile’s students roll over and abide by the Jedi Order’s old ways? I feel like even they would at least be tempted to give in, because there’s the possibility of them choosing to stay, not just because they’re giving in to the way things have been, but because they believe in the Jedi, believe that they can shape the Jedi into changing. But others cannot accept that the Jedi would turn them away – and maybe they’d turn away from the Force, as well.

Small note: Maybe this is where Vash reappears? Just a thought – I don’t know for sure, but having her return to the Jedi, perhaps ultimately becoming the first Master of the new sect... or perhaps showing the inherent flaw of allowing those with power in old systems take power in new and she is the leader of the traditionalist thoughts, believing the Jedi were only in need of minor changes, not a massive overhaul.

This isn’t a tale about physical fights. It’s about philosophical conflict. Maybe this isn’t what people generally play a Star Wars game for, but this is where KOTOR 2 shined, at least for me. And I want some content centered whole upon it.

 Miscellaneous

Romance Content – Handmaiden/Disciple as full party member regardless of gender, Bisexual Atton, Bisexual Disciple, Bisexual Visas, Bisexual Handmaiden, Atton romance culmination, romance endings at Malachor – light side and dark side

Again, we have a few little touch ups that I can’t really fit in as their own separate DLCs. First of all is one I think we all agree should have been there from the beginning, the Handmaiden and the Disciple both joining the Exile’s crew, regardless of gender. There’s no real reason they should be gated. And, of course, all the romances (well, by the standards of KOTOR 2) are now bisexual. Because space has always been gay, you fools.

Listen to Kreia.

Also, Atton never really gets a romance culmination scene – Visas and Mical have mutually exclusive ones on the way back to Telos, and Brianna’s is after confronting Atris. Atton’s was basically from the confrontation with Sion that got cut, but I’d like for one beyond that. Ideally, there’d be a clearer way of deciding between which of the romances your Exile favors, and they’d each come for a culmination between the Exile. They’d also each get their own separate romance ending, where the Exile is able to greet them after Kreia’s defeat, dependent on how they end the game.

There are probably other little tweaks and adjustments I’d make, especially considering the unfinished state that KOTOR 2 originally shipped in, but that moves outside the scope of this series.

[ltamerica]

Thoughts on what Stan Lee (and superheroes) contributed to the world

I know that Stan Lee’s death was some time ago by now, but I wanted to muse out loud on something I feel important, while I’m in a contemplative mood. Consider this something of my own personal eulogy for Stan Lee. I never met him obviously, but he still impacted my life and many others, in what I believe to be a positive way.

Bill Maher, a rather... jaded man, mocked the world for mourning Stan Lee on the grounds that, to paraphrase, “All he did was inspire people to watch more movies.” He also proceeded to more or less mock and degrade Superheroes as a whole, like many in the past have and many more in the future will.

Now, I doubt I really need to tell anyone here why that’s incorrect; I’d be preaching to the choir. But it was, if nothing else, food for thought. On the impact of Stan Lee’s life to the world, and the impact of the Superheroes that he used to tell his stories, give his ideas.

Many have downplayed the value of superhero stories, or demonized them, in every medium (after all, superheroes are in every medium these days). They’re disposable popcorn fantasy, mindless entertainment; they can’t express real pathos or challenging ideas, no meaningful morals or epiphanies; even worse, they’re vessels for Fascism or Objectivism, allegories for supermen who rule over the weak and mindless; they’re the “new” form of god/idol worship. They’re the oncoming Death of Western Culture, of Global Culture. And so on and so on.

But to me, that’s not what superheroes are about. At least, I don’t think that’s what they taught me, or what I think they taught other people. No one reads or watches Superman or Iron Man or Spider-Man and thinks “Eh, I shouldn’t do anything because someone else will do it for me,” or anything like that. Instead, they think “They’re so cool! I wanna be like them! I wanna help people like they do!” Superheroes aren’t about mindless entertainment with no implicit message, and they’re not about submitting to Big Brother. They’re about imagining a world where people have the power to make the world a better place, and then do exactly that. And because everyone wants to be like superheroes, they want to believe that they can, too.

And because kids like Superheroes so much, they and their messages hit us at the perfect age to soak them in. There’s nothing wrong with a good, mass-appeal action-adventure story if it has brains. The spectacle helps the medicine go down. Batman teaches us that people with money and status should do everything they can to serve the common good, using that very wealth. Superman teaches us to be as simply good as we can be, from altruism to idealism to simple politeness. Wonder Woman was deliberately written as a woman of power, sent to whip the world into shape from an ideal paradise isolated from the chaos of the wider world.

Ah, but those are DC superheroes. So what did Stan Lee bring to the table? Well, it’s true that Stan Lee didn’t invent Captain America, and that people like Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko (to name a few) created a lot of the biggest things we think of when we think of Marvel. But it was Stan Lee who changed the entire superhero landscape with the debut of The Fantastic Four, and pretty much all his works and contributions revolved around a single main idea:

Superheroes are people too.

That is to say, superheroes, for all their grand power and flashy costumes, are flawed, limited individuals who make mistakes, have issues, and ultimately can’t solve everything, in their lives or in the world around them. Many read into superheroes as the Master Race (especially those wishing to deconstruct them), but Stan Lee’s grand thesis behind the heroes he created and the stories he told are that, even with their amazing, impossible powers and their talents, they’re still only human. And yet, despite being only human, they still try to help, to make the world a better place, even if it costs them. And with the success of the comic books he created, that idea took hold and transformed the entire industry, changing even DC’s tune.

Stan Lee in generally loved to push the envelope when it came to superheroes, and he did most of it in a decade all about cultural revolution: the 1960s. He created the X-Men to talk about prejudice and superstition; he created Iron Man (currently the MCU’s heart and soul) specifically to make his target audience connect with the kind of man they would normally hate. He created the Black Panther to express the concept of an African nation leagues ahead of the rest of the world; he published books without the Comics Code Authority consent, opening the floodgates for comic books to publish more subversive and mature content. And of course, he created Spider-Man, who I’ll be getting to more later.

Now, again: it’s true that Stan Lee didn’t do it all alone. And as Jack Kirby could most certainly attest, he was not a man above misdeed or vanity. Nor did he himself actually write the Superhero content most of us today grew up with. He didn’t write the Tobey Maguire Spidey movies, or the PS1 Spidey game (though he did narrate that one, and I grew up listening directly to his one-of-a-kind flair for narrating and hyping). But if it wasn’t for him, none of those things would exist today. And they were all created and written with his central idea in mind, something that set Marvel apart from the competition back in the day, but is now the standard to everything Superhero: Superheroes aren’t perfect, they’re people like us, people who screw up and have issues, but who pick themselves back up and then learn from their mistakes. And most importantly of all, they still do the right thing.

Which brings me to Spider-Man. I don’t think I’ll get much disagreement when I say Spider-Man is the biggest/most important thing Stan Lee ever made or helped make. He’s big; everyone has grown up with Spider-Man and his adventures, whether through comic books, cartoons, movies or games. My dad never gets tired of telling me about that part in Secret Wars when he made a fool of the entire X-Men team without really even trying, or all the times he gets serious and wipes the floor with whoever he’s fighting. And he’s unique; no other superhero in all of the superhero landscape is really like Spidey.

So what point am I getting at here? Well, Spider-Man even today is probably one the best role models a kid could have in fiction, and given how universal he is, that’s a good thing. For all of his money problems, for all that he’s vilified, for all that he’s lost, he does the right thing, and he keeps up a friendly, upbeat attitude in front of the people he’s saving. He’s been faced with some hard decisions, but even when those decisions are absolutely miserable, he makes the choice he knows is the right one (if you’ve seen the recent Spider-Man video game, you know exactly what I’m talking about).

And that’s exactly how Stan Lee envisioned him, wrote him. Plenty of people have written Spider-Man stories, but (at least when they’re written well) they always stick to the mold that Stan Lee created.

And that’s why Stan Lee was so loved, and so important; that’s the good that he put in the world. I grew up with a superhero who was just a naive kid from Queens who gets dragged through the gutter again and again, yet never gives up and never breaks his integrity, never abuses his vast power even when nobody could really blame him if he did. Spider-Man doesn’t use his powers for himself, he uses them to help as many people as he can. Spider-Man taught me, as cliche as the line has become by now, that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. And I wanted to be like him; I still do. After all this time, Spider-Man is still “cool”.

And I’m not the only one who grew up with Spider-Man or that message. Pretty much all of us did. Because Stan Lee created that superhero and wrote those words in Amazing Fantasy #15, millions (perhaps billions, given Spidey’s popularity abroad) of people had a positive influence, one that they willingly read or watched again and again as it surreptitiously told them the right way to behave. That if you have the ability to do the right thing, you do the right thing.

So yeah, that’s why everyone loved Stan Lee in life, and why they mourn him in death. It’s why he’s considered not just famous, but important. The things we soak up in our youth are important to how we turn out, even if we don’t realize it, even if they’re not considered “Art” or made to be “Art”. Superheroes as a concept are all about doing everything you can to help others even when it’s hard, and Spider-Man managed to condense that concept into the phrase we all know and love. He’s all about the struggle of being a good person in a life filled with a hundred personal problems, and Stan Lee brought him and what he stands for to the entire world, along with all the other Superheroes he created.

So thanks, Stan Lee. Rest in peace.

[roninkairi]

GAME REVIEW: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

In the past few years my attention, when it comes to RPGs, has been spent primarily on Persona related titles (I blame my friend Anita for that) or Fire Emblem (I blame Smash Bros for this one). I even still have a copy of the original Persona 4 alongside my copy of Persona 3 FES and I still, on occasion, try to finish Shin Megami Tensei  IV when I have the time. So, when I heard that Nintendo and Atlus were going to have an actual crossover game involving both the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem series, I was more than a little curious, especially given just how much different the two worlds are. Years later after the announcement, we would get the final product…and it is COMPLETELY different than what I imagined, or anyone else.

Tokyo Mirage Session is, as I mentioned before, a game that combines the worlds and game mechanics of the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem series (and, to a minor extent, Persona) Now, as far as the plot goes, it’s rather, well, unique. If you were expecting the game to take place either in a mystical medieval landscape on the verge of war or a post-apocalyptic world filled with demons and other supernatural on goings, you may not like this, as the main story takes place in…Tokyo.

…At least it’s not Detroit or Newark.

Anyway, the story feels more appropriate for a 24 episode anime than an actual game. You fill in the role of Itsuki  Aoi, a high school student who gets roped in to the world of entertainment by his friends Tsubasa and Touma when a series of attacks led by Mirages. Itsuki soon learns he has an ability to work with unique Mirages in order to combat them and from there that’s where things get interesting.  Now,  to say that the setting of the game ruffled a few feathers is a severe understatement, as the idol industry in Japan is not exactly what I would call ‘cozy’. In fact the polar opposite of this game, Atlus’ Persona 4 Dancing All Night is actually a deconstruction of the industry and certain habits. Add to the fact that a lot of fans were not really pleased with the kind of happy setting that this game has and you can see why it didn’t fare as well as other games associated with SMT or FE. This is a shame because, at its core, the battle system in this game is quite good.

Mirages in this game take the place of the normal demons that would be present in the SMT series (and yes, the “Shadows” that populate the world of Persona if you wish to link that series), and they are also how the characters from Fire Emblem figure into the story. Characters such as Chrom, Tharja and Caeda become the partners of the main characters and transform into their weapons. They can be powered up by beating Mirages and collecting their “Performa” (yes, I know, just roll with it) to either become newer weapons or power up their current form. This, in a way, eliminates the need to buy new gear, but you still will need to grind for certain enemies if you want to make new abilities, which is handled by Fire Emblem mainstay Tiki (apparently she has her own version of the Velvet Room…). Other characters from FE will make small cameos too, if you keep an eye open.  As the game progresses the cast will expand to 7, each of which have their own specialty (Touma uses mainly spears and fire based attacks, Kiria uses rods and relies on magic and ice, Elenora is your bow specialist).

Combat, by the way, is primarily a three person based affair. As I said before, the game combines the fighting systems of both SMT and FE: certain enemies will have weaknesses and strengths based on the type of magic you use, which opens them up to a combo, or “Sessions” where members of your party can get in additional attacks. This also applies to weapons to, as the Fire Emblem weapon triangle is applied here in the game. You have to exercise caution though, as the same rules apply to your team as well, and some attacks can be nullified or outright cancelled. Getting Sessions done is important, as it helps to get you extra items, money and Performa. As you get further in the game, you can also learn special abilities like Ab-Lib performances and Dual Arts that can turn the tide of battle. A lot of the combat in the game has to be planned out in advance though, as you will find that there are battles that can get real tough real quick. And this is especially true when you come across Savage enemies. These foes are always 5 levels higher than you. The good news is that they provide particularly rare items. The tradeoff though is that they are significantly stronger than normal and you WILL more likely be forced to use part of your SP bar to handle them.

And that is another thing I wanted to get into, which is the difficulty of the game. It’s pretty standard for a Atlus or FE based game, in that it will punish you if you screw up and as you go further, the bosses will be more aggressive. This will become more evident when you meet certain bosses that not only have 2 attacks per turn, but have sidekicks that you need to kill quickly before they become a nuisance. And playing the game on a higher difficulty…I suggest playing it on Normal first, just to get a feel for the game. It can sometimes feel overwhelming at first, but when you get the basics down and find a way to get the sessions down and wipe the Mirages out its very satisfying. And some of the Dual Arts you can get are quite unique. (The less said about the one used by Barry and Mamori, the better.)

The cast of TMS, like I mentioned before, feel like they belong in an anime instead of a hybrid RPG. Itsuki reminds me of a long lost cousin of Tenchi Masaki—nice guy who has no clue that certain girls have the hots for him (in short he’s kind of bland) . Touma’s the resident Sentai hero fan and hot-blooded justice guy, Elenora is like Asuka Langley Sohryu, except less bitchy, focused on Hollywood and friendly with Mamori (she too was also the subject of certain controversy due to her heritage).  Mamori is the cute preteen…who wields a freaking AXE. Let me understand this, the cutest and nicest girl in the cast is the one that wields the biggest damn weapons?! How is that logical?!! Yashiro is the mature, blunt and focused guy (or, a dick for the first few chapters you meet him) Kiria and Maiko…

  ARE TOTALLY AWESOME AND SEXY AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANYONE TALKING SMACK ABOUT THEM.

And then there is Barry…I don’t know how to quite describe Barry but when you open his side story up, you may lose some measure of respect for him…a LOT actually.

Aside from the main story, there are plenty of side stories and missions to accomplish (Much like SMT and Persona) that will help to make your main cast members stronger and open up better abilities and new  Performances and Dual Arts or get you items that can aid you. Some are routine, like collecting a certain number of Performa and some are, well, ODD. (Like rescuing a girl from the Idolspehere or giving female Mirages a love letter from a guy who really needs to get out more. One of Touma’s side missions involves wooing ladies. Lets just say it went WAY better than what happened in Persona 3) The tone of the game is the complete opposite of the SMT and FE series as I mentioned before. While there is an overall serious plot to muddle through, the game has no issue with getting into lighter moments or taking some comedic liberties, like Kiria’s reaction to a special that Maiko has cast her in.

Now, in case level grinding in this game takes too long, there is also DLC that you can get. 3 bonus dungeons can be downloaded that can help you get experience points and skill points faster or you can take on a dungeon full of nothing but Savage enemies. The caveat for these, however, is that certain items will disappear if you do not get to them fast enough and over time, the enemies in the first two WILL get stronger. And the bosses in each dungeon will outright murder you if you are under level 50. Trust me on this, these guys are no pushover, I learned it the hard way. It’s an interesting way to help you get stronger, but if you spend too much time on it, it may make the game a little less challenging so I’d recommend only doing these if you need extra money and experience.

Now, there is one OTHER thing I wanted to get into before I give my final thoughts: the censorship. Yes, this game was edited prior to its US and European release. There are certain outfits that have been either outright removed or changed. There is also a DLC pack that is not available to us either. I don’t quite understand WHY the changes had to be made, other than due to the ages of the characters of the game.I know, they are listed as 18 for the most part (with the exception of Mamori and Kiria, who is a couple of years older than the main cast members.  Is it a deal breaker though? In my opinion, no. The outfits you have are only there essentially for cosmetic purposes and make no real difference to how the battles play out, and to be quite frank, it’s no big issue for me. Yeah sure, I have seen the alternate outfits on Youtube and holy hell, they look cool and sexy but it’s not really gonna help me slay that Platinum General any faster.

Overall, this game is an unusal but interesting hybrid. The plot does play off like something I’d rather see on CrunchyRoll but the overall game itself is quite fun and can be engaging. This was a very challenging RPG to play through and it even lets you go on a Game+ run when you beat it the first time for an extra challenge. (Oh yeah, there is a hidden boss, good luck fighting THAT). If you have a Wii-U I strongly suggest you give this game a go.

[punkwhodrinkstea-blog]

Everything is Strange

Welcome back folks to another week of “My School Is Still On Strike!”. So yeah, my school looks like they’ll be on strike for another whole week and I’m very happy about that. I’ve used my spare time perfectly to get lots of work done on my book, my art and I’ve gotten to see my girlfriend plenty this past week. I’ve noticed my depression ease up drastically too. My girlfriend has made me laugh and smile so much lately that my face was starting to hurt, which is never a bad feeling. My family is really messed up right now. My mother is making several shallow and crappy attempts to get to know me. Meanwhile my dad only talks to me if he needs too. Things like “pass the salt” or “Wake up! It’s Noon”. Which brings me to my sleep habits which haven’t been this good since before my depression. I fall asleep between 1am and 2am with some depressive thoughts in my mind but nothing I can’t handle compared to the past. There has been a clear difference in my well being between the College life style + Depression and often seeing my girlfriend + 8 hours of sleep a night. I feel so much better. I can function properly and think straight, I actually feel, ok. Anyway that’s just a quick update about my overall status.

I have a strange question. What is the deal with kissing? I mean wayyyy back in the day who’s idea was it? Like, “Hey I like you a lot and want to show my affection by rubbing my lips on your lips”. Like what the heck? Why? The mouth is used for eating food and breathing, but yet it has yet another function..It’s strange. Not to gross you out but my girlfriend and I have recently started kissing and yes we do enjoy it haha. It’s a very intimate act of affection and I suddenly have lost respect for those people who can be kissing someone one day and then someone else the next week or day or whatever. If something bad happened to my relationship with my girlfriend I think it would take me well over a year to get over and be able to open up to someone else on such a deep level. As you can tell I value my personal space very much and only my girlfriend is allowed in my personal space so you can only imagine how much I value intimate gestures. Anyway this is something I’d rather not discuss such details between my girlfriend and I here on my blog but I seriously who came up with the idea of kissing? Anyway I’m sure no one wants to hear about it. So let’s move on.

Also recently my girlfriend has a sister and my girlfriend’s mother was kinda annoyed by this sister’s behaviour. Of course I won’t go into details but her mother pointed out flaws in her own daughter. This is actually a good thing, this is how we solve a problem, grow and learn. The point I want to make is how my stupid parents would never say such things. They pretend my brother, sister and I are perfect and sweep any issues under the rug or make an excuse for them or justify my brother and sister’s behaviour. They do however point out errors in me but not in a constructive way, it’s more deconstructive, almost bully like. That is until recently when I told them I’ve been struggling with depression for years now. They aren’t really any better but it’s hard to explain. Things are just weird. But yeah I’ve gained even more respect for my girlfriend’s mother who is willing to point out the errors in her own daughter rather than justifying her behavior the way my parents would… the way most people would. Take notes folks, this is parenting done right and takes a great deal of integrity that you don’t find in most people. On the flip side my parents haven’t done my brother or sister any favors. I was lucky to become disconnected enough from my family to see these things and therefore gain from it…...

*Intermission*

…..Sorry. I was dragged away by my dad who barged into the house carrying a storm of stress with him and asked me to do a bunch of chores for him around the house. I did it and was about to sit down to return to my blog when I realized that Destiny 2 is coming out tomorrow. I loved the first game and now the second game is about to be released on PC (my prefered platform to play) and I was going to make the sad but responsible decision to pass this time since I currently don’t have a job. I explained this to my mom and suddenly my dad walks in and gives me the money for the game. My dad hasn’t bought me a game is forever and works hard to avoid buying me anything video game related. No doubt my mother and him have had something against video games since forever. But suddenly his does this? Why? I don’t really want to question it and I probably don’t have too. If anything the game will pulls us further apart and it’s his money and he simply doesn’t gain from it… that’s not like him. Everything he does is for his own gain, one way or another. Maybe he’s being nice or rewarding me for my discipline since I’ve hardly spent money on really anything other than dates with my girlfriend in the past year. I don’t know. But I’m glad. I’ve got the time to play it and the Christmas break isn’t too far away. Life is good…. Too good. That’s not normal, something terrible must be happening right now and I don’t even know it… does my girlfriend have cancer and we don’t know yet? WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!???

Well I guess I’ll have a new game, it feels good to have a new game to look forward to and grind out like the good old days. It’s always fun and something I have always enjoyed and probably always will. Anyway I guess I’m done talking to today. Peace out folks.

[thesinglesjukebox]

HALSEY - YOU SHOULD BE SAD

[5.60]

Please, no one tell Halsey where Jukebox HQ is...

Kayla Beardslee: Halsey does not have enough to say. Well, correction -- it sounds like she doesn't have enough to say. Maybe working with another songwriter or two (the only ones credited are her and producer Greg Kurstin) might have helped coax out some more vulnerable, detailed lines, but as-is this song is desperately lacking in material, both musical and lyrical. "I wanna start this out by saying/I've gotta get it off my chest": as a well-known singer-songwriter, that's your opening line? Egregious filler? The only lines with narrative value in the first verse are "Got no anger, got no malice/Just a little bit of regret," and I don't even believe them -- this is an intensely petty song, and there is no pettiness without a bit of lingering anger. She then repeats "I'm gonna start this out by saying" in the (very short) second verse: the song has started, Halsey, and you're clearly treading water to make it to the chorus. Even the bridge, typically the best point to add new meaning to a song, is wordless. "You Should Be Sad" is just a prechorus and chorus, and as for the actual material in those parts, well, it's okay. Halsey tries to characterize the guy as selfish and cold through admittedly catchy abstractions ("you're not half the man you think that you are") and tropes ("money, girls, and cars"), but her focus on all the things she tried to do for him, rather than his specific transgressions -- like cheating, which is never mentioned in the song -- makes "Sad" feel more like gratuitous punching down. And Halsey can do pissed-off: "3AM" is a highlight from Manic, and I've learned to love "Nightmare." The problem with the lyrical pettiness here is that it's supported by an underwhelming chorus and a guitar riff so limp it needs medication. I have a lot of respect for Greg Kurstin as a synthpop producer, but between this and the loud-but-flat "GIRL," I have little faith in his work with country. Halsey cited "Before He Cheats" as an inspiration for the "Sad" music video, but can you imagine Carrie Underwood singing about keying her ex's car over a track this empty? Angry, loud Halsey and completely stripped, confessional Halsey convince because those versions of her feel raw and believable and don't rely on nuance. When she dials it back to this awkward midpoint on "You Should Be Sad," the finesse just isn't there. [4]

Nortey Dowuona: Halsey has slowly become a better artist over the last few years she's been on top, and this sandcastle of shape-shifting acoustic guitar and windy soft pedal vocals, with lurching, loping drums pulling the mix ahead, stands as tribute to that -- not just that it fits Halsey's shimmering croon, it also swirls blunt observations ("I tried to help you, it just made you maaadd") and pointed ones ("I'm so glad that I never had a baby with you, cause you can't love something unless there's something in it for you") into a rising glass tower, studded with river stones. [7]

Tim de Reuse: Deconstructed 21st-century country, riding entirely on the strain of Halsey's overproduced vocal harmonies. There's something in the directness of "I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you," but between the bombastic swells of strings and effects and her every-syllable-deserves-emphasis delivery, none of it has any room to breathe. [4]

Brad Shoup: It's country the way Avicii pictured it, with one major innovation: those sheets of guitar, shaking with rage. Country tends to mask its rage as sorrow, but here Halsey and Kurstin give the arrangement as much punch as the line "I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you." [6]

Alex Clifton: "I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you/cos you can't love nothing unless there's something in it for you" is such a beautifully vindictive line, up there with "I hope you meet someone your height/so you can see eye to eye/with someone as small as you." "You Should Be Sad" is by far one of the more surprising and successful sonic experiments on Halsey's third album, feeling simultaneously understated like a good country song and anthemic like a Sia number. Manic is the closest I've ever come to understanding the appeal of Halsey, in part because she's not hiding under layers of storytelling and persona -- this is far more raw emotionally than she's written previously, and I'd argue it's more daring than creating an elaborate Romeo and Juliet album-long retelling. I've not been one for persona!Halsey, but if this is the music she releases from now on, I'll gladly become a fan. [8]

Isabel Cole: There's an interesting tension between the music's gentle, mournful prettiness and the ugliness of the story depicted, a tension echoed in the lyrics: the way she announces she harbors no anger nor malice before tearing into a devastating takedown. (That line about the baby is deliciously spiteful.) Halsey's performance also embodies this split, sometimes crooning efficiently alongside the melody's delicate turns, sometimes snarling with such spite you can almost see the spit; the creak in her voice sounds by turns sweet and bitter. [7]

Michael Hong: Perhaps there's no song quite as affecting on Manic as "More," a lament to the child Halsey never had and to the one she hopes to have one day. Then, retrospectively, "I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you" becomes all the more scathing, especially from a woman who once told Rolling Stone, "I want to be a mom more than I want to be a pop star." The rest of the track doesn't cut anywhere as deep as that line, sounding petty and lost rather than biting. Halsey's jump from alternative to pop to country makes "You Should Be Sad" sound like a lost A Star is Born-cut and equally as performative. [5]

Thomas Inskeep: Does the acoustic guitar indicate that this is her Lady Gaga-circa-Joanne bid for "serious artist" cred? I appreciate the nastiness of this, at least, and that brief little explosive note that leads off each chorus. [5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Words say one thing over laid-back faux-country, but Halsey's performance suggests the very opposite, and "You Should Be Sad" sounds like a bomb waiting to go off because of it. Staying with generalities feels like a favor to not rock the waters, and the rare moment she does lay out the specifics, it sounds aggressively personal. [6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: So boring, emotionless, and bland, it's hardly worth finding specific traits to complain about. [2]

Alfred Soto: With Greg Kurstin digging the hook into listeners' necks, it's impossible to dismiss the craft of "You Should Be Sad," nor would I want to. Halsey, like so many predecessors male and female, revels in her malice as if she had to endure the terrible relationship for the sake of writing well about its demise. Her best single since "Strangers." [7]

Vikram Joseph: Whenever I hear Halsey I just think of the time when someone quote-replied to a tweet (from a Lana stan account, naturally) saying "Without Lana there would be no Halsey, Melanie Martinez, Billie Eilish or Lorde" with "You mean to say we could have avoided Halsey?" Cruel, but more memorable than a Halsey song. [4]

Maxwell Cavaseno: At some point last year, some net teen in my feed called Maren Morris "an even worse Halsey" and I proceeded to kiss my teeth and remind myself that as I've grown up, cyberbullying brats off the timeline is unbecoming to my zen lifestyle. Nevertheless, there is some unintentional synergy here given that Morris's frequent collaborator in Greg Kurstin helps make the lesser of two evils to that random geek hit the nail on the head. "You Should Be Sad" is maybe one of my least favorite of the singles off Manic thus far; it does the most light-hefting lyrically and the vocal performances feel the most stitched together. It ends up reminding me of Post Malone's "Broken Whiskey Glass," where you have Hex-era Earth-style doom spaghetti western guitar screaming raw power at you while the subject is more interested in conveying indignation and contempt than a emotion that suits the tension it hopes to convey. Thankfully there's other and better Halsey singles that do this without trying to get all Red Dead Redemption on you. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Halsey's voice has a tone well-suited for this balance between verge-of-tears introspection and fist-clenched perseverance. The songwriting and production bolster her pain and redemption in equal measure: the steady, mid-tempo beat grounds her emotions so the screeching guitars can simultaneously vindicate, provide solace, express rage. You can register all those feelings in Halsey's delivery of the titular line, and you can sense how strong she is underneath the composure. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: It's a nice enough acoustic take on the melody of "Let's Talk About Sex." I hope that's conciliatory enough to not get accidentally wished 9/11 upon again. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[photogender]

Malika Gaudin Delrieu - La Vie en Rose ""“I’d rather sell my ass than my soul, it’s harder but much cleaner”, Claudette told me on one of our first meeting. How can one not write a story about her? I had been working for a few months on a documentary project about sex workers in Switzerland, seeking to understand why this country considers that prostitution can be a job as any other as opposed to the French state which stipulates that every form of prostitution is a violence against women.My book on the subject does not attempt to explain this job, which has as many sides to it as it has persons practicing it. The book seeks to give a voice to Claudette, to let her tell her story and express her views. Because one of the reason that explains the differences in legislations between Switzerland and France is that in France one rarely hears the opinions of the ones for whom we make the laws. We think we know better than they what they need, and we refuse to believe that a priced sexual relationship might sometimes be desired by a woman. A prostitute is unhappy, we are told, and if she claims the opposite it’s because she is not aware of being miserable. Often, because of her job people pity Claudette, or try to “save” her. But rarely do they listen to her when she talks about her achievements as a father and grandfather, her record as a champion cyclists and her victories as a sex worker’s rights campaigner. Claudette controls her life, makes her choices clearly and knowingly. She does more than just live her life, she loves it. She has endured her whole life the discourse made by strangers trying to reduce her to what she is not, because of her job but also because of her gender. Claudette is hermaphrodite. She is born with both male and female genitals, a condition that is not very well known and often mistaken with transgender. People often think that being different is a difficulty to overcome, that a physical peculiarity is a trauma, especially when it comes to gender. But the way Claudette was raised has allowed her to never feel undermined by her gender. “I never felt like a boy. That wasn’t me.” “I never felt bad about being hermaphrodite, it’s the others who have a problem with it, not me. I was born with both male and female genital parts so that it wasn’t clear if I was a boy or a girl when I was born. But my parents let me chose who I was, what my identity was even if they declared me as a boy at my birth. In 1937 it was an undeniable advantage. But I have always felt like a girl and I lived my life accordingly. I have the sex of the angels, why would I be ashamed of it? “ “The satisfaction of work well done is incomparable in prostitution. When a client is happy, I’m happy too. It’s social work, how can anyone deny that we make people happy, that we are useful? In my job I have the certainty that I have done what was right.” “With some clients it doesn’t go as well as with others. For a lot of men the need to go see prostitutes is stronger than they are, they can’t help themselves. They do it without thinking. And when it’s over they start remembering that the money they just spent they needed it for rent, for groceries or that their wives is going to be asking where it went. And all of a sudden they don’t speak to you anymore, they become shifty and they’re ashamed of what they’ve done and of you. How many times did I give 20 francs back to a guy who had realized he had to walk back home under the rain at 3am because he had given me all he had including money for a cab…they can’t help themselves. And I’ve been a good prostitute but a bad whore. I couldn’t take advantage of that need like some other girls did, and I couldn’t let them walk home under the rain. Men can be weak.” “I always found comfort and strength in the message of Christ. It’s his message of love that nourishes me, everything else is of no importance to me. The church, as an institution, does not interest me and I actually don’t agree with what they do there even if I am Catholic. But the example set by Christ gives me courage.” “Sport has always been an important part of my life. Cycling is one of my passion, I have done it all my life and I have no intention to stop. I still win competitions at my age and record better times than people thirty years younger than me.” “Activism is complicated. I’m one of the few who fight for the cause of sex workers using my real identity and showing my face, as Griselidis Real used to do. I’m exposed to the judgement of my family by doing it, for my work as well as my gender. I lost touch with some family members after my first TV show where I clearly stated I wasn’t just a volunteer in that fight, but a sex worker myself. But at my age you know that there are two types of families: the ones you’re related to and the ones you chose. If my blood relatives reject me then I have my other family, the ones I chose and who know and accept me for who I am.” Claudette unnerves some people because she lives a happy and coherent life while denying a fundamental moral precept. But her case is neither isolated nor unique. Claudette and others like her have a right to be heard, to be participants in the debate on legislation that currently criminalizes and excludes them. Prostitution is a complex profession that one cannot reduce to a simple rapport of victims facing their tormentors. This documentary is a testimony that seeks to deconstruct Manichean ideas by telling the life of Claudette, as a whole, a life where prostitution and gender play a part without defining it. Email from Claudette received 21 Oct 2013 Hi Malika, This morning it’s been 52 years since we said “yes” to each other for life. 52 years of happiness that I share with the friends I hold dear. Kisses, Clo." http://malikagaudindelrieu.com/about/someone-elses-life?lang=en

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-23/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-21/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-20/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-19/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-18/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-17/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/ny-times-farhads-and-cecilias-week-in-tech-tech-policy-too-is-undergoing-a-sea-change-16/

NY Times: Farhad’s and Cecilia’s Week in Tech: Tech Policy, Too, Is Undergoing a Sea Change

Cecilia: Excited to talk about tech policy? Music to my ears.

So much is happening, and in a normal news cycle, the rollback of Obama-era tech policies would get a lot more attention. But make no mistake, the changes coming in privacy, net neutrality and potentially many more tech regulations will be profound. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” and right away we’ve begun to see that happen.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: So we’ll get to all that in a second. But first, let’s go over the news of the week.

WikiLeaks released a huge cache of documents that purport to show the tools that the C.I.A. uses to break into smartphones, computers and even smart TVs. Other than embarrassing the United States government, the leak has fed into more conspiracy theories about Russia (Sean Hannity was having a ball this week), and they’ve given people some tips for how to protect themselves from governmental spying. If you want to safeguard your own devices, read our colleague Brian Chen’s handy guide.

But the best take I read on the leak came from the social media scholar Zeynep Tufecki, who pointed out that WikiLeaks overhyped this cache. The documents actually show that the C.I.A. finds encrypted communications apps like Signal and WhatsApp very difficult to break into.

Cecilia: And it was amazing to see the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offer help to tech companies like Apple and Google by sharing the leaked computer code so they could fix the flaws described in the C.I.A. documents. How awkward would that be? Remember, relations are still pretty tense between tech and law enforcement on the issue of encryption, which is certainly going to come up again.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: This week, there was also another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat. This time it was Messenger’s turn. Facebook’s messaging app rolled out a new feature that allows people to create Snapchat-like slide shows — known in the Snapchat world as Stories — on the service. Facebook calls it Messenger Day.

I don’t know about this. Messenger used to be a simple beloved chat app. Now it’s a mess of different things. I don’t get it, honestly.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: I left Messenger when it became a separate app. If you make me jump through even one extra hoop, I’m out.

Farhad: Oh man, you’d never be able to work with Mike.

Google also had a huge conference to show off its cloud computing services. A lot of these are too boring and business-y to mention here, but there was one thing that caught my eye: Google Hangouts is being transformed into something more like Slack, the group-messaging app that has taken businesses by storm. I’m happy about this because Google seemed to have forgotten about working on Hangouts these last few years. An overhaul is way overdue.

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Zzz. You kinda lost me at cloud conference. But seriously, I’m pumped about any improvements to Hangouts. Essential reporting tool.

Continue reading the main story

Tech’s biggest boosters of space exploration, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, were in Washington this week. Musk came for his fifth visit to Team Trump since the election to talk about ways to improve the nation’s infrastructure. One idea he mentioned was building tunnels under cities.

Continue reading the main story

Musk’s companies — SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity — have a lot at stake with any changes that could occur in government contracting and energy tax breaks and subsidies. It’s been fascinating to watch how he’s basically dodged criticism for advising the president. Why is Musk Teflon while Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, was pressured a few weeks ago by anti-Trump employees and customers to resign from the president’s advisory council?

Bezos was also here this week to announce the first paying customer for Blue Origin, his rocket company. A day later, he announced another customer for Blue Origin rockets. Blue Origin probably won’t be profitable for a long time, but the company is now officially more than just a billionaire hobby horse.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Now to tech and Trump. Under the new president we have a new F.C.C. commissioner, possibly a different standard for antitrust review on big mergers, and maybe lots of money for infrastructure that might seep into the tech economy. Can you go over the biggest tech policy changes we’re expecting under Trump?

Cecilia: Ajit Pai, Trump’s pick to head the F.C.C., has quickly repealed rules created during the Obama administration. The first big real target will be broadband privacy.

Mr. Pai started by shelving new data security rules that were supposed to go into effect this month. He is also targeting broader broadband privacy rules approved last fall that would have forced AT&T and Comcast to ask for a consumer’s permission to track browsing and app activity. If he doesn’t scrap those rules first, Congress will. Mr. Pai’s Republican allies, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, are in the process of rescinding the F.C.C. privacy rules through the Congressional Review Act, which is basically a tactic used by Congress to remove recently adopted agency rules.

Farhad: Wait, wait, what would these rules have done? From what I’ve read, they would have just stopped your broadband company from tracking you unless they asked permission. That seems … good?

Continue reading the main story

Cecilia: Yep, and that “opt-in” mandate underlies potential fortunes for advertisers. If given the explicit choice of getting tracked online, many consumers would say no. Pai has an interesting argument against the broadband rules that says a lot about his view of the tech industry. He says broadband providers shouldn’t have heavy-handed privacy rules when Google and Facebook don’t. Privacy violations by telecom and tech companies should be policed by the Federal Trade Commission, he argues.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Huh. O.K., what’s next?

Cecilia: The next big target will be net neutrality, which ensures equal access to all content online. Pai wants a diluted version of the rules put in place by Tom Wheeler, his predecessor. He’s going to permit zero-rating and could also be flexible on things like sponsored data, which is when a company like AT&T gives unlimited streaming of DirecTV channels for its mobile customers. That offering would make it much harder for a streaming company like Vimeo to compete.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: Oh boy. It’s sort of incredible how quickly all this is happening. I’d imagined there would at least be a transition period of a few months in which nothing changed, but we’re just going to dive in to a whole new regime for regulating tech and media. Buckle up!

Anyway, thanks for being here. I actually learned something, which, let me tell you, never happens when Mike is here.

Cecilia: Loved being your guest co-pilot. Talk again soon — maybe on the improved Hangouts, with Mike too!

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link