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thankssteveditko · 4 months

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Sony's PlayStation 5 Presents Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (the third game in the series)

I beat the main story and have enjoyed my time with the game overall! I want to talk about spoilers and things that I liked and disliked in the story, so here's a post with some scattered thoughts.

(Hello! I haven't forgotten that this blog exists! Like I said, no update schedule, I will read more of the Lee/Ditko comics whenever I make time for it. I've actually been sitting on a mostly-complete version of this post since I beat the game in October, thinking that I'd finish the rest of the side quests so I could throw in thoughts on those. But... eh, I'll do that whenever the inevitable DLC rolls around. I just wanna get these thoughts posted.)

Spider-Cop No More

First off: they downplayed the cop shit!!! This was the first thing that really struck me about the game, and I'm stunned that they actually listened to criticism on this. I thought we'd just be stuck with it forever.

It'll never be completely gone, of course. Spider-Man is always going to leave criminals webbed up for the police to take to prison, hoping that they'll do their time and come out the other side as Productive Members of Society. That's just a thing I begrudgingly accept as part of the genre that will probably never go away. But Spider-Man is no longer repairing police surveillance networks. You're no longer beating the shit out of random drug dealers. Gangs of escaped convicts still wearing their orange jumpsuits are no longer terrorizing the streets of New York.

Instead, Peter and Miles are played more as firefighters. Sometimes very literally! They work with firefighters, they rescue people from collapsing buildings, they rush injured people to the hospital. In general there's a huge increase in the number of random onlookers present during the big action setpieces, and the Spider-Men frequently have to save them from harm. One of the major side quest lines is even literally about a cult of arsonists, and you'll routinely find burning fuel tanker trucks you have to extinguish with your webs. It's great! Love this for them.

I also generally liked the side missions in this. There's a lot of good stuff with the Spider-Men being neighborhood heroes willing to help out anyone in need, no matter the problem. Some of them can get corny, sure, but that street level stuff has always been the real heart of Spider-Man to me.

Gameplay

The gameplay's as fun as ever. That probably goes without saying. I will not be spending a thousand words explaining that swinging is fun.

In particular, I really liked the changes to the Focus mechanic. I never loved the way Miles' game made you choose between healing and doing your special attacks, but here your four specials have their own cooldowns, and the Focus meter is spent on either healing or finishers. It still offers that risk/reward element, but those vicious cycles where you can't do any real damage because you keep needing to heal aren't nearly as bad as they were before.

Personally I didn't turn off the swing assist or turn on fall damage, because the streamlined swinging never bothered me in these games, but I'm glad the options are there for people who want them.

Kraven

I liked Kraven in this! I liked the way they leaned into his Hunters being this weird death cult, and him wanting to go down in a blaze of glory against a worthy foe, to the point that he's actually disappointed anytime a foe can't kill him. It riffs on things people liked in Kraven's Last Hunt without being the exact same story. I like that Kraven's gang is renting out this manor or whatever and just being a complete terror to the wait staff. I liked the way Kraven hunting Peter's rogues' gallery clashed with Peter's belief in giving his villains second chances. I liked that they were willing to have Kraven kill off a couple of the minor villains from the first game to sell how dangerous he is. (I know some people hated this, but like, come on. We already fought the Sinister Six. They don't need to do that again.) I like the way Kraven pushed Peter to the absolute brink, turning him more and more aggressive with the Black Suit. Good stuff all around, even if the Hunter enemy types did wear out their welcome a little bit by the end.

The Black Suit arc

I think I liked the way Insomniac handled Peter's Black Suit arc overall, but there's a tradeoff here.

They REALLY lean into the body horror tentacle stuff, with Black Suit Peter basically just being a skinny Venom by the end. The sequence where you play as Mary Jane while the symbiote puppets an unconscious Peter's body around and goes on a rampage against the Hunters was REALLY great at selling how scary Peter is becoming, and it made me completely change my tune on the inclusion of the MJ stealth missions in the sequel. Having to beat an out-of-control Peter as Miles immediately after Peter beats Kraven was also really good. This is all cool!

BUT, the thing is... with the symbiote powers being so freaky from the start, it really pushes my suspension of disbelief when Peter and co. take so long to become wary of it. I guess when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider and given superpowers, and when you live in the same universe as the Avengers and the X-Men, your perception of what's "normal" is going to be pretty warped. But they buy the whole "organic exosuit created to treat Harry's illness" story WAY too easily lmao. How do the self-aware slime tentacles help with his illness, exactly?

And I'm not sure how I feel about giving Peter Anti-Venom powers in the last act. It feels like it's primarily a concession so that they can give players that branch of their skill tree back, but honestly, the designer in me thinks it would be really cool (if risky) to just permanently lock players out of Peter's most powerful skills past a certain point. Yeah, it'd definitely piss people off, but it drives home the idea that Peter's given up greater power because it's the right thing to do. It'd put you in his shoes! Instead he just gets the symbiote powers back, but it's fine because the Venom voice in his head is gone and also the slime tendrils that explode out of his body are white now, which means they're good.

I have to say it. I'm sorry. The glistening white goo... they turned Peter into the Amazing Cum-Man. I changed back to the Classic Suit after rolling the credits and forgot I still had the Anti-Venom skills equipped, so I just saw regular old Spider-Man exploding his white goo everywhere. Terrible.

Assuming Peter is just stepping into more of a supporting role to Miles and not fully retiring after the events of this game, I really hope the Anti-Venom stuff is gone. I get that he needed it to counter Venom, but that's not what I want for Peter Parker.

Miles

Miles is good in this, and I really like his arc where he struggles with whether or not he should avenge his dad by killing Martin Li. I like how all that plays out. Unfortunately, they don't quite stick the landing when it comes to making him and Peter feel like equals in terms of narrative focus. His arc is definitely the B-plot to Peter's for the middle chunk of the story, which I guess was kind of inevitable since they decided to do the Black Suit arc. But Miles does at least get a lot of moments to shine, and by the end he's very much taking the lead as the main Spider-Man.

Becoming the main Spider-Man also gets Miles a new, wholly original suit that ended up being super controversial, and honestly... I kinda like it? Or at least I like what it's going for, even if the actual design could still use some work. It's something totally unique for Miles, and I like spandex/streetwear combo suits like what the Spider-Verse movies have popularized. But showing his hair is really pushing the limits of his secret identity. He hangs around Brooklyn Visions WAY too much for his classmates to not recognize his voice and haircut. And I understand why people would be wary about it becoming his "canon" look moving forward. But I think it's got potential.

On the subject of Miles, though, I will say that while I liked Miles' side missions, it feels like he's often saddled with the game's broad, kinda touristy, kinda token attempts at Showcasing The Diversity Of New York, in a way that Peter isn't.

I like that Miles has a deaf graffiti artist girlfriend that he and Ganke sign with, and I like that there's a series of side missions that explore some local jazz history, and I like that there's a mission where Miles helps a gay classmate ask his crush to prom. I like all these things! I like Spider-Man being involved with his community, and that said community includes such a wide variety of people! I like that this game slows down to savor these types of moments instead of just being all action all the time! But when I step back, I notice some patterns.

Hailey doesn't have a big role in the main plot, especially when compared to MJ, but Miles gets a side mission where you briefly play as her with muffled audio to teach you what being deaf is like. There are no major queer characters in the story - unless you count Felicia showing up for exactly one mission to mention she has an unseen, unnamed girlfriend in Paris now - but you get a side mission where Miles helps out a gay couple at his school, who then never come up again. To put it very uncharitably, they can feel like Very Special Episode missions. It's like the devs going: we're going to give Miles a Gay Mission, and an Impaired Hearing Mission, and a Cultural History Mission, so that we can say we touched on these things, but we're gonna make them all optional and keep them far away from the full-blown Superhero Stuff like fighting costumed villains. Those flavors cannot mix. Meanwhile, Peter gets to have a whole elaborate subplot about teaming up with Wraith to track down fucking Cletus Kasady. There's an imbalance here, and I think it's part of the reason why Peter still feels like the "main" Spider-Man for so much of the story.

I think this was all written with admirable intentions, but as others have pointed out, you can kinda tell that this game was mainly written by some white guys based in California. These attempts at depicting various marginalized groups can feel kind of detached in the same way that Insomniac's map of New York doesn't quite line up with the real thing. But I dunno. I'm not really the one to dig deep into some of this stuff as a white woman from Florida. I would be curious to read others' takes on this.

Maybe I'm just being overly cynical about the writers' well-meaning but corny and kinda out of touch liberal politics because of the podcasts.

The podcasters

I wish Jameson was in this more! They psyched us out by giving him a full character model for, like, two scenes. I like him being MJ's boss, but I wish we saw inside the Daily Bugle offices to get more Jameson.

At least his podcasts are better than the ones in the Miles game, though. Him completely trusting in Roxxon was just too much for me. Here he condemns Oscorp for the symbiote shit, and he also gets some moments where he takes the ongoing crises seriously and isn't just ranting about the Spider-Men. He isn't just a conspiracy theorist crackpot here. Shit like his "fuck Spider-Man, we have a justice system for a reason" speech makes him feel more like a human being with a point of view, rather than just a caricature. Definitely an improvement.

Unfortunately, I still find The Danikast grating. I'm sorry, Ashly Burch. It's not your fault. The quirky heckin' wholesome millennial podcaster lady who catches you up on current events and then reminds you to drink 64 ounces of water a day in the same breath is just too much for me. At least she doesn't have any lines as bad as her throwing in a "damn" and then going (direct quote here) "That's right - no censoring! That's how REAL I'm being right now!" like in Miles' game. Instead they give her this, like, almost psychic insight into the main plot to try and make her the angel on Peter's shoulder. The second Peter gets the symbiote she's like "Wow, y'all. Have you seen Spider-Man's new black suit? Something's different about him. He's been giving me such bad vibes lately. #NotMySpiderMan" Also she's supposed to be this, like, underdog independent podcaster who started her show on a whim and has become the voice of the people... but she's got billboards plastered all over the fucking city. Which makes her feel like an industry plant lmao

Again, there's a detachment with the writing. This is, like, some middle aged white liberal game dev guys' idea of what a modern leftist teenager would think is a Cool Activism Podcast. Unfortunately, because Insomniac thinks Danika's a hero, Mary Jane's triumphant ending is that she quits her job at the Bugle to become a podcaster, too, delivering a thinly veiled monologue about the pandemic to kick off her new podcast literally titled "The New Normal." She's going to save the world with podcasting, because that's the highest form of activism, I guess.

Venom

So! Venom! Venom was... okay.

Surprising no one, Harry Osborn is Venom. Harry's okay both as himself and as Venom, but I'm not sure his arc is a smooth one. He starts out as Peter's comically perfect best friend who returns to reminisce about the good ol' days and hand him his dream job on a silver platter, and then later he becomes a little ball of rage over the fact that Peter gets his symbiote and can't/won't give it back. I'm not sure that pivot is handled the most convincingly. You kind of have to write it off as the symbiote messing with their heads, I guess.

When he actually becomes Venom, I'm... mixed on the execution. On the one hand, the cool factor is absolutely there. He's a very cool big monster, and Tony Todd is great in the role. But he also wants to take over the world and make everyone a symbiote, and aside from any lingering resentment towards Peter, that's really all there is to him. It makes for a good video game to have a bunch of symbiote enemies and creepy symbiote nests and symbiote tentacles climbing up the sides of buildings in the last act... but is that really what I want out of Venom? Probably not. But he sure does look cool as a big monster guy to fight, and I was happy he was briefly playable.

Suits

Part of me feels like there's something lacking about the suit selection here, but almost every suit I liked in the previous games is back, and also I'm the type of person to give Peter the Classic Suit the second I unlock it and use that for most of the game. So does it really matter for me?

Peter's selection feels dominated by the various live action movie suits, but I get that those are going to be some of the suits people want to wear the most. I wish he had the Peter B. Parker skin to go with Miles' Spider-Verse alts, though. No idea why it's missing. Really I think I mainly just want more of the Spider-Verse designs.

Also I've complained about how most of the original suits designed for these games make Peter and Miles look like they were bitten by radioactive Alienware products, but I can just, you know. Wear other suits.

Misc thoughts

Everyone's already made this joke, but it's extremely funny that the Avengers didn't help with the symbiote invasion. Took one look at that and decided it wasn't their problem

On the subject of other superheroes, I do wish these games would acknowledge the Fantastic Four more. Peter's close relationship with that team feels woefully underutilized in his various adaptations

I like the trope of a boss fight that's a heightened version of a personal conflict between two people who are close, where throughout the fight the boss is airing out their grievances while the hero tries to get through to them emotionally. That especially works for Spider-Man! But WOW has Insomniac played that card a lot of times by the end of Spider-Man 2 lol

They're teasing the addition of Silk, I guess? I'm gonna be honest, I don't know shit about Silk, but I guess it was inevitable that they'd give us some form of Spider-Woman at some point. Gotta work all those costumes in somehow, and they're not brave enough to let one of the boys cosplay as Spider-Gwen.

They WERE, however, brave enough to let Harry say he loves Peter. I liked that little moment. They presumably meant it platonically, but clearly ol' Yaoi Lowenthal knows what's up

Post-leak addendum

So, obviously, by the time I got around to finishing this post the big Insomniac leak happened. I wish the game industry wasn't so secretive that it took a massive, dangerous data breach just to get our hands on some very basic info that would be public knowledge if Insomniac was a film studio, but here we are.

We now know that Insomniac spent somewhere around $315 million making Spider-Man 2 - triple what the first Spider-Man game cost to make. A quote about this from a leaked presentation has been stuck in my head ever since I first saw it on Twitter. “Is 3x the investment in [Spider-Man 2] evident to anyone who plays the game?”

To be honest, I'm not sure it is.

I liked Spider-Man 2, but I'd probably say that overall I liked it about as much as the first game. It's certainly a somewhat bigger game, with marginally more realistic looking graphics thanks to the power of the PS5. But I think I could do without ray tracing and more realistic hair rendering and whatnot if it meant that these games didn't take like five years and hundreds of millions of dollars to make. I could not give less of a shit if the swinging animations were recycled between games. I'd be fine with them being shorter, too.

I like these games, but as we look at that leaked project lineup and realize that Insomniac is turning into The Marvel Game Studio, I think about how many smaller, more original games that those resources could go towards if they scaled back the Marvel stuff just a bit. How many Ape Escapes or Patapons or Gravity Rushes could get made for the budget of just one of these massive AAA tentpole games of Sony's, which are apparently barely even breaking even? How many could be made for the budget of the "smaller, cheaper" Miles Morales game, which somehow cost $156 million to make despite using an updated version of the same Manhattan map from the first game? Hell, how many smaller games could have been made with the $39 million that went into remastering the first Spider-Man game for PS5 a mere two years after launch? How many people will lose their jobs if any one of Insomniac's upcoming Marvel games underperforms - which, in this case, could mean selling "only" 5 million copies? And would hardcore PlayStation fans even accept those smaller games at this point, now that they've been trained to only appreciate mega-budget Prestige Games with cutting edge graphics and treat everything else with disdain? How much worse will this get as the graphical arms race continues?

I think I just miss Japan Studio. Fuck Sony. Uhh but anyway the Spider-Man game this post was supposed to be about was good, some writing complaints aside. 8/10

#tsd post #other media

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mercurygray · 11 months

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Threat and Promise - Mike Sadler x OFC

Fandom: SAS: Rogue Heroes

Sometimes you have to write something that is so, so blatantly just for you. Really just filth here - and maybe some feelings, after. Consensual adults doing consensual things. Don't say I didn't warn you about it.

If you haven't met Daphne yet, the first part of her story is here at A Falcon, Circling.

He'd been dreaming about this door for a week.

A whole week, Mike had been counting down, to this building and this hallway, and this door, unremarkable to anyone who saw it except to him. The door to an apartment like thousands of others in Cairo, hardly a palace or anything like it. But there would be a royal welcome for him here - he knew it.

He rapped on the wooden surface and stepped back, removing his hat to wait.

The door opened. "Evening, miss," he said with a smile, leaning with one arm against the doorway, his new white beret in his other hand. "Spare a room for a poor soldier?"

Daphne Markham-Reed chuckled. "There's nothing poor about you," she said with a smile, pulling him inside by the half-open collar of his shirt so she could shut the door and kiss him.

This place was a secret, this apartment of hers - a place away from prying eyes where she could do her writing and whatever other mischief she got up to away from her father. Mike knew her well enough not to ask if she knew Dudley Clarke, whose name was a curse to his own commanding officer, or any of the other men who traded in secrets in the Long Bar. He was a secret she wanted to keep - and likewise she to him. The others might bring their girlfriends and their whores out for a drink, but he did not want the others to know what he possessed. Women like her were for men like Sterling, men who had a place in the world they'd never had to carve out for themselves, and he didn't want the reminder. Here in her rooms they were equals.

Daphne's lips were soft and insistent for what seemed like only a moment before she pulled away, less pleased than before. "The desert's still on you," she announced. "You need a bath."

"Are you offering?" he asked with a grin, arms still around her waist. She made a face and pulled even further away. "I could do with a pretty mermaid to help me scrub up."

"No," Daphne remarked, removing herself from his arms. "There's hot water in the tank -- and I've got work to finish, still."

"After, then?" Mike tried with a hopeful smile, picturing what a goddess she'd look like, perfumed and warm atop him in the big claw-foot tub in her bathroom.

"I don't want to see what that water looks like when you're done," she shot back, practical to the hilt. "I was hoping we'd catch dinner, at the Cafe Rococo," she added casually, turning away to go back to her typewriter and her notes. "Though I don't know if they'll let you in with that beard."

"Right, yeah," Mike replied, more than a little disappointed. This last jaunt of Sterling's had been a long one, nearly four whole weeks, and he'd bashed his way through it because he knew that at the end of it there'd be Daphne, alone and unspoiled. He'd done as best he could washing up when he'd left camp, but the desert was the desert and there was always going to be some sand left in his shoes. He did not like dining out - too many people to see him, and wonder at his uniform, his rank, while Daphne looked radiant in her Paris gowns. There was, too, the practical matter of shaving - it took so long to grow back, and his face would look strange and boyish without his beard's weight. But if she insisted. "I'll just… go have a wash and a shave and we'll go."

"Mike?" He turned - she'd caught his disappointment. "Maybe not Rococo -- or the shave," she offered, conciliatory. "I do like you more as a pirate."

That cheered him, a little, and he turned back towards her bathroom with a little bit of hope.

It was strange, after so long in the desert, to be among humans again. He'd heard Paddy Mayne call himself a dog, who spoke dog, and there was some truth in that, a wild thing from a wild place coming back to civilization again. Daphne's bathroom was hardly luxurious, but there was strangeness even here, after so long at Jalo - the silk of a slip, hanging on the back of the door, the cut crystal edges of her perfume bottles, the smooth ceramic edges of the sink and the faucets and the tub, tile and glass and mirror glistening in the late afternoon light.

How miraculous, to turn the tap and watch the tub fill to its allotted line, brim-full with steam! How safe, to strip down to his skin and fear for nothing. He left his clothes on the bathroom rug and gingerly stepped in, letting the water lap his calves before sitting down and feeling the water rush over everything. He closed his eyes, hands still gripping the sides of the tub, and sat for one beautiful moment in the feeling of the water. Not the lukewarmness of a shower poured from a bucket, or the morning chill of a splash from a well, but heat, and comfort. Here he did not have to guard the door.

She kept a bar of soap and cloth particularly for him, after he'd complained once about the smell of hers. First his hair, faint with dust down to his scalp, then hands and arms and shoulders and arse and knees and feet, cloth scrubbing furiously, desperate to be clean. A man could get sores, with the grit and the sand - exquisite pain. Stirling'd had them, and others, and Mike didn't like the thought of it - or Daphne's hands on diseased flesh.

He drew a breath - it didn't do to think on futures that would never be. This was here, and now, and he was in it as he was, unscarred. And clean now, too - the water was proof positive of that. Daphne had been right - he did not want her here, in this. (But clean water, in a clean tub? The thought was ripe for picking.)

Satisfied that the dust was gone, he rose, shaking most of the water loose and scrubbing the rest of himself down with a towel before taking a look in the mirror.

She wasn't wrong - his beard did look rather wild. A clip, perhaps - to rein it in a little. She kept a scissors here for that, too, and he set to work in front of the mirror, trimming carefully to take the wilderness back to what man intended.

"Are you finished?" Her voice came as if from a distance, or a dream.

"Nearly," he replied, taking one final look and the tiniest of clips before brushing the bowl with his hand to scoop the not-inconsiderable amount of beard out of the sink and into the wastebasket. "Well?" He asked, turning to face her. "How have I done? Good enough for dinner?"

She was standing in the doorway in her dressing gown, open and untied so that he could see the slip beneath - sea-foam green silk, an absolute picture. (He'd pin her up in his tent, looking like that, if he didn't know the other fellows would have a wank about her, too, and he did not like to share his things. Daphne was a private pleasure.) She paused. "I'm not sure I'm hungry any more," she said with a mild look, a smile tugging at her lips, and he realized, in the moment, that he was still stark naked, all of her seeing all of him. "At least …not for dinner," she added, the smile widening suggestively as she took another long look at him.

Mike grinned. "You naughty girl," he said, lunging for her even as she turned tail out of the door.

He caught her in the passage, pinning her face-forward against the wall, the silk of her dressing gown treacherous against his cock, his heart thrilling as he heard her breath hitch in anticipation. "Well?" His lips tried to be light at her ear. "Do I still have the desert on me?

"No," she breathed, the word as light as air.

"How long's it been?"

"You know how long."

"Yes, but how long, darling?" He shifted his hips against her, loving the feeling of his body sliding along hers, cock nestling just between her cheeks.

She hissed in frustration. "Three weeks and six days."

Of course she'd have it to the letter. "Should I just have you here?" The threat felt real, though he'd never done it that way before, from behind, against a wall. Now that he'd said it he wanted to try it once, how he'd feel coming up on her. "Seems fair since you wouldn't take my bath with me."

"But how will I see how clean you are then?" She murmured, breathless again, and he growled and smiled and let her go, so she might slip away and turn to face him, disappearing down the passage to her bedroom and leaving him to follow.

She had lain down on the bed, dressing gown slipping from her shoulders, and he dove between her legs to kiss her. He'd been dreaming about this bed for weeks, after the door, the feeling of her coverlet and the curtains and the draft from the window, and Daphne's legs around his hips - or his head.

She met him in the middle, her hands cupping his face for a moment before stroking his shoulders and chest and going lower still. He gasped at her touch, his skin like wildfire. "How long's it been?" she asked, her hand clasping his cock and sliding, like silk again, up and down along his length.

"Yesterday," he said, breathless himself. "I was thinking of you and this bed."

"But how long's it been," she said again, her grasp more insistent, building a little. "How long's it been since me?"

"Three weeks and six days," he repeated again, moaning and pressing against her hand. "Christ, Daff, could you go faster? A man could starve."

"But I want it to count," she replied, and he kissed her, ravenous, moaning into her lips as her hand increased its tempo and he was a man starved and starving still, every muscle flexing and straining against her, his hips fucking into her fingers desperate for all of it, until he felt everything contract and then finally release, warm and insistent, over himself and her hand and the silk of her slip, and his whole body felt loose again.

"Naughty boy," she said, though she did not really seem to mind, reaching to her bedside table to grab for a handkerchief. "Now you've spoiled dinner."

"What an absolute shame," he said, hardly sorry at all, letting her clean her hand before he reached for the cloth himself. "And you've spoiled me."

"Yes, I rather have," she said with a smile. "And I'll do it again, too."

Mike grinned at that, the thought of being spoiled too good to miss. Men like him did not get women like her, except in Cairo, in the middle of a war, when the rules were made to be broken and he who dared won. The others would say it made him weak, wanting for one woman alone. But she owned him, body and soul, and he did not care what this made him, except that he loved her for it, and he would not let her go. "And I'll let you," he said in reply, and it was threat and promise both.

They had four days. He meant to make them count.

#i have written a thing #a spicy thing #mercurygraypresents #daphne markham-reed #sas rogue heroes fanfiction

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popculturebuffet · 1 year

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Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Retrospective Issue 6: Interiors

Hello all you happy autbots and welcome back aboard the lost light. So there's a few bits of buisness to attend to before we hop back on board after our detour with the Wreckers for some needed context, something i'm glad we did as I forgot this issue is essentially a direct sequel to last stand. While Lost Light follows up on some plot points, this one directly follows up on Fort Max and what he went through… and also ties some other threads into it, one being why Whirl is in court mandated therapy in the first place, the other i'll save as if you have context, it's one hell of a cliffhanger. If your me and you didn't, you just scratch your head a bit.

The first is some great news: Brotoman.exe in addition to paying for the wreckers review is now doubling down on patreon, being my first 10 dollar patreon in some time and thus we'll be covering the issues 2 at a time instead of 1.. and sometimes more if he feels like it. While I have something of a schedule ready, it's flexible, so you can expect AT LEAST two issues a month and sometimes more from here on out. We also plan to thread in the two drift mini series, the second wreckers mini series, and the final wreckers one shot as we go.

Threading things in also leads to the second announcment which is a story thing: As a result of how we're doing this the next two months are going to be a bit different barring Brotoman adding any issues as the next three sets of issues are all something diffrent: We'll be covering the two spotlight issues next month. During Phase 1 of IDW Transformers, they frequently did issues like this, little issues to spotlight one character and help widen the story outside of ongoings, the central mini series and what have you. I liked that system a lot, and it's something IDW was really great at and did later again with TMNT, though with Microseries instead (i.e. a one shot with a neat name). There were only two made for the Lost Light side of things and after this phase they stopped doing them, likely both due to both series being so plot dense it was hard to squeeze them in and the addition of Windblade as a third ongoing likely making it finacially tough. We'd still get a few one shots later on with a christmas special and a revolution tie in, but both are more fun side stories.

Then while MTMTE returns in March, it's for our first Scavengers arc. If you haven't read the series, buckle up and if you had, then you know it means our heroes will take a breather so a new bunch of screw ups from the other side of the forever war can take stage. Finally we'll be covering Chaos Theory, which while intended as a prequel to the Chaos arc that ended the Carey era of transformers and ushered in the MTMTE and RID era, it also serves as one ot this series as it sets up cybertron's past, something that will become heavily important to the series and also stealth introduces Whirl. T

So before things change, we've got a hostage situation to deal with so join me as we spend a lot of time in a therapists office under the cut

We open in Rung's office where Fort Max is in therapy. He's not exactly opening up about G9 despite rung prodding, not wanting to relive his trauma… which as we see had Overlord planning to murder someone every second he didn't reveal the truth. We also find out why Overlord was intrested in Aquetius and thus had max plugged in, as in hindsight , and I kick myself for not thinking of this he had no reason to other than to be a dick, which was probable but didn't seem right. Why would a rogue decpticon care about airing the autobots dirty laundry? That wouldn't get megatron to notice him and fufill his death wish any faster. No he wanted something UNDER IT. There was something else there and having forgotten what i'm chomping at the bit to find out. Point is he's not opening up.

What is open , for now anyways is swerve as they play a rousing game of guess who transformed, which Chromedome is great at though Rewind is usually better. Pipes.. is alive?!

Yeah I was floored by this. While I remember a lot about more than meets the eye, some details just slipped so i'd just.. assumed pipes was good and dead last time but other than being shaky about transforming, for obvious reasons, he's fine… for now. As for where Rewind is he's outside as Tailgate finds out when he sits down, having asked Cyclonus to join them and got the response you'd respect

We also get a hint of how the two met .. at a relinquishment clinic but that's all we ge tfor now

Ultra Magnus walks in… and as you'd expect yells at swerve before dragging him off in chains.. well handcuffs, Rodimus hid the chains for obvious reasons. Fort Max then comes in grumpy.. and just up and shoots pipes. Yeah I forgot about this part.. I knew what he did NEXT… but it's one of the only joys of my spotty memory: sometimes you forget a moment or something, and thus you get to be suprised all over again.

So things then went from bad to worse as we find out in the situation room later that day: Max didn't stop with just pipes, shooting 4 robots we've never heard of on his way out and now holding Rung hostage. Thanks to Blaster, Soundwaves sadly undeerultized autobot counterpart, they have visual. Magnus also stops in and naturally is very I told you so.. and has earned it as he's absoltuely right that the recently traumatized POW should NOT have been carring around his big old gun. HE still probably coudl've done what he's done so far WITHOUT one, granted, but it wouldn't be nearly as easy. Our heroes find a ray of hope though someone's in there with him who Rodimus hopes is a beacon of stablity and calm to help defuse this tense situa…

We also find out why he's doing this besides you know, clearly needing the therapy he's refused to actually take seriously

While what he's doing is not right he's holding an innocent man and whirl hostage to vent his anger is horrible… said anger is understandable. G9 went silent for years and while sure, we know part of it was Megatron's invasion left the autobots barely functoning due to a combination of their numbers being worn down to next to nothing and bad writing, he dosent know that and even if he did.. they stilll sent ONE SQUAD two years later. It's hard not to feel for the guy even as he's holding an innocent bot whose using his thumb microphone to broadcast the sound hostage… which backfires as soon as Fort Max catches on.. and immdeitly uses up said sympathy twice in a row. He assholishly demands Rodimus turn the ship around and refuses to talk to him or listen to the fact their FAR too far from cybertron for that to actually work anyway, and then rips out Rung's thumb.

One final touch i'll note from all this.. the fact Rodimus.. looked sad as he figured out what Fort Max meant. The guy has enough flaws to fill several more issues of this very comic, but it shows he does care and does feel horrible about what max went through.. even if he's not about to aquiese to his demands.

In the medbay for a thankful break Ratchet notices a pattern.. he'll say it later but all the victims.. look like overlord. Not exactly, pipes for instance has a cool visor thing, but they all have purple eyes and light blue and dark blue chasis.

Back at the hostage situation

Whirl just says to kill them already and be done with it, especially since as he put earlier, telling Rodimus to do something he dosen't want to do never works. This does get Fort Max curious.. why is HE in therapy and in the dog house and while Whirl being.. whirl refuses to answer at first, it's telling that when Max threatens to shoot rung he instantly complies. Whirl was kicked out of the wreckers, we'll find out why shortly, and took it "shoot up the place" badly, so hence the therapy. He also reveals a key part of his backstory for the first time

We'll get a more fleshed out version of this soon enough, but for now comnand notice rungs pointing at his model of the lost light.. specifically to where he is.. and to it's window.

Outside the unlikely duo of Swerve and Rewind are re-riviting the ship as punishment: Swirl for his bar, which he figures he'll keep since while Magnus naturally hates it, Rodimus will brush it off, and Rewind for those discs we saw him get back in issue 1, one of our first chekovs guns to get fired. I really should've been counting every time this series foreshadows something. Maybe next time. Point is we find out they were essentially snuff films: heavy casualty battles that sort of thing. Though rewind isn't a monster.. .he just wants to find someone. He dosent' open up who, yet another setup for later, but we will indeed find out. For now our heroes are useful as being outside they can reach the window and pull a gun on the guy pulling a gun.

Back at the office, Whirl continues his story…

This.. is where Whirl really grew on me. At first he just seems like a quippy, trigger happy robot dead pool but actually forced to get the therapy needs…. that's not bad.. but like wade himself finding out WHY he's like that and seeing the heart underneath really makes him more loveable. He just wanted to make watches, lost that, became a thug, and while he clearly again needs help… it's easy to see why he turned out like this. He was only an autobot because Prime saw good in him.. while Whirl dosen't phrase it that way.. that's really how I feel it. Optimus may be many things.. but he's a good bot and while i'm sure not letting megatron gain more followers was a tiny consideration, the fact is knowing him.. he just saw a bot who was lost and needed a better purpose and took him in for that. It's also likely why, however misguided, he tried to end springer: he saw a friend in pain. Granted it wasn't the best call and he shoudln't of done that, but given what Springer had been through emotinally and physically on garrus 9, you can understand why he might try to do a one flew over the cuckoos nest.

Him declaring rung his friend is also sweet and reframes his actions this whole issue. Sure on paper he's putting everyone at risk because he dosen't care if he nor anyone lives or dies.. but in practice, it's kept the gun AWAY from rung. It's kept Max, aside from the whole thumb incident, focused not on harming Whirl's friend.. but on Whirl himself, who can not only take the hit (He earlier took two punches to the face from Max, but likely figures if he gets shot, then it'll force the bots outside to rush in. He's trying to sacrifcie himself to save Whirl. Why he considers him a friend, to close this bit out… is also easy: Most people on the ship see Whirl as an unstable screwup and while it's mildly true… Rung so far is the only person to treat the guy with kindness, humanity and as a person and not just the mistakes that person made or his mental illness. He's someone trying to help who genuinely belives hin him and that's likely barely happened in the poor bots life.

Things then deteroiate fast as Fort notices they aren't moving and is somehow suprised Rodimus hasn't reverserd course because you know.. why would he? Swerve tries to take the shot, but with Fort max under a pillar Rewind is forced to use those snuff films to his advantage.. using footage of Garrus 9. We get a truly heartbreaking sequence afterwords: Rung manages to calm a freaked out max down.. but not wanting to take a chance Rodimus orders the shot. As a result rewind accidently hits poor Rung, while Whirl stabs Fort Max for causing all of this.

So we end rather grimly: Rodimus is clearly wracked with guilt, the art doing a nice amount of the lifting to show this, and wants Max locked down tight by Red Alert… while Drift is concerned as Red Alert's been acting paranoid hearing voices.. but as we learned last issue those voices are real.. and as we see at the close of this one we not only find out what he was hearing.. but just what Prowl had the duobots smuggle on board

I told you overlord would be important did i?

On that cliffhanger we close this issue. I'm pausing the soundtrack reviews for now both due to the increased workload a coming, and because they just haven't been clicking. They've felt like an afterthrought and it's better to just roll out when the issue does. So i'll see you next month for some Decpticon Shenanigans, and till all are one thanks for reading.

#transformers more than meets the eye #transformers #fortress maximus #rung #whirl #swerve #overlord

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neurodiversebones · 2 years

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this is irrelevant to anything but you asked for asks and so i am asking: what are your thoughts/vibes/knowledge of star wars?

i really do not know much about it but i do associate it with some good memories so i'm gonna use this chance to tell a happy childhood story that kind of turned into a writing piece as i went on . i know this is not at ALL what you asked for im so sorry bestie i just started rambling .

so for context- my dad and older brother share a special interest in star wars. back when some of the newer movies were coming out (rogue one + last jedi), my dad would spend MONTHS telling us exactly how many days until they were released. and sometime within the first week of their release, both of my brothers and i would get signed out of school for the whole afternoon, and we'd go out and see the movie. now, for anyone who doesn't know me personally, my dad has severe agoraphobia- he struggles to even go to the grocery store more than twice a year, so a giant mall in december would have been out of the question otherwise. but he was so excited about these damn movies- it was one of the only times in my life he'd ever taken me somewhere. i really didn't even care for star wars, but i was so excited to go out with my dad and brothers that it was one of my favourite events of the year. hell, i don't even like my dad, but i didn't really know that at the time.

and so there we were, in the nerdy star wars shirts my mum bought for us at walmart- mine had nine different darth vader helmets, each labelled a different emotion (a la mid 2010s kristen stewart memes)-, all lining up with more candy and drinks than should ever be provided to three hyperactive children on a school night. i don't remember much about the movies, other than the fact that i was so excited to see girls who saved themselves. i remember being pissed about the ending of rogue one, because i grew so attached to these characters just to see them explode out of existence. i remember getting motion sickness the whole ride home because i was allowed to have an entire bag of skittles and a giant orange slushy all in one sitting, and yet i would do the same thing the very next year.

that is one of the few good memories i have with my dad, and so i do attach good vibes to star wars because of it :-)

#i haven't seen any of the other movies since i was like five #im sorry for what this turned into i have no clue what happened !!! i just started typing #i know this is nowhere near what you wanted LMAO #welcome to my public diary i guess

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cindera-etharians · 2 years

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"Don't talk to me about loss, I've lost more than you ever could. Do you know what it's like to have your heart broken so many times? Course not, you're a professional not allowed to love or care.

I was a damn fine soldier once, a vanguard of King Lires army. I've fought from the pearl coast to the mandeers forest and my men were some of the finest fighters. I lead them into some of the worst battles and came out unscathed, but...Cindera, that battle would be my last. We were ordered like many times before, "go in first and slaughter them". So we did, the clashing of steel and the whistling of arrows all around us. Back to back cutting down the bastards. Men cried like babes, bleeding out, the ground was saturated with so much blood it made us slip.

We were supposed to hold out until the calvary flanked them, but it didn't happen. We were surrounded and getting cut down like wheat, those still dying clutched at my legs begging me for help, I could feel myself being dragged down.....I had to do it, I had to kill them....my own men... what else could I do?

What few of us remained barely fought our way out back to our line, wounded and covered in so much blood it thickened on our armour. They sing about the glory of battle, aye there is but they don't tell you...they don't tell you that it haunts your dreams. You know what we got when we made it back? Not a medal or praise but fucking chastised! for retreating, my service my loss just to be thrown down like a bloody rotten apple.

The drinks flowed that night and into the morning, we made a choice. Keep fighting this damned war, or desert and head to our loved ones. We tore off our insignias and left in the night, some went south, the rest came with me westward, I offered them rest once we'd make it to my home.

You ever felt an overwhelming joy to see your loved ones? That the risk of death because you abandoned your oath didn't cross your mind, because all you can think is thier smile, thier warmth when you embrace them.

I never got to experience that... instead I arrived at an empty house with a note on the table, turns out she'd been getting pricked by some skeevy rat for quite some time. She had a enough my going away for months at a time fighting senseless battles so she ran away with the dog. My daughter's gone as well...my children, she took everything yet I gave her and the kids all the spoils from my victories to keep them out of being poor. To make sure they wouldn't go hungry, she lost love for me.... I'd have hung myself if my men didn't stop me. I thought that she'd calm my nightmares....I never thought she'd be apart of 'em.

What'd you expect from a man who has nothing left but skills in fighting? Course we'd gone rogue and took whatever the fuck we liked. Recruited those who were left to die by our so called King, touring the country side we called it, ambushing merchants and the like, sometimes units on patrol. You ever see those poor saps in the streets of Bedliehm? Loyal soldiers once proud, now broken and begging in the streets like lowborn rats. That's how they're treated, I'd be damned if I let my men end up like them, lower than a common rat, that's why we do it. You think it's right for men who gave everything, then to tossed aside like they were fucking nothing, lose everything that was keeping them alive inside, to end up lower than human? A shell of a man. Tell me, how's that fair.

Now, you've come here hunting me down like a rabbid hound. How much was it for my head, 300, 400 gold? Ha! I was worth nothing at Cindera, my love meant nothing to my wife but as soon as I made my own.....MY OWN DAMN GLORY! They fucking care now don't they?! Care enough to send you after me,.....what does it matter now.

You've cut down my friends, my men. Scorched whatever I had left, what's it fucking matter now. So, are you going to cut me down or find some rope and a tree with a strong limb, what are you going to do now Huntsman? How will my story end."

#writing #world building #character #medival #mediaeval #battle #monologue #wrote #write #story #storytelling #war #vanguard #warfare #soldier #bandit

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