OOC X-COM Think Tank (part 4)

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
And another from Dalh and Zombs.

What is this crap? Pleasant gift giving? Making new friends? Yakone not being tortured? Where are my Ethereals mind raping people, burning people alive, and sacrificing their own children in order to soften up their enemy!?

Seriously though, today was enjoyable. I did make the mistake of telling Gem/Marine privately what I thought of their collab and forgetting to post it here.

Good chemistry between Yakone and Desmond. Went over a lot less awkwardly then I thought it would. Interesting to see the conflict Desmond has of wanting to be loyal to his new life but also wanting to help his daughter. Good attempts at justification (even if I don't feel like they quite justify enough). I wish I could have a deeper look into both Yakone and Desmond's thoughts. And it makes me look forward to the day Yakone and Desmond face off or, even better, Atka and Desmond (or perhaps Alex and Desmond... perhaps:oops:).
 

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
and-now-for-something-completely-different.jpg

 

Taxor_the_First

Well-Known Member
So today was an odd one for me. My parents have owned and worked in a pharmacy in my hometown for as long as I can remember. I know the place like the back of my hand, I've known most of the people working there all my life, and I myself have worked here for the past 4 or 5 years.

But my parents are getting old. They sold the shop a few weeks ago, and the change of hands is about to occur. So it was my last day today.

I am unashamed to say I walked out of there crying like a little bitch. Still am, actually. Said goodbye to a lot of friends today.

So thank everyone that posted something today for giving me something to read when I got home to pull my mind out of that. Honestly, you all do this everyday, but today I really needed it. Seriously, thank you for being quality writers. All of you. Nothing like saying goodbye to friends to make you appreciate the ones you have.

.... why are there no fucking tissues in this house?! Fucking hell...
 

MarineAvenger

Operator 21O
Staff member
So today was an odd one for me. My parents have owned and worked in a pharmacy in my hometown for as long as I can remember. I know the place like the back of my hand, I've known most of the people working there all my life, and I myself have worked here for the past 4 or 5 years.

But my parents are getting old. They sold the shop a few weeks ago, and the change of hands is about to occur. So it was my last day today.

I am unashamed to say I walked out of there crying like a little bitch. Still am, actually. Said goodbye to a lot of friends today.

So thank everyone that posted something today for giving me something to read when I got home to pull my mind out of that. Honestly, you all do this everyday, but today I really needed it. Seriously, thank you for being quality writers. All of you. Nothing like saying goodbye to friends to make you appreciate the ones you have.

.... why are there no fucking tissues in this house?! Fucking hell...
Well, life sucks and changes have to happen but hopefully your parents can enjoy their later years and that you are alright.
 

Dahlexpert

Well-Known Member
So today was an odd one for me. My parents have owned and worked in a pharmacy in my hometown for as long as I can remember. I know the place like the back of my hand, I've known most of the people working there all my life, and I myself have worked here for the past 4 or 5 years.

But my parents are getting old. They sold the shop a few weeks ago, and the change of hands is about to occur. So it was my last day today.

I am unashamed to say I walked out of there crying like a little bitch. Still am, actually. Said goodbye to a lot of friends today.

So thank everyone that posted something today for giving me something to read when I got home to pull my mind out of that. Honestly, you all do this everyday, but today I really needed it. Seriously, thank you for being quality writers. All of you. Nothing like saying goodbye to friends to make you appreciate the ones you have.

.... why are there no fucking tissues in this house?! Fucking hell...

Glade we were able to help you with your day, hope your parents enjoy there later years. And her's hopen you be OK, I know what it's like to say good by to a friend. It's relay difficult.
 

DarkGemini24601

Well-Known Member
Got a solo for you guys. Wrote the bulk of it on friday, and refine it today.

You're welcome for the dramatized character development.
 

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
Got a solo for you guys. Wrote the bulk of it on friday, and refine it today.

You're welcome for the dramatized character development.
Dream, dream, everybody dream...

...that's all I got because work has been too busy for me to actually read it. That should change in about... an hour.
 

ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
Got a solo for you guys. Wrote the bulk of it on friday, and refine it today.

You're welcome for the dramatized character development.
Quite enjoyable. I was a little afraid from the beginning that it was going to turn into the Tree Scene from The Evil Dead (of you don't know, don't ask), but loved the little trip into Yakone's mental sanctuary. There nods to my characters were nice. And the literal struggle against one's inner flaw was great. It really wants me to see Yakone fight Zemsis'jiputer.

And that last line? “I’d be humbled to practice with you, then." Genius.
 

DarkGemini24601

Well-Known Member
As I know there are people here that haven't watched all of the previous seasons of RWBY yet, anyone that responds to me, please keep your responses in spoiler boxes. That said,
When I saw the opening sequence on youtube, I had some concerns about the direction the story was going to take. Most of them have been proven to be entirely well-founded. Prepare yourself for a rant:

Alright, so it begins well enough. We get to see the birth of grim from these alien-like vats of goo. The animation team shows off that they can do fluid dynamics now. Cool. We then cut to a shot of Emerald and Mercury. I'm surprised to see these two already, but that's not a bad thing.

Unfortunately, from here, things start to take a downward turn. We're introduced to Salem's henchmen. Hazel is this brutish guy that says little and is probably pretty strong. He seems utterly boring from a primary antagonist on equal standing to Cinder. Meh. Then the crazy guy, Tyrian. He seems entirely shallow and one-dimensional. He's insane, likes murder, does the maniacal laugh. That's it. Watts, the fellow with the mustache, actually seems to have a little promise. He's smart, he was playing with that Scroll (could he be the architect of the computer virus used in Voume 3 against Atlas?) And of course Cinder. You know, it's divine justice that by killing Pyrrha, who wasn't a threat to her, she's suffering as much as she did. HOWEVER, Salem makes it quite clear that Cinder is going to be backseated for at least this Volume, so... best villain out of comission.

As for Salem herself, I feel like showing her off this early is a mistake. When she walked in, her henchmen seemed more surprised than afraid. She doesn't really carry much of an aura of power, and so far has given me really nothing to be engaged with other than her connection with Ozpin (which was established LAST season). She claims he's dead, but I severely doubt that it's that simple. After these six minutes of discussion that probably could have been a little shorter, we cut away to...

A farmer boy. Knee-jerk reaction: "Who the hell is this asshole?" We get like one or two minutes or him. I've seen theories that he might be a maiden pretending to be a guy to hide from Salem's people, probably Spring. But seeing as Tyrian is sicced on Ruby, not him, showing this guy/gal right now seems entirely irrelevant.

After 7 minutes and 40 seconds, we finally arrive at team JNRR, RNGR, whatever. I'm glad to see Ren talking more, and his dynamic with Nora is... more or less there, though I can't help but feel it's a little hollow right now. Ruby is doing good, and as I predicted off of the trailer (based on how Ruby had improved her combat skills and Jaune sounded more serious), Jaune is the one leading this composite team as their strategist. So that was cool. I'm also happy possession-type Grimm are confirmed with the Geist, thought the fight itself felt a little too long and a little less interesting that it could have been. It consisted of pretty much hitting it over the course of like 5 minutes until it died, nothing special. Ruby's combo attack with Nora was cool though. The weapons feel a little less so this Volume.

Subsequently, with their mission complete, team RNGR (I'm going with that one) heads over to the town to collect their reward. The scene between Ruby and Jaune was funny, but I can't help but feel it went on too long, dragged out the joke. He gets his new equipment (which... aside from incorporating Pyrrha's metals doesn't really seem different?) and the team proceeds to keep heading along their journey. So overall, the Geist fight was fluff, and nothing of real import takes place with team RNGR in this episode. Wait, what, it's almost the end of this episode?

We get a short scene with Weiss that sets up the next episode, and then just like that, cut to the opening sequence, it's over. This episode had... nineteen minutes to get me engaged and hyped for this Volume. Honestly? It failed. Now that I've run through it, I'm going to try to explain why.

The most basic element of how it fell short was the pacing. The episodes are now much longer, but I can't help but feel like they actually don't accomplish more than the short episodes of the first three seasons. I noticed several times as evidenced above that things felt really slow. The opening sequence worried me about this. It wasn't fast-paced rock like the prior three songs, and even the animation in it was sluggish. The pacing is all off and swamped, and I feel like this extends to the storyline as much as the fight scene we've seen. The trailer fight was a lot cooler (though I suppose the Red Trailer was that way too... but now Ruby actually IS as badass as she was shown to be in the V4 trailer).

Tied to the pacing is the organization format of the show. Lord help us, it's exactly what I feared it would be. Jumping around between all four of the girls of team RWBY. The reason this is bad is because that essentially means that this Volume is going to get nowhere in terms of progression. When you're cutting between four characters, you have 1/4 of the time to move the story along.

And speaking of the girls being split up, so far that risk that Roosterteeth has taken has not paid off. I don't feel like Ruby has really gained anything from the separation so far other than improving her skills out of necessity. From what the opening sequence suggests, Weiss is going to spend this entire volume doing 2 things: arguing with her dad and learning how to summon her knight in full. Blake is going to go after Adam I'm guessing, and probably fail to stop him for now. Yang is going to... come to terms with the loss of her arm, and that may be all. In addition to their storylines progressing at a crawl, I really, REALLY miss the chemistry the team had going. Their separation so far has done nothing for me but bring down the engagement levels I had in the show.

Volume 4, if it continues along this path, is set up to be really boring, in short. I hope that maybe this is just the case of a slow first episode, and things will really pick up after this, but so far, I'm not impressed. This is coming from someone that loved the prior 3 Volumes. I don't mind the darkness whatsoever, but it's not being UTILIZED to do anything interesting thus far.
 

MarineAvenger

Operator 21O
Staff member
As I know there are people here that haven't watched all of the previous seasons of RWBY yet, anyone that responds to me, please keep your responses in spoiler boxes. That said,
When I saw the opening sequence on youtube, I had some concerns about the direction the story was going to take. Most of them have been proven to be entirely well-founded. Prepare yourself for a rant:

Alright, so it begins well enough. We get to see the birth of grim from these alien-like vats of goo. The animation team shows off that they can do fluid dynamics now. Cool. We then cut to a shot of Emerald and Mercury. I'm surprised to see these two already, but that's not a bad thing.

Unfortunately, from here, things start to take a downward turn. We're introduced to Salem's henchmen. Hazel is this brutish guy that says little and is probably pretty strong. He seems utterly boring from a primary antagonist on equal standing to Cinder. Meh. Then the crazy guy, Tyrian. He seems entirely shallow and one-dimensional. He's insane, likes murder, does the maniacal laugh. That's it. Watts, the fellow with the mustache, actually seems to have a little promise. He's smart, he was playing with that Scroll (could he be the architect of the computer virus used in Voume 3 against Atlas?) And of course Cinder. You know, it's divine justice that by killing Pyrrha, who wasn't a threat to her, she's suffering as much as she did. HOWEVER, Salem makes it quite clear that Cinder is going to be backseated for at least this Volume, so... best villain out of comission.

As for Salem herself, I feel like showing her off this early is a mistake. When she walked in, her henchmen seemed more surprised than afraid. She doesn't really carry much of an aura of power, and so far has given me really nothing to be engaged with other than her connection with Ozpin (which was established LAST season). She claims he's dead, but I severely doubt that it's that simple. After these six minutes of discussion that probably could have been a little shorter, we cut away to...

A farmer boy. Knee-jerk reaction: "Who the hell is this asshole?" We get like one or two minutes or him. I've seen theories that he might be a maiden pretending to be a guy to hide from Salem's people, probably Spring. But seeing as Tyrian is sicced on Ruby, not him, showing this guy/gal right now seems entirely irrelevant.

After 7 minutes and 40 seconds, we finally arrive at team JNRR, RNGR, whatever. I'm glad to see Ren talking more, and his dynamic with Nora is... more or less there, though I can't help but feel it's a little hollow right now. Ruby is doing good, and as I predicted off of the trailer (based on how Ruby had improved her combat skills and Jaune sounded more serious), Jaune is the one leading this composite team as their strategist. So that was cool. I'm also happy possession-type Grimm are confirmed with the Geist, thought the fight itself felt a little too long and a little less interesting that it could have been. It consisted of pretty much hitting it over the course of like 5 minutes until it died, nothing special. Ruby's combo attack with Nora was cool though. The weapons feel a little less so this Volume.

Subsequently, with their mission complete, team RNGR (I'm going with that one) heads over to the town to collect their reward. The scene between Ruby and Jaune was funny, but I can't help but feel it went on too long, dragged out the joke. He gets his new equipment (which... aside from incorporating Pyrrha's metals doesn't really seem different?) and the team proceeds to keep heading along their journey. So overall, the Geist fight was fluff, and nothing of real import takes place with team RNGR in this episode. Wait, what, it's almost the end of this episode?

We get a short scene with Weiss that sets up the next episode, and then just like that, cut to the opening sequence, it's over. This episode had... nineteen minutes to get me engaged and hyped for this Volume. Honestly? It failed. Now that I've run through it, I'm going to try to explain why.

The most basic element of how it fell short was the pacing. The episodes are now much longer, but I can't help but feel like they actually don't accomplish more than the short episodes of the first three seasons. I noticed several times as evidenced above that things felt really slow. The opening sequence worried me about this. It wasn't fast-paced rock like the prior three songs, and even the animation in it was sluggish. The pacing is all off and swamped, and I feel like this extends to the storyline as much as the fight scene we've seen. The trailer fight was a lot cooler (though I suppose the Red Trailer was that way too... but now Ruby actually IS as badass as she was shown to be in the V4 trailer).

Tied to the pacing is the organization format of the show. Lord help us, it's exactly what I feared it would be. Jumping around between all four of the girls of team RWBY. The reason this is bad is because that essentially means that this Volume is going to get nowhere in terms of progression. When you're cutting between four characters, you have 1/4 of the time to move the story along.

And speaking of the girls being split up, so far that risk that Roosterteeth has taken has not paid off. I don't feel like Ruby has really gained anything from the separation so far other than improving her skills out of necessity. From what the opening sequence suggests, Weiss is going to spend this entire volume doing 2 things: arguing with her dad and learning how to summon her knight in full. Blake is going to go after Adam I'm guessing, and probably fail to stop him for now. Yang is going to... come to terms with the loss of her arm, and that may be all. In addition to their storylines progressing at a crawl, I really, REALLY miss the chemistry the team had going. Their separation so far has done nothing for me but bring down the engagement levels I had in the show.

Volume 4, if it continues along this path, is set up to be really boring, in short. I hope that maybe this is just the case of a slow first episode, and things will really pick up after this, but so far, I'm not impressed. This is coming from someone that loved the prior 3 Volumes. I don't mind the darkness whatsoever, but it's not being UTILIZED to do anything interesting thus far.
When I saw that farmer in white and orange, the orange eyes and black hair please tell me you thought of Mathas too Gem. XD Most of the complaints are valid EXCEPT for Jeane's armor. The blacksmith said there were some upgrades so I am assuming from probably being stronger, the things have some unforseen stuff as well. Honestly, I hope we see more of him and him struggling to handle the grief of losing Phyrra.
 

DarkGemini24601

Well-Known Member
When I saw that farmer in white and orange, the orange eyes and black hair please tell me you thought of Mathas too Gem. XD Most of the complaints are valid EXCEPT for Jeane's armor. The blacksmith said there were some upgrades so I am assuming from probably being stronger, the things have some unforseen stuff as well. Honestly, I hope we see more of him and him struggling to handle the grief of losing Phyrra.
Yeah, I'm hoping we get to see more of Jaune. It was... off that he was the butt-monkey of jokes when we can tell he's a lot more serious now. Hopefully his sword and shield do cool things now. Harpoon-blade maybe, to play off Pyrrha's spear? And she could throw her shield, dunno what he might be able to do with his.
 

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ZombieSplitter53

Game Master
Staff member
Yeah, I'm hoping we get to see more of Jaune. It was... off that he was the butt-monkey of jokes when we can tell he's a lot more serious now. Hopefully his sword and shield do cool things now. Harpoon-blade maybe, to play off Pyrrha's spear? And she could throw her shield, dunno what he might be able to do with his.
Malboro_Final_Fantasy_VII_edit1.jpg
 
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