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Category: Entertainment

I admit, the idea of a new “Barda” focused Story is intriguing

For one thing, a Barda-Only Story where Barda gets her hands on the Onyx Sword from Gods and Monsters and jumping universes to meet the somewhat criminal Superman of that earth would make for a cool comic.

The Premise is fun, there was an anomaly at the Source Remnant on New Genesis. The Source Remnant has this sword hilt in it, when grabbed the MotherBox like tech in the sword activates and tells Barda a secret way into this alternate universe. It also tells her that in this alternate Scott Free is a strong and powerful warrior.

You set up that she needs “Scott Free” from Gods and Monsters Universe to donate some blood for Local Mister Miracle because his time on Apokolips robbed him of something from his diet that every child on New Genesis gets. Subsequently an organ is shutting down.

Barda has to get a sample and reading from “Bad Scott Free” to save her husband, strangely the sword “Wants to Go Home”

An RPG in “The Matrix”

Back in the late 90s and Early 2000s, before there was a Matrix Sequel or even “The Animatrix” there was just “The Matrix” and what we knew about the world of it from that first movie. It was full of the promise that “anyone” could be have super powers in the Matrix and that all it took was being “shown the way”

Well, I took that idea and ran with it. The Premise [in the RPG] was that a famous former Superman actor had received cutting edge nano-tech treatments for his spinal injury, allowing him to walk again and the tech became widely available to the point that humans commonly had enhancements to their bodies. This led to a singularity of humanity and machine where machine intelligence was born and became independent from human intelligence.

Machines had typically been slaves to humans and humanity (for the most part) wanted that to continue, but the Machines had their own goals, emotions and needs now. They were a new mode of being, purely software in any shell they could imagine. It was wonderful for the new machines, but humanity was envious of the freedom of the machine children and war broke out and “the plot of the Matrix” happened.

I don’t recall where the idea of multiple Matrixes came from, but the premise was that the “real world” in the Movie was less desolate, but that humanity was pushed mostly to “the moon” and the war between Humanity and the Machines had pushed those with the resources to do it to leave earth for the “the moon” and so Humans had to hold orbital launch stations at the poles to allow for resources to be dropped to the core.

Also, “The Matrix” that we saw in the Movie was just “That Matrix” and there were others, some with Magic, Some with Superheroes, Some with Cowboys, the premise being the GM could set the story in a Matrix with rules they could set and give the players different things to do other than “Be Neo”

I ended up scrapping it, especially after the other movies came out, I changed the title to “The Sequence” after the initial code snippet that “turned on” Machine intelligence and left it to lie

I don’t even know what happened to the manuscript at this point, it’s somewhere on a disk.

I did get it printed and bound though, since I had access to the means, along with a book of poems I wrote while working the phones for “Teh Nortons”

The Solar Farms

Alright, so this is a pitch for a story at DC about Superman using the Kryptonian propensity for Energy Storage as a way to grew and sell living beings as batteries.

So the setting is like this.  Centuries before Krypton was poisoned and Kryptonians could still leave the planet without special aids a “Tropey” Grey Alien is found kidnapping Kryptonians of every station and house.  The Grey Alien ignores their indignation, some of them talk about a truce or an agreement with “the Grey” and the Alien just turns away and proceeds to stretch them on a medical device to the point they call out in pain and several devices appear from arms around them and extract matter from every part of them.  They scream or complaint, the Grey looks on dispassionately, gesturing to a machine that displays “memory alteration” and we see the Kryptonian returned to where they presumably came from, like they had stumbled or had a bad dream.

Earth, START LABS YEAR CURRENT -5 a scientist has been sequencing Kryptonian DNA from samples from Superman when he has been de-powered here and there (they are all over the place if you look!) and has determined that while cloning a perfect copy is out of the question due to handwaved technology limits for the story.  Buuut, there is the possibility that they could tease out a few features of Kryptonian Physiology, namely the ability to absorb and retain solar energy in order to use that stored energy to “Dealers Choice of Supermans Powers”  only one power at a time, but you could potentially be super strong, or have eye blasts, or something, but there’s no way to control it.

So we’ve set up two threads.

Somewhere in Sector 7821 Green Lantern Grtan of The Osmis Cluster runs into a space cruiser stuck in a null sector, a sector of space with a negative infraction ratio it absorbs light like a black hole.  It has shut down the craft.  On investigation the Green Lantern digs in the bowels of the craft and discovers a humanoid baby inside a massive solar reactor,.  Grtan ignites their ring and orders it to create a stable yellow sun radiation field.  At which point the child appears to swell as it absorbs the light, slowly at first and eventually to a grotesque extent, until it’s flesh touches a contact point on the reactor and THE REACTOR LIGHTS!!!

The craft explodes from the Null sector, the Green Lanterns corpse is expelled from the craft by an unseen person and the spacecraft zooms into the stars, leaving Grtan floating in space.  A ring distress signal summons “Dealers Choice Green Lantern” who takes Grtan to a nearby planet.

 

STAR labs has some test subject, animals that have been given one each of Superman’s powers, so they have a dog that can fly and horse that can stomp and cause damage and a cat that is VERY fast, but it has to be coated in a special suit because it keeps tearing it’s fur out. Jimmy Olsen comes across a mouse that seems to be able to find treats no matter where they are hidden, and discovers a tattoo on it that leads back to start labs. The little mouse escaped the lab (because it has Superman’s prodigious senses) and so it was able to navigate to the open air where Jimmy Found it and snatched it up and “saved it” from being stomped on by a passerby.

So we have two threads, Earth Scientists are using Superman’s Genetics to create potential weapons and the Grey who has turned Kryptonian Clones into batteries.

Neat!

Legions of Things

It took what seemed like years to finish “Watch Dogs: Legion” and literal Years for me to sit down and finish “Legion” from Marvel Television and I didn’t plan it, but I finished them both the same night.

Watchdogs: Legion is the continuation of the series started with “Watchdogs”, continued in “Watchdogs 2: Silicon Valley Monsters!” and now “Watchdogs: Legion” and I think this latest edition might have finally figured out the formula for the games, and that is to not have a primary character.

“Watchdogs: Legion” is (like the previous games and pretty much every Ubisoft game) an open world with a bunch of stuff to do while following a main mission. The “twist” for WD:Legion is that you can recruit “anyone” to join your fight. Including “bad guys” which is really where the game play system shines, you recruit someone, do a couple missions (sadly repetitive ones) and they join your team. All you can customize is their clothes, and the clothes and “battle mask” (my name, but you put it on to fight so “battle mask”) The main plot takes FOREVER to get through, there were what seemed like over 100 plot missions to get through and who you embody (the operative) matters, so choose your team wisely! I had a blast in the game, but the writing was kind of weak for the main plot, I had it sussed out in the first cinematic so I spent the whole game waiting for what I saw coming in the first minutes of the game. Which is sad, but there are only so many plots in the world and when it looked like I was going to be wrong, I was intrigued, but the mystery the game does a masterful job setting up really doesn’t “matter” in the game, you had to seek it out and the payoff isn’t great storytelling, but it *is* good world building, I think they were going to go somewhere else and left in the bits. I’m tiptoeing around the plot details as i don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The game is good, I WANTED to finish it, so yeah.

LEGION (from Marvel TV) WAS great, but I think they had wanted to go in a direction and had to swap motivations around a bit to make drama and it all got very “Manson with Powers” and if I’m honest, they went all cosmic, they didn’t need to ground so much of it after that.

What I loved: Behind Blue eyes!
What I hated: Problematic Protagonist and a heel turn that wasn’t

Fortnite: Save the Game

I’ve played “Fortnite: Save the World” for YEARS now and it’s not as good

That long title says it all, I used to play “Save the World” ALL the time, anyone who has seen me in game will recognize my banner as one of those ones that Epic gave us play-testers, I played the game before the deliver the payload mission was added, there was a time when outlanders had a neat “gravity bubble” power so the could get high like a ninja…

anyway, that aside to show me cred, I don’t like playing Save the World anymore, not like I used to, I played EVERY night for ages and even when I lost interest I’d try to play 99.9% of days (there have to be days away from the Internet)

So when I say “I don’t enjoy it anymore” that is saying something.

I started playing Battle Royale when I found out about the bases on the map, and the story missions and tasks have kept me playing

I used to spend HOURS in maps in STW just exploring, this is the level of commitment to STW I’m talking about and the level of goodwill that the STW team and EPIC have lost in me. I didn’t even bother with trying to get the spy weapons

Save the world used to be more than a wave shooter to me; but the game is just a borderlands in a bottle game now, and that’s what’s sending me to Battle Royale (never mind that the toxic players are like less than 1% of the player base now, so that’s nice)

So, in short, the Toxic player problem is mostly not a thing in BR (or it isn’t for me) I’ve loved the narrative in the current “season, whatever” and It’s a CRIME that I don’t look forward to Save the World everyday like I used to.

The Lobbers, by the way, were the worst thing of all the recent changes, having 20 or so bombs landing all the damn time in some missions? What?!?!?!