Manuscript Piles

I have a lot to catch up on and put into my computer for my books. :p Staring my bony thumb and the tea on my shelf. :p

Why Star Wars Rebels is Scaring Me

Sooooo....Remember what I said as soon as Disney bought Star Wars? Remember that bombshelter I was going to take all my 212th people (and 41st because Gree is awesome) into? NOW IS THE TIME!!! D: I just got back from pacing the room and literally shaking with anxiety because, like I feared, the Rebels tv show is dragging a few clones into it's twisted plotline. I just watched a bunch of videos confirming that Rex, Gregor (the worst for me), and Wolfe in the upcoming season of Rebels. One of the videos displayed Rex cackling like a maniac and not making a shred of sense. :p I also noted along with the commentator that the clones had scars from removing the Force-drug-triggered chips. Now what to do with this information.

 For one, I am happy I don't see Cody there. I hope I don't see him in that show AT ALL (i.e this is crucial for my final book to do what it came to do; it nears on the entire point of my Commander Cody books), EVER. I want him to stay in my bombshelter until these books are published. But as people were discussing both in the videos and in the comments, it is largely believed that Cody will not have been spared the "chip's" influence and conclude that this is why he "committed Order 66" (once again largely ignoring the delicate details of that scene and the proceeding scenes with him afterwards). First of all, why wouldn't Rex have told his best friend about the danger of a chip controlling him when injected with serum??! That's like not telling my sister that she has cancer. Ok, so the excuse that it would look suspicious and they'd get killed, but this is exactly what I cover in Underworld!! I don't want to spoil it but the clones ban together (like anyone would!) and manage to work around it. Because who can tell if they simply don't take the injections or secretly have the chips extracted? I never liked the idea of the chips to begin with (see other posts ranting over the potency of choice over submission) but if that's how they're going to roll, I can't justify any clone not attempting to not just help his brothers but his Jedi Generals to prevent the inevitable from happening. And how could Rex tell Wolfe and Gregor when they are away on completely different planets but refuse to help Cody?! That is just stupid.

And if Rex is presumably crazy from a mishap in surgery....I don't even want to think of what Disney's writers will be willing to do to shame Cody. :( It's not funny Disney. I don't like seeing people who were supposed to die in or shortly after the Clone Wars reduced to mindless senility before their years. It makes no sense and isn't fair to anybody who sees clones as people striving to be seen as human. I can tell you right now, if Cody was watching these videos of his friends all having a "jolly ol' time" blowing up spaceships or making light of Rex's obvious impediments, he'd be over in a corner sick to his stomach. And seeing Gregor with Rex and Wolffe is like a blow to face for me too. That guy is 212th (&(*&*&^%^%$! He deserved to go back to his legion and be with them until the day he died. He deserved to get off that stupid, craphole of a planet and get back to people who actually appreciated him. ;__;

And then back to the fact that if Cody does appear he will likely be as poorly treated by the artists and writers as the others were (i.e beards and Cody do not equal!). Or he will be thrown on the opposing side as some twisted version of himself (as if the chips somehow make you evil or insane or something....What garbage....) bent on killing everything. If I hear or see this happen I will lose hope that any of my books will ever get published. (If that happens you can be sure to find them in their entirely, all 8 of them, on Deviantart or something.) I mean, how little can you make the clones seem after all the exploration and expansion their stories got from the EU and Clone Wars episodes?! If they were to show the clones, instead of making them perversions of themselves to serve some sort of dumb comic relief (which I did not find funny at all), then include ones like Climber who for sure refused the Order in books. Or even Spar who goes on to become the Mandalore (that is mindblowing when you think about it...the first Fett on the throne is a clone)! Or Able, the clone stranded on a planet (somehow not aging hardly at all....was a cure invented??) that joins Luke. I love that story! Able wasn't affected by any chip (which kinda bounces my theory that only a few clones, the younger ones especially--because Sidious realized that the clones were too close of friends with the Jedi--only had the chips implanted) and didn't kill Luke or Leia even though both were clearly Jedi. He actually ends up dying a horrible death to protect them. And since they created him, definitely go into Rex's future stories. But for the love of the Force don't make him so stupid and imply that they are the "lucky few" or the "good clones" meanwhile you let Gree and Bly and Cody all rot (literally in Gree's case) in shame!

This series backpedals the clones, reverts them back into "mindless meat-droids not capable of protecting or organizing themselves to stop the Sith". It ignores the huge amount of cases in the comics and books where the clones openly refuse to kill the Jedi, or clearly allow the Jedi to survive an initial feint-attack. It ignores the huge amount of sympathy there should be for these beings and really any others forced into a situation like Order 66, knowing the consequences and the in-consequences. You cannot just erase perspectives like that and pretend they never happened or could happen. They did and they will because clones are not "meat machines". They're people. And I don't know how many times I have to keep saying this (and biting my tongue against giving away too much of my books), how many times the books and episodes and games and graphic novels have to keep saying it either. I guess a lot because Disney still can't get the concept of 'grey characters' into their skulls. I digress.....Like usual... :p       

If there is one good thing that can come out of this is that I know where my books sit judging by the age Rex and the other clones look in the videos. In other words, in relation to my books, Cody is safe and sound from this horrid time period. t__t

*Joins Cody in the corner. *

Why I'm Not that Excited about Battlefront 3

Enter the cynical, post-Clone Wars show me. :p

A lot of my friends have been innocently asking me what I think of the new Battlefront game coming out (I think) this year. First of all, I am really happy that so many people see me as an honest point of knowledge when approaching the Star Wars universe. I have done a lot of research on it (after all, I am writing like eight books on it) so I hope I can be of honest help to people in that regard. When it comes to the recent Star Wars happenings though (like Rebels, The Force Awakens, or Battlefront 3) I begrudgingly and somberly admit that I have not been following these recent events or stories at all. Also, sadly, I feel almost no shame in doing so (note this is coming from a super-clone-star wars-lover). In fact, ever since Disney entered the scheme of things and cancelled 1313 and Clone Wars, I have kept up to date very, very little. :( Mostly this is because everything this new Disney-Star Wars is advertising is set in an era I have very, very little interest in, The Galactic Civil War and New Republic eras.

Why, you ask? Well, for one, it has no clones or Jango Fetts or really amazing Jedi like Kit Fisto or Kenobi. And secondly, I have not had very good experieinces with the Rebels vs. Empire to New Republic eras' stories. I read a few, back in the day, when I'd exhausted basically all the Jedi Apprentice or old Clone Wars comics/stories I could lay my hands on, and were disappointed. One book in particular, Jedi Sunrise, repulsed me so much from the era and characters that I had originally enjoyed in eps 4, 5, & 6 (aka Luke) that I just stopped reading Star Wars books all together. This is huge because I used to watch one of the movies, in canon-chronological order, every Saturday and almost had at least one Star Wars book that I was reading (or re-reading like Jedi Apprentice). I even saved what little money I had (after multiple birthdays or holidays since I didn't have an allowance) to buy my favorites or the beautiful "Panel to Panel" books, language books (yes, I used to know quite a few words in Huttese), and the now outdated galactic map. So now you've been various examples of my dedication and interest to the lore of Star Wars I can come to Battlefront 3.

I'll say it right now, I'm not angry or surprised that it's not going to be something I buy. I don't buy a lot of new video games simply because I have absolutely no interest in spending money on them. Battlefront 3, as I've told you before, used to have me interested but that was only because I was hoping there'd be some deeper coverage of the Star Wars universe and it's various and vivid eras. As an entire history and reference to the massive stories present in the 'expanded universe'. As a whole. Not just the Rebels vs. Empire as it is being made out to seem to be. Also the fact that the trailer doesn't tell me hardly anything that I don't know kinda turns me away from the game. I'll compare it to the Dragon Age Inquisition trailer: In Inquisition we see all the companions joining together with the Inquisitor to fight the demons and close those giant green glowing things we later learn are tears or rifts. This trailer shows us not only some intrigue into what our character will possibly be doing but also who we will be fighting, how, and with whom on our side. The Battlefront trailer, on the other hand, while showing perhaps some of the different things our character will have to do (setting/wasting pointless shield generators to protect two people instead of using their camoflague, and blowing up giant AT-ATs that were stupid enough to somehow get inside of Endor's sequoia forests...), don't really tell us what we don't know already. There was a battle on Endor and the Rebels won. Instead of showing us a new dimension to this map--which has been repeated in both the previous two Battlefront games--it just rehashes the same old stuff. I don't care so much about gameplay or graphics, I don't want to be paying $60 some dollars replaying a level I can play on my ps2 in Battlefront 2. :p Sorry, but no, I'm not that into that. This trailer could be misleading but why show us just Endor or Hoth when they can wow us with a plethora of places we've never seen in games yet?! This is what I wanted to see: Jabiim's swamplands, Merson's forested mountains, the debris encircling the airspace of Yavin 4, the Underworld of Coruscant, the Spires of Geonsis....Things that involved the different aliens, different tactics, different aspects of the battles (espionage, open warfar, the usage of actual cover to prevent oneself from dying....sorry, I hate it in movies or games when people just run straight into battle when they shouldn't. :p). Also, I wanted a story that I could really get into that reflected a perspective of the different sides of the stories. Battlefront 2's campaign was one of the factors that got me into the clones' perspectives. Not having even a hint of this intelligence nor aptitude really makes me want to dig a deeper trench to hide from Disney. I mean, there could be so much their game engines are capable of which games like Skyrim showed us, but the fact that they're actually devolving into a cash hound, trying to get you to pay for more content in addition to what (little) you got for the game is hideous.

I will not buy this game and will probably not even watch the gameplay. It shall be avoided like how I avoid Call of Duty and Battlefield. Not worth my time.

My Skyrim Adventures, set 1

Because all the other reference-links I've been posting don't work when I log out of Steam. :p Also, one should note that I have mods, many mods. @w@ Better Interior Lighting, Wanderer Armor, 'Nightstalker Armor', Lord of the Rings weapons, LoTR Elven Armor, LoTR Rings of Power + other notable jewelry, Forger (allows you to replicate Daedric artifacts when you have completed those quests), Improved Smithing (allows you to continue to improve, say, ebony to the level of daedric items), Swift Steeds Stables, Improved Interior Lighting (for Breezehome mostly I believe).... These are just some of my favorite screenshots that I feel capture the wonders of Skyrim and the world I made for my character there. (I didn't create the game, Bethesda is the owner of that!) Some may recognize things that I have written about (especially in my poems) and drawn. :3