Question for ppl who've read the Doom Patrol comics: Is the emphasis on fathers/fatherhood as prominent in any of the comic runs as it is in the show?

I'm on my...like, 4th or 5th rewatch now and I just got to the end of S1 and I'm sitting here like. Man. This show is so very deeply about fathers, specifically shitty fuckup fathers and their children. And I'm wondering if that's something like Jeremy Carver's Supernatural influence seeping and oozing through or if that's important in the source material too.

I love the show deeply and so I'd love love love to get my hands on the comics eventually but rn I have zero knowledge on them

Anon I’m ASSUMING that these are from the same person; apologies if they are not

I would say that my feelings are similar to yours, but not quite identical ...

Disney’s handling has been imperfect, and some of the mistakes have been made the highest level (I know that people give Kathleen Kennedy a hard time, but if rumor is to be believed, some of the interference that made IX kind of weird came from higher than that)

for example, Kennedy said in an interview that she tries to find people who just make big, successful movies to make sure that these are also big, successful movies. I can understand that as being a safe bet from a business stand point, but that’s not the same thing as finding someone passionate about very specifically telling good, new Star Wars stories, which we did not really get in the Sequel Trilogy

(one of the most common theories that I saw from TLJ apologists was that people didn’t like that it was new/different than what they were expecting, which was really not the issue for me or my friends. Also it was just a speedrun of parts of Episodes V and VI)

I think that I’m “too close” to Star Wars to see it as a financial asset rather than a beloved universe full of characters and stories that I adore, but I don’t think that “literally just rehash the Original Trilogy for two movies and barely acknowledge any other part of Star Wars until IX” was a good idea

Rey deserved her own story. and Luke deserved to not be retroactively robbed of his

as for George Lucas, I do think that years of backlash over the Prequels sucked the fun out of it for him. Also, who doesn’t want four billion dollars? it was a sweetheart deal for Disney, of course

the sad thing is that this meant the end of Clone Wars, because Disney took one look at Lucasfilm’s budget and was like “OH NO YOU CANNOT SPEND THAT KIND OF MONEY ON A CARTOON” which is why Season 6 was paid for by Netflix and why Maul: Son of Dathomir was a comic

I love Star Wars Rebels and I’m not trying to knock the show at all, but the budgetary difference was palpable. Clone Wars did have it a little easier because of the Clone Troopers (all having the same face), but on Rebels, you notice that 90% of the Imperials are the same guy wearing a hat with his visor obscuring most of his face. market scenes show just a few people (but plenty of Storm Troopers)

the designs of the main characters -- Ezra, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Thrawn, Kanan, etc -- are great and loving and detailed and most of those change a little over time, but there’s a reason that we only see so many planets on Rebels. look at the huge armies and crowds in Rebels. my friend @drunkkenobi​ is the first who pointed out to me that in Clone Wars, you sometimes see lines of ships (Space Traffic) and each ship in line will be unique, distinct from the others

it’s not Rebels’ fault that they didn’t have that kind of budget. that’s also why their space battles (and space ships) never quite look right. meanwhile, for Clone Wars, if they wanted a particular scene or ship that went over their planned budget, all that they had to do was ask Uncle George

eccentric billionaires funding expensive media isn’t necessarily the most sustainable model for storytelling, but it sure worked out well for Clone Wars and for The Expanse

(Jeff Bezos personally called up the head of Amazon Prime programming, who had already been considering acquiring the extremely good but expensive show, and was like “hey the cast from this show is at a thing where I am, I’d love to just tell them that their show is saved, give me it?” and we saw as many new locations in Season 4 as we did in the first three seasons)

but streaming -- where you actually get money directly from customers who then, through their activity on your platform, show you exactly what they want to see aka what is keeping them on your platform -- offers a new opportunity for high quality genre media. remember, scifi and fantasy were EVERYWHERE in the ‘90s and the early aughts, and then because too expensive for regular TV unless they had huge audiences. only through streaming do we have these new Star Treks, The Witcher, and the real possibility of a new Stargate series

why do I bring up streaming? because

The Mandalorian goes to show that Disney can 100% do good Star Wars. Rebels was good, despite its budget, but can you imagine how much better it would have been if it had aired on Disney+

as with the DC movies (three of which are good and I’m also excited for Birds of Prey), the solution to the our-movies-made-a-lot-of-money-but-aren’t-strictly-speaking-good is literally just “let the people who do the cartoons make the movies”

and now we’re getting a final, seventh (half) season of Clone Wars! twelve episodes looking better than the show has ever looked!!

if you’re like me, you probably thought to yourself “gee, only 12?” and, cynically, you figured that it’s a trick -- announced at ComicCon in 2018 to build up the first wave of hype for Disney+

and it is ... but it 100% worked on me, I signed up for Disney+ and will pay anything for Clone War

my HOPE is that this is a test run to see if people really like high-quality animated Star Wars stories enough to continue with it. there’s only so much clone wars that one can cover (my suspicion is that we will see Ahsoka fake her death during Order 66 in these eps, so yep, that’s the end of the Clone Wars right there)

imagine a well-written series with everything that Clone Wars had in terms of content and visual quality, but it’s set after Episode IX. to my frustration, IX ends with effectively the same worldstate as VI which essentially means that nothing much happened in the Sequel Trilogy. but imagine a series set after IX. we could see a new set of (Force-wielding) characters. we could see Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose during some episodes. Rose could finally get to do something that’s not an insulting fool’s errand (she deserves so much better!!!!!)

we don’t need a new Big Scary Empire/First Order thing, just organized crime and pirates and Hutts and bounty hunters and individual planet systems going to war as the characters try to assemble a NEW New Republic (gods I hate the unchanged worldstate)

now, I know that Star Wars Resistance is not ... reassuring. this is the only screencap that I have from it because I couldn’t get into it. it’s not the animation (I enjoyed Tron Uprising and Iron Man: Armored Adventures and this is the same kind of deal), but three things:

-I watch Star Wars for the Force primarily; other stuff can be cool but I need the Force

-I will never care about ships racing and really I don’t care about an individual ship flying; I’m a Command Ship kind of space nerd

-apparently the writing doesn’t improve much during the first season. people tell the main character to not do something, then he does it, and disaster ensues. that’s ... it’s fine, it’s fine to exist as a show, it’s just not for me

obviously, not all Star Wars media is for me, but when something -- like TLJ or the Sequel Series as a whole (even though VII and IX are enjoyable) or Resistance -- disappoints me, I would never accuse it of “ruining Star Wars”

Star Wars is a whole franchise. the breadth of canon isn’t all wiped away by some disappointments. was the MCU ruined by Age of Ultron? no. it was a bad movie but from the same franchise that gave us The Winter Soldier and Thor Ragnarok. hell, Dawn of Justice doesn’t “ruin” Wonder Woman or Aquaman or Shazam. bad movies aren’t contagious

for the past several years, the Entitled Dude crowd has felt empowered. they were radicalized in the altright/redpill/MGTOW/meninist/nazi/gamergate/comicsgate/etc spheres of the internet and now they just have a reflex where they see any sort of representation and decry it as “SJW,” which they also seem to think is a bad thing

in the same way that well-meaning people on tumblr can get radicalized into being antis/puriteens, people with certain vulnerabilities on reddit or youtube can get sucked into a world that tells them that they are the default and that other people existing is “political” in media and in real life, and that people being upset by outright cruelty towards them is both funny and means that the cruel person is the victor. they need therapy and studios need to not listen to them

unfortunately, sometimes there are movies that are bad despite having things like solid representation. Ghostbusters 2016 was a delight, but my friends and I with whom I saw TLJ (all of us queer feminists) left the theater angry. we’ve bitten our tongues a lot (even if it seems otherwise) because publicly criticizing the film too often leads some incel monster to chime in with agreement, and we’re just like

the redpillgate crowed et all is a natural ally of conservative white evangelicals, even though the former group is generally made up of New Atheists (the short version is atheists who hold socially conservative views because racism/misogyny/transphobia benefit them without using christianity as an excuse). it’s kind of like how terfs will side with conservative hate groups because, though they’re natural enemies, they both despite trans people just for existing

unfortunately, when you’re looking at who went to see a movie or who hated it, not everyone posts with an ID card saying exactly their demographic. which is only going to make studios like Disney even more nervous about including queer content in Star Wars and in the MCU (I mean real queer content with characters whose names don’t have to be searched on a wiki)

that was a bit of a tangent, but yeah. sorry if I missed anything

Yang is Stronk (I did the math)

Okay, we all know Yang is strong, but do we talk about it enough? I decided the answer is NO and so I did a bunch of back of the envelope calculations to figure out exactly how ridiculously powerful she is.

tl;dr: Yang can lift 180-270 kg/400-600 lbs over the shoulder, so maximum lifting weight is 450 kg/1000 lbs or more. Yang can endure at least 3.5-5.2 MN of force on her body, get right back up, and punch a mech. Oh, and when she punches said mech, she throws out 17-20 MN with a single punch. That’s 4 THOUSAND times more force than a professional boxer.

Calculations, math/science, and awesome pictures of Yang are below the cut, take with multiple tablespoons of salt bc I had to estimate on a lot of things.

Point 1: How much can Yang lift? Let’s talk about that ridiculous scene with the speaker

you know the one

Based on really quick graphic analysis and Yang’s height (5 ft, 8 inches), that speaker is around 57 inches long and 38 inches wide. Depth is hard to determine because of the angle, but I’m guesstimating it at 25 inches. This gives a total volume of 54,150 cubic inches.

So how heavy is that? Well I spent some time browsing Best Buy (I wonder what my facebook ads are gonna look like after this...) and a 17,827 in^3 speaker weighs 116 lbs. Judging by that ratio, the speaker Yang is holding is around 350 lbs. 

BUT WAIT. The Best Buy speaker had two 15″ subwoofers whereas this speaker has two 23″ woofers. I don’t know much about speaker systems, but after looking up a few subwoofers it seems like they’re the heavy part of the speaker (rest of the speaker is more lightweight structural components and air). Using a volume to weight ratio of a subwoofer, the Yang speaker becomes around 740 lbs. Realistically, it’s not fully a subwoofer, so I’m estimating the actual weight in the neighborhood of 400-600 lbs.

Keep in mind that this is casual over-the-shoulder lifting. So I’d wager that her maximum lifting weight is at least double that (so 800-1200lbs, around 1 ton -- ~450 kg if you don’t use the filthy imperial system. Sorry for using imperial, it was easier given the specs on Best Buy). Btw if any of you lift weights regularly, feel free to chime in on this. Idk how shoulder lifting compares to maximum weight, so if you have a better estimate let me know!

Regardless though, Yang is able to just casually sling around 180-270 kg/400-600 lbs, which is uhhhh pretty hot very impressive. No wonder she makes this face afterwards:

Point 2: What is Yang’s durability? Remember that time she got punched into a concrete pillar and fucking BROKE THE PILLAR ?!

That’s right, she didn’t just crack it or dent it. It didn’t even split in half or anything. No, that column of solid concrete literally SHATTERED from the force of that mech punch.

So...that’s a lot of force, all of which was also imparted on Yang’s body. What’s the force required to break a concrete column? This fun video shows an axial compression test for a 6″ diameter concrete cylinder, which withstood 10,000 psi (pounds per square inch). That’s 700 kgf/cm^2 (kilograms of force per cm^2) or about 70 MPa (mega pascals). We’re going to use real people units for this bit fyi.

70 MPa to “pop” a column with a radius of 7.62 cm. The area that the force is being applied to is just the area of the circle -- 182.4 cm^2. Multiply that by the 70 MPa of pressure and we get over 1 million newtons as the force applied (approx. 1.25 mega newtons (MN) if you want a more exact number).

Cool, now let’s do it for Yang’s body smashing into a column. One important thing to note is that she’s hitting the column from the side. This is testing the tensile/flexural strength of the concrete, NOT the compressive strength. Since these columns are built to support a bunch of weight from above, they are weaker when hit from the side. This website says that tensile strength of concrete is 10-15% of its compressive strength, we’ll go with that as an estimate.

So we need something around 7-10.5 MPa to shatter a column of concrete from the side. The force exerted on the column is all from Yang’s body, and I’m going to estimate the contact area of that at around 0.5 m^2. That’s 3.5-5.2 MN, or 350,000-525,000 kgf (770,000-1,157,000 lbf). And given the strain rate at which the pillar shattered, the actually force imparted was probably significantly more than that, but it’s already pretty ridiculous.

And as a side note, if we assume that the mech punches are fairly consistent, then she also was able to catch around that same amount of force with her hands and not move an inch. 

Point 3: How much force can Yang dish back out? Let’s not forget that she completely DESTROYED a giant mechanical battlesuit in a single goddamn punch

Wow I’m...gay.

Okay this one is a bit of a challenge since we don’t know what the Atlesian Paladin is made out of. Who even knows what sort of cool metals and alloys they have going on in Remnant. I’m going to use mechanical properties for composite armor, which is what is used for modern tanks (the Paladin is sort of like a really mobile tank, right?). 

Quick history, tank armor used to be made primarily from hot-rolled steel, because steel is awesome (really strong, durable, fails in a forgiving way). But unfortunately it wasn’t that great at stopping ballistics, especially as weapons got more sophisticated. Meanwhile the strongest class of materials (ceramics) weren’t used because they’re too brittle and thus prone to shattering, unlike metals which are more ductile and will usually dent or bend upon failure. But with the magic of composites, more modern tank armors like Chobham armor let you take advantage of the super high strength of ceramic materials without having to deal with brittleness and multiple hit capability problems.

That was a tangent, but basically composite armors consist of ultra-strong ceramics enclosed in a metal matrix of some sort (like a sandwich). It seems like the metals used are usually some combination of steel, titanium, aluminum, and alloys of those. We want to know what force it takes to annihilate one of these composites. When Yang punches the mech, it flies away and shatters upon landing. However, she also shatters one of it’s arms directly -- right after she catches the punch. So it’s safe to say that the number we’re looking for is the ultimate tensile strength. UTS is defined as the maximum stress that a material can withstand before fracture, conveniently labeled below.

We have a bit of a problem here, which is that a lot of these composite armors are very new in development, and unfortunately most military groups don’t want to share the details of their defense materials and the resultant mechanical properties (very rude of them tbh). I checked out some general ceramic metal composite materials though, and got a fairly massive range of UTS values (like, 600-1900 MPa). We’ll take a relatively high value, since Remnant/Atlas is technologically advanced (giant mecha battle suits, ridiculously good prosthetics, etc.) Assuming UTS between, say, 1700-2000 MPa, then Yang would have to hit the mech with a corresponding amount of force concentrated just on her fist.

Surface area of her fist + Ember Celica we can estimate at 100 cm^2 (0.01 m^2). So that’s 17-20 MN of force in a single punch. Let me write that another way. Yang punches with 20,000,000 Newtons of force. This article says that most boxers punch with a maximum of 5,000 Newtons of force. Yang is 4,000 times stronger than a professional boxer.

I...did not expect THIS crazy of a result going into this, let me tell ya. I think I need to lie down...

Anyway, this was a lot of fun lol. Again, take with a heaping serving of salt since I’m not a professional in any of these areas (my only credential is 3/4 of an undergraduate Materials Science degree). 

Murder! Rhetorically Speaking

The Murder: 

On June 6th, 2010, Mark Smith, a cyber security engineer at SmartLock Technology, was found dead, at around 10:37PM that night, in the company’s parking garage. After many missed calls, Rachel Smith, Mark’s wife, decided to call Mark’s bestfriend and co-worker, Scott Anderson. Anderson reported to Mrs. Smith that he had last seen Mark when he clocked out at 5:30 that evening. Mrs. Smith, now worried, phoned the police as it was now 10:15PM, and Mark had never worked that late before. The 911 operator then dispatched the patrol unit nearest to Mark’s office at around 10:30 that night, and when the officers arrived on-scene they found Mark’s lifeless body surrounded by a pool of blood, coming from what looked to be about a dozen stab wounds. The two officers then requested back-up, and proceeded to secure the area. By the time I arrived at the parking garage, it was 11:28PM, and there were about three patrol cars there, six officers in total, and the coroner was en route to our location. The victim was lying on his front side, his right arm stretched above his head, and while his left arm lay limp at his side. Visibley, there were multiple stab wounds to the victim’s back, as well as bruising and lacerations covering the victim’s hands. It was quite obvious that the victim had been attacked from behind, struggled with his assailant, and eventually endured the many stab wounds he died from. After the coroner arrived, he determined the victim’s time of death to be at about 9:45 that night, and that he had about 9 stab wounds in total, 7 to the back, and two to the victim’s abdominal area, most likely obtained during the struggle. The items found on the victim included his wallet (still containing his money and driver’s license), his company ID card, the keys to his Audi, and a smaller loose key found in his front pocket. The victim’s body was transported to the city morgue at around 12:45 in the morning, and the forensic unit continued to collect additional evidence until about 1:23AM. At approximately 1:40AM, I was the last to leave the scene after releasing 2 of the 3 patrol units, leaving one behind to surveil the area until another unit could relive them.

Getting In Touch With Your Inner Detective:

1. My report begins with discussing the who, what, where, when and how the body came to be discovered, and ends with me leaving the crime scene and who was watching it when I left.

2. I found myself adding the details that are usually included in crime shows because I watch a ton of those, and I didn’t include the tedious details, like the names of each officer on the scene or who went to inform Mrs. Smith and at what time she was notified. I find these details tedious because they don’t really center around the victim himself.

3. I used language that is primarily used in true-crime podcasts and other shows where law-enforcement reports are read. They are usually formal, but also straight to the point.

4. I used a candid and direct tone in my description of the crime scene.

5. I organized my information into the order that it was discovered.

6. Again, I watch way too many crime shows, and listen to way too many podcasts about true crime. Therefore, I just mirrored the character that law-enforcement is often depicted as in those.

Coroner’s Report: 

At about 10:45PM on 06/06/10, the coroner on duty, (Dr. Martin Weisman, myself) was requested at the parking garage on Roosevelt, connected to the SmartLock facility. I arrived at around 11:45 PM, and proceeded to record any initial findings about the body (i.e., its appearance, temperature, etc), and determined the time of death to be at approximately 9:45 that night (06/06/10). After transporting the body back to the morgue, I performed a full autopsy and discovered 9 stab wounds, as well as contusions on the victim’s chest, as well as bruising on the victim’s face and hands- most likely from falling to the ground. The victim’s hands were also covered in small lacerations, concentrated around his knuckles, which is consistent with patterns of struggle, insinuating that the victim was trying to fight back. Although the victim had 9 stab wounds, the cause of death for Mark Smith was ultimately exsanguination (blood loss). The fatal stab wound occured to the lateral, right anterior side of the victim, which lacerated the victim’s right coronary artery. After the victim died, rigor mortis began to take effect, and was in its beginning stages when I arrived, which is why the victim’s approximate time of death is 9:45 PM, but could have occured in a window of about 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. There are no visible signs of scarring or tattoos on the body. The body of Mark Smith is currently located here, at the Hillside Morgue, and is being kept in freezer 29B.

Eulogy: 

Mark Smith was a wonderful husband to wife, Rachel, and father to daughters, Isabel and Sage. Mark was one of the most talented engineers at SmartLock and helped the company soar to new levels of greatness, earning it one of the best reputations in the field. As a kid Mark would always talk about how his biggest dream in life was to be a dad- and thanks to Rachel I am happy to say that Mark fulfilled that dream. We aren’t always guaranteed the longest life, but I know for Mark living a full life was more important to him. Mark was a smart man, an honest man, but most importantly he was a good man. I hope that we will all remember Mark as the man he was and the life he strived to live. Isabel and Sage, please know that dad is always looking over you, and Rachel- Mark will always be by your side. May he rest in peace.

Closing argument: 

Thank you, Your Honor, and members of the jury for being so patient these last few weeks as we try to bring justice to Mark Smith’s wife and two daughters. As you all know, Mark Smith was blackmailed by the defendant, threatening the lives of his family if he did not comply with the plan. On June 6th, 2010, Mark Smith was to re-enter SmartLock after all other employees had gone home for the day. In the security logs, please note Exhibit A, we can see that Mr. Smith unlocked the door to his office at around 7:30 that night. According to the plan the defendant had outlined for Mr. Smith in an email, Exhibit B, he was to transfer all secure shares of the new cyber currency, “Compu-coin” into the unmarked, off-shore that the defendant had secured. Such protected files within the company required intensive work, especially if it were to go undetected- which is why the defendant, CEO of SmartLock itself, blackmailed his top technical engineer into doing so. Now, members of the jury, I want you to look over there at the tiny, sweet face’s of Mark Smith’s daughters as I continue to what happened next. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the defendant knew that a man like Mark Smith would not have been able to keep a secret like this- which is why he had his computer bugged to show him exactly what Mark was doing on his computer. While transferring the cyber currency, Mark was able to purposely make what seemed like a minor mistake with one of the accounts, as it is one of the warning signs that the cyber division of the FBI watches for. An small error like this would have ensured that the transfer was investigated. Sadly, the defendant, John Conway watched as Mark did this, from a remote location. After Mark finished, he walked to his car, and probably ran, quite frankly, because he thought he had just lifted the price from his wife and kids’ heads. What he didn’t realize, though, was that he had just put a price on his own. The defendant slipped out from a darkened corner of the parking garage and proceeded to stab Mark Smith- his employee, the father to Isabel and Sage and husband of Rachel, nine times. Nine times. I wonder what it was he said to you, John, as he was gasping for his last breath. Was he begging you to stop? Did he ask for mercy? The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, is that we will never know what those final words were. In fact, we will never hear any words again from Mark Smith- the defendant, John Conway made sure of that. I am asking you today to serve the justice that Mark fought so hard to obtain. If not for Mark, then for his family that must live the rest of their lives knowing what this monster did to their dad. I am urging you all to come back with a verdict of guilty. Thank you.

Discussion:

1. I found the closing argument to be the easiest to write because it is essentially all about emotion and writing things in way that stirs your audience. I personally find the structure of a courtroom argument to be quiet poetic, so I have a certain appreciation for this kind of writing.

2. I thought the coroner report to be the most difficult because I found myself pausing to think of more medical terms and trying to remember what the anatomical names for the positions of the body were and it just made the whole process of writing the report slower.

3. The rhetorical situation of academic writing is the prompt or assignment in which you are responding to because this is supposed to be the springboard for whatever analysis or prose is expected of you, as a student and such. The audience is always going to be others involved in academia, whether that be other students, professors or those just interested in the topic. For most academic writing, the tone should always be direct on some level, but I don’t think there should be a universal tone for this genre, as that would defeat the purpose of considering all parts to the piece and not just the one. For academic writing, the jargon is usually formal words that don’t repeat (so using a Thesaurus a lot would help). Anything essential to the central idea will most likely be included, but unnecessary tangents that people often talk about when they speak will probably be excluded from an academic paper.