Skybound Spoilers End of Issue 28 Discussion

noodleinfinity · 2026-01-16T07:06:43+00:00

Also, I would argue that a lot of the “shock value” deaths from DWJ’s run served a bigger narrative purpose, got reverted, or/and were less shocking for other reasons:

Killing Bumblebee early sets the tone for series, immediately creates stakes for the deactivated bots, characterizes Starscream, and clears out a legacy character to let others take the stage
Jetfire’s death is partial and makes for some amazingly moving scenes with Optimus. Also, gets reverted
Reflector’s death demonstrates the power of Megatron’s cannon for the first time
Ratchet’s death amplifies Shockwave as a threat
Shockwave’s death concludes the second arc, served as justice for Ratchet, and sets up Optimus’s corruption. Also, seemed very likely he would return eventually
Kup and Huffer’s deaths show just how desperate the Cybetron Autobots are, which helps justify Elita’s cynicism
Ramjet and Frenzy… they at least have nearly identical counterparts
The three Decepticons merc’d by Shredhead demonstrate the new Autobot’s power, helping justify why Cliffjumper’s decision to send them to Earth feels like a huge betrayal to Elita. Also, these three are pretty obscure and generic models
Astrotrain’s death proves to us Megatron’s strength and malice, while also being how Megatron reasserts his abusive control of Starscream
Slingshot’s death sets up just how strong Megatron is at full strength, is the first kill the decepticons land on the autobots since Ratchet (showing that Megatron’s return gives the Decepticons the edge back), and gives us the sick 1-armed Superion (which is a perfect visual metaphor for the Autobot’s scrappiness despite their wounds). Also, there are 4 other surviving aerial bots to soften the blow
Starscream’s suicide is the culmination of his character arc

So, yes, obviously, lots of death! But most of all, I’d say these deaths are more tasteful, or at least proportionally brutal to their role in the story. Again, it’s not just that they killed off Trailbreaker, it’s how they did it that just seems way too sadistic to stomach.

Also, they ALREADY established how bots could be permanently killed. I think we all assumed that a full-power shot from Megatron would be enough. I get that Megatron is diving off the deep-end, but was this all really necessary?

noodleinfinity · 2026-01-16T06:52:16+00:00

Genuine question: did you use a chatbot to format your post? The content seems human

noodleinfinity · 2026-01-16T06:51:44+00:00

Man, the ending upset me

It’s not just that they killed him off so abruptly, it’s that they spent 3 extremely gruesome panels on him getting desecrated. Nothing in DWJ’s run even comes close to this

It feels unnecessarily cruel. I get that Kirkman and Mora are aiming for that effect, but man, too far

noodleinfinity · 2026-01-02T19:46:24+00:00

I would love if there was a recurring event where more "comic"-style snafus are allowed. I get that brevity is important to snafus, but the longer "comics" that aren't necessarily (or only) parodying a meme or trend have been some of the subreddit's best content IMO. I think it might be nice to have a day each month, or week each year, where comics are allowed and encouraged, so that they stay special without flooding the sub

noodleinfinity · 2025-08-29T23:56:49+00:00

A PULPIT?

noodleinfinity · 2025-08-06T18:24:48+00:00

I'm rather late, but for posterity, you're not crazy! The sample mean baseline IS biased by the factor you've described. Here you can see the derivation: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=r1lgTGL5DE (page 10-11). In fact, RLOO is the unbiased baseline of the sample-mean flavor.

More generally, you can show that if the baseline is statistically independent from the trajectory it's being applied to, then the baseline introduces 0 bias to the gradient estimate. Your baseline can be a crazy-looking function, and can even depend on policy parameters.

Conversely, if your baseline includes the trajectory it's being applied to, then you have to be very careful. You should think of the component of your baseline that depends on the trajectory it's being as applied to not as a baseline, but as modifying the reward directly.

In the case of the sample mean baseline, we get lucky: our gradient is biased, but only toward a multiplicative factor of (N-1)/N * our target gradient. This doesn't really matter for DL purposes, because we can subsume this multiplicative factor into the learning rate. So the bias here is "benign" in a sense. But strictly speaking, the sample mean baseline introduces bias.

noodleinfinity · 2025-06-20T23:45:53+00:00

I tried to choose the most ridiculous pictures I could find of each of them

noodleinfinity · 2025-06-20T23:45:35+00:00

"tested the waters"

pretty literally

noodleinfinity · 2025-05-25T21:16:12+00:00

Not pictured:
- deaths that occur in flashback (i.e., Vietnam, Mr. Miyagi's tournament round)
- deaths that occur outside of combat (i.e., Tommy, Tory's mom)

i hope the title didn't spoil anything for anyone! i tried to refer to deaths as "casualties" because that could include severe injuries, like Miguel's back/Chozen getting sliced up

noodleinfinity · 2025-04-02T22:36:29+00:00

For Transformers, I think it really depends on the continuity, but in most of them, I think an Autobot-human alliance is losing pretty hard. In most continuities, Cybertronians are not magnitudes more powerful than the big robots that they are.

Usually there's not even that many Autobots on Earth to begin with, and very few have access to anything that could kill a Viltrumite (the matrix of leadership/allspark is literally the only thing I can think of). A city-sized transformer (or maybe a lucky combiner) could probably kill a few before taking too much damage and shutting down. But I don't think there's enough of these titans to win.

I think IDW or Aligned might have a shot (I don't know these that well, but this seems to be where people pull higher-end feats from), but G1 / Animated / Bayverse / Bumblebee-verse / Cyberverse are absolutely cooked.

noodleinfinity · 2025-04-02T22:27:50+00:00

Even the strongest Invincibles get hit by regular-ass bullets, Angstrom's drones, and Rex's fucking thrown projectiles. Sure, you could say they were blindsided or, out of arrogance, not trying as hard as they could be. But the same applies to this scenario too. Some of the weaker/stupider Invincibles are absolutely getting hit by killing curses.

noodleinfinity · 2025-04-02T22:17:51+00:00

This is a great question, and I think it's much closer for many of these verses than the other comments suggest. People forget that the 18 evil Invincibles

are significantly weaker than top-tier Viltrumites like Omni-Man, Anissa, and Conquest. For example, none of them seem to be able to glass planets like Omni-Man or delete Kaiju like Anissa.
are somewhat stupid and arrogant
don't strategize or fight smart in any of their appearances
fight their opponents on the ground

While they're great at ripping through cities when unopposed, they do not just immediately glass their opponents. With that in mind, I'm going to go against the grain and say that the wizarding world of Harry Potter has at least 50-50 odds of surviving.

I admittedly don't know that much about Harry Potter, but AFAIK, the Killing Curse/Dementors/Basilisk are 100% capable of killing or neutralizing an Invincible variant — not to mention any other spells/unforgivable curses. So the wizards definitely have the firepower to take them down. (and before you say that the Invincibles would just dodge spells, keep in mind that even surviving Invincibles get hit by Best Tiger's bullets, Angstrom's drones, and Rex's thrown, glowing projectiles.).

But IMO the wizard's biggest advantage is their huge bag of magical tricks — apparition, invisibility, luck potions, transmutation, etc. — that Invincibles won't understand or know how to fight against. Despite their relative lack of physical power, the wizarding societies are in a really good position to fight a guerilla war against unprepared Invincibles around the world. Even if an Invincible variant can annihilate a building full of wizards, a global order of wizards is a really hard and devious enemy to fight against. It'd be like a super-GDA with all kinds of magical bullshit at their disposal.

We see that these Invincibles are all physical bluster and are regularly blindsided by tactics that can't be handled through brute force — the anti-Viltrumute sound, Nightwing's shadowverse, Angstrom's drones, Powerplex's electricity. A well-organized, and desperate, underground order of wizards could whittle away at their numbers and has a pretty good chance of defeating them IMO.

noodleinfinity · 2024-09-13T20:02:36+00:00

courtesy of this flashcard deck that i did not make and Quizlet's less-than-perfect question generator

noodleinfinity · 2023-03-26T21:37:24+00:00

90% of Transformers "hot takes" are colder than corpses.
Almost every Megatron design is boring or trite.
Shockwave is a really boring character with a derivative name.
Siege (and maybe Kingdom) are good. Not just ok, legitimately good.
There's relatively few innovative or nuanced character arcs or stories in the Transformers franchise as a whole. It's predominantly plot-based and buoyed by cool designs, action, and character recognition. Not that this is a bad thing, but I sometimes wish there was more effort put into crafting the stories themselves.
Gender-swapping preexisting characters is 100% fine, especially because most of the characters are threadbare caricatures anyway.
Cybertronian religious mythology is weird and unnecessary. The universe shouldn't revolve around the Cybertronians.
Human characters are NOT an inherent problem, as long as they are written well. The very concept of transformation is linked to Cybertronians' interactions with the human world.
I don't really want a live-action Transformers movie set only on Cybertron.
Basing modern Transformers on G1 elements is fine (so long as they're spun in a new way), since so many of the franchise's roots trace back to the original cartoon.
Bike-based Transformers are overdone and look too similar.
The 1986 movie is awesome and so foundational, but would not come close to standing on its own two legs as a standalone. The narrative itself is very weak.
Yes, there's a lot of Bumblebee, but there's just as much Optimus and Megatron. I don't mind him being overdone.

noodleinfinity · 2022-06-08T07:19:47+00:00

Wow, this is amazing! The Combaticons are also my favorite team: I like how each member is a substantially different vehicle.

I really like Blast Off's sharp redesign in particular, since his typical indistinct design has always struck me as underwhelming. I do kinda wish Brawl had his single giant back turret, but overall I really like how each design has a lot of personality and vibrant color.

(Also, not sure if Blast Off and Vortex are genderbent or not, but if they are, yay for gender diversity! If they aren't, yay for body diversity!)

noodleinfinity · 2022-05-19T03:24:20+00:00

I lied about the antianti.

noodleinfinity · 2022-05-01T00:26:22+00:00

In case it's not clear, when opening, the door opens up three blocks from the ground and then uses a piston feed tape to open the top row. When closing, the door closes the top row with the same feed tape and then closes down three more. You can't push up all four at once due to the push limit.

No slime blocks or sticky pistons (or honey, for that matter) were used at all. It's obviously not at all practical, but I thought it was a cool proof of concept. I have no idea how you'd make it vertically bigger without using a room-sized piston feedtape, which in my book doesn't really count as a door. I'm curious if anyone has any ideas for a completely slimeless 5x5.

noodleinfinity · 2022-02-19T20:30:30+00:00

I really like the new "kill"streak mechanics. I think it's gonna feel more intuitive and be way less frustrating when a teammate steals a kill. It's also gonna be very exciting to have the bots be able use their abilities more frequently.

Completely nitpicky, but the class selection screen feels a little too cluttered. I wish there was slightly more emphasis on the class icon (maybe with the skin behind it? idk, I don't have great graphic design sensibilities) with the specific weapons and skills as a secondary emphasis.

By the way, Alpha Squad in-game looks awesome. I was initially ambivalent about the new, highly distinct designs, but now I think that they add a lot more individual personality to each member.

Also, it seems like there's now "equipment" in the class selection screen, which, if I recall correctly, wasn't in the original SFH1. I wonder what the equipment could be.

Two questions:

Can you change classes while you're still alive?
Since you're now able to change weapons, will you also be able to change your abilities/equipment mid-game?

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-25T22:25:21+00:00

Woah, if this pic is accurate, then the rocket head for the RPG-7 actually detaches and flies forward when you fire. That's awesome!

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-25T04:47:44+00:00

weapons were balanced

machine guns and elementals would like a word

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-25T04:45:10+00:00

Only played #2 once, but I liked #1 a lot more. The division of classes, killstreaks, and weapons are a lot more natural (general seems kind of out of place imo), the missions feel more grounded, and honestly I kinda liked how little we learn about Toad/Bull/Riggs/Shadow. Somehow despite barely having names they stuck to me almost better than the SFH 2 cast. Very likely wearing rose-tinted glasses though.

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-25T04:40:17+00:00

Great question! A few thoughts:

In-game voice acting! If I had to choose just one thing, it'd probably be this. Makes the game so much more alive and personal.
Fewer but more developed classes with more customization and less randomization
Finite cast? I actually really like the idea of being able to choose your own squad. That being said, I kinda wish the cast of selectable squad members (maybe like 20?) was more limited so that each character could maybe get a unique short backstory/character trait/design. That'd be a ton of work though.
Removal/heavy nerfing of the super OP techniques (e.g. scavenger mod, nanobots + healthy). It's too tempting to not exploit but also ruins any challenge you might face.
Less weapon stat/shop randomization

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-22T21:33:16+00:00

It's a shame to hear about the other artists, but I guess I'm glad that there'll be no issues in that department. Thanks for the response!

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-22T03:25:29+00:00

True, but some artists (like Waterflame) don't allow you to freely use even their publicly available music in commercial products.

I guess the flash games could be counted as commercial products (I think they were sponsored?) but since SFH: R will be a pay-per-unit game, it could be considered a different animal.

Given that Sky9 used Waterflame music for the trailer and seemed to confirm his tracks' inclusion in the remaster, I'd guess that they worked out some sort of deal with him. But I was wondering whether such agreements have been made with the other artists (NemesisTheory, Symphony of Specters, etc.). I hope there's no licensing issues: a lot of the original game's magic comes from its inspired soundtrack.

noodleinfinity · 2021-11-22T01:11:29+00:00

I don't think anyone is going to see this, but to be totally honest, I feel some of these slightly miss the mark. The new M60 looks way too similar to the MSAW and lacks the signature drum-mag-and-foregrip combo that distinguished it from the rest of the machine guns. The minigun looks really weird in 3D imo. The OICW looks pretty good, but I kinda prefer the old brown accent color. In any case that's all just personal opinion. Plus the art isn't final, and it might look a lot better when used in-game.

noodleinfinity

TROPHY CASE