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Watching GI Joe: The Synthoid Conspiracy

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Structurally, a lot of GI Joe's craziness comes out of needing to make things intelligible to children. While GI Joe targeted an older demo than Transformers, it also had to make sometimes entirely new concepts something kids could grasp, especially if it was important to the story. This will explain...well, a lot of things, especially in the opening scene. Also, this two-parter was written by Christy Marx, who wrote several good, notable episodes of the series. I forget if I've mentioned this, but GI Joe does an admirably good job at having women being able to do anything a man can; and I think part of that was having a gender balance in its writing staff.  Anyway Walt Disney Class Destroyer The [i]USS Flagg[/i] carrier is at sea, with a USN warship and three oil tankers, about to do some war games to impress the top brass. In addition to Col. Sharp and Admiral Ledger, GI Joe commanders, there's also an Army (or Marine?) General Franks and an Air Force General, Howe. Frank...
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Watching GI Joe: The Pit of Vipers

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 Lately I've been wanting to do a Joe post, if only as a morale booster. Picking an episode proved tough. I could pick the episode where Cobra at the start successfully destroys the world's oil infrastructure and then attempts to ransom the six remaining loaded supertankers into global domination. I could pick an episode where Cobra establishes Fox News. I could pick one of the 'crazy even by GI Joe standards' episodes. Instead, I pick one where the Joe command structure is subverted by a smart Cobra plot - and AI.  link to full episode We start strong, with Fort Kickass:    Cobra has build a cathedral-like fortress and coated it with a thin veneer of mesa, near the Joe base in the American southwest. Cobra units erupt from it like some sort of anthill, if the ants were part of the Warsaw Pact.  This is detected by the Joes! All hands on deck!   By the watercolors of dawn, the Joe attack begins. A gopher is disturbed.  Air-dropped assault buggies...
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Submarines are visually boring

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I've been interested in submarines since I was a kid; it's the fault of Microprose's Silent Service (I'd post graphics from the game, but it doesn't have any.)  This is a 1/700 Los Angeles class I built a long time ago. Like many modern subs, it is a tube with a sail. It is, mind you, an incredibly successful class of submarine, the American Military-Industrial complex at its finest.  Like the USN Gato-class subs or the Fletcher class destroyers, it was built in vast numbers (62) with the later 23 being the improved 688i, which is still in service now; not bad for a basic design from the 1970s. Still, though: Toob.  So when I bought some small submarines a while ago, I decided to paint them like sea creatures  Painted normally: Delta III The Delta 3 is a Soviet ballistic missile submarine (SSBN or 'boomer' depending on who you are) that is fairly distinctive. Its humpback shape conceals the missiles with the canned sunshine inside. The Delta series (1-4) was...
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