All right, so, I've taken a couple of days to process this, and... I still don't really know where to start, so let's just get straight into it.

It's clear that big parts of this came from someplace deeply personal, and I respect that in a way that my off-the-cuff, on-the-fly first response did not convey. That's a major reason why we do this kind of stuff, after all, is to express these things in creative ways, and this is very creative. The premise of a team that's not out there for money or glory or even honor in the conventional sense, but just for the sheer joy of it is very compelling.

That said, a lot of the school's practices as described are straight-up war crimes, of a caliber that would get a prison shut down if anyone on the outside heard about them, much less a high school in the 25th-century "first galaxy". The brutality of the place, and the corresponding mania it engenders in the students, are... disturbing, particularly in the context of a side series that's meant to be more comedy than tragedy. And I get that it's meant to be. The whipsaw switching-up between flights of whimsy and the revelation that what motivates them is manic desperation is powerful stuff, but it also messes with my head in a way I just wasn't prepared to deal with this week.

TL;DR: It's very personal, and very powerful, and it doesn't fit very comfortably in the corner of my head where DSMP lives.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.