#Also there's a plot where humans from a different planet with space ships n shit show up

[fivepebblerhehe]

Whenever I play a mobile game I'll start developing a world and lore for it and it eventually becomes its own independent story thing. No matter what I do this happens. like one time I was playing this Pokemon knockoff and as i was playing it i was making my own version where all the characters were monsters (mystery dungeon style) as well as lore for what happened to humans (there was this whole reveal that these guys called the first ones which were created to protect humanity took a bunch of them after they destroyed themselves and put them on another planet to start over, and a whole thing about one of the first ones deciding to possess the royal bloodline to rule the new humans cause he thought they were shit leaders which is pretty interesting) and in my version the first ones would've thought that humanity was just doomed and instead they took the monsters and placed them on another planet to see if they were any better with the one guy possessing the royals to make sure they were better than their predecessors. Typing this all out makes me wanna lore dump EVERYTHING I have on this damn pokemon knockoff

[inbetweenhours]

so concept, humans are space orcs traffic series/3rd life  au featuring human Scott because he has main character energy and is unsurprisingly my fav character in most smps-

anyways uhh I doodled this sloppy concept like a week ago because I on and off daydream about space aus with hermits and life series characters y’know? Anyways I actually go far enough in daydream mode to double down and talk about the concept in a brainstorming discord and ended up with the following plot, which will explain the context of the doodles lol. Enjoy

Basically to my memory it was a very basic usual humans are space orcs kinda set up. Or at least a concept I’ve seen enough times to grasp and remake. Humans are kind the boogey-men of the universe. Underdeveloped enough they haven’t been able to reach out to the rest of the galactic community on their own. Were largely considered protected for a while, and there was lots of disputes politically about interfering with them.

This all came to a head when a group of humans had gotten off planet, likely through malicious outside intent, and ended up breaking havoc and killing many aliens. Pretty deserved but with no survivors and gruesome display of adrenaline force and cruelty they immediately earned a name as the boogeymen of the greater universe.

SO onto plot we actually care about with that basis in place. The 3rd life characters are all champions of a super illegal fighting ring run by a group of watcher adjacent aliens probably. Some have been champions longer than others, some are much newer. They are kept in various different cells around the facility when not fighting to contain them, since they’re all various types of aliens with unique strengths and weaknesses. The unique layout of the fighting matches, and proximity of cells allows very specific groups of them access to each other most of the time. 

For example, the Dogwarts folks are in cell blocks close to one another, and thus have time between fights to socialize. They have the opportunity to forgive injuries and make plans.

Jimmy is a bit special, a unique alien. Kinda a cross between a nymph/floran and an avian yknow? So he’s very pretty and incredibly fragile with his stupid bird bones. He is often, if not always the starter event for fight nights. Him losing his match (because he literally never wins) is the kind of kickoff to the main event. Then he is kept separate from all else to be healed and such. Somewhere a close eye can be kept on him than others, can’t have their favorite canary dying after all?

Nearby to Jimmy is where Scott is kept when its brought in. Scott is, of course, human. He cannot communicate with anyone like the other prisoners can, and is having a considerably tough time.  He proves push come to shove that human survival will win, and he will fight and fight well. However he also shows restrain, making him terrifying but perfect for these fights where they don’t actually want a champion dead, lest they have to be replaced.

Scott is kept in close proximity to Jimmy also to be kept under watch, though much more because he is considered a much higher risk than other fighters. Because of this though, he and Jimmy end up forming a kind of bond. They’re the only non hostile presence the other has and despite the language barrier they get along. They even begin learning to communicate, though its uniquely not quite either language.

There's definitely other background dynamics and shit happening with other fighters but these two have my focus rn so sorry. 

The actual plot kicks off with Grian, formerly staff of the fight pit went rogue and for his disobedience became a fighter himself. He hatches an escape plan, ends up finding a way of communicating it to as many of the other fighters has he can, and fight his opportunity to spring it. 

Gotta clarify, the fights are run either on a big old travelling ship. Like a BIG ship that smaller ships can doc on to come watch fights n stuff. Allows for maneuverability n hiding. OR an obscure ass moon.

Anyways so Grians springs his plan, the establishment is in chaos. The other fighters are making a break for where ships are parked with the intention of hijacking one and escaping together. Whatever beef anyone has from the amount of breaks and bruises were given in the pit aside, they gotta get out of this together. That's why the group waits as long as they do while Grian (follows by Scar for backup) hunt down Jimmy to get him out too.

They hadn’t expected to find Scott, the human. They hadn’t fully considered Scott for saving. So new, and so dangerous. But they find him crouched over Jimmy, unconscious and various of their captors strewn around. Unconscious or dead Grian doesn't check.

He wants to get to Jimmy, but Scott won’t back off. Scar manages to deescalate and its terrifying but they manage to communicate bringing Jimmy with them. Scott picks Jimmy up on his own, intending to follow them. And Grian finds he doesn’t have much of a choice. The human is coming and also helping them he guesses? He hopes?

They get to the ship the others have yoinked, no one has time to question anything they just get the fuck out of there. They tend to their wounds, watch over Jimmy, and Scott passes out at Jims side once he’s sure he’ll be okay.

The rest of  the actual au would theoretically consist of the various fighters coming to terms with what happened, with their gripes and treatment of each other. Scott learning to communicate, all kinds of misconceptions from everyone being addressed and broken. They learn to trust each other, stay on the run from their poachers, and reunite with a couple helpful family and friends on the way (Pearl, Mumbo, Lizzie,, as ya do. gotta get em in here somehow lol)

anyways that was all it wasn’t a big thing but it’s a fun brainworm. Y’all can do as you want with the thoughts :]

[saltineofswing]

Ozzy or Drell?

Obvs I got one for Drell SO:

Full Name: Osmanthus Quince, Sword of Storms

Gender andSexuality: Male;probably bisexual

Pronouns: He/him

Ethnicity/Species: Homo Anubii (Shortened to‘Anubii’ in 99% of situations), a race of technically-undead beings whosegenesis is attributed to Worldmarrow, pure unfiltered magic in liquid form.Worldmarrow makes up the core of the planet and frequently wells up in largeamounts to the crust, magically altering things at random. One of the productsof this phenomenon are the Anubii, who owe their existence to the abandonedorganic material of the sapient races of The Road. There are two varieties:Whole and Imperfect. Imperfect Anubii are covered in Sal’s post here, inregards to Domino the Dominator, but Whole Anubii are, ehhh, a little harder toexplain. They don’t quite resemble any of the races that currently inhabit TheRoad… but the various skin colors they appear in are vaguely reminiscent ofthe mysterious Liches that inhabit the massive millennia-old necropolisesbeneath the surface of the continent. This is a painfully obvious connectionbut nobody has actually officially put it together for a variety of reasons, somost people consider it to be one of the grand mysteries of the Road’s society.

Specifically,although nobody now alive has the words for it, Ozzy would be half-Gariagaxianand half-Bogribolan, as evidenced by his pale hair and sort of indistinctlygrayish skin that you could construe as faintly yellow-tinted or faintlyblue-tinted; in addition, Ozzy was born a little extra special – he is what’sknown as a ‘Lesser Lich’, a type of Anubii identifiable by their incrediblemagical potential… and the subsequent mental instability that accompaniessuch power. If a Lesser Lich is put under too much stress, they have a chanceto breach a power threshold and ‘emerge’ into a Greater Lich; Ozzy,specifically, is a Supremator, a subtype of Lich with an extraordinary controlover an elemental force (in Ozzy’s rather exceptional case four of them –Lightning, Water, Wind, and Ice, giving him the title of ‘Storm Supremator’).

Birthplaceand Birthdate:Actually, Ozzy doesn’t come from the Road’s prime timeline, or ‘Primeline’. Theversion of The Road that he hails from is one we affectionately refer to as the‘Mindrunner’ timeline, where the powerfully Psionic hivemind species known asthe Uluth were able to survive their… rocky exodus through the Unknown, fromtheir dying homeworld to the Road. As a result, the trajectory of thedevelopment of both the continent and the society was drastically altered.Notably, the Psionic energy that saturates the atmosphere due to the abundanceof Uluth Overminds across the continent places an inordinate pressure on theminds of Anubii, resulting in an incredibly high incidence rate of Anubiiexplosively developing into Liches. Because nobody really knew what to do withthem, and the understanding of mental health in this world remains somewhatabysmal, facilities were created where Liches could be sent to keep them calmand/or sedated, and in a lot of cases kept in stasis until a long-term solutioncould be divined.

This meansthat the culture into which Ozzy was born views and treats him as a second orsometimes even third-class citizen, where Anubii that are too powerful or areat risk of turning into Liches are taken away to any of several installationsof ‘The Facility’ and the governing bodies use the populace’s fear and lack ofunderstanding to pass laws that blatantly infringe on Anubii’s civil rights.Ozzy was born in 2002 (Mindrunner is set in 2025), in the ever-cloudy southerncoast of the Tidelands. He was born in the suburbs of The Well, MetropolitanZone Prill-003, named for the local Uluth Overmind. Ozzy is a second-generationWhole Anubii and is an orphan, adopted by two human parents, so his exactbirthday is sort of nebulous. Best guess, he was born during the hot rains ofSummer.

GuiltyPleasures: Ozzyis a really shy guy with very little self esteem and a lot of internalizedissues, so he feels guilty about enjoying himself doing just about everything.He’s grown out of most of it, but highlights include: long showers or baths,colorful clothing, expensive tools, taking apart expensive or sophisticatedmachinery (especially if it doesn’t belong to him), and other stuff that hefeels like makes him ‘impose’ on the world around him too much. A big one,though: using his powers just for his own enjoyment.

Phobias: Not only is Ozzy very shy, he is also a peerlesslyanxious guy. He’s got a LOT of phobias. It would be faster to name the stuffhe’s not afraid of – he’s kind of a coward – but there are a couple ReallyReally Big Ones: he is easily triggered by needles, medical equipment(especially especially ESPECIALLY anything that goes on his head), and mentalinstitutions. He is terrified by the prospect of losing control, hates to beseen/looked at/placed in a position of authority, and is horribly averse to thespotlight. After all, he spent most of his life trying to hide his true natureto avoid getting crammed in a stasis pod for the rest of his natural-bornexistence. He also doesn’t really like to be touched, especially by people hedoesn’t know, and is also rather averse to enclosed spaces and restraints.

What TheyWould Be Famous For:If it weren’t for the whole mess Ozzy has become embroiled in, he wouldprobably be famous for his engineering prowess. Ozzy is a genius-levelintellect, and is a talented machinist in his own right – he was able to get ascholarship to work a janitorial job at a college where he was working towardsseveral different tech-based degrees. He created a technology for prosthesisthat utilizes the Uluth’s Psionic-sensitive material known as ‘Mindstone’ as acore and a tough but lightweight and magically reactive plasteel compound,allowing the prosthetic to be linked directly to the user’s mind and react notonly to their mental commands but also to their expectations; if the userexpects to feel touch sensation, they will. If the user expects the plasteel tofeel and behave like flesh, it will (to an extent). It’s really a miracle ofmodern engineering. If his life had panned out differently, he would’veprobably been taught about in medical textbooks for decades on decades.

Also in a wayOzzy is famous, both in the primeline by way of the Wild Hunt and in theMindrunner timeline due to his… legal status. As an inescapable part of hisfights being televised to the Threnghelleon viewing public, Ozzy has been puton blast in a way; he seemed like a huge wimp to everyone (including members ofthe ‘home team’, so to speak) until he literally could not hold back his powerany longer and kicked the ever-living shit out of notorious Wild Hunt bruiserEthem-Cailo in his very first fight. That very first victory was seen as a HUGEupset, and it’s gotten him a ‘following’ amongst the Threnghel populace. Thisis not necessarily a good thing.

What TheyWould Get Arrested For: Existing, actually. When faced with the choice of submitting to a newordinance requiring all Anubii with ‘At Risk’ or higher status (denoting therisk factor for an individual to become a Lich) to be ‘chipped’ with atransmitter and status indicator, or probably just being straight-up taken awayto The Facility, he had a mental breakdown and revealed that he was a Lich (afact he’d been hiding for years). So he went on the run! Canonically, Osmanthuswould probably be arrested for defying Overmind ordinances, failing to reporthimself as a Lich, resisting arrest, defying basically all Emergence protocols,resisting and evading Pure Fold detainment squads, assaulting a police officer,assaulting a Pure Fold agent, associating with known governmental dissidents,conspiracy to commit a felony, conspiracy to incite a riot… uh, et cetera.

OC You ShipThem With: He hasa girlfriend! Her name is Rosemary, they’ve been best friends since highschool, and she is definitely the one who has the spine in their relationship.When Ozzy went on the run, Rosie basically dropped everything and went on therun with him. Otherwise, when it comes to idle speculation, I think Ozzy hasgood chemistry with Fee; he literally took a plasma bolt to the gummy-works forher before he even knew her, which has endeared him to her somewhat.

OC MostLikely To Murder Them: Ethem-Cailo, now Jovix-Cailo, has faced not one but two ‘humiliating’defeats at Ozzy’s hand now. After the first, Ozzy stole the legendary hammerMjolnir (not the version everybody is familiar with, but with a similarWorthiness parameter), which Ethem-Cailo himself had won by beating the hellout of the Aesir. He wants his hammer back, and is filled with hatred for the‘lowly’ mortal that stole it from him. In fact, Jovix-Cailo is going to havehis shot – the two of them are due for a reckoning, and there’s a significantchance that Ozzy might wind up dying in their final conflict. One of them isgonna have to.

FavoriteMovie/Book Genre:Sci-Fi, no question. Since he comes from a near-future and slightly dystopiantimeline, you’d think it holds no mystery for him. But it’s even more wild,speculative, and diluted there, so it’s still pretty nuts. This goeshand-in-hand with horror stuff, too (the more sci-fi, fantasy, or high-conceptthe better). He also enjoys fantasy to a lesser extent, and is a big fan ofsuperhero comics. He’s a fairly typically nerdy guy in his tastes in media.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Ozzy has a certain appreciationfor most cliches and tropes, because he’s pretty good at analyzing media. Evenif he doesn’t necessarily enjoy a cliche, he’s able to appreciate the way itslots into a narrative. However, he is easily annoyed by Idiot Plots andanything that arises from people behaving ‘out of character’, which he feels isa sign that they had to force something to fit where it didn’t. He hates the‘We’re five feet from the exit but OH NO I TRIPPED!’ Trope, and glaring gaps inthe logic of the media in general – stuff that isn’t consistent with the rulespresented by the media in question.

Talentsand/or Powers: Asmentioned above, Ozzy is a genius-level intellect and is fond of tinkering;he’s dexterous and knowledgeable in the art of crafting machinery. He’stalented enough in the art of engineering to innovate functional prosthetics,and has a broad umbrella of technical know-how. He’s clever, quick on his feet,and isn’t a terrible tactician when he’s given a comfortable breadth to plan.He’s also crazy good at fighting games. Don’t challenge him to Street Fighterunless you want to know what it’s like to feel hatred for pixelated green menbecause you KNOW he mains Blanka.

What? You’resaying I’m forgetting something? I dunno. Oh, the lightning thing? Haha yeah,right, right.

Ozzy is aBLISTERINGLY powerful magus with an affinity for elemental magic –specifically, elements associated with the storm: Lightning, Wind, Water, andIce. He is so latently powerful that his mere presence can influence theoverhead weather if he’s not keeping a tight grip on his own magical aura.Once, Ozzy channeled enough lightning to power an entire town for about an hour(he did the math in-universe). Since then he’s actually gotten more powerful,to the point that the upper limit of the amount of electricity he can generateis unknown. The cost of all that power is that his body literally cannot handleit, hence why he has prosthetic arms now. In terms of gameplay mechanics, Ozzycan theoretically deal about 600 damage in a single turn with the proper confluenceof events. It costs him a significant amount of HP and CON, so it’s notsomething that can be used flippantly, but it’s a considerable boss-burner ifthe situation calls for it.

Recently, Ozzywas blinded in his one remaining fully-functional eye by a bad turn in a gameof divine chance by Al Fortuna, August En-Zaiid’s patron deity. However, notlong afterwards, Ozzy’s senses of Touch and Hearing were elevated to superhumanlevels by the whims of the very same game; currently he hasn’t had the opportunityto replace his eye with a prosthetic but he does have the ability to mapobjects around him in space based on electromagnetic fields and bioelectricity,and that with his super-hearing gives him a fairly precise image of the world.He just can’t read or watch TV or do anything too precise.

Why SomeoneMight Love Them:Osmanthus is a sweet guy with a big heart and a lot of empathy. He’s a verygood listener and has a very clever sense of humor. He’s smart and is willingto share his knowledge very liberally, but he shares inclusively and doesn’texplain so much as inform (narrow though the distinction may be). When he’scalm, he’s very methodical and cunning, and he gives pretty decent advice. Hehas no problem sharing the spotlight (prefers to stay out of it, in fact) andis very good about giving credit where credit is due – doesn’t hold grudges,nonexistent temper, doesn’t take stuff personally, and is quick with acorrection or a fact-check when needed. Some people enjoy a partner they canhelp or ‘fix’, so to speak, and Ozzy does have a lot of issues.

Why SomeoneMight Hate Them:As I’ve mentioned, Ozzy is a bit of a coward. His self-esteem is absolutelyabysmal and he is devastatingly non-confrontational to the point that he won’tstand up for himself at all unless absolutely forced to. He can seem a littlesniveling, especially since he has a pretty bad stutter that gets worse whenhe’s stressed. On top of that he is kind of hard to deal with at times; it’snot always easy for people to handle their own issues, let alone somebodyelse’s – and Ozzy has a lot of issues. When it’s at its worst, he’s incoherentand completely non-functional for the whole day; at it’s best, though, he stillhas trouble speaking coherently, has problems with dissociating and sometimeshearing things, and stuff like that. When he’s feeling talkative it’s hard toredirect his focus when he’s on a roll, which can interfere with his ability tolisten to other people and participate in group conversations, and if someone snapsat him too sharply he’ll just clam up and stop talking altogether. So,sometimes interacting with him can be tiresome.

How TheyChange: Ozzy haschanged A Lot since I first introduced him to the game in Mindrunner;originally he was a very lonely and honestly quite pathetic guy, with a lot ofproblems he’d completely given up on trying to solve, slogging through day today life and hiding his ‘At-Risk’ status. When Mindrunner started he wasactually suicidal, and had already failed two attempts due to his Lichabilities; although it was partially against his will, being swept up in theevents of that story gave him a will to live and the discipline to actually dosomething about his mental health and the state of the world at large. He hasdeveloped an incredibly fine control over his powers (which continue to grow astime goes on), met a bunch of new people, and has gotten in REALLY good shape,all in the span of half a year after spending most of his time as a skinny-fatjanitor at a second-choice college. Ozzy is working on his self-esteem, whichis coming along slowly but surely; after taking Mjolnir from Ethem-Cailo he hasdeveloped a reliance on the hammer as a sort of crutch for his self-esteem – ifthe fabled mythological hammer of the Aesir deems him ‘worthy’, he probably is,right? It’s a good first step, but the events of his next campaign willprobably involve confronting that crutch. He’s not a hero yet, per se, but he’sgetting there.

It’s not allpositive, unfortunately; since Ozzy started to grow exponentially more powerfulafter his ‘emergence’ into a full Lich Supremator, Ozzy has also begun tosuffer from adrenaline-influenced mood swings and the occasional bout of mania.As is the case with many Liches throughout the history of both Mindrunner andthe Prime Timeline, Ozzy has developed a trigger-response to life-or-deathstressors in which he undergoes a mental status shift and gets much moresevere, violent, and manic that he refers to as The Lich Shift. An unstable butmostly manageable issue that only really rears its ugly head when Ozzy isconfronted with significant danger. The problem is, Ozzy is currently under theweight of several long-term mental stressors: Everybody keeps telling him thathe’s going to have to kill Jovix-Cailo, and although he knows that’s the rightthing to do, he’s never killed anyone before – and he’s going to have to killagain, in the civil war that is all but waiting for him back on his home plane.The burden of responsibility in these situations has begun to warp the ‘LichShift’ defense mechanism into something more distinct and disparate.

Why YouLove Them: Ozzywas originally made because I wanted to turn my Destiny OC Euclid into atabletop character, but he almost instantly became a unique character that wasthe star of a surprisingly in-depth and exciting one-off game. Both Sal (TheDM) and I decided pretty instantly that we wanted to do more with him. I thinkhe’s a fairly nuanced, complicated character for what he is; I feel likecharacters with his type and severity of problems don’t often get to strugglefor their own benefit (as opposed to the audience’s schadenfreude), and despiteevery setback he’s still kicking and still making progress, which I think isvery relatable and very important. He’s got a lot of handicaps and regrets andphobias but he fights anyway. He’s the underdog, he’s grown up taking shit forbeing born, his own powers threaten to kill him, but he fights anyway. Peoplehave unrealistic expectations for him. His life has been completely ruined andflipped upside-down by the choices he’s been forced to make. His reward is along, uphill slog with few immediate gratifications. He Fights Anyway.Characters in his position I feel like get shoehorned to side-character, orkilled off, or turn into the bad guy, or all of the above, but Ozzy is theprotagonist and that gives him a really interesting breadth of emotion andchange. And also, he’s cute.

[ayearofpike]

See You Later

Pocket Books, 1990 226 pages, 15 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-74390-2 LOC: PZ7.P626 Bo 2012 (Bound To You compilation) OCLC: 746155163 Released July 15, 1990 (per B&N)

Sometimes it is hard to know what we want coming out of school. That might be even more true for those with congenital physical disabilities who don’t really expect to survive much past graduation. But when Mark meets Becky, for the first time he thinks he might actually know. Becky sure does, anyway – at least, an older and wiser future Becky who comes back in time to break up with her then-boyfriend-now-husband and get together with Mark, thinking that this very act will affect the future of all of humanity. 

First things first: More than anything else, See You Later is a love story. Even though it’s got elements in common with Pike’s earlier stuff, this book is not a horror story, a detective story, a straight-sci-fi story, or a murder mystery. It’s a romance from the point of view of a dude, which makes it the first of these books to use only a male POV and only the second to use the first person. It’s got computers, a space station, murder, and thermonuclear war, yeah, but the core of the story is Mark’s growing feelings toward Becky and his despair at the possibility of her returning them. It retains enough Pike that you can recognize his characterizations and stylistic devices, but it’s really not what anybody would expect to come out of this dude’s pen if they’ve read the 14 books that came before it.

That said? It’s one of my top five favorites. It carried me through my lovesick teen years, and rereading it this week brought back all the feels.

I first encountered See You Later around the time I started to notice girls and think that maybe I would like to be affectionate with one. Before this point (maybe around the end of eighth grade) everything I wrote was a straight-up spy heist, but after it I caught relationship drama sneaking into my stories. I eventually realized it was my imagination manifesting the girl I was too shy and scared to talk to, the one I’d built up as the image of perfection and the key to my happiness, and allowing my protagonist to get her without actually having to do anything. Like, maybe I should just let the first paragraph of this book do the talking for me.

It began with a smile, or at least that’s what I thought. But then, I didn’t think much when I was eighteen. I just longed for things I didn’t have, and reacted when they came to me and I no longer wanted them. But love ... I always wanted to be in love, and to have love, and to pretend they were one and the same thing. I was like everybody else, I suppose, and I thought I was so different. I had to find that one girl who was so different, so perfect – who would accept me just the way I was.

It’s both the reality of my existence in high school and the problem of teen masculinity in general: I just expected things to happen for me, especially love. We’re told that if we behave in a certain specific way, the circumstances of our picture-perfect life will just fall into place around us. You can either be a rich jock asshole who cons girls into falling for your status and biceps, or you can quietly support and compliment them until they realize the rich jock assholes are not where it’s at and that the nice guy they’ve always wanted has been there the whole time. We’re familiar with the inherent problems of the nice guy model in 2018, but in 1991 it was just the way to go, not to mention way more attainable for the shy band geek on the honor roll.

I’m not sure that Mark completely fits into this mold. He certainly takes his destiny more firmly into his own hands by actually asking Becky out, rather than only hanging around all the time and hoping her boyfriend magically disappears and that she sees the light of his presence. (Although he does that too.) He is definitely the shy nerdy type, a computer programmer who avoids his high school graduation and has disavowed his abusive family and is sickly due to a heart defect. He could just hang out at Becky’s store all the time and bemoan his poor luck of being born sick and growing up nerdy and unsupported, and face whatever is fated to come his way however Becky decides. But this is Pike, so there’s got to be something more to the plot than that.

On one of his visits to the store, Mark sees a weirdly familiar guy over in the corner, reading the copy on the box of one of his games. It turns out the dude is also a game designer, and wants Mark to come and critique the most recent one he’s written. While at his house, Mark meets his girlfriend, another weirdly familiar person despite her not looking or sounding like anyone he’s ever met (he doesn’t know anyone with long blonde curls and a Scottish accent). She takes an immediate interest in Mark’s pursuit of Becky and decides to help by getting the boyfriend out of the way. So she goes to the bookstore where he works and gets him to ask her out, then goes to Becky’s store and pretends to recognize her from a picture in her “cousin’s” wallet. This, of course, immediately gets Becky to break up with the dude and ask Mark out the same day. They have a great time, they spend the night together, and in the morning when he calls she hangs the fuck up on him.

Wait, what? This certainly wasn’t in Mystery Girl’s plans. It turns out that the boyfriend got wise to the plan and told Becky all about how Mark planned the entire breakup, using his blonde Scottish friend to trick the guy into going out with her so that Becky would be free for Mark to snap up. The girl realizes that something’s up, that the boyfriend has been warned by someone else, and while she’s screaming at him about it, whoops, her accent falls off and she reveals she was faking the whole time. However, we do learn that the whistleblower is a dangerous man, and that the mystery girl wasn’t counting on him following her, and that even though Mark has no idea what’s going on he knows it’s way bigger than he had previously thought.

I’ve already laid this out in the intro, sort of, but here’s the whole thing: In the future, Becky marries her boyfriend and Mark dies of his heart disorder. (And loneliness, it’s implied.) The boyfriend husband joins the Air Force, is quickly promoted to general, and is assigned command of a military space station that is supposedly only for scientific research but which everybody knows boasts an enormous arsenal of weapons. In the global argument over this space station, the general gets an itchy trigger finger, and decides to win once and for all by nuking China. Of course this leads to global war that more or less wipes out human life on the planet, and the space station is crippled and houses about a hundred survivors, including Becky, all of whom cluster together and pray for forgiveness as the air runs out. (Except the general, who is “too busy” – presumably still bombing brown people.)

Then the aliens show up. Only they’re not defined as we would expect. These aliens are nothing more than fuzzy balls of light, and there’s one for each human on the ship. They use their undefined advanced technology to clean up a chunk of Los Angeles and make it a beautiful garden, where Becky can spend the rest of her days in peace and happiness. Only she’s not happy, because she’s still thinking about how things might have been different if she’d married Mark instead of this ruthless warlord. Wasn’t it her support, her help, her forsaking of her own career plans to allow his to grow, that made this dude able to control the country’s nuclear arsenal? Conveniently, right about here the aliens offer Becky a deal: go back to any point in her own life and make some kind of a change to increase her own happiness. They also somehow resurrect Mark and send him back with her.

You guessed it: the weirdly-familiar people are Becky and Mark from the future. Future-Becky’s goal for happiness is to break her past self up with her boyfriend and start her going out with Mark. Future-Mark’s goal is more benign: world peace. See, the game he’s got Mark testing is completely based on the war, and just like with the real war there’s no way to win – UNLESS you decline to launch any weapons from the very start. Unfortunately, the time travelers don’t have a clean palette to paint from, because Future-Becky’s husband has learned about the plan and has traveled to the same time, not to save his relationship but to ruin Becky’s. He thinks that she’s held him back, restrained him, made him too soft, and without her mitigating influence he will be able to successfully blow the shit out of the other side of the globe. Sure, you could argue that this same timeline would be effected without his interference, but then again, he’s a vengeful asshole. She ruined his life; why should she be happy? And what easier way to make her unhappy than to kill the dude who would replace him?

To Future-Becky’s reckoning, there’s only one possible solution: kill the boyfriend before he can become the grizzled, vengeful general, and do it tonight before the full moon is at its highest point in the sky and all the time travelers phase out of existence. All Mark can think to do is ask Becky for advice on how she would kill her boyfriend. And of course she knows, having just broken up with him – she’d run him down with her car as he left his store at night. Which is exactly what Future-Becky tries to do. Only Becky doesn’t have the baggage of thirty-plus years of a shitty marriage, and she runs out in front of the car to warn the boyfriend, and it’s going too fast to stop.

The boyfriend rushes Becky to the hospital, and Mark plans to follow, only Future-Becky knows there’s no point and takes him back to a cave in the hills behind her house. This cave has been around throughout the story, but it’s only here that Mark realizes it’s the time-travel point. It doesn’t hurt that the husband is hanging out there waiting for them. It doesn’t help either, as he’s got a gun and plans to kill Mark right there. So Mark has to talk fast. 

Something I didn’t mention before is that with a little effort, the time-shifted variants of the people can experience what the other half is doing. Mark did it before, when the husband kidnapped and killed Future-Mark and we learned what his plans were. Mark asks the others to do it now, to see the pain brought on by Becky dying in the hospital, to remind them of how they once cared for each other. And lo and behold, they remember why they got married in the first place, what was there before they felt trapped and resentful and eventually forgot that wasn’t the original point of their relationship, nor the only way it had ever been.

In the morning, the time travelers are gone, Becky is dead, and Mark and the boyfriend have to explain to the police how and why it happened. This is a formidable effort, considering that a) the only other witness, the mall security guard, was stoned out of his gourd and b) nobody except for the two of them knows, remembers, or even saw any evidence that there were future alternates hanging around and fucking shit up. Like, the car Future-Becky was driving when she smashed into her past self? No such car, no such license plate, no record of sale. So the security guard saw Becky bleeding on the ground, he figures there must have been a car – but he didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, didn’t see Future-Becky standing there mourning herself. The boyfriend is furious, and moreso when Mark adopts the same line. But eventually he catches on, and when Mark tells him what happened in the hospital (something Mark couldn’t possibly know, not having been there) he seems to accept that some things are magical and unexplainable.

So this leaves us to wax philosophical about what the hell just happened, as Mark dies of his heart defect ten years after the story’s events. This part stinks of mansplaining a little bit. Future-Becky described the events of the war and the time travel quite thoroughly, but Mark doesn’t believe she actually knew everything and proceeds to give his own version of events. I don’t know where he gets off, but it is true that he has no plans to save himself for future medical care, and doesn’t even know of the possibility existing as she described. So he has to come up with something, and his something is more metaphysical than science fiction. He thinks that the “aliens” are actually time travelers from a farther distant future than we know, a time when our souls manifest as light rather than in physical bodies – that Future-Becky was being helped and guided by Even-Farther-Future-Becky. This helps to clear up some of the inconsistencies in Future-Becky’s story, true, and maybe we should grant a dying man some clemency as he’s thinking about his mortality and the fate of the future. And yes, a lot of this is coming from me being like another ten years along from Mark dying, and more enlightened by nearly thirty years of societal progress since the story itself was written. But still, he wasn’t even fucking there.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed rereading this story. It’s the tightest Pike’s written so far in terms of characters: technically, there are only three, leaving out the security guard and the cop at the end (who I think pretty much only exists because our dude can’t resist writing detective interrogation scenes). There’s almost no fat to cut, though the epilogue goes a little farther than is strictly necessary. And honestly, it was warmly nostalgic for my years of thinking I knew myself and what I wanted and needed and actually not knowing dick. That’s where Mark ends up, after all: not knowing, and realizing that’s OK. We might still wonder how this possibly came from the same dude who wrote revenge murderers and sexy lizard teens, but as we analyze what came next (and probably was written before and during this one), it’ll start to make sense. Maybe.

[baronvontribble]

Since I've been inactive lately and Tumblr's broken my activity feed ANYWAY, here's some Ted drawings for my original space universe! Because I clearly don't have enough of those. >.>

I'm at that point in my original story writing shit where I get an idea that's really fucking cool but it doesn't gel with my revamped story so I go back to the First Draft for ideas. For context, the second draft had nothing to do with Finding Cool Shit In Space, and everything to do with Ted and his robot being Rebel Space Fugitives. Neat as this is, it doesn't let me show off my actual real research that I've done in making this world a believable one that follows real science and shit.

For those of you who are interested, a bunch of actual things that I've researched and put in the plot point bin for potential use later are under the cut:

--the maximum distance a Voyager-like or Pioneer-like probe might've travelled given the maximum age of a third-generation star (plus the estimated minimum age of that star's planets then being able to nurture and grow complex alien life) which could produce an advanced civilization. hint: it's not actually that far

--the estimated temperature of a protoplanetary disk

--time dilation, gravitational lensing, and what this means for someone whose communications work off of a quantum entanglement-based idea ("why is our data suddenly coming in SO FAST" asks the ship next to the black hole. "why are they sending us data at a rate of about a bit every three seconds" asks home base, located back in Sensible And Unbent Spacetime)

--the size and rotation speed a round thing in space needs to produce artificial gravity (answer: A Lot)

--the Fermi Paradox/Drake Equation (see 1 for a potential solution to this)

--Planet X and the implications of wonky planetary orbits

--how planetary orbits work in a binary star system

--a star's size/heat vs. the distance of its "goldilocks zone" and how THAT affects orbits and rotations

--Helium-3 harvesting and cold fusion

--methods of sublight propulsion that are Not Rockets (laser sails, photonic propulsion, etc)

--neutrinos. just, neutrinos.

--tardigrades and other extremophiles

--brown dwarf stars, neutron stars, zombie stars

--no, asteroid fields are not that densely packed, but they are insanely cool nonetheless

--did you know our OWN GALAXY is obscuring a massive fucking part of the sky? who knows what's past that bit!

--d y s o n   s p h e r e s

--not quite related (still part of in-universe canon but not directly related to space), but touchable holograms aren't that crazy an idea anymore. this seems to me like it could be one of the next steps towards normalizing things like deafness? like imagine if a hologram could tap you on the shoulder and sign at you

--the limitations of terraforming, applications of bio-domes, most common kinds of earthlike exoplanets we can find easily, and the effects of different levels of gravity on the human body in a long-term sense. space blindness is a THING.

--how to insulate against high levels of solar activity

--gamma ray bursts and their potential effects on life as a whole

this is not a comprehensive list but it IS a list. I have researched all of these things. they are all Neat. hopefully I'll get to use a good chunk of them because they deserve better than to simply go to waste.

PS: the worldbuilding stuff as far as how human civilization has evolved and how its technology has improved is expansive enough to make a whole nother post. thanks for reading this one though! always happy to know there are other people who also think that Space Is Cool.

[tessatechaitea]

Green Lantern Loves Space Ghost #1

I hope this stars the talk show version of Space Ghost.

James Tynion IV is writing this issue so I bet it's more serious than it ought to be and it'll probably be full of comic book tropes and Space Ghost will come out as bisexual. The issue begins with a planet in some serious trouble. You know the kind of trouble planets get into in Green Lantern comic books! It's always serious and hardly ever humorous and wacky. Just once I'd like to read about a planet full of sentient penises having to deal with sentient vagina missionaries hellbent on getting the penises to worship their vaginal god. I mean, okay, fine. That's probably a metaphor for a lot of comic books. But I don't want to read it as metaphor! I want to look at pictures of talking vaginas!

So the weapon is a pen? Is that the big Twilight Zone twist? "He's got the only pen on this world and he's writing lies about us! Future generation will read those lies and think we were all jerks! And we can't get the pen away from him because he's locked himself in the bathroom! And we can't get the door off the hinges because the door swings inward! And we can't pick the lock because our greatest technological advancement (aside from the one really sweet pen!) was perfecting the unpickable bathroom door lock! We're doomed!"

I love to toot my own horn so let me say I probably just wrote a better story than whatever Tynion IV came up with. I just got to the page with the credits and I want to apologize to Christopher Sebela for not including him in my critique of the writing. I'm sure you've added nothing to this story that James Tynion IV didn't say, "I was already thinking of adding that! I know Scott Snyder!" I should really meet some of these writers before caricaturing them. Although I feel like I probably nailed Tynion IV. It's just too bad you can't hear, through the written text, the grating, whining voice I gave him. The first few pages are used to establish that the call for help is coming from a place outside of the known DC Universe. Page one is all, "We don't know where we are!" Page two is all, "I'm Hal Jordan and this is a new space and time dimension that I'd like to enjoy!" Page three is all, "I'm Salaak and I'm reminding you that this distress call is coming from uncharted space that we've never explored because it's outside our universe or even further!" Hopefully that's all the reminders this comic book gives us because even I'm not so stupid that I didn't get the message after rereading it all three times because I was sort of confused about where the message was coming from. Now that the location has been established, it's time for some action! Larfleeze makes an appearance, as does Space Ghost and Zorak. How did this comic book get so exciting so quickly?! Was it written by geniuses?! James and Christopher should take that last paragraph as a compliment because it's the nicest thing I'm bound to write today.

Especially if I have to wade through twenty pages of dialogue like this.

Although I wouldn't mind more art like this:

Is this the first time Green Lantern has made a light construct butt plug?

Green Lantern and Space Ghost crash on a planet outside of the known universe (yes, it's mentioned again). It's a planet full of either Robocops, Transformers, or Sentient AT-STs. It might also be a Battletech crossover but since the cover didn't mention Battletech in an effort to get the huge Battletech audience to pick up the comic book, I remain doubtful of that conclusion. The alien Hal winds up talking to (a regular humanoid alien because the robots are apparently just weaponized vehicles) tells his story and it sounds suspiciously like the plot of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Apparently Green Lantern and Space Ghost have crash landed on Krikkit. I could explain in greater detail but if you aren't familiar with The Hitchhiker series, why would I coddle you and your choice to remain ignorant of something so enjoyable? Although, to be fair and objective and other complimentary things that perhaps aren't completely true of me, Life, The Universe, and Everything was the worst book of the bunch. The Perterrans attack Hal because they can't have any evidence showing up on their planet that suggests there is more to the Perterran universe than simply Perterran.

I would have chosen Amanda Waller. But I guess that might be construed as racist or sexist or fattist.

Does anybody need to know my opinion on United Airlines and their behavior this week? No? You all know exactly what I would say already? Good. Thank you for paying attention so I can spend less time writing. Hal gets away so that he and Space Ghost can have a battle. Remember that thing I said about James Tynion IV relying on comic book tropes? Well, here we are with the good guys battling due to a misunderstanding! Only a few pages left before they realize the mistake and work together. I bet Christopher Sebela read the script and was all, "Maybe let's try something different?" And James Tynion IV was all, "Really?! You're going to question my writing! I did mention I know Scott Snyder, right?! Anyway, what do you think of all my great jokes?" And then Christopher was all, "There are jokes?" The two heroes wind up knocking each other out just as some kid named Keila and her robot on a leash (named P.E.T. because of course it is) enter the scene. She takes them away so that they can learn that they're on the same side and also become part of the rebellion, probably. So there's some stuff where everybody decides to get along so the plot can continue. Can we get some kind of Comic Book Consortium to set up official tropes so that comic book story space isn't wasted by them? So the first ten pages of this comic book could have been condensed into one panel that read "COMIC BOOK TROPE 1A." Then everybody goes, "Cool. Space Ghost and Green Lantern fought each other due to a misunderstanding and neither actually bested the other before they realized their mistake and began working together to find the real bad guy. Let's get to the story now!"

Oh no! This story isn't about a secluded planet cut off from the rest of the universe at all, is it?! It's a metaphor for human loneliness! NOOOOOOOO!

It turns out that this planet that speaks English (it must since Hal can understand the aliens without his ring) has only one major difference in their language: weapon means vehicle! They also have the word vehicle for vehicle which enables the alien to easily explain, "Weapon is our word for vehicle." Well, that sure will cause a lot of wacky mix-ups, right?! Green Lantern and Space Ghost probably wouldn't have shown up if they received a transmission that said, "We have a really powerful car and some guy wants to destroy it!" Green Lantern and Space Ghost believe the crazy guy with the rocket ship who sent out the distress call. They decide to back his play to destroy the foundation of the entire culture of this world. That seems like the right thing to do. Truth is always better than stability! I mean, even if you believe that truth is better than stability, is it smart to trust the judgment of one guy? I suppose when the other side has already threatened to kill you, it's probably the best decision. To make matters even more exciting, the military shows up to destroy everybody! It happens so quickly that Space Ghost and Green Lantern are given back boxes holding their ring and wrist bands but the little girl mixed up the boxes! And there's not time to switch! I can't believe I thought this comic book couldn't get wacky! Ha ha! Look at Space Ghost try to use the Green Lantern ring! Ho ho! Look at Hal Jordan try to use Space Ghost's whatevers! They switch back pretty quickly but Hal Jordan discovers his ring is almost out of energy. Like always! How the fuck aren't Green Lanterns getting stranded on backwater planets constantly? Their rings always get critically low or run out of juice because that's the only way to make the fight tense (at least for unimaginative writers like Cullen Bunn and Cullen Bunn). It wouldn't be a problem if the Green Lanterns hadn't stopped using that Storage Locker Planet to keep their batteries nearby in interdimensional space. In the end, Green Lantern and Space Ghost inspire the planet to rise up and believe in something greater than whatever they were already believing in. They inspired the Perterrans to not simply sit back and take it in the ass! What a great story! I'm so happy that people are around to inspire other people or else how will all those other people know that there are other ways to live their lives?! People who inspire are life-saving heroes! I hate stories that glorify inspiration. Inspiration is what people who are too lazy to actually do shit do. It's the acceptance of advertising as the impetus that gets the world moving. "Without a charismatic person singing on a reality television show, how would any young people know that you can become a charismatic person lucky enough to get all the same breaks that that person did so that they could also become an inspiration to inspire people to become inspirations? It just wouldn't happen without inspiration! Nobody can ever be self-motivated or believe in themselves without first being told to believe in themselves! Fuck off! The Ruff 'n' Reddy story is terrible. It's just a bunch of old jokes and stolen material shoved into a framing story of two comedians trying to find new partners whose last names will make a clever pun or saying. That's just an old Mitchell and Webb sketch! So even the framing story connecting the stolen material is stolen!

I'm sure the punchline has something to do with somebody putting their cock inside somebody else's ass. Ha ha.

A lot of the material in the Ruff 'n' Reddy story seems way bluer than I would expect DC to greenlight for a Teen Rated comic book. I guess because the filthy punchlines are either never actually mentioned or were deemed not quite explicit enough, DC Comics was okay with it. I certainly don't mind! I just think it's an odd decision. Especially since the main story is about how Space Ghost is good with kids and how people inspire children to grow up to change the world. I mean after feeling good about how little Keila grows up to become a space explorer, the reader is treated with jokes about chickens fucking eggs, cocks inside asses, and walruses raping seals? Way to go, DC! Oh! There's also a violent depiction of a forced rimjob!

To be completely transparent, I was less upset about this as I was about the stolen Bill Hicks escalator joke! And by "less upset," I mean I masturbated to this.

The Ranking! Overall, I'm almost sorry I purchased this comic book. At least I'll get a few more private moments with that rimjob pick. Ooh la la!