#I would destroy the fabric of spacetime

[freelathed]

just beat outer wilds, no biggy (<-got the kazoo ending)

[stormsthatrage]

Have three (and a half?) ideas/sketches for the very beginning of the Two Idiots and a Temporal Incident Bleach AU. I made Ichigo a girl in this post because I have a deep-seated desire for more female Bleach characters that a) aren't constantly being rescued and b) aren't hyper-sexualized.

Snippet 1:

Two months after she killed Aizen, Ichigo came to the abrupt realization that she was ready to murder again. 

“Grimmjow,” she said, “if you don’t eat that somewhere else, I am going to kill you.”

Grimm lifted his head to look up at her. The rotted arm hanging from his mouth twitched as he ground down, evidently severing some sort of muscle between his teeth. This was unfortunately the last straw for the limb’s integrity; a large chunk of slimy skin sloughed off, landing on the bare dirt with a horrifically wet plop.

Ichigo told herself she was not going to vomit. 

The back of her throat tightened and her mouth filled with saliva.

She was not going to vomit.

Grimm locked eyes with her. Reached out a clawed hand to pick up the goopy chunk. Brought it towards his lips.

Ichigo contorted herself, leaning out over the side of the boulder she was sitting on, and heaved. Breakfast came up — a protein bar — and so did lunch — another protein bar.

Over the sound of her own gags, she heard him say, “And you think I’m disgusting?”

She gagged one last time, gave herself a second to be sure it really was the last time, and then reached out blindly for her sword hilt. Her fingers scrabbled over cold stone and found Zangetsu’s pommel, and then she was leaping down from the rock, fueled by the blood-thirst of someone a little too far past done with another person’s shit.

Grimm laughed as she crashed down on him, his breath powerful enough that she smelled the sound as equally as she heard it — but he had dropped the arm, and now she got to try and beat his face in, so it was a victory even if it was a Pyrrhic one.

Pantera caught Zangetsu’s edge (a brief connection, a split second of perfect understanding: grief pushed down and buried deep; a growing restlessness, born from the pointless question of now what; desperation to pretend the world remained as it was, before the war, before it was all broken, before they two were the last-) and Grimm shoved upward. Ichigo moved with the force of the block, springing backward and landing in a crouch. He grinned at her, more of a baring-of-teeth than a smile, and lunged forward.

And off they went, the two of them, playing pretend in a forest that was shrinking every day, the unraveling of reality itself closing in.

Snippet 2:

The sky was a perpetual, vibrant blue. 

Ichigo hadn’t stopped to ponder the color of the End of Everything before, well, everything ended. But she thinks if she had, she would have expected it to be black.

Black, like nothing. Black, the color of absence. 

But it turns out that the threshold of the apocalypse — where spacetime was being ripped apart, atoms and quarks torn open and destroyed — glowed.

Hat-and-Clogs had explained it before Aizen had killed him. In a twist of cosmic irony, blue was the color of sunny days and also nuclear fission. And so above them burned a spherical shell of brilliant blue, eating its way closer through the fabric of reality.

And beyond the shell, past the threshold? No color at all there, not even black, just a complete nothing.

There was a pun there, about moths and Aizen’s monstrous transformation and the destruction of fabric and possibly an emperor left wearing no clothes. If Renji had been there, he would have made it. Ichigo wasn’t drunk enough to do it for him. 

Spirits, she missed him. She missed them all, with their stupid jokes and annoying — 

“Can you shut up?” Grimm said. “I would, actually, like to fall asleep sometime this year.”

Ichigo stopped staring at the sky to roll over onto her side, squinting through decaying grass to peer at him. “I haven’t said anything?”

“But you were thinking. I know because I could hear you straining.”

Ichigo considered that, and then rolled over twice more, until she was close enough to Grimm to kick him.

Parallel to her in the grass, he tensed, bracing for a strike.

The joke was on him, though, that wasn’t her move. She let out a horrid, caterwauling wail, doing her best approximation of a drunkard trying to perform an aria. In her opinion, she managed the imitation quite well; the sound was positively, excruciatingly awful. 

Grimm launched himself across the remaining ground between them, landing on top of her and desperately trying to muffle the noise leaving her mouth. “Shut up, shut up, shut up - ”

She laid off screeching in favor of employing a technique all siblings learn early in life: licking the hand trying to silence you.

Grimm recoiled, skittering away and frantically wiping his hand on the ground. “I hate you!” he cried.

Ichigo cackled, and he turned his head to stare at her, shoulders hunched and eyes wide, posture all offended-cat. But there was something else in his eyes, too — something a little self-satisfied, maybe.

She huffed. “Go to sleep, moron,” she said, and closed her eyes. 

Snippet 3:

They stood over Aizen’s corpse. Just the sight of it was enough to make Ichigo’s hands shake with a mixture of fear and anger.

Soul King.

They had avoided this place by unspoken agreement, before now. Had wandered through what little forest remained, staying as far away from here as they could without getting too close to the boundary.

After all, why return? All it was was a reminder of how they had failed. How they hadn’t defeated him. Hadn’t killed him until he had already won in every way that mattered.

So, naturally, their return was prompted by nothing less than what Ichigo suspected was the stupidest plan to ever be created, synthesized from pure frustration, a deep lack of comprehension of kido theory, and the complete assurance that whatever they did, they couldn’t make things worse.

“The bastard didn’t even have the decency to rot,” Grimm said.

It was true. Aizen’s body lay there, perfectly preserved by the hogyoku, as the universe decayed around him instead.

“Looking at it makes me want to kill him again, you know?” Grimm added, kicking the side of the corpse. It was not a gentle kick. Something audibly crunched under his toe. “I feel like once just wasn’t enough.”

Ichigo breathed out. Breathed in. “Well,” she said, and her voice was as still and steady as Hat-and-Clogs could teach her, “if this works, we’ll get a second chance. Better make it satisfying, though, because I sure as hell don’t want to do this a third time.”

Grimm’s fangs glinted blue in the light of The End. “Oh, I have no doubt I will enjoy the opportunity immensely.” 

He crouched down and put one hand over the spot Aizen’s heart should have been. “You sure you’re up for this?” he asked. “Your gargantas have always been shit, you know, and your kido is worse.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she said. “Just do it already.”

And so Grimm unsheathed his claws and plunged his hand into Aizen’s chest. With a series of crunching snaps, a wet sucking sound, and a tide of the stench of iron, he ripped the hogyoku out of Aizen’s chest.

He cradled the tiny ball of divinity between both palms. Ichigo’s hands wrapped tightly around his. The two of them dripped gore and power from their fingers.

Focusing together, with neither array nor incantation, they imagined a clock, spinning backwards, and wished.

The hogyoku glowed, awakening from its sleep.

Blue light turned blinding white.

And everything came undone.

Snippet 3.5ish:

In a shocking turn of fate, the two’s methodology was successful.

But there was one factor — one small but vital factor — that they both forgot.

The type of time travel they embarked on required so much energy because, at its heart, it required undoing. In order to write a different book on pages that have already been printed, the pages must first be erased.

Under normal circumstances, the energy required to do this to a whole universe would be so immense as to be prohibitive. 

With a hogyoku, doing so became possible, but very, very difficult.

Doing so with a hogyoku, with the entirety of the universe already undone, save for few cubic miles?  

Well. The energy for that, dear reader, is peanuts.

And so the two time travelers, who had poured all the energy they could into the hogyoku in the desperate hope of landing far enough back to make a difference, found themselves flung back not two months, not two years, not even two decades, but about two centuries.

… There was, perhaps, a reason, that when everyone was still alive, those two were never put in charge of strategy.

[headcrabrangoon]

how did the original accident play out in the rangoon au?

I've told the story of the aftermath from a few different perspectives, and it's high time I addressed the start of it all.

If you want the TL;DR: Gordon was conducting some unsupervised tests with a teleporter he was modifying. Lamarr was loose and got involved when the machine started falling apart, and the two regained consciousness as a single disoriented and distressed being.

If you want a longer story...

The setting is White Forest, six months after Alyx killed the Advisor and vanished. In the time since then, she'd been reported as being sighted only once by Dr. Mossman on the Borealis shortly before it was destroyed. The logical conclusion would be that she was killed in the crash, but Gordon didn't feel her death through their vortal connection. It's clear that she's not gone, only displaced. The task of tracking down a human being who could be anywhere in spacetime seemed impossible, but if anyone was willing to take the challenge, it would be Eli Vance and his colleagues at White Forest.

Gordon was especially dedicated to the project. He had plenty of reasons to be, not the least of which was being able to feel Alyx's life force through the fabric of the universe. Vortessence was not easy to study in a purely physical manner, but Dr. Freeman knew it was too important to leave out of his research. He spent months synthesizing notes from Vance, Kleiner and Mossman's developments in teleportation with personal observations and oral accounts from experienced vortigaunts, and was finally at a point where he felt confident in using equipment to test his theories. If he can understand teleportation in relation to the vortessence, he can find Alyx. If he can find Alyx, he can do something important on purpose, driven by his own will, and then he might feel a little bit like the person that everyone else is so proud of.

It wasn't exactly headline news when Lamarr got loose that night. Her kennel was being cleaned, and while there was an effort made to contain her, she was a very clever and curious beast who loved to explore. She was attracted to the sounds in the lab-- for most of her life, spent alone with Kleiner in his City 17 lab, these sounds mean Her Person is doing Important Work. Things moving and changing, making rhythms or unexpected loud sounds that make her jump and startle. Her favorite thing to watch, made even more tempting when she was not allowed to be present. It made hiding in the vents even more exciting.

It was not Her Person working, but Gordon was fine. She had not known him for very long, but he was friendly to her, Kleiner and the rest of Her People liked him a lot, and he liked to do Important Work, so he was allowed to be in her inner circle. Still, she wasn't sure if he'd let her hang around and watch him, so she stayed hidden.

He stayed working for a long time. Sending things from terminal to terminal, recording the readings, making modifications, starting over. Really, it would have been safer and smarter to do this sort of work with a lab partner, but Gordon was determined not to bother anyone. With White Forest growing from a Resistance base into a living community, people were looking to Eli and company for leadership, they had enough on their plates. Meanwhile, Gordon was struggling to find his place in peacetime. If he could just do this for them... If he could just do this for her...

He could get a little distracted, letting his thoughts take over like that. Distracted enough to not register that the readings from the equipment were starting to trend toward something dangerous. Distracted enough to disregard loose parts, even. But Lamarr, from her hiding place, was paying attention to the way the machines were moving.

Later, she might understand that a headcrab launching at a person's head from out of nowhere isn't the best strategy for getting them out of harm's way. In fact, there's a good chance it well put them further in harm's way. Regardless, she'd wanted to help, but instead she just put them both in the blast radius when the restrictors blew on the smaller teleporters.

Neither would be able to remember exactly what happened or what the impact felt like, which is unsurprising given that having your nervous systems spliced together counts as cranial trauma. The physical and psychological toll is immense and immediate, as their neurons are on fire and their immune systems are rejecting each other. It's hard to process anything, they can't separate their thoughts or understand what they are. But they know that they've made a terrible mistake.

[pokeology]

completely theoretically if I destroyed the concept of time and allowed past and future to mingle as one would the ecosystem still work

Oh, yes. Time as a concept is entirely a human construct. Just don't touch the fabric of spacetime.

[preshtagonist]

Marble hornets!stuck thoughts bc its that time of night again and talking into the void of shit nobody cares abt is my thing and bc this has been brewing in my head for half a year now i think? Some of these are disconnected thoughts and concepts that dont work together

their session is a horribly glitched out seemingly void session where the white queen and black queen were not separate entities (may also include black king and white king idk!) (this is the operator)

This entity is also their first guardian. Lord english esque in how it perpetuates its own creation (yknow how arasol found the code for sgrub. I think it does smth similar w tapes or some other method. Arg to find your sburb disc loser) and in how it seems almost to have always been present in the life of tim (you know) and alex (birthday video)

Possibility: Alex discovered the sburb code or whatever the mechanism was and tried to hide it thinking it would prevent the apocalypse from happening. It doesnt and never would have. Jay finds them i think (maybe for a while alex blames jay for the apocalypse bc he couldnt keep his goddamn nose out of it)

as an amalgam of four game constructs (WQ BQ BK WK) it is considered the exile of the main four (alex, brian, tim, and jay) and indirectly fucks them via “commands” on the computer terminal. Tims pills run interference for whatever reason.

Brian (as hoodie) eventually gains access to his terminal and occasionally through “hacking”, the terminals of the other four guys. TTA brainblasts you w audio visual hallucinations sometimes

Jessica, seth, amy, and sarah have “normal” exiles. Thank god

Heres a fucked up thought: tim and alex have opposing views on initiating the scratch. Who is on what side probably requires a more nuanced understanding of their characters than what i have but heres an attempt to pick a side for each and figure out reasoning:

So first of all neither character has a perfect understanding of what the scratch truly is or how it works. They do not have a doc scratch or trolls to yell at them for universe cancer so there is no real way for them to have a full picture of the implications of doing this.

alex is actually for NOT initiating the scratchz his reaction to finding out they “caused” the end of the world (or more accurately were harbingers of that end) is “we all deserve to die.”, heavily rooted in christian/cartholic (i am tired sorry for conflating the two) guilt for what i hope are Obvious Reasons and the whole “you need to kill everyone and then yourself” thing. Additionally does not believe the scratch will destroy the operator (he is right) so trapping it in this dead universe is the best they can do in his eyes (he can not actually hope to trap it). Sees them all as infected by it but ESPECIALLY Tim as “the source” (why? I dont know. I think it favored him as a doom player. Tim being a doom player also makes him the most literally representation of everything alex hates and resents about the situation).

Tim is for initiating the scratch. He believes that the scratch will wipe out the operator for good (it wont). I had mlre thoughts on this but i got sjdetracked sorry

Jessica survives the scratch somehow

Maybe she is hidden away by tim before the scratch starts, maybe he even is able to hide with her from it? Would imply tim knows the scratch is surviveable and thus the operator could escape from it but would also reflect how his self preservation kind of outweighs any desire to be a martyr unlike alex. Tim Will Survive a la final girl? I had better ways of expressing this thought but i lost it. If you look at this and say “you dont know what youre talking about” you are so correct

Either way, due to tims planning or a glitch in their already buggy session, she falls through the fabric of spacetime and into the new universe but loses all her memories/has a fuzzy recollection.

If tim does survive this could explain how she is able to be situated in a universe where she should not exist (he got everything arranged the way sburb guardians (non first ones) would)

This is how marble hornets comic happens and that cast would get involved

Have you considered skully sprite for your troubles. Yes? Okay i dont have a more developed thought than that i spedread the comics from excitement and did. Not internalize the meaningful stuff bc im small brained

….i just rmbrd the ^2sprites and. Thinking sbt that in relation to skullysprite is… yeah id be wanting to fix the broken too if i was an amalgam of several dead bodies shoved into a sprite in this timeline (maybe)

Obviously real skuly is more than that but i dont fully understand them so. Ack

Anyway this sessions FOR SURE players are jessica, taylor, adam (who i ALWAYS tag as seth bc i dont have a BRAIN) and david (and skully! In a way)

Adam kills david during the session. I know it in my heart. Bastard >:(

I cant think of anything else good night

[razzberrydazz]

Oh the antics if I shoved my dnd character Lotte into BG3.

Rambling under the cut

Lotte in the dnd campaign I introduced her in is a drow martyr that ascended to godhood upon her death and thanks to Time Magic Shenanigans (that fused her essence with a spider and gave her amnesia bad enough she forgot her own name and so the players named her Lotte/Charlotte) she was trapped for an indeterminate amount of time in the Void outside spacetime and when she was dragged back into existence by the players she became a drider-shifting goddess of Fate and Magic that blessed the entire party. Her very essence is tied to the weaving web of magic and spacetime she was pulled through.

Lotte, in BG3, having just been freed from the endless void and with amnesia of who she is and why she exists, not remembering that she is a mortal-turned-goddess, hears one (one) mention of a drow spider goddess called Lolth and goes "Oh, spider goddess? Sign me up I love spiders!" But then quickly learns how Fucked Up Lolth is and is absolutely repulsed and when she enters the Shadow Cursed lands and encounters Karniss that drider man she gets sudden recognition because something in her remembers she's able to turn into a drider. And so she does. And everyone flips their shit about it because holy fucking shit what was that. Sudden flood of memories return to her, most Not Pleasant. And she's PISSED. Now she remembers she had a sister that committed identity theft to impersonate her, and that she was trapped in the void by cultists who used time magic to try and erase her from history and existence.

Ooooh she's ready to destroy the Absolute and while she still doesn't remember she herself is a goddess, the realization that she can shapeshift and control spiders and manipulate the Weave makes her way more formidable. She can pull on the strings and fabric of the weave itself and sew it together, she can summon and compel swarms of spiders to do her bidding, she can share senses with the spiders she controls, she can physically shift into a drider or into a swarm of spiders, she can seamlessly infiltrate Moonrise towers just by shifting into a swarm of spiders then dispersing the many instances of herself to sneak through the creaks and crevices of the complex to spy on everything.

She would save Minthara from death and protect her, and while there are no gods left for Minthara and Lotte does not know she herself is a goddess, she promises Minthara that she will do everything in her power to protect her and help her get revenge on those that hurt her and brainwashed her. She makes Minthara one of her own chosen and favored, though she isn't aware that's what she is doing by making that promise. Minthara finds herself suddenly able to sense and speak with spiders, able to have minor foresight of attacks in battle, and takes an unexpected level in shadow magic sorcery because Lotte gave her the blessing of her spellweaving. Lotte doesn't need or care much about having worshippers or followers, largely because she still doesn't remember she's now divine.

Dame Aylin being the child of a goddess would see Lotte and recognize she's no mere mortal, but can't put her finger quite on what Lotte is. Just that Lotte is a new friend who saved her.

Lotte thinks Gale is funny and loathes Mystra for how she treated him, and again Lotte unknowingly makes someone her favored and gives Gale her blessing of spellweaving which gives him a level in shadow magic sorcerer. So now he can sense and talk to spiders too. Lotte is adamant he refuse to give Mystra the crown of karsus though she doesn't think he should have it either. She personally wants the crown destroyed. Though at endgame when she's got her hands on the crown, she lets an impulse take over, and so she puts the crown on herself. Boom, the memories flood back in, she remembers she IS a goddess, and with that knowledge knows She can remove the netherese orb from Gale, and so she goes to Gale and does just that, and the orb combines with the crown and blasts away what was left of Lotte's own mortality. Karlach and Wyll and Minthara traveled to Avernus together to keep Karlach from dying, and at Withers' party Lotte appears and sees the blueprints they found on how to fix the engine, and with her spellweaving magic and the power of the crown bolstering her god powers, she is able to follow the blueprint and fix Karlach's engine then and there. Which also consequently makes Karlach one of her favored which gives her a surprise level in shadow magic warlock and ability to sense and talk to spiders.

Shadowheart and Lae'Zel are an item and went together to help Orpheus fight Vlaakith and rebel, Astarion killed Cazador but remained spawn, the shadow curse was lifted, Jaheira was able to save Minsc, Wyll became the blade of Avernus, yadda yadda, ultimately Lotte makes all of them her favored to give them the gift of her spellweaving. And then with Withers watching, she removes the crown, and uses the remaining energy of the orb absorbed into it to destroy it entirely.

From one god to another, she nods to Withers, bids everyone farewell, and dissolves into a swarm of spiders that dissipates until they can't find her anymore. Several spiders from the dissolving swarm hitch a ride on each companion to quietly tell them that Lotte will always be with them, that she is always watching, and that they will never have to face their fears alone again. Minthara can see spiders as sacred but no longer out of fear of Lolth, but out of respect for Lotte.

[random-iz-stuff]

For the zimvoid multaverse, 4 interest me the most. Like ya he losses a lot of his creative but that don't make him less smart, just that his though process is more In like with other irkens. Also it would change his relation with everyone, for good or worse. Also with zim and tenn switch places how? Like planet wise or something else, if it's planet sway all I can see is both being burnt to the ground.

Let me check real quick….

4. “What if Zim wasn’t born defective?”

….Yeah that’s an interesting one to me.

Because a non-defective Zim is what I would consider one of the “Ultimate Zims”.

Zib is the Ultimate Dib because he’s the one that completed his goal in life, but Zim’s goals have changed over time and there are many different Zim’s that could count as “Ultimate Zims”, and a Zim with no defects is one of them.

This Zim would have never caused the Blob Incident, meaning that Miyuki never died and Zim never joined the military. He’d still be a scientist, but I don’t think he’d be nearly as high ranking as a defective Zim. Because a lot of what got Zim to his rank as a Top Scientist (working for Lard Nar (the head scientist of the entire station), with Prisoner 777 as his Coworker/Friend) was his creativity, imagination and willingness to think outside the box. He’d still be an extremely good scientist, top of his field, but he wouldn’t be able to do as much as a defective Zim, wouldn’t have been able to impress Tallest Miyuki like a defective Zim would have been able to, and he wouldn’t have been placed on Lard Nar’s team. He probably would have ended up just one rank lower as an Elite Scientist instead of a Top Scientist.

Zim with his defects is capable of figuring out dimensional travel, time travel, complicated wormhole generation that took an artificially enhanced Irken brain MONTHS to figure out, and in the Zimvoid Zim mentions that the Zapper that Zib built and used to destroy the Armada, the thing that can tear the fabric of spacetime like a wet piece of paper, was HIS design. And he can build these things in a matter of hours. But he was able to figure those things out not just because he’s extremely smart even by Irken standards, but also because can think in ways that no other Irken can.

As a consequence of this, in this universe, the Massive either wouldn’t exist, or would look radically different. Because Zim was the one that single handily built the Massive’s planet destroying Bridge Cannon. Because Zim never became a top scientist, he was never placed in the team that designed the Massive and he would have never designed the Bridge Cannon.

Another rather large difference is that Operations Impending Doom 1 and 2 never happened, as it was Spork that created OID1 (although he never got to see it through) and without OID1, OID2 couldn’t have happened. Something similar under a different name could have happened with Miyuki being the one controlling it, but it would be very different from OID1 and 2. Just for one example, Vortians wouldn’t be targets, as they would only become enemies of the Empire after Miyuki died in the Blob Incident on a Vortian scientific station with no one truly knowing the cause, with Spork fanning the flames. Under Miyuki’s rule, Vortians were very good friends of Irkens.

Another difference between this Zim’s universe and the Main Zim’s universe is that Tenn wouldn’t have survived smeethood and Skoodge either wouldn’t have met Zim or also wouldn’t have survived smeet academy. This is because Tenn and Skoodge are both defective and in the main timeline, Zim, Tenn and Skoodge all covered for each other. Helping each other keep their defects a secret so they wouldn’t die.

But Zim isn’t defective, and wouldn’t hesitate to turn Tenn and Skoodge (assuming that they even met in this universe) in, after all, being able to treat a defective like a person while knowing that they’re defective is in and of itself a defect, albeit a minor (meaning fixable) one.

Overall, this Zim wouldn’t achieve the same highs as a defective one, but also would fall to the same lows. And most importantly of all, this Zim would be happy with what he has, and that’s without him knowing just how many bullets he dodged. This Zim would have never ended up on that fall from grace that ended up with him on Earth. He’d still be a scientist working in Research Station 13, and he wouldn’t mind that.

The other question is below the cut:

7. What if Zim and Tenn switched places?

By “switch places”, I don’t mean planets. I mean defects and roles. In this universe, Zim is the less defective one while Tenn is the most defective Irken of all time.

And what do you know, this is another one of the “Ultimate Zim” universes.

The effects are immediate when following Zim, but it’s kind of hard to say for Tenn.

Firstly, this Zim would have been able to become a Top Scientist working on the Massive project. He’s less defective and his creativity would be affected by that, but he’s still defective, having the same amount of defects that Tenn does in the Main Universe. He’d still be a scientist, still impress Miyuki, still build the Massive’s Bridge Cannon, but Miyuki wouldn’t die, meaning that Zim would stay as a scientist.

This is because as Zim and Tenn swap defects, they swap each other’s level of control over those defects.

Tenn can be just as destructive as Zim, but they have far better control over themselves. She can put more thought into their more impulsive thoughts and can usually just shake them off as nothing or realize that it’s a bad idea before committing to it. They also have more emotional maturity and control over their emotions in general when compared to Zim.

Basically, Zim destroys everything around him with the exception of a few individuals that can either match him in chaos or know him well enough to know what to expect (so Tenn and Skoodge respectively), while Tenn still destroys everything, but can usually aim that destruction in a direction she wants. Usually.

A large part of this is because they have way less defects, meaning that their PAK can actually still help with stuff like emotion and impulse control. Zim’s PAK is so defective that it can’t help at all, so he’s going all on his own with just his organic brain when it comes to impulse and emotion control. Which is a bit of a problem when you consider that his organic brain is also the source of all his defects, destructive impulses and all the things he’s trying to keep under control.

Zim can still control his thoughts and feelings, and very often needs to to prevent his defects from being discovered, but it’s more difficult for him because his PAK can’t help him, especially given how dependent Irkens are on their PAKs for this sort of thing.

Point is: More defects=less restricted mind. Less restricted mind=problems with impulse and emotional control because the Irken brain is used to the PAK doing that for it. That’s how it tends to work with defective Irkens most of the time. It’s just taken to the extreme with Zim because he’s the most defective Irken of all time.

In this universe, Zim is less defective and has better self control and emotional maturity because of that (although he still has problems with it), meaning that the Blob Incident never happens and Zim remains as a scientist, being promoted to Sci-Lord (Irken equivalent to Vortian head scientist) of his own scientific station a few months later on Miyuki’s behalf, and possibly even becoming a Royal Scientist (highest Irken scientific rank that works directly for the Tallest) by the time the series would normally happen (which I headcanon takes place about 4 years after the Blob Incident and 3 years after Zim was sent to Foodcourtia)

As for Tenn, it’s hard to say. They have Zim’s level of defects and Zim’s lack of emotion and impulse control because of that, so they’d probably end up on a journey that parallels Zim’s in the Main Universe, but it wouldn’t be exactly the same.

Zim’s journey starts with him being a scientist, then Miyuki’s death traumatizes him and gets him to join the military out of guilt, Spork’s death on top of Miyuki’s death breaks him and gets him to destroy Operation Impending Doom 1, and then Foodcourtia seals the deal with an extra dose of trauma, leading to the Zim we all know on Earth.

But in this universe, Miyuki doesn’t die, Tenn already joined the military fresh out of Smeet Academy and Operation Impending Doom 1 isn’t a thing because Spork never becomes Tallest and creates it. Tenn’s journey would be its own thing and I’m not sure where it would take them, but it would most likely parallel Zim’s journey in the main universe.

There’s also this to think about: Tenn’s defects make her a pretty good Invader (invading often requires the ability to think fast and on your feet with outside the box solutions, which is why it’s considered such a difficult job by Irkens. Defectives however, excel at that sort of thing, which is why Skoodge completed his mission faster than any invader on record, Zim completed his invader training in just a few months (faster than any other invader on record as Invader training takes five years on average), and Tenn was declared the empire’s star invader and was assigned to Meekrob), but Tenn wasn’t always an Invader. They used to be Irken Special Forces before switching to being an Invader not long before Operation Impending Doom 2.

As for what that even is, we’ve seen an (ex) Special Forces member before and his name is Sizz-Lorr.

Special Forces have mechanical suits of armour with modified PAKs that can work as jetpacks, modified PAK legs that can become wings and modified spinal implants to support the extra weight. They’re essentially the opposite of an invader. They’re equal in rank to each other, but invaders are stealth focused solo jobs that work behind enemy lines and Special Forces are loud, destructive squads that often fight on the front lines.

Sizz-Lorr is retired and doesn’t keep his armour fully deployed (he keeps his arms bare and wears cooking gloves because the heavy duty gauntlets would get in the way of his job as a frylord), but he’s still a good example of what a special forces soldier looks like. The Jet-PAK, the heavy armour, the space-proof mask, the massive shoulder pads (fun fact: the shoulder pads are so big because they contain powerful weapons. In Sizz-Lorr’s case, a plasma cannon equal in power to a small (Voot Sized) ship on each shoulder). Apart from the fact that he keeps his gauntlets undeployed, he’s a good example of what a special forces soldier looks like.

Sizz-Lorr and Tenn aren’t the same, as Sizz-Lorr was a part of the frontline division (basically the default special forces division) and Tenn was a part of the Incendiary Corps, but they’re similar enough that you can get the picture. Just give Tenn’s armour a more fire based colour scheme and some heat based weapons like a flamethrower (also, the shoulder pads on Incendiary Corps armour contain a napalm launcher on each shoulder instead of a plasma cannon like frontline armour) and you should have the general picture of what they looked like.

I already have a bunch of headcanons related to that sort of thing in this post about Sizz-Lorr.

But just like Zim’s scientific career, Tenn’s special forces career is heavily affected by the amount of defects she has.

In the main universe, Tenn both benefited from and was extremely effective at her job because of her defects. Like mentioned before, Tenn is extremely destructive, but in comparison to Zim, has some degree of control over the collateral damage. They have a tendency to destroy more than they’re supposed to, but not to the point where it negatively affects the Empire. As a member of the incendiary corps, a military group whose JOB it is to be destructive with fire and explosives, Tenn is pretty much perfect for the position. Tenn and her squad can be pointed at something that needs to be burnt down or blown up and they’ll do it in record time, with Tenn often destroying more than they’re supposed to, but still attempting to keep the destruction away from the Empire.

But Tenn’s position in the incendiary corps also helped her control their more destructive thoughts and impulses, giving them a way to vent her more destructive thoughts in a way that benefited the empire instead of causing damage to it, intentionally or not.

But that was the main universe’s Tenn. A Tenn that was already more in control over their thoughts. This universe’s Tenn is NOT able to control the direction of their destruction or the collateral damage. So this Tenn would be far too destructive for the Empire’s liking.

And Tenn going for a position in Special Forces is something that happens in just about every universe. Like Zim becoming a scientist. It’s their main goal because they genuinely want to do that in life, and if the only way that doesn’t happen in any given universe is if they’re pretty much a completely different person. Zim always tries to become a scientist because that’s what interests him, and he becomes a scientist no matter how defective or non-defective he is. Same goes for Tenn and special forces. No matter how defective they are, they almost always aim for a position in special forces, switching to an invader not long before OID2.

I cannot say for certain what Tenn’s journey would be in this universe, but I can say that it would start around that point, with Tenn as a special forces soldier. As for what happens to them afterwards, I don’t know. Maybe they destroy too much and get reassigned as a drone like main universe Zim and OID1. Maybe their actions result in the death of someone close to them and that’s what kickstarts their journey like Zim and Miyuki in most universes. Maybe something completely different. I don’t even know if they’d end up on Earth, and if they do end up on Earth, how they got to that point.

Another question I have for this universe is: Who ends up in the Zimvoid, Tenn, as this universe’s equivalent to Zim, or Zim, simply because he’s Zim, ignoring that this Zim isn’t anything like the others?

Would this universe’s Scientist Zim see the distress signal on an unknown planet way out in unknown space and go investigate in his Voot Cruiser (or possibly even Zhook Cruiser), being pulled into the Zimvoid in the process?, or would Tenn, either living on Earth or not, be the one to receive the signal and investigate, getting their Shuvver sucked into the Zimvoid in the process. Maybe they both get pulled in. Maybe neither of them do.

[tanadrin]

"On the Hylobiota of FEC-3230-3B6f," a note from the personal log of Junior Technical Officer Omru Setan, of the DSEV Soliton. As published in Frontier Xenobiology Today, issue 32, vol. 26.

The Soliton was, fortunately, able to spend a few months in orbit of FEC-3230-3B6, a luxury of time not usually afforded to frontier exploration vessels. It is a sad truism of this line of work that we can only ever devote the smallest fraction of due attention to most of the worlds we discover, and we must hope that eventually follow-up missions will be able to visit at least the most interesting of them. Since the ship was overdue for maintenance by the time we reached that star, and the local civilization had technology and resource extraction compatible with our systems, the crew elected to remain in the system long enough to establish basic communications and trade relations sufficient to complete repairs. That process went more smoothly than expected, and a further twelve weeks were devoted purely to scientific investigation, which accounts for the outsized entry on the Shards and their environment in the Soliton's survey logs.

The Shards are the dominant variety of local sapients in the FEC-3230-3B6 system, and are found especially around FC-3230-3B6f, a fragment of a disrupted planetary-mass body embedded in a dense asteroid belt in the circumstellar habitable zone. They are a variety of machine life, with a complex culture and language, including sophisticated political and economic structures, and one evidently purpose-built to the low-gravity zero-atmosphere environment in which they dwell. They are capable of autonomous space travel within the local asteroid belt, and many of their most basic systems rely on very sophisticated field manipulation, spacetime-distortion, and reactionless propulsion mechanisms, all far more advanced than any technology in common use in Accord space. Very little of the functioning of these technologies could be gleaned from studying the Shards directly, since the field manipulators on which the Shards rely are microscopic in scale and distributed throughout their bodies. How much the Shards understand the technologies their bodies use is also unknown; while basic communication was established fairly easily using standard protocols, communication on abstract concepts has been more difficult, and the Shards' understanding of their own history and design is, for now, mostly opaque.

We do know this: the Shards refer to the principal volume of space in which they dwell as the Field of Rest. It is so called because artificial field effects, generated by ruined megastructures found embedded in 3B6f and the other largest nearby asteroids, keep the major celestial bodies in the region more or less stationary with respect to one another; and any body moving through the region will gradually decelerate, until it is at rest within the Field. This effect is strongest in the immediate environs of 3B6f, and past a certain point rapidly falls off with distance, with a very weak residual effect spreading out for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers in all directions. We were unable to determine whether this field and the megastructures which generate it were responsible for the original disruption of the planet which formed the asteroid belt; whether they are incidental ruins; or whether they were built or repurposed after the disruption in order to stabilize the region. Moreover, while the Field is stable over much longer time scales than it would be without the presence of this effect, it is unlikely to be stable over very long geological timescales, even provided the megastructures (power source currently unknown) could maintain the effect for that long. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by my colleague, Sidar Resk, indicate that the Field is likely not younger than one hundred thousand years, and likely not older than two million.

My own expertise is not in astrogeology, xenoanthropology, or xenoarcheology, so I will leave further explanation of such matters to those more suited to do them justice. See especially the logs of Svys Sidar, Deng, Falke, and Yun, especially Svy Yun's speculative but extremely interesting timeline of the system's history. What I really want to discuss is the--for lack of a better term--biology of the system.

3B6f, most other bodies in the Field, and most bodies surveyed in the wider belt, show traces of a unique set of chemical and physical processes analogous to, but very unlike, the processes of organic life. Since applying the term "biology" to both aqueous organic processes and these unique processes is a recipe for confusion, let's call the latter "hylology," by analogy to hylotechnology, that is to say, non-aqueous nanotechnology which has much more in common with purely mechanical systems than normal nanoscale systems do.

A brief digression for the interested: it was once the dream of many engineers that, as the miniaturization of mechanical technology improved, it would be possible eventually to build machines at the nanometer scale, very roughly the size of the most interesting components of living cells, and that this nanoscale technology would allow extremely precise manipulation of both biological and non-biological materials, and thus both extremely precise manipulation of living tissue and the easy creation of macroscopic materials with novel properties. As the technologies for investigating and manipulating the nanoscale world improved, however, it became apparent that below a certain scale "mechanical" and "chemical" processes rapidly converge: the interactive forces of atoms and molecules that we usually think of as belonging to the messy world of chemistry come to equal or overwhelm what we think of as the austere forces of the purely mechanical world, especially in the watery environs of biological systems, and when the first nanotechnological revolution finally began in the 22nd century, it was the result of many parallel developments in mechanical, chemical, and quantum engineering, and it proceeded rather more slowly than the optimists of previous ages had hoped.

Some researchers have continued to pursue what might be called "classical" nanoscale and sub-nanoscale technologies, in a specifically non-biological context. This is what is usually meant by "hylotechnology," a niche but important category that, among Accord species, is used mostly for careful fabrication of small quantities of highly specialized metamaterials. Because of the difficulties inherent in nanoscale mechanics, hylotech is extremely finicky, and even the most cutting-edge hylotech forges usually end up recycling as much as 60% of their output for failing to meet the intended specifications. The term "hylotech" also is often extended to mean chemistry-like processes which occur in systems other than normal atoms and the molecules they form: quasiparticle complexes, Xuluan lattices, and monopole chemistry, but for now these all belong to the theoretical realm.

The Field is unusual because it is an environment with many naturally evolved forms of life, that is to say orders having arisen without apparent intervention by any sapient actor, all of which are based originally on artificial hylotechnology. As Svy Yun argues (and I agree), chemical and fossil evidence in rock fragments formerly belonging to the crust of 3B6f's progenitor-planet indicate that organic life arose on that world, and eventually yielded a sentient species not too dissimilar from any of the Accord members. This species built a technologically sophisticated civilization, one which pursued nanotech vigorously, and which integrated it into many of their other technologies. When the catastrophe that destroyed 3B6f occurred, fragments of that nanotechnology survived, perhaps in the form of trace programmable matter, of small self-replicated nanomachines, or as part of the structure of larger machine life entities like the Shards. This basic nanofilm eventually spread throughout the Field, and evolved in new ways, producing new complex behaviors and structures. These include the equivalent of both single-celled organisms, and multi-cellular organisms with highly specialized tissues; organisms with bilateral and radial symmetry; and even organisms with tissues that seem to resemble, in structure and function, the nervous tissue of Earth's early animalia like the Cnidarians.

Needless to say, we found this to be a very startling result, and there are several considerations which I wish to address in turn.

First, the Shards. The Shards are not an evolved organism; of this I am as certain as it is possible to be. Although they plainly share technological innovations with the hylozoan LUCA, they don't have anything like the pseudocellular structure of the hylozoa. The smallest units of the hylozoa are molecular machines that range in size from 50 to 500 nanometers. They are mostly self-reproducing, and they exhibit some of the field and spacetime-manipulation technology the Shards do, at a far smaller and much more low-powered scale. The Shards, in contrast, while they are carefully engineered from the nanometer scale up, are not composed of easily discernible components on that scale, nor specialized tissues made up of self-reproducing components. The Shards do have sophisticated repair mechanisms, but these replace sections of their bodies at the scale of dozens of micrometers. Whereas most species we have encountered have had at some point to grapple with the fact they are the product of accident and not intention, and that they are of the same order of life and matter as the living things they share their environment with, the Shards might justly be possessed of a certain smugness--they are, after all, truly different from the hylozoa around them. Something else to consider when the xenologers attempt to investigate Shard culture, I suppose.

Second, the hylozoan "cell." Our own cellular structure is a lipid envelope enclosing organelles, proteins, and many different kinds of useful molecules either taken in from our food or produced by our own bodies, which--carried along by the furious Brownian motion of the aqueous environment--shakes and rattles thousands of different kinds of chemical machinery along every moment. It is, in origin, a droplet of the primeval soup that has been carefully contained and carried forward in time, a product of the ancient oceans within which those droplets formed.

The basic unit of hylozoan biology, the "hylocell" is likewise a product of its original environment--in this case, the austere vacuum. It is not a bag of chemical soup: instead, it is a spindly structure made of many modular elements which spread outward from a central nucleus. Rather than containing chemical information stored as DNA, the nucleus of the hylocell is a chemical-mechanical battery which powers the modules to which it is connected. At the tip of the spindles or rays which extend out from this battery, magnetic interactions between specialized connector-modules bind the hylocells together; these connections can be rapidly reconfigured as needed. Between the spindles, a weak electromagnetic field holds various kinds of charged particles in a diffuse suspension, one which is practically a vacuum compared to the interior of our own cells, but which is a valuable reservoir of raw materials for the hylocell, compared to the gasping emptiness of most of the Field.

The modules which compose the hylocell are arranged hierarchically, and while we have much to learn about how they function, at least some of them seem to store information in a manner not unlike our own cellular nuclei, albeit distributed throughout the hylocell; others are geared toward energy storage, to the synthesis of specific chemicals, to building new modules or new hylocells; and still others to generating precise field distortions or spacetime distortions which form an integral part of the hylocell's functioning.

Another important difference between the hylocellular structure and our own biology includes the far more rapid mutation rate of hylocells: the biodiversity of 3B6f is comparable to a biosphere many hundreds of millions of years old, and my own experiments, undertaken with the help the Soliton's geneticists, indicate that the hylozoan LUCA may have been designed to be adaptive from the beginning, able to direct and vet mutations that allow it to function better in novel environments, instead of having to rely on copying errors and blind chance. Attempts to devise a "molecular clock" based on some highly conserved hylocellular modules across many different genera put the divergence of those genera from the hylozoan LUCA between 250,000 and 750,000 YBP, at the younger end of our estimates for the age of the Field as a whole; but these results should be regarded as extremely tentative.

Lastly, I wish to collect miscellaneous observations from my colleagues, which have not fit into any of the larger topics above.

While many varieties of hylocell process other organisms, minerals, or solar energy directly, at least some seem to be capable of absorbing energy from solar neutrinos. This adaptation is found in many different clades, where it seems to have arisen independently.

Hylocells are completely non-functional in dense atmospheres. The pressure of even a one-Pascale environment disrupts normal function. Some single-cellular hylozoans seem to be able to gradually recover when returned to a near-vacuum environment, but all studied multi-cellular hylozoans were killed when exposed to high pressures. Shards, by contrast, are entirely unaffected by normal atmospheric pressures, and were able to come and go from within the Soliton without difficulty.

Since Shards do not consume hylozoans for food, they are in many respects "outside" the hylozoan ecology. They do not depend on it for any resources, nor do the hylozoans depend on them; but the ecology of their environment does seem to have cultural significance and aesthetic interest.

Hylozoans are most densely distributed in the middle of the Field, but are found on virtually every body in the asteroid belt surveyed. The smallest and most distant of such bodies often have very divergent clades inhabiting them; no known hylozoans can traverse deep space except if carried, intentionally or accidentally, by the Shards.

Five major domains of hylozoan life have been identified: these are the Hylobacteria (invariably single-celled, and with simple structure), Electrophores (have cellular processes that depend on more sophisticated manipulation of charged particles), Lithozoa (most are deep-rock dwellers), Planetozoa (found mostly on remote bodies outside the Field), and Polyklemata (have an advanced compound cellular structure whose greater complexity compared to the Hylobacteria is perhaps comparable to the difference between the Eukaryota and Bacteria). Multicellular hylozoans are found in every domain except the Hylobacteria. The most basal existing hylozoan may be Plinodeisa aeides, a planetozoan that forms thick, undifferentiated cellular mats on sunlight-exposed surfaces.

[radiant-flutterbun]

11 and 12 for Mordecai?

My bad boy!

11. Are there any rules that govern their existence?  If so, what are they and how do they work?

Let's see if I can explain this without it sounding like nonsense. So Mordecai was literally cut from the fabric of SpaceTime so that's where the majority of his power comes from and therefore his immortality. So if he were to somehow lose connection with this SpaceTime his powers would be greatly limited. Same if this SpaceTime was damaged somehow.

So he's ruled by the fabric of reality itself basically. Destroy reality destroy him. If he looses connection with his reality he loses his power.

12. How do they relate to dragons?  What do they think of dragonkind?

Mordecai is from another universe altogether from Sornieth.

He has yet to make contact with the planet but if he were he would seek to gain control of dragonkind. He wouldn't kill them as he would recognize their magical potential as useful, but he would seek to obtain that magic as his no matter the cost. He might try to kill the Eleven tho, seeing them as a threat.

[dothemindything]

I SPENT MY ENTIRE CHILDHOOD DODGING THE DRAFT, AND NOW YOU’RE TELLING ME THEY WOULDN’T TAKE ME IF I EVEN THREW MYSELF AT THEM???? LITERALLY WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT ANYMORE.

KIND OF STUPID TO SUMMON A DEMON WHO CAN DESTROY THE FABRIC OF SPACETIME THOUGH. LIKE. HOW WOULD ANYONE BENEFIT FROM THAT IN ANY CAPACITY. NOT EVEN THE HORRORTERRORS LIKE THAT DUDE, THAT’S HOW YOU KNOW HE’S SHIT. AND THEY LOVE MAKING DUBIOUS ALLIANCES.

skies not cracking fortunately but every now and then we get a troll born with incredibly strong and stupid powers and they decide hey you know what would be fun? bringing back a big ugly green guy who likes to kill kids.

and unfortunately for you sign ups closed for the sweep

[jimintomystery]

The Mandela Effect

The term “Mandela Effect” originates from Fiona Broome’s false memory of Nelson Mandela dying in the 1980s as a political prisoner.  In fact, Mandela was released in 1990, served as president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and died in 2013.  Broome claimed that, while attending Dragon Con 2010, she encountered many other people who shared the same memory, which she believed could not be a coincidence.

The most famous example of this phenomenon is the dispute over the spelling of “The Berenstain Bears.”  But my personal favorite is Shazaam, a 1990s movie starring Sinbad as a genie, which is suspiciously similar to the 1996 Shaquille O’Neal film Kazaam but is definitely its own totally real thing that actually happened.  How could a whole movie just up and disappear?  Why would anyone care enough to erase it from history?

Belief in the Mandela Effect seems to have more to do with asserting that it’s real than with determining what it is.  The forums I’ve found are content to endlessly document the alleged discontinuities, without forming a consensus on what can be learned from them, or how to proceed with that information.  For example, one hypothesis is that we’re all trapped in a virtual reality simulation, and the Mandela Effect is a glitch in the program, but there’s no dialogue on how to test this assertion or, if it were true, what we’re supposed to do about it.

The most popular line of reasoning is that the Mandela Effect causes people to slip from one parallel reality to another.  This appears to have originated from a 2012 blog post  by “Reece,” seeking to explain the Berenstain Bears thing.   Proponents love to cite the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which does suggest the existence of a multiverse.  But since that theory doesn’t suggest that people would be randomly teleported around that multverse, it’s a bit like saying the law of gravity proves aliens have landed on Earth. 

(For what it’s worth, Reece himself insists his original proposal is unrelated to the multiverse or time travel, and has more to do with imaginary numbers suggesting a second spacetime continuum that is perpendicular to us on the complex plane.  Yeah.)

You might be thinking “This sort of sounds like Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.”  Except for one detail: In Spider-Verse, the reality shifts are accompanied by big flashy effects which make it hard to ignore that something happened, even if the characters are slow to realize what happened.  With the Mandela Effect, the shift from one reality to another is so imperceptible, and the differences between worlds are so subtle, that it might be years before you notice anything is amiss, making it impossible to investigate the original event.  Like alien abductions and the Loch Ness monster, this phenomenon just so happens to leave no physical evidence, making it unfalsifiable.

I like the argument that the Mandela Effect has something to do with the Large Hadron Collider, since that at least tries to identify a root cause.  This ties into a separate line of tinhattery, based on anxieties that the LHC could produce micro black holes or a chain reaction that would destroy the world.  If you already buy that kind of comic book science, it’s not a huge leap to believe the LHC has torn the fabric of reality, producing extremely specific spacetime anomalies.  You’ll notice, though, that nobody ever claims to be from a world where Al Gore was president or the Blue Man Group was red; it’s always something that people forget about, like whether the Monopoly guy has a monocle.

Since about 2016, the Mandela Effect has taken on a religious angle, as some Christians have begun to panic about their Bibles being “rewritten.”  (The most prominent example is Isaiah 11:6.)  You might see how this could be a thornier subject than how to spell “Froot Loops”--why would the inerrant word of an omnipotent God be slightly different in alternate timelines?  Considering the Mandela Effect is (for lack of a rational explanation) supernatural, this sets up speculation that scientists are “hacking” reality on behalf of Satan, or that apparent discontinuities are signs of the End Times.  On the other hand, some religious groups have decided that this satanic conspiracy theory (rather than the Mandela Effect itself) is a “satanic psy-op” designed to confuse Christians.

In the end, it may not matter.  Even believers who think they know what causes the Mandela Effect don’t seem to think it can be stopped.  And I’ve never found anyone claiming that the changes attributed to the effect are particularly harmful...except for the religious nuts, who automatically assume God will ultimately prevail.  The thing with this sort of fringe theory is that adherents desperately want you to believe it, but fail to present any reason why it would matter if you did.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

That is not relate with your fics. I want to know how you imagine it would be if Allura had survived. She would be Queen of New Altean? Even there isn't an approach between her and them. She would stay in the space in some base of the Coalition? She would stay in Earth and, haha Idk, became a farmer along with Lance?

Hi, anon! Ahh that’s a good question. I know that during a 2019 interview with Let’s Voltron, the executive producers stated that a happy ending would have included Allura and Lance having a baby together? But to get some version of a happy ending I personally would have preferred; I’d have to re-write seasons 6-8 almost completely. It’s actually quite difficult for me to answer your question—which hinges on accepting s8 as-is until the last 15 minutes or so of the show. I struggle to get a genuinely happy ending from s8 at all, even if Allura did survive, for various reasons.

But I think, from my perspective, a happy ending for Allura is one where she’s with the people she loves most (among them, honestly, Coran—that man was her father figure but s8 just tossed his relationship with her aside like a sack of potatoes and also thrashed any other “found family” trope with the paladins).

I’d love for Allura to have agency again and to obtain freedom from having to constantly pay for the sins of her father or Zarkon or others…

I feel like Allura really desires to feel useful, so while maybe she’d need a well-deserved break for a time, I can’t imagine her walking away forever from forging a path of peace. But this time, her path forward would be on her terms.

Bonus if Voltron plays musical lions again and that Allura as a militarily and diplomatically trained princess with the power of the universe is no longer subordinated to a boy who doesn’t even really want to lead Voltron. While I think it’s cool for Allura to be a paladin, the position also seemed to limit her greatly. I think by s8, with her abilities, she would have well outgrown her training wheels or her father’s legacy.

On that note, I do think Allura would work to restore the Alteans from the colony that Lotor mentioned had perished in his pursuit to unlock the secrets of quintessence, and that she would also heal those Alteans we saw in the pods who were apparently still alive but were in trouble. That action of resurrection would likely help to build some much-needed bonds between herself and her own people, and it would undo one of the most painful moments for her in the whole series.

And honestly, I don’t think Allura would be happy with Oriande, Altea’s most sacred spot, remaining destroyed. So I could see her working to rebuild and responsibly share its knowledge, which could alter her position with the remaining Alteans and with several other interested cultures as well.

For me, a happy ending for Allura would also include the redemption of Sincline, in part her own creation, as a mecha that could be used for peace as well. Another bonus if Atlas gets rebuilt, but better than its first iteration….

I would have preferred an s8 where the rift creatures/dark entities were the big bad, given that they were hinted as the big bads in the season 3 finale. This would have totally rewritten the final battles in s8 and the purpose of those battles. It would have placed Voltron as only one of many mechas attempting to hold the universe together. It might have justified the resurrection of Lotor too, if Sincline had bonded to him just as Voltron had spiritually bonded to its paladins.

And I really think Allura needed closure from the entire s6 plot twist—like, how many actually perished, what all Lotor was doing, whether he genuinely loved her (the dev team says he did anyway), etc. Bringing Lotor back to help in the final fight against rift creatures would allow for a proper trial to take place and to see Lotor respond without quintessence fueling a massive mental breakdown or Haggar making the situation worse. I think even Allura herself would plead on his behalf, given how she herself exonerates him and wishes for Honerva to honor him in s8. So that makes me think a reconciliation would be possible, and that Allura could find peace through it.

As far as her title goes—I could see her own people asking if she would like to take up the throne again. It would be a nice subversion from how Honerva abused Altean trust, in comparison. While I know Allura is capable of being Queen of Altea and that this is her birthright, I do feel it’s a bit limiting to her as well. So I could see New Altea instating a sort of government that maintains her as a figure-head, allowing her to keep her title but also have freedom to go and do big things. Because the universe is always getting into trouble, and Lotor had mentioned in s4 that Honerva’s experiments could never be undone, including that there are weak spots in the very fabric of spacetime now…

I’m not sure if this answers your question? I rambled a bit. But you made me think, thank you for your ask!

[cool-crap-daily]

Here is a cool thing I wrote. It's meant to be a prologue, but the book it's a prologue to doesn't exist because I am lazy. If you don't like it, too bad, you just read the whole thing sucks to be you ig.

Earth. 

    A planet full of natural wonders, rich in resources, and green with life, reduced to a festering pile of rubble and poverty. Not decimated by some outside force, no, it was ruined by scientific advancement and the sinfulness of man. The paragons of those horrors were called The Ascended. The Ascended were a group of individuals who had used the secrets of The Breakthrough to ‘ascend’. Each of them gained levels of power akin to those of the gods of legend. Every man, woman, and child in The Empire knew their names. Havoc, Seraphim, Volt, Stratagem, Hive, and finally, The Beholder.

    Havoc mastered the art of destruction. Originally the CEO of the world's leading weapons manufacturer, "Arcturus Armaments", The Breakthrough allowed him to fuse his mortal form with the instruments of chaos he created. Wielding atomic lasers and hypersonic rail-cannons as well as a panoply of other ordinances, he became an unstoppable courier of fire and death. To top it all off, his body was armor-plated in a composite meta-material that left him virtually invincible.

    Seraphim, the biological angel of life, had mastered the power of healing, the inverse of Havoc. Once the world's foremost scientist of medical studies, she created technologies that saved millions of lives. After the breakthrough, however, she melded herself with prototype machines she'd been working on in secret and obtained the ultimate treasure. The terrible prize that so many in history had sought after. Immortality. Any wounds she received closed as quickly as they opened, her aging halted in its tracks. She had an immune system aided by nanotech so that no pathogen stood a chance against her. Alas, she gave in to her dark fantasies of endless reign and destroyed all notes, machines, and evidence of her immortality tech, so that only she would be without a mortal end.

    Volt, the mover of mountains and Hermes incarnate, was once a man known as Ahmad Cunningham. He was the lead engineer of Athletonics Inc, the world's largest manufacturer of cybernetics, as well as his own startup: Fusoria Industries, the most advanced in Fusion power research. Using The Breakthrough, he molded his body into his most ambitious exoskeleton yet. This suit had so much potential that it needed impossible amounts of power to function. The only thing that could fuel such a bionic juggernaut was a prototype fusion reactor that he incorporated into the design. He could run and fly at incomprehensible speeds and could deliver enough energy in a single blow to flatten a skyscraper.

    Stratagem, the shadow of the abyss and master of illusion, was a trillionaire like the others in her former life, but her field of choice was espionage and stealth technologies. The Breakthrough allowed her to become nothing but a whisper on the airwaves, just a flickering of distortion on the edge of the most advanced cameras on the planet. She cloaked herself in stealth tech decades ahead of anything else ever conceived. She was completely invisible to the naked eye, and utterly silent to the ear. The only sensors that could hope to detect her were the ones she herself invented and replaced her eyes with. She could look through concrete walls and magnify her view enough to see miles away.

    Hive, the unfeeling swarm of symmetrical horror, was born out of a man named Stewart Stanford, the Head of Robotics and Androids Research of Rubicon Industries. Rubicon Industries used to be a competitor of Athletonics Inc. until the Ascended took over. Utilizing The Breakthrough, he uploaded his consciousness into his company’s hypercomputers, which were capable of processing petabytes of information per second. In doing so he gained unbelievable power but lost his humanity. After stealing FTL communication tech from a competing company, he could command his legion of millions of drones as if they were his body, seeing through myriads of eyes, controlling an endless swarm of weapons and tools. He could mine resources to create more drone factories and computers for himself, and there was nothing to stop him from doubling his forces every few weeks if left unchecked.

    The final member of the Ascended was The Beholder. Unlike the others, who are all incredibly infamous, few knew much about The Beholder. He used to work as a scientist at Tesseract Labs, whose main goal was to discover the secrets of quantum mechanics and dimensional dynamics. Before The Breakthrough, they had produced an FTL communication prototype, but it had vanished mysteriously, and they lost their government grants. Just before they shut down, an infinite number of new avenues for research opened up thanks to The Breakthrough. The lab was back in action. Using the power of The Breakthrough, they built a machine to study the secrets of existence itself. The machine was to a particle accelerator as a particle accelerator was to a particularly uninteresting rock. Alas, the scientists became arrogant and dug too deep, and it cost them everything. A horrible calamity struck as they probed into the folds of reality, ripping the entire facility out of the fabric of the universe and whipping it into the deepest Oblivion as the machine imploded. 

    The only survivor, if one could even call him that, was the man who was operating the machine during the calamity. Alexander Belton. The Beholder. His consciousness was caught between the two sides of the schism, split into an infinite number of parts and pieced together again over and over for an abstract eternity. Slowly, he learned to control the forces beyond reality and started to hold himself together. He built himself a physical form, found his way through the ever-changing miasma of the ethereal beyond back to our world. Coming back into existence crippled him, though, limiting his power and preventing him from ever leaving again. He anchored himself to this plane. Still, he was the most powerful of the Ascended by far, able to manipulate reality and travel through spacetime effortlessly, though not able to interact with the past. No one knew anything about where he was, what his motives were, or if the stories were even true. The other Ascended denied his existence, but endless numbers of sightings and stories of hope from the oppressed said otherwise.

    Together, the Ascended ruled the world uncontested, vowing a tentative truce, and promising to never allow anyone else to discover the secrets of The Breakthrough. They feared someone else could ascend using its power, jeopardizing their rule. They had scuffles occasionally, obliterating a few square miles of city here and there, but mostly they minded their business. They held a public meeting once a month to make decisions and ensure benevolent relations between them, as well as to agree on any new tenets to press onto the dying people of their world. They were corrupt, and they were only growing more so, but they enslaved the people in factories and power plants, under so much surveillance that the citizens were utterly powerless to stop them.

    Each of them controlled a different aspect of The Empire. Havoc was in charge of all military efforts as well as policing the citizens. His loyal knights carried out executions and silenced hope, armed with weapons that had power mirroring his own.

Seraphim was responsible for all biological research and plague control, as well as the only hospital left in existence. The Hospital was only open to the most elite, and only they could even afford a visit.

Volt was in charge of all power generation for The Empire. All electricity was generated by four massive fusion reactors, one in each district. Each absolutely dominated its skyline and required only tiny amounts of fuel to run in comparison. The fuel that they did need, however, was incredibly hard to produce, requiring tens of thousands of hours of manual labor involving harsh chemicals and radiation to create even a single gram.

Stratagem worked day and night to make sure that every square inch of The Empire was surveilled by one of her cameras, bugs, drones, or agents at all times. This way, the Ascended could stamp out any notion of an uprising or rebellion before it even began. She had hundreds of operatives who scoured The Empire and cyberspace for any intel or data that the Ascended could use.

Hive controlled all construction and resource gathering, his body made up of an endless swarm. If another thirty-story domestic housing unit needed to be constructed, it could be done overnight. Any steel or alloys that were required, he strip-mined from the less habitable parts of the planet, placed onto automated trains that carried them back to the factories. If any single part of the logistic chain was broken or destroyed, there was enough redundancy in the system that he could fix it in a matter of hours or even minutes.

Together, the six Ascended ruled The Empire with an iron fist, surveying their dystopia with cold, calculated, pride. They took comfort in the fact that no human alive could ever hope to topple their rule. It all worked like a well-oiled machine; oiled with blood, but oiled nonetheless. They sat on their thrones in The Floating Citadel, basking in the perverted glory of their ultimate abomination. Earth.

But seven became eight, and now, The Godhunter stalks her prey.

[Initiate Epic Soundtrack]

[theredpharaoah]

It’s quite literally stated that they altered reality. That’s not my headcannon, that’s me explaining what the monks did. They didn’t just input false memories into people, they literally altered reality. The show alters reality on many occasions BEFORE we get to Dawn. We know what altered realities look like and how they work - it’s not them imputing false memories. We see reality alteration in I Only Have Eyes For You, and pretty much any act of magic in the show is a minor alteration of reality. Jonathan and Willow do more powerful variants of reality alteration in season 4. Jonathan’s is almost to the level of a major alteration but it has an “out” in the demon it also summons. In The Wish when Cordelia and Anya alter reality, it literally creates another dimension where Buffy never came to Sunnydale. We know it did this, because later on Willow and Anya botches the spell to summon Anya’s amulet from that dimension and instead get Dark Willow. They then return Dark Willow to the same dimension they summoned her from. Angel has even more instances of major reality alteration, as Wolfram and Hart plays around with it a lot. We have a similar situation where they alter reality in Angel with Connor. Dawn didn’t fade away in the comics. She was in the process of doing so but they got the new Seed of Wonder and Willow fixed her. And she only faded away because she was the Key - a being of pure magical energy - and the source of magic, had been destroyed. No witch could cast spells during that either. Only those magical beings whose magical nature altered their physical forms were able to retain their abilities - Slayers, Vampires, etc. But that isn’t at all relevant to what’s being discussed here.

Reality alteration usually involves memory implantation or alteration as well, but that isn’t the whole of what’s being done. They literally alter the fabric of spacetime to create a new reality. They can alter the memories of everyone around Dawn, but what about the computers she’s in? The Government files and whatnot she’s listed in? Medical? All of this stuff would’ve had to be accounted for by the Monks and it clearly was. Dawn lives in the mundane world more than any other Scooby and she manages to navigate it without any trouble. And let’s say we go with it just being a memory spell: a memory spell would have to be continuous. Every time she comes in contact with someone Buffy or the gang knew, it would have to jump and alter their memories. Every time she came in contact with some official or someone’s looking for her in a system she isn’t in it has to alter that person’s reality too. This as opposed to just creating an alternate reality where she’d always existed and got all of those things the normal way.

I also think a lot of people misinterpret what the monks did with Dawn. The monks didn’t just turn the key into a human and then alter everyone’s memory to remember her. The monks turned the key into a human and literally altered reality so that Dawn had always existed. You’ve gotta realize that there’s a lot more to Dawn’s life than the Scoobies; Hank, childhood friends, school, medical, etc. A memory spell wouldn’t have been able to account for all of that - or it would be far harder to do that than just casting a reality-altering spell at that point.

[aldahi-rp]

Reaching for the Stars

@deals-and-the-chipped-cup

"I'm okay" Dawn said to her father. "I think...". She frowned. "I'm sorry"

She looked up at the four eyed alien with really pointy teeth. "Not on purpose". She told him.

The Doctor was pacing thinking.... talking to herself...

"A human child had merged herself with a "magic" crystal."

She was stabilized for now, but that didn't mean she wasn't dangerous. The energy held within the crystal (and now within the child) was still incompatible with the energy of this world.

"If she crosses the town line, or has another extreme energy upset, it could and would still tear a hold in the fabric of time and reality."

And, of course, the child's gaurdian couldn't be trusted not to encourage her to do just that, to cross the line on purpose! Universe destroying tear in the fabric of time and reality apparently not withstanding!

"Unless...!"

Unless the Doctor took the child out of time itsself. The TARDIS created a its own Spacetime feild, those inside it existed outside of regular spacetime- and the little girl just MIGHT be alright if she was in a different time flux, outside of this time stream, and with the buffer of prolonged exposure with the TARDIS she might be able to venture into different time lines as long as they were far enough removed from this one...

"But she's so young!"

The doctor didn't usually have juvenile companions and there was a good reason for it. What she did was dangerous! And she had a lot of enemies! And while an adult could make up their mind about whether or not travel with the doctor was worth the risk, a child really couldn't concent to something like that....

"But on the other hand what choice do I have?"

The child's gaurdian could manipulate elemental energies with his bare hands. That could go a long way towards keeping the girl safe. And the girl seemed to have something of that ability herself, though it was less stable, less honed....

"And once she saw for herself how beautiful, and brilliant, and magnificent, and grand the universe was, then surely she'd make the right decision!"

The Doctor ran to Dawn, crouching down with her hands on her knees to put herself at the little girl's eye level.

"Right then. How'd you like to travel the stars? See the universe? Watch the big bang happen, pet a sauropod in the cretaceous period-" oh wait, no, even herbivores could be big and stompy. Small child. "Scratch the dinosaur. But you could pet a Valaxian kitten!" They don't usually grow in their venum sacks till at least 6 months old. Should be fine.

"Mommy wants to see the world" Dawn said, "can she come?"

"Is she as completely selfish and morally irresponsible as your father?"

"Uhm... No?"

"Then why not!"

[risualto]

I Do Not Know Your OCs but as I wish to know, pick one and gimme 1, 3, 11 and 14 ? :D

I’m super flattered that you’d take an interest in my OCs, my friend :D Thank you for asking!

I’ll go ahead and choose Iruka Hezs, an OC from an original sci-fi setting of mine (though I also used her as an NPC in a D&D game at one point).

1. List five basic facts about your OC.

Iruka’s given name is Yrrce (ɪəɹçə), no family name.

She’s an alien from a race whose name she translates into United Earth Standard as “the conduits.”

She has perfect recall and limited powers of hydrokinesis due to her particular subrace.

She has a difficult time using contractions correctly in UEStandard, so she chooses not to use them at all.

She is the daughter of a politician who hates politics, preferring direct action and honest words instead of complex negotiations and lies.

3. Post a snippet from your writing that describes your OC.It’s been a really long time since I’ve written anything for the universe she comes from, and I just spent about half an hour looking for anything in my old writing that isn’t cringey.  I failed--I don’t like my old writing.  But here’s something that I think captures her character pretty well, even though it’s from someone else’s POV.  At this point in her story, she and the main character (her adopted brother, Nickolai, who was raised human) have realized they made a crucial mistake in attempting to resolve the main conflict that has cost them the trust of everyone else they care about.

“This is not on your shoulders alone, Nick[,” Iruka said.]

“But if I’d noticed sooner—”

“If we had noticed sooner, things might be different right now, and that what if will never go away.  But we left ourselves a way out,” Iruka said, cutting her brother off like a warm knife through butter.  Nick met her gaze evenly as her hands slipped to his shoulders.  “Do you remember?”

He did.  Slowly, his feet came back under him and he was standing up, pulling Iruka to her feet with him when she didn’t let go of his arms.  He knew Iruka’s question was redundant when he saw the sad resignation in her eyes, but he nodded anyway, hands coming up to cover hers.  [Their last resort, for Nickolai to destroy his body and sacrifice his power to manually fix the spacetime continuum where it was torn, and for Iruka to martyr herself in front of the Council to generate sympathy for the Earth.  It was uncertain, much less likely to succeed than opening negotiations between their people, but without help, it was all they had.]  Looking away, Nick pulled Iruka’s hands from his shoulders and lowered them.  “It shouldn’t be like this.”

Iruka agreed, “It should not.  But I would rather we do this and lose ourselves...”

“…than let our friends--”

“--our people--”

“--everyone else, really, lose everything.  Yeah,” Nick eventually concurred, shadowed by the fading daylight.

Neither said anything for a long minute.  Nick shut his eyes, reaching into the void around them until he could see it with that sense that wasn’t exactly sight.  The fabric of spacetime glittered in strange webs all around him, and he scanned it with practiced ease, picking out a weak spot and unraveling it, pulling at the loose threads until there was a gateway before them. “This way,” he said, ironically cheerful in a way that made Iruka’s face soften in pity.  She fell in beside him with the ease of breathing, though whether she was comforting him by taking this weight on her shoulders or comforting herself by affirming they’d walk into it together, he couldn’t tell.

11. What does your OC want for their birthday?Iruka would really like to go somewhere on vacation for her birthday.  Somewhere with history written into its land and architecture and not a major city (she hates smog).  If she had to pick a thing for her birthday, she would probably like a gift card to somewhere that makes really good hot chocolate.

14. What is one of your OC’s secrets?Iruka has a lot of secrets in TPS canon, but the biggest one she keeps is probably that her brother’s second-worst enemy and the guy in charge of the organization that they need help from, a human man known as Ayumo, is her soulmate.  (He’s also the one who gave her the name “Iruka” because her actual name was too difficult to pronounce for most people.)  This secret will go with Iruka to her grave if she can help it because she fears it being misunderstood.  The connection isn’t necessarily romantic, but it does give Iruka access to certain special powers when she and Ayumo are close to each other.