#even if it's extinct precursor aliens!!!

[thegreatyin]

sci-fi that doesn't have aliens is just the most boring sci-fi ever. like what's even the point then

[elbiotipo]

in my space opera story, there's a character who is the last of her ancient civilization (found in animated suspension) but that doesn't mean she knows ancient precursor knowledge, she was the equivalent of a cringe and fail gamer girl who ate snacks and played videogames all day, and when they ask her "but how did the precursor's intragalactic communications network technology work? where were their homeworlds? how did they went extinct? what does this ancient inscription says?" well, she wasn't paying too much attention, she was pulling gacha, she didn't think too much about how the whole thing worked

I mean, suppose YOU got pulled into the future into a whole different solar system with aliens all around you and you are asked (in technical detail) how did internet connections work or how to get to Earth (in a star map in a completely different language with no reference points) or how to make an internal combustion engine. You'll be fucked.

(unless you're a Wikipedia addict like me, but even then, I'm not even sure how electricity works)

[ornisapiens]

A fan made All Tomorrows family tree I fussed over quite a lot before settling on this version. It includes human lineages, other earthlings, and a few aliens. I did this mainly to add context to the book's family tree and organize some groups for clarity. And if you can believe it, this isn't even the whole roster of species, but I kept the well known species and their cohorts and ancestors in the picture as much as I could.

I found a lot of trouble trying to tie posthuman groups together with the boxes (miMind will try to attach them to the nodes because the boxes are just big nodes), and conveying the less obvious connections to some groups as indicated by the dotted lines. I'm aware there are more that should've been added, but, at a certain point I wanted to avoid added visual noise.

Now there's no way all the information thus far can fit into the ALT text feature, so it's probably best to take a crack at it here.

The very top starts with a non-human, therizinosaurs, to contextualize what Panderavis pandora is. Or, was. The green outline for these nodes indicates it's a reptile. I stuck it in the node closest resembling a coffin because Panderavis went extinct well before it was discovered.

The modern humans split off into two nodes, the Earth Humans, and the Martians. They had eventually interbred to create the Star People, who then discovered Panderavis bones.

The Star People hereafter had almost all populations genetically modified by the damselfly-like aliens known as the Qu, or Quhanim.

Under the posthuman lineages that died out during bottleneck events are: Mantelopes, Bone Crushers, Temptors, Hand Flappers, Blind Folk, Titans, Striders, and unknown others.

One lineage of Star Person went into hiding and avoided the Qu, which are the Spacers.

The surviving lineages that were Qu modified are:

Insectophagi, Ruin Haunters, Swimmers, Lopsiders, Colonials, Parasites and their Hosts, Worms, Finger Fishers, Flyers, Lizard Herders, Hedonists, and Predators with their Prey.

Note the Lizard Herders co-existed with a reptile originally from planet Earth, which had become the Herd Lizards. As appropriate, their outline is also green.

Onwards to the second empire era posthumans as indicated with blue fill and outline, with one notable green exception. Insectophagi gave rise to the Bug Facers, Ruin Haunters the Gravitals, Swimmers the Tool Breeders, Lopsiders the Asymmetric People, Colonials the Modular People, Parasites and Hosts the Symbiotes, Worms the Snake People, Finger Fishers gave rise to aerial species and the marine Sail People, Flyers gave rise to aquatic and terrestrial species along with the aerial Pterosapiens, Spacers became Asteromorphs, the Lizard Herders became Human Steeds, Hedonists turned Satyriacs, and the Predators became the Killer Folk. Prey still exist, but some of them are farmed.

And the one species that is considered arguably more human than the posthuman steed it coexists with, is the Saurosapients. They're descended from Herd Lizards.

The big box enveloping most of these posthumans indicates they were eradicated by the Gravitals, thus ending the second empire. Although most precursors went extinct in the sense they all evolved into their second era iterations, there is at least one exception. The Lopsiders still existed with the Asymmetrics, and were wiped out by their descendants. Only the Asteromorphs, Bug Facers, and Gravitals themselves remained.

The Gravitals then subjugated and modified the Bug Facers into the Subjects.

Meanwhile the Asteromorphs underwent further changes into godlike forms. They usurped the Gravitals, who were altered into the New Machines, and rescued the Subjects, who became the Rescued Subjects. The Asteromorphs, being hands-off parents of this new humanity, created Terrestrial forms of their kin to withstand gravity and watch over their Subjects on their home planets.

These are a few lineages left of what was once humanity, and an alien with an equally complex yet unknown history enters, the Amphicephali.

New Machines, Rescued Subjects, Asteromorphs, Terrestrials, and Amphicephali are indicated as coexisting in this new era with red.

The Qu descend from an unknown species, and the Author character's descent is equally mysterious.

And that about wraps it up. I've left out fan theories around the origins of the Amphicephali, Qu, and Author alien in trying to keep this chart objective to the original book. It may outdate itself once the redux is published, and there might not be a "need" for another fan chart if CMK includes one in the redux and polishes it to a shine. We'll see in a few years, realistically speaking.

[penumbralwoods]

can you tell me about subnautica ? ive always thought it looked cool but i dunno much about it ..

also i recently started reading 20k leagues under the sea and it was reslly good !! so thank you :]

YES OF COURSE I CAN IM. normal about it super normal subnautica is a horror exploration game developed by Unknown Worlds in the early 2010s. it's set on an alien planet dominated entirely by aquatic species and the goal is to find a way to OFF OF IT after your spacecraft has crashed. that's the spoiler-free part here's a readmore bc the rest is going to be full of spoilers and SO LONG

SO. in subnautica you play as ryley robinson, a passenger on the Aurora spacecraft. you crash into the ocean in a lifepod equipped with a medpack, fabricator, and basic scuba diving gear. an AI? it's more like siri, really. in your PDA guides you through the basics of the nature of the planet, the resources available, etcetera!! before your arrival on the planet, an alien race called the precursors landed on it to do experiments on the native life to find a vaccine/antidote for a virus currently killing off their entire species. they managed to imprison a leviathan (leviathans are a class of creatures 20 meters or longer, not an actual species. just a designation!) that showed immunity to the virus, but due to its age, it was unable to provide the enzyme needed to develop treatment. because the leviathan's aquarium's conditions were made to meet the requirements for an ADULT leviathan and not newborns, its eggs wouldn't hatch. eventually, the virus broke containment and spread to the rest of the planet. it was put under quarantine with a gun programmed to shoot down any craft exiting or entering the planet's atmosphere. this is the gun that shot down the Aurora. by the time you get to it, you're already infected, and cannot shut it down. the new goal is to find a cure for the virus. throughout subnautica, you explore different biomes, increasingly dangerous, to find a way to the precursors' different bases. you are alone. this is important. several times, fellow survivors from the Aurora's signals reach your radio and you can go and meet them! except they're dead. every single one. the ship that comes to rescue you is shot down by the alien gun. you are alone. you will not be saved. the PDA traces different precursor bases until you enter the containment facility- specifically built to house and research the Sea Emperor leviathan; the largest creature recorded on the planet, and the leviathan the precursors trapped for thousands of years to research. and then you're not alone. the sea emperor possesses telepathic abilities. it instructs you to open a warp to free its offspring, and how to create the enzymes that will trigger their hatching- something the precursors spent dozens of years trying to take by force.

the offspring secrete the enzyme immune to the virus naturally, and you're cured! the planet is no longer under danger of extinction.

but once its offspring hatch and leave the tank, the sea emperor stops holding on. the PDA entry for it theorizes it has lived far beyond its natural lifespan. it begins to collapse, and thanks you for helping. it calls you a friend, and wonders what it'll be like to die.

i'm gonna be honest. i've played through subnautica 3 times, and it always takes me a while to be able to leave the sea emperor. if you leave for a while and come back, instead of struggling to support itself, it's on the floor of its tank. struggling to breathe. it's even harder then.

when you finally disable the gun and are able to leave with an emergency craft, the sea emperor sends one last message:

"What is a wave without the ocean? A beginning without an end? They are different, but they go together.

Now you go among the stars, and I fall among the sand. We are different, but we go... Together."

pain. pain and crying and tears and. and and and.

[insert cartoon sniffle] ANYWAY

the environments in subnautica are super neat; lots of it was conceptualized by an ACTUAL MARINE BIOLOGIST, including different designs for the leviathans!!! my personal favorite is the Lost River, a gigantic tunnel system spanning to the corners of the map. theres so much diversity and subnautica does a fantastic job pushing the limits of what's possible underwater. one thing i really love is that killing things is so, so fucking difficult. there are no weapons designed for killing, only self defense. there is no reward. because you are the intruder here. it's very nice.

subnautica triggers something in me that makes me wonder if i should be allowed to scuba dive. my absolute favorite creatures in the entire game are the Ghost Leviathans- which im sure youve seen! i just drew one! they are SO FUCKING DANGEROUS. they kill the player in 2 bites, are aggressive and territorial, and are used as a border for the game's map. and i love them. when i see one my entire brain shuts down and i just look at it. this has caused several in-game deaths. sometimes i go to the places they are just to look.

overall, subnautica really appeals to me as someone that's been an ocean person 5 ever. it has a fantastic balance of fantasy and realism, and it's just all super great. also, there's a clip of donald trump saying "china" in one of the ambience tracks.

never ask me about subnautica: below zero. ever /silly

[theseventhoffrostfall]

When you put aside the stuff that's just fun adventure romps (which I'm not dissing, that's most of what I read) it's interesting to look at how 'high-substance' sci-fi and fantasy tend to operate. Not just in the trappings of whether a knight is fighting orcs with a sword or a a commando is fighting aliens with a laser rifle, I mean in terms of the philosophy behind the narrative

Fantasy works tend to examine man's relationship to nature, the divine, and purpose in life. Magic augments how a character interacts with the world more than the world itself, and grand-scale issues and conflicts tend to be outgrowths of baser, more personal and fundamental conflicts, not just depicting good vs. evil or law vs. chaos, but examining what that means to the characters and the author. As you might expect, the prime archetype here is indeed Lord of The Rings

Sci-fi, by contrast, tends to be much larger in scope with what it tackles. The focus is more likely to be on societies as a whole, the nature and purpose of government, how religion is among the factors shaping both individual thought and the cultural zeitgeist, and more fringe topics like the effects ecology and planetology have when shaping a people's philosophy and mindset. And, of course, how new factors like new technological paradigms, the dispersal of civilization across multiple planets, contact with non-human sapience, and even the removal of certain factors ranging from computers to senescence affect all of the above. As you probably predicted, the poster child for this is Dune.

Where it gets interesting for me is when a work of one genre seems to be written with the mindset of its counterpart. The Hyperion Cantos is a sci-fi series to the hilt, but its focus and mindset trend much more towards fantasy, with different characters going through crises of faith and being forced to confront their understanding of their place in the universe as they encounter strange factors outside their conceptions of what was possible. Conversely, The Prince of Nothing is a fantasy series, but a huge amount of focus is given to how various characters' cultural and religious backgrounds shape their thinking, and as the series progresses it examines the way a new government forms and the methods and reasoning that shape it. As a more surface-level detail, the way it handles plot-important magical devices is a lot closer to how sci-fi handles precursor artifacts and LosTech than how fantasy tends to handle magical relics and wondrous items.

Certain books are likewise a more even mix of the two. Book of the New Sun has examinations on both personal, spiritual topics and the nature of society in an exhausted, ancient world facing none-too-distant extinction, while Sun Eater explores both the personal internal strife of its protagonist and the oppressive, alien nature of a society that in the story's context is a pretty believable evolution of our own. These are actually perhaps unsurprising, since the author of the former is on record as saying "all novels are fantasies, some are just more honest than others" the author of the latter is an outspoken advocate of a no-more-brother-wars attitude among what he calls 'weird fiction'.

Though where it gets confusing again is that, despite what I said at the start, all of these books do indeed play with the trappings of the respective genres as well, with quasi-magical elements in Hyperion, Not-Angband being a crashed alien starship in Prince of Nothing, and Book of the New Sun having strange, time-breaking quasi-divine intervention in a primitive feudal world where a castle's towers might be derelict rockets and a knight's mount might be a bioengineered war-alien

[vaguely-concerned]

R-r-r-rewatch thoughts for The Mandalorian S2 Ep2

(or Chapter 10 as they seem resolved to call it)

- can I just express my joy for a moment that in one episode we get peli, the answer to my pleas for female representation in the ‘sketchy middle aged car mechanic’ niche, and a female alien designed with no consideration towards sexiness. (I mean I’m sure there’s someone. There is always someone somewhere on the Internet, is the bitter truth history has shown to us. but it’s not the intention behind the design haha)  

- they do take great pains to deliberately show you boba’s armour several times both in the recap and in the episode itself, so never despair he is very likely still on his way onto our screens once more

- this dude holding the baby hostage wanting specifically the jetpack in exchange is the one (1) break this whole episode gave din lol 

also the Patented Mando Finger Curl of Stress while he talked softly and calmly to not promp this asshole to make a sudden move... the most endearing character tic, I love my space cowboy dad so much 

- fun continuity detail: din is all out of whistling birds now, and you can see it here!

I wonder if he could still use the same mechanism with different ‘ammo’, it’s just not as effective? from the way the armorer spoke whistling birds seem quite rare and it would be an inefficient use of beskar if that’s the only thing it can be loaded with

 - I love how after the last episode, a 50 min epic with a bunch of original trilogy significance and impressive technical achievements and exciting character reveals, I was like ‘yeah okay I suppose that is quite interesting’, and this mess/comedy of inconveniences is the thing that fully makes my brain tip into the obsessive ‘BABY AND DAD SHOW!! BABY AND DAD SHOW!!!!!’ mind state lol

- ah the traditional ‘mando trudging slowly but steadily through the desert’ montage we all love to see (I hope this is going to be a Thing for the second episode of every season from now on) 

Also I assume his suit has some sort of temperature regulation built in and that’s how he didn’t, y’know. die under the blazing desert sun

-

CAT FIGHT CAT FIGHT man I love the jawa. also mando doesn’t even glance over at them, really emphasizing how he’s like. done with this entire day (and it’s all barely even getting started din! i’m sorry)

 yodito’s look in this scene tho... he’s like ‘we’ve Seen some shit lady’ (actually I think he’s staring at ‘dr mandible’ like O___o. it’s been a long day for a lil boy) 

you get to see dr mandible’s cards a few times, so I assume anyone who knows the rules of... sabacc? probably? could figure out beforehand that he was in a bad spot. (the star wars fanbase is one of those where I KNOW the rules exist somewhere, and I know people who know those rules exist too)  

- that sound the baby keeps making -- the ‘boo-a’, sometimes with a p-sound at the end -- if that’s the precursor to him saying any variation whatsoever of ‘dad’ or ‘papa’ or ‘baba’ or even ‘buir’ or anything, I will die. I will sink to the ground in a heap and never get up (the way he keeps seeking out gaze contact with the helmet and seems perfectly satisfied with it too... fasdhfaskdjhl my FEELINGS)

- it seems confirmed in this ep that the mandos who died on nevarro did so while holding off the enemy so the rest(probably especially the children) could get away; some of them appear to have escaped. which I guess is a small relief

- 

frog lady stepping out of the shadows and into our hearts

I like that her firm nod after Peli translates ‘her husband has seen them’ lets us know she understands... basic? is that the common tongue thing in star wars there’s just so many to remember across fandoms lol? perfectly well, even if she can’t speak it. 

- mando might be running low on ammo for the pulse rifle, if the fact that he hasn’t replaced the missing cartridge on his... bandolier belt thingy is any indication

ETA: actually ignore me this has been a thing since the literal first episode of the show my brain just had a hiccup lol

- so baby seems to use a little bit of the force to pull the eggs towards him -- I wonder how often he ‘taps into it’ or if it’s always ‘on’ in the background for him. if so I guess there’s no wonder he’s so hungry (but also... kid you can’t end this lady’s entire family line like that one cat who singlehandedly made extinct a whole species of bird! D:)

- din so rarely gets openly angry, he just gets passive aggressive and grumpy. and that’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with things but I love him

- frog lady reacts so strongly to when din sends the ping when nothing else woke her up, I wonder if she can hear more frequencies than a human

- 

hello darkness my old frieeennnddd

- 

proof nr 1508 that din does not starve this baby you guys, he even has his own little tray just the right size for him! as it happens the baby simply seems to prefer eating things that are... still alive in some capacity. which, uh. maybe they can invest in some form of non-sentient crickets or something for him to hunt down and.... oh dear

- 

Look how they massacred my boy

By the way I finally managed to put into words why the Razor Crest -- and particularly the way it keeps getting beaten to hell and back and patched up again --  is so symbolically important and meaningful to me in this show in this post over here! it’s always a great relief to me when I can finally understand what the hell I’ve been going on about all this time and this was one of those lol

-  honestly if it weren’t for frog lady and (more importantly) the baby I think there’s a slight chance din would’ve gone ‘well I had a good-ish run of it for a while there’ and just let the ice claim him haha   

- “Why don’t you come over here and give me a hand. Make yourself useful” This is the one time in the episode I think he crosses the line into just being a dick for a moment (but noticeably the baby isn’t just a little hurt at this reaction, he’s clearly surprised and confused, which means this really does not happen often. after the time mando’s been having recently I guess a moment’s snappishness is understandable haha. he does follow up right after with being much more responsive and attentive when the baby toddles away from him, so it feels like it’s going to be okay)

also the ‘boo-ap’ sound is there again when he’s trying to get din’s attention. just sayin’ 

when din comes over to see the footprints baby makes a declarative little meep like ‘see??? I did tell you!’ haha

- it is very funny that mando is using all his technology meant to track down dangerous bounties in the grungy depths of the criminal underworld... to find a naked lady just chillin’ in a hot spring 

- 

cue the ‘father is evil?’ memes fsadfda. actually the funniest thing about this moment (apart from the fabulous finger acting) is that din actually snatches a few eggs out of the baby’s reach more subtly right before, and that baby only whines for ALL OF ONE SECOND before he goes to sniff around for other food possibilities fkadfhjkds. from my experience with human children he’s a lot less prone to tantrums. yodito doesn’t get mad, he gets even 

- baby running towards din through the hatching spiderlings like ‘DAD I FUCKED UUUUUUP’, din’s little strangled ‘ngh’ sound as he picks the baby up and watches all the creepy crawlies come out... *chef kiss* impeccable 

(that little ‘ngh’ and the soft shocked ‘ah ah AH!’s from when he goes flying at the beginning of the episode... pedro pascal and his voice work for this character gives me so much life. in some ways din has this sort of dignity and grace and in other ways he uh extremely doesn’t. he gets to be cool but also vulnerable in ways a lot of male main characters don’t and it’s probably why I love him so much) 

btw here is that moment when din moves to hold the baby tightly against him with both hands as the big spider appears, because it gets me right in the heart... it such an instinctive thing of holding on to the dearest thing you’ve got before something bad is about to happen

fdsafhsdakjlfhsdkjlhfsdajhf oh my god the baby is clutching din’s finger with his little hand during the chase!!!! 😭😭😭

this FUCKING SHOW has just WEAPONIZED putting in small details everywhere to convey the love and tenderness and attachment felt by a little muppet doll even where only weirdos like me will frame by frame their way through the video to see it I am so MAD

- frog lady going ‘fuck this’ and bounding along is  e v e r y t h i n g 

- din is an amazing shot, though, he doesn’t seem to miss a single one in this whole scene (then again there’s something to shoot at basically everywhere one can take aim so lol)

-

baby hiding behind/half hugging din’s boot as he tries to get the doors closed hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I can’t breathhhhheeeee 

honestly every single one of the baby’s proximity seeking behaviours in this ep has me on my knees 

- it’s very unfair to play the heroic happy mando music like everything is going to be fine and then have a huge fuck-off spider drop down from the ceiling and break it off mid-tune, the mandalorian, you have trained me in certain ways and now do you betray me??? how can I trust again

- the camera work in the scene with the new republic guys gives such a good sense of the discomfort of being judged from on high by someone or something you can’t really see -- the glare of the lights blocking out everything in the shots from din’s pov makes it feel like a tense interrogation (the new republic dude who is actually dave filoni has such a look of fondness as he watches din tho it’s kind of sweet)

- ...oh no I think baby was actually considering munching on that dismembered spider leg YODITO NO JUST EAT YOUR KRAYT DRAGON BABY

- hngh this is a weird filler episode and it has my entire heart. I suspect we might get some episodes of a more stationary baby between active ones like this -- you can tell a little bit in this episode that especially having him running around fast is quite difficult to have look natural, they likely save that effort up for when it best serves the narrative  

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: Alien Races That Changed the Galaxy

https://ift.tt/3eNUoaa

Star Wars is the story of a massive galaxy and the thousands of alien races that inhabit it. More importantly, it’s an epic tale of how these different civilizations come together to live as a galactic community, and the many struggles it often takes to get there.

Like any real-world society, many of the alien races in Star Wars have deep histories that cover everything from their origins and traditions to how they discovered spaceflight and their contributions to the galactic annals. Thanks to the Expanded Universe of books and comics that have spent the last 40 years going way beyond what you’ll ever see on screen, we know all about how the Chiss settled one of the most dangerous corners of space as well as how the Jedi and the Sith were born. We know about many of the earliest races to explore the galaxy, and we’ve learned quite a bit about the massive empire that preceded the one in the movies by millennia.

The point is that the Star Wars universe contains a lot of history, especially when you dig back through the Legends stories that are no longer canon but offer a wide breadth of information on events that predate the eras in which the movies and TV series are set. And now canon stories like The High Republic series are doing the same for the modern Disney continuity.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

Through these stories, we’ve learned of the many alien civilizations that have shaped galactic history, whether through conquest, scientific discovery, interstellar exploration, or some smaller action that still led to a massive sea change in the galaxy. Here are a few of these civilizations that you should know…

Gree, Kwa, and Tythans

The Gree are so ancient that they predate known history in both Legends and Disney canon. Even the most authoritative Gree scholars didn’t know the full scope of their civilization’s history, but we do know that these six-tentacled cephalopods were one of the first alien races to develop a form of hyperspace technology and explore the stars. While the Gree settled many planets and built an empire, they most famously discovered Tython, a once-hidden planet strong in the Force that would become the birthplace of the Jedi Order.

While the Gree had long abandoned the planet (and the known galaxy) by the time the pilgrims who would become the Jedi arrived on their massive pyramid-shaped arks known as the Tho Yor, they weren’t the only ancient civilization to live on Tython before the days of the Jedi. Next came the Kwa, who were actually contemporaries of the Gree. They were best known for having built the Infinity Gates, a network of structures that allowed them to travel from one point in the galaxy to the other instantaneously — a far more advanced method of interstellar travel than even hyperspace.

But much of this Kwa technology and knowledge had been lost to time when the Force-sensitive pilgrims representing many of the galaxy’s species arrived on the planet and formed the Je’daii Order, the precursor to the religious faction of protectors we know today. These people are also referred to as the local Tythans, an ancient civilization that studied and learned to wield the Force, both the light and dark sides…

Rakata

During the time of the Gree and Kwa, there was also the vicious warrior race known as the Rakata, a primitive cannibalistic society that would one day escape their home world of Lehon and conquer the rest of the galaxy to form the Infinite Empire. Originally discovered by the Kwa, the Rakata learned about the ways of the Force from the more advanced species and quickly embraced the dark side. They created Force-powered hyperdrives and captured Force-sensitive slaves to power their ships, and when they turned on the Kwa in order to take the Infinity Gates for themselves, the Kwa were forced to destroy the network. Ultimately, the Rakata wiped out most of the Kwa, and what was left of that once-advanced civilization eventually devolved into a species of creatures known as the Kwi.

Needless to say, the Rakata were known for two things: their immense cruelty and the massive empire that connected over 500 planets. At the height of their power, the Rakata developed many other Force-powered technology, including the Star Forge, a space station that fed on the dark side and the energy of a nearby star to create an endless supply of battleships and weapons for their war machine.

But like all empires, the Infinite Empire eventually fell. Millennia of wars with other races, in-fighting, and a mysterious plague that cut them off from the Force left the Rakata broken and virtually extinct. The few Rakata that remained centuries later no longer even knew how to power their own technology.

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Sith

The original Sith that existed tens of thousands of years before Palpatine hailed from the planet Korriban (known as Moraband in the new canon) and were very different to the Sith Lords you know from the movies. In fact, the ancient Sith were a unique species of humanoids with red skin and facial tentacles with their own culture and traditions. But they do have one thing in common with the villains of the Skywalker Saga: they worshiped and practiced the dark side of the Force.

The Sith species eventually interbred with a faction of Human Dark Jedi outcasts who had left the known galaxy after a long, bloody war with their light side-worshiping counterparts (a story for another time). It was during this period that the Sith people amassed a great empire of their own and fought many wars against the Republic and the Jedi.

But more long-lasting than their ancient empire — long dead by the time of the movies — are their traditions, religious belief in the dark side, and the many artifacts and teachings they left behind for the Palpatine’s order of Sith to discover and use to conquer the galaxy. Sith holocrons scattered across space contained many great secrets about the Force, while tombs located on Korriban were home to the histories of many of the greatest Dark Lords of the Sith, including one worshipped by the Sith Eternal in The Rise of Skywalker. Without this ancient species, there would be no Sith as we know them today.

Mandalorians

Thousands of years before Boba Fett, the Clone Wars, and the Great Purge, the Mandalorians were known as fierce invaders and conquerors, a race that valued a good fight over all else. Both Legends and Disney canon tell stories of Mandalorian Crusaders who left Mandalore on a campaign of conquest that stretched all the way from the Outer Rim to the Inner Rim of the galaxy. Along the way, they fought great wars against the Jedi and the Republic.

While Disney canon has only alluded to a long conflict with the Jedi, the Legends continuity went into much more detail about the Mandalorian Wars, a 16-year conflict that left countless dead, at least one planet completely shattered, and led to the rise of a new Sith Empire that further devastated the Republic. It was during the aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars that many Jedi also broke away from the Order, turned to the dark side, and joined the Sith, sparking a Jedi Civil War that itself would lead to the near-extermination of the Jedi.

In essence, the Mandalorians’ initial salvo against the galaxy and its protectors escalated into a massive conflict beyond even what this warrior race could have ever imagined, and their legacy is in part immortalized by the role they played in ushering in a key moment in Jedi and Sith history.

Chiss

The blue-skinned and red-eyed Chiss are a mystery to most. In fact, besides the infamous Grand Admiral Thrawn, few Chiss have ever operated in the known galaxy, preferring to instead rule their empire in the uncharted, difficult-to-navigate, and dangerous region of space known as the Unknown Regions (where the Sith planet Exegol from The Rise of Skywalker was also located). Republic historians knew very little about the origin of the Chiss or how they formed their hidden empire, but one theory suggests they evolved from a forgotten group of human colonists who traveled into the Unknown Regions and never returned.

But while most Chiss preferred to keep to themselves on their home planet of Csilla, and the Chiss Ascendancy largely remained neutral in most galactic conflicts, Thrawn changed all that, bringing Chiss brilliance and strategy to the forefront of the Galactic Civil War. Legends introduces Thrawn as the new leader of what’s left of the Empire after Return of the Jedi, while Disney canon introduces him much earlier as a Grand Admiral operating at the height of Imperial power before the Original Trilogy. Regardless of the entry point, this master military tactician left an indelible mark on the galaxy, securing his people’s place in history, even as the Chiss as a civilization continue to confound scholars.

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By Lacy Baugher

Kaminoans

Although we didn’t actually get to see this era of Star Wars until 25 years after A New Hope, the Clone Wars have been a key part of the history of the galaxy far, far away since the very beginning. In fact, a brief mention of the Clone Wars in the first movie was one of the first signs that there was a big, epic history beyond the scope of the story being told. Obi-Wan describes the Clone Wars as the stuff of legend to a young, impressionable Luke, a time when the Jedi were at the height of their power. Of course, the Prequel Trilogy painted a much bleaker picture.

Regardless of the point of view, few would argue that the Kaminoans played a pivotal role in the Clone Wars, not only as the creators of the clones themselves but as the civilization that pretty much single-handedly turned the tide of war and set the stage for the Empire’s rise to power and the near-extinction of the Jedi. Before the Kaminoans delivered its massive clone army, the Republic had no army of the scale needed to fight the Separatist forces threatening to dismantle the galactic government. But by the time Palpatine was ready to unleash his ultimate plan at the end of the Clone Wars, he had the endlessly renewable fighting force he needed to do whatever he pleased. And thus, a largely benevolent alien civilization’s dark legacy was solidified.

Geonosians

The future Emperor and Dark Lord of the Sith didn’t just have designs for a grand army that he’d one day turn against a weakened Jedi Order, he also wanted to build the ultimate superweapon with which to control the rest of the galaxy. When it came time to begin construction of the dreaded Death Star, Palpatine turned to the industrious Geonosians, an insectoid species with the ingenuity needed for such a massive undertaking.

Geonosis will always be known as the planet where the Clone Wars began, but it was also the site of one of the most consequential military achievements in Star Wars history, as Geonosians set out to not only design the plans for the deadly space station but build it in the planet’s orbit. But their efforts were not rewarded. Not only did the Geonosians suffer terrible casualties for their part in the opening battle of the Clone Wars, but once the Emperor had no more use for them after the war, he ordered his forces to poison the planet with gas that effectively sterilized and killed the entire Geonosian population. The goal of this monstrous genocide? To keep the Death Star a secret until the time was right.

Bothans

While the Geonosians were key to the Death Star’s design and construction, crafty Bothan played a pivotal role in ending the space station’s reign of terror once and for all. You likely remember Mon Mothma’s words in Return of the Jedi: “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.” It’s a solemn moment that barely scratches the surface of one of the most consequential espionage operations ever conducted.

Known for their cunning and elite spy network, the Bothans worked tirelessly to secure the location of the second Death Star project. These spies also discovered that the Emperor planned to visit the station, presenting the perfect moment for the Rebellion to strike at the very heart of the Empire. The result of Bothan sacrifice was a killing blow to the tyrannical government and the death of the Emperor.

Yuuzhan Vong

One of the most controversial races ever introduced to Star Wars, the Yuuzhan Vong came from outside the known galaxy and played the role of classic alien invaders hellbent on conquering all planets in their path. They were known for their bio-organic weaponry, armor, technology, and vessels as well as for being largely impervious to the Force, making them the ultimate foe for Luke Skywalker’s New Jedi Order in the Legends continuity.

The Yuuzhan Vong waged a war on the New Republic that not only led to the death of Chewbacca and Anakin Solo, the youngest son of Han and Leia but to the dismantling of the galactic government itself. Everything the Rebellion had fought so hard for during the Galactic Civil War was shattered. Whether you like them or not, the Yuuzhan Vong took down the New Republic in Legends canon more than a decade before we even knew what the First Order was.

Let us know in the comments if you think we missed anyone and we may add them to the list!

The post Star Wars: Alien Races That Changed the Galaxy appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3cFVGBf

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-05-31

Mainline upd8 before the June break.  More Terezi!  That should put me in a better mood. (1 edit (2020-06-01) since posting)

> CHAPTER 10. 1 WOND3R WH4T TH3Y T4ST3 L1K3

Wait, fuzzily waking up seeing the new planet?

Wait, why is the site background still black?

Wait, is this one of the new alien race members just created?

That would explain the chapter title.  (Especially if they were part plant, but Terezi would say that regardless, when you think about it.)

> ==>

Coming more into focus.

> ==>

Oh!  Back to the normal background.

TEREZI: W3LL

She’s not the one seeing this, so is this an alien perspective or does Rose’s visual processing take a while to turn back on post-warranty-breach?

> ==>

Huh?  It WAS her point of view?

So this:

--is just an attempt at rendering her smell-o-vision?

I know her sense of smell is supposed to be amazing, but this is MARKEDLY less paint-like than previous depictions of her smell-o-vision.  See for comparison:

Was this an intentional difference in clarity? Laziness? Her scent-vision being sharper?  They’re practically making us feel like her eyes are healed again, which would be disastrous, and not something even Ultimate Rose should necessarily be capable of.

(I’m inclined to give them less credit than usual today, though, so a poor visual choice most likely.)

TEREZI: TH4T W4S PR3TTY FUCK1NG STUP1D

Hate-screwing Rosebot?  Why?

I guess it’d leave you sore.

> ==>

TEREZI: F4LL1NG 4SL33P H3R3 1S JUST 4SK1NG FOR TROUBL3

Oh.  Are the new races - or their precursor “experiments” running around?

> ==>

TEREZI: NODD1NG OFF L1K3 TH4T UND3RN34TH 4N 4RBOR34L 4MBUL4TOR TEREZI: WHO KNOWS WH4T COULD H4V3 H4PP3N3D TEREZI: Y34H 4LR1GHT, 4LR1GHT TEREZI: G3T OFF MY C4S3 4BOUT 1T ALR34DY TEREZI: 1TS NOT L1K3 1 D1D 1T ON PURPOS3

Is Terezi talking to her other selves or something?  Or another brain ghost?

TEREZI: W3R3 JUST LUCKY TH3R3 1SNT 4NY W1ND 4T TH3 MOM3NT TEREZI: 1V3 3ST4BL1SH3D TH4T TH1S 1S WHY TH3Y MOV3 TEREZI: TH3 4MBUL4TORS 4R3 PL4NTS IN THE STR1CT S3NS3, BUT EXH1B1T LOCOMOT1V3 B3H4V1OUR DU3 TO TH31R UN1QU3 CONSTRUCT1ON

Ooh, moving trees.  Nice.

TEREZI: TH3 M41N BODY OF THE PL4NT CONS1STS OF A N3TWORK OF HOLLOW, TUB3LIKE GROWTHS THROUGH WH1CH 41R M4Y TR4V3L TEREZI: TH3S3 N3TWORKS 4R3 SO SOPH1ST1C4T3D TH4T TH3 SH1FT1NG PR3SSUR3 1NS1D3 TH3 TRUNK 4ND BR4NCH3S C4N C4US3 TH3 3NT1R3 PL4NT TO UPROOT 1TS3LF 4ND B3G1N "W4LK1NG", PROV1D3D TH3 COND1T1ONS 4R3 R1GHT TEREZI: TH1S PROC3SS, WH1L3 M4J3ST1C, C4N H4V3 DR4ST1C 3FF3CTS ON TH3 PL4NTS SURROUND1NGS

I know you like to eat them, but when did your analysis of plantlife get so clinical?  Do you have Aranea blabbing in your ear or something?

Oh.  OH, wait.  They have a Command Station.  Is Rose communicating with her remotely via that, and Terezi is just Dave-like vocalizing everything Rose punches into the terminal?  Then that would be Terezi arguing with HER out loud.  And the sudden transition of talk to “I’ve established that this is why they move.” is very Rose-sounding.

> ==>

That lil’ “hup” pose to jump over the gap Terezi’s making is adorable.  Also, those are bad failed experiments y’all have created and you should feel bad, Rose and Dirk.  (Rose is definitely to blame for this spider-bunny nightmare.)

TEREZI: HUP!

Hup

TEREZI: 1 WOND3R WH4T TH3Y T4ST3 L1K3 >:O

They look like they’d taste like bee spiders with inedible stuffing throughout.

Trolls do find grubs of most sorts appetizing though.

> ==>

TEREZI THOSE ARE NO REASON TO BE HAPPY

> ==>

Yeah, beautiful field-shot aside I feel pretty bad for that creation.  Looks miserable.

> ==>

Now they’re just mashing up consorts.  Are they TRYING to populate the planet with weird garbage for the final products to eat?  (Or fight? Hard-troll-childhood style?)

> ==>

THAT THING IS NO REASON TO LOOK SO HAPPY EITHER REZI

Gosh, at least she’s having fun though.

> ==>

You’re ignoring Onionsan, Terezi

> ==>

I wonder what lazy name this Horsisaur has.

Fun abandoned. Survival instincts fully engaged. Terezi runs.

She throws backward sniffs over her shoulder as she tears through the scrubby cling of the planet’s undergrowth, catching fractured impressions of exactly what has decided to chase her. A shuddering, 20 foot monstrosity that somehow seems to both scamper and glide, like a centipede, rustling like foliage as it moves, as if an entire goddamn forest is bearing down on her.

Between the game and Alternia, you shouldn’t be TOO rusty at this, right?

The problem with using smells to navigate the world is that the unfamiliar can be difficult to parse. Every whiff over her shoulder gives her another blurry glimpse of what this beast is.

Yeah, smell is a little slower on the pickup than sight.

Rose shared her books with Terezi when she was on the ship, and her favorite by far was the compendium of the zoologically dubious. Everything contained inside was just so unbelievably unlikely. This creature appears to be a combination of all of them.

Really? What we see of it doesn’t look THAT weird.  But we only see about half of it from this angle, so.

--Twisted ankle?  Come on, you’re not THAT rusty.

> ==>

It’s fear, pure and simple. Unsurprising, when being menaced by a monster, but it also doesn’t last for more than a second. A cold flame that instantly burns itself out, and all of a sudden she is just deeply, impossibly, indescribably tired. Down to her bones.

You’re already giving up??!?

Honestly, she really has no right to feel this... this fatigue. This crushing embrace of endless struggle. Terezi Pyrope has not had an easy life by anyone’s standards, but so much of her thirteen or so sweeps has just been standing still. Waiting. Huddling blind and half dead in her recuperacoon, the sopor burning the hideous mess that the sun has left her eyes, alight with a hatred so layered and intense that she couldn’t make sense of it.

Dammit, do we have to go SO EXHAUSTINGLY DEEPLY into EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER’S PTSD?!??

It was horrifying--that pain or fury--but also, admittedly, very boring. Then there were the sweeps on the meteor, the endless, gelatinous stretches of time in the chaos of the outer ring, searching for... Vriska, ostensibly, but also maybe just for a chance to dry up. To disappear. Go extinct.

Terezi doesn’t know if it’s an attribute of her aspect, or the sheer psychic damage of spending so long in the company of two humans with god complexes. Maybe it’s just an inherited symptom of being conscious. But sometimes it feels like none of them are going to get out of this, alive or dead.

Fuck, apparently we are.  These writers don’t know how to let up.  Can’t we get a little more retroactive dwelling on how FUN some of their lives up til now were?  And then... maybe NOT only do that to contrast with how depressed they are now??  There was SO much delight in Homestuck amidst the hardship, and if you’re going to show us more of the hardship you have to show us more of the delight, too, or everything just gets pointlessly dark.

--ah, Rose redirected the command console to point to the monster and stopped it that way.

ROSE: I am devastated to report that those are really more vines than tentacles, and even worse, they aren’t mine.

Pff.

...Poking fun at the terminology for Patron Trolls, at this late date of all times.

TEREZI: D4V3 4ND 1 H4D 4 LOT 1N COMMON B4CK TH3N, OR 4T L34ST 1T F3LT L1K3 W3 D1D ROSE: As I have come to understand it, for a while at least, we were all being steered in the right direction by a debatably benevolent force. ROSE: One imposed on us by the game itself, even if we had yet to enter it. TEREZI: ... ROSE: You don’t believe me. TEREZI: NO, 1 DO TEREZI: 1T SOUNDS 1NCR3D1BLY DUMB AND UNL1K3LY BUT SO DO3S 3V3RYTH1NG 3LS3 TH4T H4PP3NS TO 4NY OF US

Terezi, don’t you know at least half as much about Skaia as anyone else here? Isn’t that what she’s talking about?

TEREZI: SO YOU 4R3 DO1NG TH3 S4M3 TH1NGS TO TH3S3 CR34TUR3S TH4T SOM3 OTH3R CR34TUR3S D1D TO YOU 4ND YOUR FR13NDS ROSE: I suppose that is a fair assessment. Although we were not our own creators. It was John who— DIRK: I hate to break up the recap episode, but we need to deal with this situation before it gets out of hand.

Wait, she’s talking about the Exiles?  Terezi TOLD Dave about the exiles helping them.  SHE was the one who told us how that worked!  Although I guess you could chalk her questions up to her not knowing one of those “terminals” was involved.

TEREZI: 4ND HOW 4R3 YOU H3R3 4NYW4Y? DIRK: I have administrative privileges. TEREZI: YOU H4V3 4DM1N1STR4T1V3 PR1V1L3G3S TO MY P4LMHUSK DIRK: Yes.

Was Terezi dictating to her palmhusk earlier?  Why was she talking for Rose’s part of the conversation earlier, but not now?  Was that a mistake?  Or did Rose switch off the terminal, despite her apparent confusion with the terminal now???

Opinion of HS^2... dropping... keep it together stop judging the comic so hard... NOT dropping off in quality... shh brain! Shoosh!!!

(Seriously though, don’t put ANY asks in my inbox about HS^2 dropping off in quality, even as much as I’M starting to complain.  Gotta keep my hopes up to keep enjoying myself as I keep going.)

ROSE: Don’t let it get to you. My father has a habit of appearing in places he’s not wanted.

You’re seriously just CALLING him that now?!??

DIRK: I was saying that we should get Terezi down from there before continuing our mining of the core themes in our personal narratives.

Ah, that’s why you used the terminology.

DIRK: I was saying that we should get Terezi down from there before continuing our mining of the core themes in our personal narratives. ROSE: Of course. I’ll take care of it. DIRK: Appreciate it. TEREZI: 1 W1SH YOU WOULDN’T DO TH4T WH3R3 1 C4N S33 1T DIRK: Do what? TEREZI: TH4T TH1NG WH3R3 YOU G3T P3OPL3 WHO 4R3 NOT M3 TO DO WH4T3V3R 1T 1S YOU W4NT TH3M TO TEREZI: M1ND CONTROL

Oh, damn.  That was a creepy order, then.  And is Rose STILL not wise to it?  Can Terezi and Dirk just TALK about the narrative control IN FRONT OF ROSE and have her not recognize it because of said control??? :C

TEREZI: WH4T TH3 FUCK 1S GO1NG ON DIRK: You can make more boots. TEREZI: 1M NOT T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 BOOTS, NOOKBR34TH TEREZI: 1 MEAN TH3 M3N4G3R13 FROM H3LL DIRK: Well, we’ve encountered a couple bumps along the road. TEREZI: YOU DONT S4Y

This is fun, but I can’t help but notice that Rose has completely stopped talking.  Fuck having Dirk flaunt this even harder just ups the creepiness even more.

TEREZI: YOU GUYS R34LLY SUCK 4T TH1S DIRK: Yeah, agreed. TEREZI: ... TEREZI: WOW, TH4T W4S MUCH L3SS P41NFUL 4ND LONG-W1ND3D TH4N 1 W4S 3XP3CT1NG 1T TO B3 DIRK: What was? TEREZI: CONV1NC1NG YOU TH4T 4LL OF TH3S3 "D3S1GNS" TH4T YOU H4V3 COM3 UP W1TH SUCK SH1T TEREZI: 1 THOUGHT YOU WOULD T3LL M3 TH4T 4LL OF 1T 1S P4RT OF SOM3 "GR4ND PL4N" TEREZI: TH4T TH3Y SUCK ON PURPOS3 OR SOM3TH1NG L1K3 TH4T DIRK: Well, it is a part of the grand plan. And they do suck on purpose. DIRK: But not on my purpose. DIRK: It’s Rose. She is remarkably bad at this. Voluntarily. TEREZI: DO YOU M34N TH4T SH3 1S TRY1NG TO S4BOT4G3 4LL OF YOUR GR4ND CR34T1ONS TEREZI: OH POW3RFUL GOD PR1NC3? DIRK: No, she’s playing the game. That part hasn’t been a problem. DIRK: I mean she is just making incredibly nonsensical decisions and refusing to back down, even when I up the ante to preposterous levels. DIRK: You should see some of the shit she’s come up with. I’m pretty sure I watched a vagina on legs walk by this morning. TEREZI: 1 DONT TH1NK 1 S4W TH4T ON3 DIRK: Despite her initial resistance, Rose has gone completely feral. TEREZI: YOU M34N TH4T SH3 1S H4V1NG FUN DIRK: Yes.

You loosened her morals so she’d be conscience-free to go full zoological playground, and she’s GOING full zoological playground.  What did you expect?

TEREZI: 4ND WH4T 1S WRONG W1TH 4 L1TTL3 B1T OF FUN YOUR H1GHN3SS? DIRK: Nothing. I got absolutely no problem with having a good time while we see to the boring and altogether completely frivolous task of seeding the future of this planet. DIRK: But she really TEREZI: YOU 3XP3CT3D H3R TO B3 TH3 ON3 TO HOLD YOU B4CK, 1NST34D OF TH3 OTH3R W4Y 4ROUND DIRK: No, that's not it. TEREZI: YES, 1 TH1NK 1T 1S 1T

What?  “Holding her back”?  How did this suddenly become about Dirk’s insecurity at his ectobiological skill?

DIRK: By project, do you mean that I expect Rose to be too much like myself? TEREZI: NO, 1 M34N TH3 OPPOS1T3 TEREZI: YOU 3XP3CT H3R TO B3 B3TT3R TH4N YOU TEREZI: YOU W4NT H3R TO PR3V3NT 4LL OF YOUR WORST T3ND3NC13S. TH3 W4Y 1 US3D TO W1TH VR1SK4 WH3N W3 W3R3 MO1R41LS

--Oh, you meant hold them back from going TOO FAR.  I see.  And also, the way Terezi and Vriska were “moirails” is the WORST example, and thus quite fitting to relate to this situation.  For their brief pale stint, Terezi never really STOPPED Vriska from doing ANYTHING. She just supported Vriska, while Vriska spewed some flattery Terezi’s way... and then proceeded to do whatever the fuck she wanted. Sometimes without telling her.  It was an AWFUL example of proper moirallegiance, as I covered in the above link.

Dirk wouldn’t know about that, though.  And neither does Terezi, apparently, unless she’s just not admitting it.

(EDIT: Also, Rose never had the slightest chance of ever holding Dirk back like she might have wanted because DIRK MIND CONTROL OVERRIDES HER EVERY TIME SHE HAS RESERVATIONS. The only way a moirallegiance can work at all is if the one being held back is WILLING to listen. Dirk has deliberately and continuously suppressed Rose's ability to even THINK about dissuading him from literally any course of action.)

TEREZI: YOUR3 3XP3CT1NG ROS3 TO C4TCH YOU WH3N YOU GO TOO F4R TEREZI: SH3 1SNT GO1NG TO DO TH4T, 1 DONT TH1NK TEREZI: 1N F4CT, 1 TH1NK SH3 1S MOR3 L1K3LY TO GO TOO F4R TH4N YOU 4R3 DIRK: What makes you say that? TEREZI: 1 DONT KNOW TEREZI: JUST 4 F33L1NG, 1 GU3SS. 1 M1GHT NOT B3 4 GOD-MODD3D DORK 1N COSPL4Y, BUT 1M ST1LL A S33R TEREZI: 4ND 1 H4VE SP3NT W4Y MOR3 T1M3 W1TH TH3 TWO OF YOU TH4N 4LMOST 4NYON3 ELSE, WH1CH 1S 1NCR3D1BLY D3PR3SS1NG TO TH1NK 4BOUT

Guh.  A real pair of villains.  Is that REALLY why you brought Rose, Dirk?

TEREZI: 4NYW4Y, 1F YOU DONT L1K3 TH3 W4Y ROS3 1S DO1NG TH1NGS WHY DONT YOU JUST NOT-M1ND CONTROL H3R 1NTO DO1NG 1T TH3 R1GHT W4Y TEREZI: PROBL3M SOLV3D DIRK: I’ve made the decision to freehand this one. I’m not planning to influence Rose’s decision in any part of the contest. Otherwise it’s too easy, and barely worth doing at all.

Obviously.  And you can’t argue her down the normal way because she was NEVER someone to listen to someone like you in a direct confrontation without any misleading subterfuge.  You would’ve had to Doc Scratch it.

DIRK: So you’re saying you want me to mind-control Rose. TEREZI: NO, 1M S4Y1NG TH4T 1 TH1NK YOU 4R3 4 COW4RD TEREZI: P3RH4PS 1 W1LL T3LL H3R TH4T YOU H4V3 B33N WH1SP3R1NG YOUR STR4NG3 L1TTL3 1NC4NT4T1ONS 1N H3R 34R OV3R TH3 L4ST F3W SW33PS TEREZI: L1K3 4 CR33PY W31RDO DIRK: No, you won’t. If you were going to, you would have already.

Are you talking about the narrative mind control or are you talking about something else?  Something weirder?  Because calling them “strange little incantations” sounds like he’s been doing some creepily Doc-Scratchy grooming to her like how Doc kinda rage-controlled the trolls to write his genetic code on their walls in their most vulnerable moments.

DIRK: Unless you think I’m still projecting my "image" of what I think Rose "should" do, and she actually won’t give a shit. TEREZI: NO, 1 TH1NK SH3 W1LL B3 CONFL1CT3D TEREZI: UNL3SS YOU M1ND-CONTROL H3R NOT TO B3 DIRK: Not mind control. TEREZI: WH4T3VER!

And that’s just it.  Rose WOULD have been very conflicted about MUCH of this if you hadn’t used your narrative control to override all her inhibitions.  So instead you get the version of her who would have gone with your plans without hesitation, which is the WORST version of her.  And she doesn’t even have a choice to be better.

Alright, that’s the end of the upd8.  See y’all!  Maybe a bit after the commentary goes up for this (already has for the Influencers bonus) I’ll cover the commentary on both this and the bonus, but that’ll be in at least a few days.  Ciao

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #240 - Ice Age

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: I don’t think so?

Format: Digital HD

1) This is one of only two films where I only own digital copies of them as opposed to hard copies. In the case of Ice Age, it happened when I linked up MoviesAnywhere and Vudu (or possibly when I linked one of those to my iTunes account). My family owns a DVD copy so I did grow up watching it but I never thought it’d be part of my (re)watch. But a digital copy is still owning it, so here we are.

2) Meeting Scrat.

Scrap has become the most iconic part of the series and that is because (much like the Minions in Despicable Me) he is the franchise’s certified Scene Stealer™. His little adventures are so simple it’s genius: his motivation is simply to collect and/or store his nut(s). But the slapstick that ensues, the escalating sense of cause & effect, not to mention the vocals provided by director Chris Wedge have made him into an animation icon. He’s Blue Sky’s mascot and even has his own balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Opening with Scrat is a strong way to start the film.

3) The herd migration immediately following Scrat’s adventure has a lot of sharp humor I didn’t pick up on as a kid. Namely the debate of, “How do we know it’s an Ice Age?”, the kids playing “Extinction”, and the character who thinks he’s on the cusp of an, “evolutionary breakthrough,” before trying to fly. It sets the wit for the tone up well.

4) Manny as portrayed by Ray Romano.

Manny’s character is well established immediately by his literal moving against the crowd when walking through the migration herd. He’s set up as abrasive and harsh but we’re also quickly given reason to root for the Wooly Mammoth.

Manny: “You know I don’t like animals that kill for pleasure.”

Ray Romano does great as the voice of Manny, in fact all three members of the herd are great. Romano plays against his “Everybody Loves Raymond” type of the sort of passive momma’s boy by being not only strong but assertive throughout the film. And it just feels right. It’s a good first character to meet.

5) Sid the Sloth as portrayed by John Leguizamo.

Leguizamo is nearly unrecognizable as Sid in this film. The amount of saliva you can just HEAR in his voice, the nerdy quality, but also the warmth and humor, I think Leguizamo gives the best performance in the film. Much like Manny, Sid is well introduced from the start when we learn his family has ditched him. We get the impression he’s a bit of a pain but also we can SEE he’s well intentioned if a little much. It’s understandable why people are hard on him while we are also given good enough reason to root for him. I like Sid.

6) Thing I didn’t pick up on as a kid: the rhinos Carl and Frank are totally a couple, right?

7) This movie is a lot funnier than I remember.

8) It is worth noting Manny’s line about, “animals that kill for pleasure,” sets up the rules of this world. There are carnivore characters we’re meant to sympathize with and root for in this movie. This line basically sets up the rule: killing for survival is fine but killing for pleasure is not. That is an important element when we’re introduced to our villain later.

9) The literal human element of the film - the nomadic hunters and gatherers - helps ground the film a little. It’s an element I appreciate and missed in the movie’s sequels which began involving dinosaurs and a flying saucer at one point.

10) Remember in note #8 when I mentioned the moral rules this film plays by. Well, the villain Soto is immediately breaking those rules. He wants to kill a BABY of the human leader just for revenge. A BABY. It’s not food, it’s not survival, it’s a Khan-esque mission of wrath and cruelty. And Soto is chilling. We actually don’t get to see much of him in the movie, but his mere presence shows off the threat he is. I think that comes at a combination of writing, voice acting, and design for the animal. I dig it.

11) Just an observation: like the Minions in Despicable Me (who Scrat is very much a precursor to), Scrat is best used in small doses sprinkled throughout the film.

12) The plot of this film is basically Three Men & A Baby set in the ice age with extinct animals (except Sid, unless his specific brand of Sloth is gone). But that’s a plot which inherently has a lot of heart to it, the idea of bonding and found family. It helps give the film an emotional core I appreciate.

13) It’s probably just my own interpretation and desire to see more representation in media, but I feel like there’s so much LGBTQ+ subtext in the movie and I dig that.

Diego [on Manny and Sid with the baby]: “Can’t have one of your own so you decided to adopt.”

14) Diego as portrayed by Denis Leary.

The third member of the herd, Diego is a wonderfully fleshed out character. We get the intimidating and fierce predator but we also have the heartfelt development where it is easy to root for him. It is believable that he finds a sense of family with Manny and Sid. I think this duality is well played by Leary, who is able to make Diego a threat in the beginning but also put enough heart/warmth in the performance that we like him as a character. All of this makes his changing sides towards the movie’s end feel natural, making him a nice final member to the herd.

15) The immediate Sid and Manny have with Diego is founded on mistrust, they EXPECT him to eat the baby, which creates a unique conflict at the heart of their relationship. It’s interesting seeing them overcome this conflict.

16) While strong as individuals, each member of the trio work well in the herd together. They have a fun chemistry and play off each other well.

17) The Dodos!

This is one of my favorite scenes from the film and that’s because I get the joke so much more now as an adult than I did as a kid. WE’RE WATCHING THE DODOS GO EXTINCT! The fast paced energy, slapstick elements, and unique characters which the dodos are make it a wonderfully entertaining scene. And Alan Tudyk voices the lead Dodo! (Along with two other characters in the movie)

18) I like how each member of Diego’s pack is voiced by someone noteworthy as its made up of Jack Black, Diedrich Bader and Alan Tudyk (again).

19) This got me laughing pretty hard, not gonna lie.

Female Sloth [lovingly, after seeing how Sid is with the baby]: “All the sensitive guys get eaten.”

20) “Send Me On My Way” is one of my favorite songs and this film introduced me to it, so I’ll always be grateful for that.

21) File this one under jokes I didn’t get as a kid.

Manny [when pacing Stonehenge]: “Modern architecture. It’ll never last.”

22) I might be Sid.

Sid [when offered to go through a dangerous short cut]: “No thanks, I choose life.”

23) I love the hall of ice gag, especially the alien at the end.

24) The ice slide sequence is really fun and one of the strongest “action” pieces in the film. It just has a sense of adrenaline and enjoyment to it that’s hard to beat.

25) The cave painting scene.

This is the heart of Manny’s character. The decision to animate this scene differently from the rest of the film helps to give it a sense of identity and almost nightmare like quality. Because it is a nightmare, but it still happened. In an absolutely heartbreaking moment we learn that Manny not only is a widower but he lost his child too. Usually in animated films it’s an orphaned kid but parents aren’t supposed to outlive their kids, so the fact that Manny had to go through that explains perfectly his isolationist tendencies.

26) A key moment of character development for Diego comes when he and the group are running across the river of lava (lake of lava? It’s lava). He realizes this herd will do something for him his pack wouldn’t: risk their lives for him.

27) This is the heart movie in one moment.

Manny [after Diego asks why he saved him]: “That’s what you do in a herd. You look out for each other.”

28) When Soto illustrates how to take down a mammoth (by backing them in a corner) there is a wonderful sense of tension. The visualization there really illustrates the stakes to come.

29) The climax of the film starts with a sense of fun and energy we’ve come to except so far, what with Sid’s snowboarding moves on full display as he outmaneuvers the tigers. But the change in tone to a more intense encounter involving Soto, Diego and Manny feels organic. There is a sense of tension here which works well and Soto’s dialogue-free death is particularly effective.

30) I think I’m definitely Sid.

Sid: “Ah, you know me. I’m too lazy to hold a grudge.”

31) The scene where Manny returns the baby to the humans carries a lot of tension. We know how badly this can go, we saw it in the cave painting. So the fact that it ends happily makes the emotional pay off even stronger.

32)

Manny [to the baby]: “We won’t forget about you.”

But we won’t mention you ever again in the sequels.

33)

Sid [expressing his dissatisfaction with the Ice Age]: “You know what I could go for? Global warming!” Manny: “Keep dreaming.”

34) The epilogue which showcases that Scrat is chasing that nut of his for 2,000 years is a perfect representation of his character. I dig it.

Ice Age is a lot of fun and, in hindsight, pretty underrated. I know that’s odd to say about a film that kicked off a five movie franchise, but the franchise became so different from the original movie and the original is still pretty unique in its setting and look. With a great wit, strong character, a good heart, and quality performances, it’s feasibly one of the best animated films from the early 00′s.

[jahaliel]

We Go... Together Chapter 9

i feel like we could all use some happy - here’s the next chapter of WGT, and remember i’m also uploading it to AO3 (which has a little bonus poem at the end which this one doesn’t)

Chapter 9 - Kharaa or Bacterium Stupidus

There’s a strange beauty to the illumination of this system.  There’s lights - potentially made by the alien species who built the QEP.  The heavy-water river flows slowly along and it’s just. Stunning, in a way that Nemo’s rarely seen.  They pause the engines and lock the sub into place - checking each others tanks because they’re far away from any air supply.  Diving into the quiet of the biome feels amazing, Nicholas signs for them to explore the lights to the left of the sub, and there’s a large skull which Hikari immediately swims towards to scan.

Nemo heads down to the river and immediately detects a problem.  She turns around and signs large - gaining the attention of the others.  Once she has it she explains that the river is dangerous - potentially acidic.  They nod, and Hikari swims over to scan the lights next to Nemo - Nicholas’ attention is drawn higher, he swims up and then comes back, tugging on Nemo’s arm excitedly.  Together they swim up to where a light-ray shield shines bright, illuminating the stand for a keycard next to it.  Nemo reaches into her pack and pulls out a purple keycard, slotting it into the holder.

The beams fade but a staticky barrier remains - Nemo pushes through it and drops down - pulling off her mask, she waves the others in carefully “That barrier - there’s no water in here,” she tells them, stating the obvious.  Hikari pulls her mask, setting the oxygen tank to cycle and refill.  “That’s incredible, I wonder how they did it…”  The gather the data packets and scan the fossils, before returning to the sub and heading deeper into the river biome - on the way Nemo grabbed some nickel ores, and some sulphur crystals - knowing that nickel was often involved in the low-depth modules.

There were even more fossils, large ones further into the river system. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT” shouted Nicholas Nemo looked up from her mapping to see a ghostly translucent levithan attempting to ram their sub.  “It looks like a ghost” “A ghost?”  asked Hikari, even as she ran to deploy the sound-wave decoy Nemo grabbed her repair tool out, fixing the damage from the inside “Yes.  Outside the caldera that this whole ecosystem exists in there’s a steep drop off and ghostly creatures like that one except maybe 3 times the size.  I managed to scan one.” “You mean to tell me that’s a JUVENILE?! Fuck.” Nicholas’ hands remained steady even though his heart was racing.  When the decoy was successful at distracting the Ghost, he piloted the sub deeper and then turned off into a secondary branch as there were more alien-tech lights. The sunken ruin of a facility appeared before them, and all three went out to explore. Hikari used the repulsion cannon to punt a warper out of their way.  There were more keycards and ion crystals to pick up as well as a lot of information, the Precursors - idiots Nemo thinks, had stolen a sea dragon leviathan egg and the mother had attacked the facility causing the bacteria to be released, and the facility destroyed.  They also discover that the warpers are a rather sinister mix of machine and animal species - the native animal must be extinct as only the warpers exist.  They are a mobile QEP - programmed to destroy those infected with Kharaa.   The three are nearly done when all of their PDAs beep, asking for a self-scan.  When they do so, green pustules begin to bubble up beneath their skin, Nemo watches it with a detached fascination - this is the beginning of stage two of the stupidius infection and she is not having it.  “Give me your hands,” it’s a demand, an order borne of love and fear and desperation.  Nicholas and Hikari both do, though it hurts where the green blisters touch.  Nemo takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and focuses on that plane where she becomes nearly one with the universe.  She can see in this place the way the Kharaa spreads, the advancement of the disease and she reaches with all the power that her years grant her, dropping deep into the flow of magic and soul.   She breaks the cycle back to stage one, a present threat but contained without physical symptoms.  And she draws on deeper power, burning more and more of herself to lock it there - to buy them the time they will need to find their answers.  If it had been just herself she may have been able to rid herself of the disease altogether but she does not cast blame, or regret what might have been, just does what she can.

Nemo opens her eyes, to see Nicholas and Hikari staring at her in no little awe, and she smiles at them, before blacking out.  The others catch her before she drops, and decide that it would be best to head back to the base instead of remaining in the deeps.  Between the two of them they manage to get the unconscious Nemo back to the Nobody.  Getting back past the ghost is trickier without a third set of eyes but the creature decoy works well enough, and they head up out of the grand reef towards sunlight.

Two full days pass without Nemo stirring at all beyond the gentle rise and fall of her chest that reassures Hikari and Nicholas that she lives.  This is beyond their skill - driven by the desperate need to do something Nicholas ventures into the Dunes where the leviathan nests are.  He finds a wreck that holds a drill arm for the prawn suit, and returns to Hikari unharmed.  She sympathises - her worry drives her to crafting plans and theorems.  They build a prawn suit together, remind each other to eat and spend the night holding onto Nemo hoping that she wakes.

When Nemo wakes on the afternoon of the third day, it’s to the concerned eyes of her friends - she coughs, throat dry and aching which spurs Hikari into action, she returns with a bottle of water, Nicholas assists Nemo to sit and steadies her as she drinks.  “Sorry,” she whispers having devoured the bottle of water.

“What did you do Nemo?  The blisters on our hands vanished and then you’ve been asleep for nearly 3 days…”

Nemo leans against Nicholas and takes Hikari’s hand in hers, “I undid the progression of the disease.  It’s now stuck in a loop where it won’t progress past the first phase - we’ll still have to find a cure to get off planet but this gives us time.”

“And the collapse?”  Nicholas’ voice holds a fine tremor,

“The ability to change how a bacterial species works isn’t without cost - and this planet, it’s immensely draining to do even simple things,” she levitates a plush dragon they’d found in a strange capsule briefly, “but I was willing to do whatever it takes to ensure we’d all be alright.”

That night Nemo has somehow ended up in between Hikari and Nicholas - and when she goes to move out, thinking that they're asleep Nicholas' arm tightens around her and she glances over to see his silver eyes reflecting the pale moonlight that makes it through their window. She tilts her head in inquiry, and he tugs her down so their heads are close together. "You scared the daylights out of me, and I..  I don't know whether we'll live or die. Or if Hikari will take you and maybe me up on the offer you made, but right now, Nemo, I want to kiss you." Nemo will never admit that she squeaked a little in surprise before warm lips brushed over hers. As far as kisses went this one held a lot of promise. She was returning the kiss, with interest when she became aware of Hikari's eyes on them. Breaking off the kiss Nemo lifted her head, a question dancing in her purple eyes and Hikari's soft huff of laughter as she leant in for a kiss of her own was all the answer Nemo needed

[projectalbum]

Art is Resistance. 149. “With Teeth” (Halo 19), 150. “Year Zero” (Halo 24), 151. “Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D” (Halo 25), 152. “Ghosts I-IV” (Halo 26), 153. “The Slip” (Halo 27) by Nine Inch Nails

The 6-year gap between Nine Inch Nails studio albums saw the Internet become truly ascendant in popular culture, for better and worse.

Napster took a bite from the music industry and was put down like a mad dog. The Pirate Bay first unfurled its flag. Radio play and music videos were still the main avenue for displaying the wares of major label musicians to the general public, and success was still measured in units of CDs sold, but more and more people were becoming hip to the underground access provided by a DSL modem.

But the power of the Web to empower artists and connect them to their fans still evaded most of the recording industry; honchos and artists alike were largely clueless. Trent Reznor, the big ol’ nerd, was a notable exception. Posting on early message boards on Prodigy, embracing torrents, creating an online gateway for the band’s fans, leaking material from the archives, experimenting with an optional-pay release, even being an early adopter of Twitter— it was a white-hot fiber optic cable running through the life of the band. While this technological engagement didn’t always translate into sales (The Fragile was considered a financial disappointment), it was a 21st century incarnation of the connection between what the artist creates and how the audience consumes it, internalizes it, and hopefully finds some emotional release in it.

This uneasy alliance between organic emotion and technological chilliness is reflected in this era of Nine Inch Nails’ aesthetic, both musically and through the packaging. Where Downward Spiral and Fragile dealt in decaying earth tones, the releases starting with 2005’s reemergent With Teeth (#149) are shades of blue, black, ghost white, and slate gray, dirtied up by belching factory smoke, or distorted by broken pixels and lines of computer code. The songs are likewise colored by pulsating synth accents, digital distortion, hums and drones and beats. The instrumental stems for Reznor’s compositions were offered up to remixers both professional and amateur, so that even the boundary of artist and audience member became liminal. He had his carefully constructed versions of “The Hand That Feeds” and “Only,” but suggested that there were infinite alternate permutations to be created at the click of a button. For the once angry, brooding Prince of Industrial Rock, it was downright egalitarian.

“All The Love In The World,” a title that might suggest a big-hearted power ballad on a cornier band’s track list, is in Reznor’s hands an electronica-inflected paranoid dirge. Where crunchy guitars would have provided the backbone in the past, here woozy piano figures are the main melodic backup to the vocal, before shifting into driving major chords to signal minute 3’s complete tonal transformation. With its layers of harmonizing Trents, it’s completely unlike anything else in the band’s repertoire, but it was the perfect next course to stimulate my appetite. And then Dave Grohl’s superhuman drumming on “You Know What You Are?” kicked me through the door. The wailing chorus presented an aggressive musical release for me that I’d never had access to before.

“Right Where It Belongs,” the keyboard-driven closing track, is spooky and introspective, and one of the best songs in NiN’s catalogue. A stripped-down, electric piano and vocal version, originally exclusive to the Japanese release but eventually uploaded by Reznor to his website, captures that dark night of the soul uncertainty even better. This recording made its way into the end credits of my senior thesis film, at the point where it was obvious it wasn’t going to go anywhere and that I should at least put copyrighted stuff I liked into it. I also set a live version against grainy deleted footage from Pink Floyd - The Wall, a mashup I figure ol’ Trent would appreciate (the idea was to then do the reverse, matching “Hey You” to the visuals cut together for NiN’s stage show, but the result wasn’t as compelling).

I don’t have any supporting evidence, but Year Zero (#150) may well have been the first time I ever plunked down money for a physical copy of a NiN CD. Also lacking sufficient empirical backup: I’m convinced this speculative fiction about an increasingly plausible American dystopia represents some of Reznor’s strongest songwriting. Inhabiting characters like a brainwashed foot soldier, an underground Resistance fighter, a religiously-inflamed demagogue, even a judgmental alien intelligence, he moves away from the diary page introspection that could occasionally curdle into lyrics of questionable taste (Sorry, please don’t slip on all the tears I’ve made you cry).

The release of the album was notably attached to a labyrinthine “Alternate Reality Game” campaign, with in-character websites, USB drives hidden at concerts, and music videos with secret messages, adding plot strands and world building to the lyrics. (I missed the boat on all that, but the work that the same marketing company did for The Dark Knight was sure something to experience.) All of which would be near-impenetrable, if the actual music wasn’t so compelling. You don’t have to read the wiki pages to feel the apocalyptic beats and glitchy cacophony of “HYPERPOWER!,” “The Good Soldier,” and to pump your fist to the chorus of “Survivalism.” “I got my propaganda / I got revisionism” hits harder in a time, 10 years on from the album’s release, in which the most powerful voices in the U.S. government disregard reality on the reg, occasionally try to downplay the Holocaust. “Capital G,” a gleefully sociopathic near-rap by the forces of greed, could soundtrack one of Paul Ryan’s dead-eyed workout photoshoots.

“In This Twilight” and “Zero Sum” are the shattering two-part coda, in which the squabbling remnants of humanity face the end, whether by divine intervention or nuclear fire. The first juxtaposes crunchy, distorted percussion and fuzzed-out bass with perhaps the most perversely light and melodic vocal performance Reznor has ever delivered. He’s singing about encroaching extinction, but in a blissed-out religious reverie, optimistic for the afterlife. The character at the center of the closing track is not so sure: this is the End of this ridiculous human experiment, and we’ve brought oblivion on ourselves. “Shame on us / For all we have done / And all we ever were.” There’s the Nine Inch Nails nihilism we know and love!

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (#151) filters the previous album through Hip-Hop and EDM, to uneven effect. The collection of remixes never quite sustains the highs established by the first two tracks: Saul Williams’ fiery rap verses turn the instrumental “HYPERPOWER!” into a polemic against a legacy of American violence, “Gunshots by Computer,” while modwheelmood frees the vocals of “The Great Destroyer” from the squealing synth breakdown and creates a whole new paranoid anthem. While it’s also interesting to hear the Kronos Quartet reinterpret “Another Version of the Truth,” the rest is largely skippable. The physical set includes a DVD with the multitracks for the original Year Zero recordings, so you too can fuck with the raw materials! (I’ve been trying to remix things for years, and I’m awful at it, but it’s fun to hear the individual instrumentation.)

After freeing himself lyrically from his old methodology, the next release from Reznor eschewed words and melody completely. Ghosts I-IV (#152) is nearly 2 hours of ambient experimentation, a precursor to the Oscar-winning film scores with Atticus Ross (a few tracks were literally reworked for The Social Network, and several others continue to be licensed for film and documentaries). The buzzsaw distortions, dark piano chords, oddly organic synthesizers, and industrial beats identify it as a NiN record even in the absence of vocals. Though good luck recommending your favorite tracks, with titles like “26 Ghosts III” and “09 Ghosts I” not exactly sticking in the memory.

The Slip (#153), originally released free of charge, is more of a return-to-form. Arguably too familiar— it’s essentially With Teeth Part 2, but leaner and meaner. It’s not held in especially high regard, but it was there right at the outset of my fandom, and as such I continue to have a soft spot for it. I even bought the physical copy after years of listening to the decent quality MP3’s. “Discipline,” with its uncommonly funky bass line and high hat-favoring drum beat, is my number 1 “trying to sneak it onto a party playlist but not very successfully” NiN song. Along with the following track, “Echoplex,” the dark dance floor vibe is a preview of the sound Reznor and co would explore with How To Destroy Angels. “Lights in the Sky,” “Corona Radiata,” and “The Four of Us are Dying” create a kind of suite, insinuating and ethereal. I can understand if you bow out of that middle, 7-minute-and-33-second, ambient track before the library sample of fighting cats kicks in. But “LITS” is Reznor’s sparsest, prettiest piano lament, announcing the eminent “retirement” of Nine Inch Nails as a touring/recording entity.

Wave goodbye. They’ll be back.

[danmacrae]

Silly 90s Intro Blab: A Thing To Skim Through On The Toilet

Hello! I’m semi-tolerable nuisance Dan MacRae! Why am I shouting at you? Not sure! Sorry, I’ll take it down a notch.

Instead of learning how to pleasure a woman or how to unlock the mysteries of grooming, I have devoted my life to TV nonsense. Blessed YouTube presence RwDt09 has been collecting these amazing compilations of era (and sometimes season) specific TV intros and they are my everything. Imagine having a child that didn’t suck? That’s the feeling RwDt09′s videos put in my heart.

I've been obsessively rewatching this collection of mostly forgotten early '90s TV intros. The bulk of these shows died a quick death and feel like the product of whatever drugs TV execs take. (Probably something snorted from one of those awesome McDonalds coffee straws they ditched in like 2002.) Because I'm a handsome pin-up hunk of the year, I wrote some dumb blurbs about the first few shows and have some stray thoughts on the rest. This appeals to no one but me AND I APOLOGIZE TO NO ONE!

In the immortal words of John Lennon, let’s get biz-zay!

DINOSAURS: I’m at a point in my life where I can acknowledge that Dinosaurs sucked. It’s incredibly freeing. Christ, this is like that stupid-ass Norman Lear show where dogs did social commentary BUT WITH HENSON PUPPETS! I hope Baby Sinclair was stomped to death and eaten as pudding before the extinction series finale. (Yes, that happened.) The intro isn’t bad, mind you. You get the lumbering theme song and Earl gets stuck in a door CUZ LAFFS! TIMES SURE HAVEN’T CHANGED HO HO HO! God I hate these fucking dinosaurs.

Intro MVP: It’s not a stellar pack, but we get a bit of Robbie Sinclair who census data has shown led to a variety of surprising sexual awakenings for youths at the time.

SCORCH: A 1300-year-old dragon named Scorch visits the 1990s on a budget that looks not far removed from Skank on The Ben Stiller Show. The song will make you want to barricade your sex organs from a world where you can bring children into a world with THAT CAWAZZZY SCORCH! The theme song really is a special brand of irritating and Scorch looks like a malformed Deviant Art dildo with a vaguely religious bent.

Intro MVP: Probably John O’Hurley for not actually appearing in the intro. (Even with O’Hurley’s weird résumé.)

FISH POLICE: Not to be confused with the (ARF! ARF! ARF!) Dog Police, Fish Police and Family Dog are shows I know almost exclusively from being mentioned as examples of the crappy post-Simpsons primetime animation gold rush. Fish Police actually looks good animation-wise, but it’s pretty clear you’re gonna be sledgehammered with endless “COULD YOU IMAGINE FISH DOING THESE OLD TROPES? DO WE NEED TO CALL A SEARCH PARTY FOR YOUR SIDES? ARE THEY SPLITTING ALREADY?” jokes. Congrats dipshits, you made a cinema-touched precursor to Frankie & George. You dummies. Also there’s the tone of casual racism UNDER THE SEA so do with that what you will. DID YOU SEE CHINATOWN? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SHIT?

Intro MVP: Thank goodness they specified who John Ritter voices so we could all bask in Inspector Gil as a character name. Fuck you, Fish Police.

CAPITOL CRITTERS: Christ, this looks UNWATCHABLE. Like walk into oncoming traffic as an alternative unwatchable. Capitol Critters centers around an animated mouse named Max (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) witnesses his family being murdered in Nebraska and moves to D.C. and wait what the fuck is going on with those roaches? (Racism, mostly.) Who thought this was a good idea to invest time, money and animator joint damage in? Stephen Bochco, baby! I have a perverse curiosity to see an episode but after 90 seconds I know I'd be dying to eat a fucking gun instead of suffering through any more of Capitol Critters.

Intro MVP: Gotta be Bochco. Also, EAT SHIT BOCHCO!

And now a really tiny blab about the rest. Watch this clip package, ya goofs!

FAMILY DOG: Folks were fucking horny for Spielberg TV shit in the 90s, ditto Tim Burton too and that's how an Amazing Stories, uh, story was morphed into a shitball TV series that Brad Bird wanted no part of. Also, I have no idea how to explain things like the CBS StereoSound chyron to anyone born after Clinton left office.

THE CRITIC: Nice to see you, Jay Sherman! This is a lovely intro and you likely know that already. I've done a few rewatches of The Critic (not the web series season, though) and I say the show definitely holds up and is far from a duketastrophe. That said, some of the parody film clips that got raves at the time are kinda creaky in hindsight.

CHARLIE HOOVER: Can I say something? Fuck Sam Kinison. Hmm... That's a bit harsh. I guess I just don't get him on any level. The only thing he's done that I've ever found all that funny was when he said he wished Andrew Dice Clay die of stomach cancer from the inside out, like Bette Davis. Kinison's not my cup of tea is what I'm getting at. In Charlie Hoover (GET IT HURF HURF), Kinison is a foot high loudmouth in a long coat that's getting 40-year-old square Tim Matheson where he needs to be in life.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN: Or... "Betty Spaghetti's Here Which Is All The Star Power You Need!"

HARDBALL: A League Of Their Own had a fun, feel good intro with all the corny touches of ol' timey baseball. Hardball tries to sell you on Joe Rogan: Baseball Fella and the vague scent of urinal troughs.

GOOD GRIEF: Howie Mandel golfs in a cemetery and it's not particularly clear if he's just fucking around on strangers graves for fun. (Alternate Theory: Those graves belong to the family from Bobby's World. All the Generics!)

THE FANELLI BOYS: If enjoy broad Italian-American stereotypes to the point of falling down laughing at the sight of a pizza box, you'll love The Fanelli Boys! Joe Pantoliano and Christopher Meloni both star.

SOMETHING WILDER: Something Wilder was the sort of show where I wished Gene Wilder well and still kept 5000 miles away from watching it. Also, Wilder's face on that house is CHILLING.

DUDLEY: Embrace the luxury hotel elevator elegance of Dudley! Does it feature Dudley Moore make a series of faces where he seems surprised by everything? You better believe it. This was also where Max Wright got work in-between taking abuse from a cat eating alien and Norm Macdonald.

CAROL & COMPANY: It's a bit Carol Takes On in the intro with Carol Burnett in assorted costumes and that's alright because everyone does the assorted costumes intro thing. Tickets to the show are blown across America and get in the hands of whatever Orphan Black Carol happens to be in the area.

THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW: This is an extremely 90s sort of intro that feels like something more upscale soft rock stations did in TV ads at the time too. Richard Kind directs a bit of paper at someone midway through.

DREXELL'S CLASS: One of more storied entries in the Dabney Coleman being an asshole catalogue. The first intro features Dabney, ol' Drex himself, just hanging around in class being hot shit and occasionally mimicking a flying dinosaur. The second intro is a more traditional clip collection highlighted by a young Brittany Murphy (WHO WAS MURDERED! FACT! REMINDER!) and Coleman in a wild 8 ball jacket. Rembrandt off Sliders also makes an appearance.

TEECH: If this intro looks exactly like a sitcom where a Cool Black Music Instructor™ teaches Prep School bad boys in Bush Sr era America that's because it is exactly that sort of sitcom. Maggie Han deserves better.

THE ROYAL FAMILY: It seems extra cruel to take Redd Foxx's popcorn away considering he'd be dead before the fifth episode even aired. Della Reese is in this, die-hard Della fans.

ROC: This intro works perfectly. We get Charles S. Dutton, Ella Joyce and an easy to digest Jerry Lawson theme song. (En Vogue would do the theme later.) It’d be nice if they could get Edgar Allan Poe wagging a finger at seafood or something else in the background to push that Baltimore thing even more, but I still wish this intro from 25+ year old Fox comedy all the best in its future endeavours.

BREWSTER PLACE: Speaking of good intros, Brewster Place is a first rate brand of TV welcome. Brenda Pressley is the MVP of the intro over Oprah Winfrey which might explain why Brenda Pressley has been missing since 1992. (I know she’s on The Path. Just play along.)

SUNDAY BEST: The intro equivalent of getting someone to throw shit at a wall, we get an early 90s NBC grab bag of fuck it whatever shots of TVs and TV dinners with poor Carl Reiner trotted out partway through.

AMERICAN CHRONICLES: Mark Frost and David Lynch paired for a documentary series in the early ‘90s on Fox because Fox was like fucking UHF at the time. The industrial strength creepy opening doesn’t include any shots of narrator Richard Dreyfuss turning towards the camera and that’s a damn shame.

AMERICAN DETECTIVES: If you get horny for stressed out real-life detectives, this will send your undergarments to Mars! Lots of mustaches here. A whole Safeway bag’s worth. Some real rural gas station rock going on with that theme tune.

FBI: THE UNTOLD STORIES: The tone of this entire intro is: “Hey kid, wanna see a dead body? Or twenty?” Creepy music blasting over Jackie Kennedy on the back of JFK’s death limo and Wayne Williams heading to trial equals primetime party fun!

ENCOUNTERS: THE HIDDEN TRUTH: Suck it, Sightings! Encounters is leading a new dawn for crackpot horseshit to eat Bugles to! I appreciate the shameless X-Files knockoff intro thing Fox is doing (cuz it’s their show) that comes complete with head shop blanket alien head popping up midway through.

STEPHEN KING’S GOLDEN YEARS: Essentially Garth Marenghi's Darkplace with one hell of a music rights win tacked on.

TRIBECA: This opening reminds me an awful lot of terrible movies I was bullied into watching on VHS at a friend’s house.

WIOU: One thing I like in a TV intro is when something fun happens with the title onscreen. It’s a minor thing, but the way those WIOU letters turn into view? HOOCHIE MAMA! Eight is Enough’s Dick Van Patten does a fantastic job of conveying that being a weatherfellow is tough work.

GABRIEL’S FIRE: I will never for the life of me understand how the early ‘90s could not sustain a James Earl Jones fronted program titled Gabriel’s Fire. Those worlds are supposed to meld beautifully.

PROS & CONS: Gabriel’s Fire would morph into the more lighthearted Pros & Cons which symbolized its new form by laying it on thick with the Video Toaster touches. Instead of James Earl Jones peering at you from the darkness, this go-around it’s a lot of smiles and silly moments with Richard Crenna.

BURKE’S LAW: Hearing “it’s Burke’s Law” at the start of that intro is like when “Do you smell what The Rock’s cooking?” would play before Dwayne Johnson would wander down a ramp to kick Triple H in the stomach. In this case, it’s to get you fired up that Gene Barry’s back on television. This particular episode promises Dom DeLuise and Tawny Kitaen together at last!

MAX MONROE: LOOSE CANNON: If you only see one intro for a Shadoe Stevens vehicle that transitions from a Donut Hole shot to an extended leer at a lady’s bum, make it this one!

TEQUILA AND BONETTI: The creators of Tequila and Bonetti know that if you want folks to get on board for an L.A. dramedy about a New York cop and streetwise police partner dog, you should kick things off by trying to make you feel sorry for this asshole who “accidentally” murdered a kid. Seriously, that’s the route Tequila and Bonetti goes with this fucking insane opening that begins with newspaper headlines screaming “COP KILLS 12 YR OLD” while he cradles a black girl in her arms and then BOOM! we’re spun around to JACK SCALIA GRINNING AROUND WACKY LOS ANGELES AND ALL ITS CRAZY CHARACTERS LIKE A DOG THAT JUMPS THROUGH A FUCKING WINDOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? THIS IS LIKE IF SOMEONE STROKED OFF THE HANNITY VIEWING AND KEPT WHAT WAS SPURTED OUT ONSCREEN! It’s just a really, really, really bad intro.

[ciathyzareposts]

Star Control II: Age of Ultron

No, it’s not a sentient, malicious robot. It’s the galactic equivalent of a Lance Armstrong bracelet.

             Lots of stuff to talk about, so I’m just going to pick up where I left off.

Running out of items on my “to do” list, I next went to where Admiral Zex wanted a life form on a yellow sun world. I poked around several planets in the Lyncis constellation, taking longer than most players because a lot of colors look like they could be “yellow” to me. Eventually, I found what I was sure was the correct world when this big devil’s head started attacking my lander. He killed all but three crewmembers before I hit him enough time to stun him and bring him back to the ship.             

A close-up of the monster that my team hoped to bag and tag for Admiral Zex.

           The crew reported:

             We had only a few seconds to get it into the magnetic restrainor before it started thrashing around again. Even as I make this report, that damn monster is shrieking like a steam engine and trying to tear its way free. I hope we know what we’re doing, bringing that thing aboard.

             Back in VUX space, Zex gratefully took the alien demon off my hands, but then immediately announced he wouldn’t be honoring his side of the bargain (to give us the Shofixti females). Instead, he said that his menagerie would never be complete without humans. But as he ordered his underlings to attack us, a fun vignette played out (entirely by text) in which the demonic alien escaped its bonds and slaughtered everyone in the complex, including Zex.            

Undone by his own perversions.

            When it was over, a trip to the planet allowed us to recover the cryogenically-frozen forms of the Shofixti females. We brought them back to Tanaka, the lone Shofixti male, who gratefully set himself to the job of repopulating the race.              

I’ll bet you do.

           Out of ideas at this point, I returned to the Melnorme and turned in a bunch of life forms and the locations of two Rainbow Worlds for over 1,000 credits, which I proceeded to spend on technological upgrades (including the ability to double the carrying capacity of my lander) and information. 

Among the information was a bunch of stuff I already knew, like the origin of the probes and the location of the Slylandro home planet. But then the Melnorme started talking about some races I’d never heard of, including an extinct race called the Burvixese, a terminally-depressed race called the Utwig, and trading race called the Druuge who “care for nothing but profit and personal gain through unfair mercantile exchanges”. I learned that the Utwig have repeatedly talked of ending it all by exploding a Precursor super-weapon. The Druuge tried to obtain the weapon from the Utwig by selling them a worthless “personal magnifier” called the “Ultron,” but the Utwig refused to give up the weapon. Later, the Utwig broke the “Ultron” and got even more depressed. The Melnorme gave me three locations where I could find parts to fix the Ultron. I already had one of them–a “clear spindle” from the Pkunk.            

The Melnorme are not happy about the existence of another trading race.

           The Burvixese, meanwhile, had been destroyed by the Kor-Ah. The Burvixese had learned that the Kor-Ah find other races by scanning for HyperWave transmissions. They were kind enough to warn the Druuge of this, and the Druuge repaid them by building a HyperWave caster on a Burvixese moon, ensuring that the Kor-Ah would attack the Burvixese instead of the Druuge.

I decided to head first for the old Burvixese homeworld, where I found the HyperWave Caster on the moon. When I used it, oddly enough it seemed to summon the Melnorme, so I guess that could be handy, although not what I was expecting. I next went to Utwig space, hoping to see about that bomb. They were indeed a terribly morose species, like the Dweenle of Starflight II. They refused to trade me the bomb, but the visit was useful because their system (Zeta Hyades) had three treasure worlds.               

For some reason, this was the only shot I took of the Utwig.

          While I was in this corner of space, I decided to explore the most remote system, Groombridge. It turned out to feature just one star and one planet, but it was a Rainbow World.

Looking to assemble the components to fix the Ultron, I next headed for Zeta Perseide and the Druuge, a weird primate species that hangs from chains. They somehow knew I had the eggshell fragments from Syreen, the portal spawner, and the HyperWave Caster, and they offered to buy all of them, although what they offered for the latter two (fuel and ships) wasn’t very tempting. I needed from them the “Rosy Sphere,” which they offered to sell for 100 crewmembers or the Mycon eggshell fragments. I didn’t like either option, frankly, but I wasn’t about to sell my crew into slavery (I barely had enough anyway). The eggshell hadn’t gotten me anywhere with the Syreen, so I reluctantly let it go and took the sphere.              

So few altruistic organizations have the word “crimson” in their names.

          The Thraddash supposedly had the final Ultron piece, the “Aqua Helix.” I’d been unsuccessful finding them before, but after some searching, I finally met them–huge, rhinoceros-looking beings–in the Draconis system. I tried to adopt a threatening, blustery posture with them, but it didn’t work out. I found myself in combat regardless of what I did, in fact.                 

The “hostile” option did not cow them.

         Despite their supposed ferocity in battle, I found the Thraddash relatively easy. They have a smoke screen that draws in homing missiles, but their ships are small and die within a couple of shots of a fusion cannon, so I just destroyed them with my flagship. The problem wasn’t difficulty but quantity. Once hostilities developed, they just swarmed me with squadron after squadron, and I got sick of all the fighting, which didn’t seem to be drawing me any closer to the Aqua Helix.            

Note how few hit points the Thraddash ship has.

          I headed back to Earth to consider my next moves. When I arrived, Commander Hayes told me that the Spathi had abruptly departed, taking their commanders and ships with them, but the Shofixti had joined us. I sold a Zoq-Fot-Pik Stinger to make way for a Shofixti Scout.             

Apparently, the Shofixti reproduce so fast that finding crewmembers won’t be a problem. Not that it ever was. Maybe I should have sold them to the Druuge after all.

          The starmap showed me that the Pkunk were in the process of moving back towards Yehat territory again. I decided to visit the Yehat with my Shofixti commander and ship and see what they had to say about the return of their “ward” race. It was pretty extreme. 

             Our children have returned from oblivion!! But now we are faced with the cruelest truth! We who have sacrificed our honor! We who have lain with our enemy! WE ARE NOT WORTHY! WE ARE NOTHING! We are less than nothing. But wait! We are not Spathi. We are Yehat . . . OF THE SHARSHIP CLANS! We will NOT live this lie any longer! Listen as I speak these words! If our Queen makes the dishonorable command, then it is THE QUEEN WHO HAS NO HONOR! And a dishonorable Queen is NO QUEEN AT ALL!

                And at that, the Yehat were at civil war.             

Well, good luck with that.

            I next headed to Ilwrath space, hoping that I could impersonate their gods with the HyperWave Caster. But there must be something about the Umgah version that makes that possible because this one did nothing except summon the Melnorme again. The Melnorme did happen to mention that the Caster could penetrate a planetary shield, so I took it to Procyon to see if I could talk with the Chenjesu or the Mmrnmhrm. It worked. They related that they decided to accept fallow slavery because of the Ur-Quan doomsday weapon, the sa-matra. They figured they’d bide their time and create a stronger hybrid race before emerging from the shield and attacking the Ur-Quan once again. They said if I could find a powerful enough energy source, it could speed up the process.            

My old allies weren’t much help.

          I felt it was time to deal with the Spathi and their repudiation of our alliance. When I arrived at the Spathi homeworld, I found it covered in a red shield–but not one of Ur-Quan origin. Apparently, the Spathi had used their time on the alliance starbase to study Earth’s shield and then reverse-engineer it, thus sealing themselves off from hostile races forever. They didn’t respond to my use of the Burvixese HyperWave Caster.              

An unwelcome sight as we approach the Spathi homeworld.

            On the moon, they had left behind the Umgah HyperWave Caster. I can’t remember exactly how it came into Spathi hands, but at last I had what I wanted. I returned to Ilwrath homeworld and hit them with the HyperWave Caster. As with the Umgah, they believed that we were their gods. There were some funny options where I could tell them to change the name of their own species or replace common words with nonsense words.

            The Dill-rats take immediately to their new name.

            But the most important option was to tell them to leave Pkunk space and “seek new prey.” They mulled it over and decided to vent their fury against the Thraddash. Over the next few months, I watched on the starmap as the Ilwrath circle migrated across the galaxy to the Thraddash circle. Then slowly, both circles got smaller and smaller. It was pretty cool.

Coming up on only one year before Earth was due to be destroyed, I wasted a couple of months collecting more life specimens for the Melnorme only to find out things I already knew. Eventually, they told us about the Mycon “deep children” and how the Mycon sent these eggs into the crusts of other planets which expanded and essentially cracked open the planets, making them more suitable for fungal life forms. The Mycon had already told me this, but now having double-confirmation, I returned to the Syreen commander to see if she’d react. She did–but, unfortunately, she wanted proof, and I’d sold that proof to the Druuge. I knew that would come back to haunt me.

I began to wonder if I could find another eggshell on one of the many “Shattered Worlds” within Mycon space. I spent a while trying, but after having no luck on three or four planets, and getting sick of trying to fight the Mycon ships (which I hate), I confess I looked up a spoiler–just to see if I was on the right track, or if I had to restart from before selling the eggshell. Well, it turned out that I was on the right track and that there was a single alternate eggshell on Gamma Brahe I. I would have found it eventually. With evidence in hand, I returned to the Syreen. The commander vowed vengeance against the Mycon and told me to leave.           

That’s what I like to hear, but aren’t you trapped on this planet?

            Meanwhile, the Ilwrath had reduced the Thraddash so much that I could freely explore the former Thraddash space for the “Aqua Helix.” It took forever–Draconis, Apodis, and Antilae are all huge constellations–but I persevered (reloading when a visit turned out to be a complete waste of time) and finally found the thing on Zeta Draconis I. 

With the three parts in hand, I returned to the Utwig, who told me that they gave the broken Ultron to their friends, the Supox. The Supox turned out to be another alien species–this one plant-based–in a nearby system. Long story short, they gave me the broken Ultron, I fixed it, I returned it to the joyful Utwig.             

My current list of devices.

           At this point, I was hailed by a Druuge cruiser. The Druuge had got wind of our impending exchange and had zipped over to Utwig space, hoping to seize the weapon they’d tried to acquire in the original Ultron exchange. All dialogue options–except letting them have the weapon–led to combat.

The combat was difficult in several ways. First, the Druuge ship is capable of killing almost every ship in my fleet, except the flagship, in a single shot. Second, it has some kind of “turbo boost” that sends it zooming away just as I’m aiming at it. Third, I had to defeat like 10 of the damned things. They weren’t very well-armored, and I could defeat them in a few shots if they sat still long enough for me to hit them, but the sheer number of battles meant that the encounter ended with about a third of my fleet destroyed.            

I lose my Earth Cruiser to the Druuge ship.

             In the end, I got the Precursor weapon, which the game calls an “Utwig Bomb.” I’m not sure how to use it. If I try to use it from within my ship (as you do other devices), it just blows up my ship.             

My crew finds the weapon on the planet.

              As I close, I’m back at starbase, replenishing my fleet. It is the beginning of April 2158, or only about 10 months to go before the originally-prophesied destruction of Earth. On the map, the Thraddash have disappeared and the Ilwrath territory has shrunk to the size of a pea. Yehat territory has also grown alarmingly small.                

Rebuilding my fleet. The Utwig Jugger is now an option.

             And I’m out of ideas. I have nothing left on my “to do” list, and I’ve bought all the information that the Melnorme have to offer. The only thing I can think to do is re-visit each species and see if anything new comes up in dialogue. I’ll probably save-scum a bit during this process, as I cannot afford the wasted time if the visits offer nothing.                 

The state of the galaxy.

              I’m still enjoying myself and the unfolding story, but I also wouldn’t mind if it was heading into its final chapter.

Time so far: 38 hours

  source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/star-control-ii-age-of-ultron/

[purposenotknown-blog]

Why Finding Alien Life Would Be Bad For Humanity - Fermi Paradox & Great Filters

As many people throughout history have questioned the advent of life, we still today have no real definitive proof. Although there may be many different individual cases, amounted together they are not nearly enough to prove anything. 

Now, as it stands today, there are over 100,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is a low estimate compared to others. Not only that, but there are countless galaxies within the observable universe. Statistically speaking, that means countless stars with even more planets orbiting them. So, that means there is life right?

Well, look at the supposed age of the universe, 13.772 billion years old. Humans have been around for approximately 200,000 years, give or take. So, it should make sense that within 13.372 billion years, taking away the approximate 400 million years it took for galaxies to form, that some consciousness should have become advanced enough to directly impact their solar system or even universe by now. So where are they? This is the Fermi Paradox. 

The Fermi Paradox explains, with the help of Great Filters, that there are very bad implications for humanity if alien life is found. Great Filters are, as they are fittingly named, filters; challenges that delay or completely stop development of a life form. If there is alien life, that means that life in the universe is more common than we previously thought meaning that Great Filters are a thing that we as humans probably have to worry about. 

Examples of Great Filters could either be behind us in history or in front of us. The best chance would be behind us. Ones behind us would mean things like evolution from single cell to multi-cell organisms, or mass extinctions, asteroid bombardments, all of which have already happened to Earth. Ones in the future would be devastating news, war, famine, global warming, running out of resources, or even future technology failing us. 

There are three levels of danger around finding life: 

-Single cell organisms would be kind of bad, implying that organisms have had time to adapt and grow. This would mean that there would be the chance for life anywhere and it would be extremely common. However, it could be safe and implying that the Great Filters are behind us. 

-Civilizations like our own would be worse. This would imply that over the period of the universe’s history, there could have been many like us that have advanced. This would be pretty bad news, meaning that the filters may either be around us, possibly behind or ahead of us.

-Advanced civilizations in ruin would be the worst. This would imply that in the past, civilizations have thrived and lasted for a while, but ultimately met their doom, and our own fate would be on the same trajectory. 

The truly best scenario for humanity is that we are the first, the precursors of life. I personally do not wish to believe this daunting possibility but it provides some scary thoughts. If we are the first, that means that we are alone. If we are alone, then shouldn’t it be right to venture outward and to the stars? Evolution would still happen. Maybe one day, there would be a vast space network of the humans and our future generations could look up at the stars.

So far life has spread all across the planet Earth, affecting everything. Should it not be in our interest, as a part of nature, to spread out and continue this cycle?

This is not intended to anger anyone, it is simply a question and a possible answer. Perhaps there is life out there and we’ve just been looking in the wrong spot in the sky.  

[andyb117]

Haven't updated in a while so I decided I should post something with a bit more effort put into it to make up for it

(I should put a disclaimer please don't be a hater I'm not trying to ruffle anyone's feathers by talking about the stuff this post is purely for fun) 

so because I've been playing a lot of halo wars2 let's take a look at all religious connotations and references from throughout the halo games. perhaps in reading this you'll even discover a reference you didn't know about. Let's start with the obvious one the name of the game “halo” in the games it's a giant galaxy destroying death machine. where traditionally it is described as “a disk or circle of light shown surrounding or above the head of a saint or holy person to represent their holiness” now that description doesn't really match with the idea of a giant death machine. however what it does match up with is the fact that the 3 leaders of the covenant from Halo two and three had ornate crowns that they would wear. that Had holographic imprints of Halo itself in the crown. thus in a way they had halos over their heads. 

Let's quickly touch on something that was mentioned before “the covenant” the covenant are a collective group of different kinds of alien species from across the galaxy. who were promised salvation and deliverance. a not so subtle reference to the covenant formed between God and the people of Israel. as he was to deliver them to the promised land and in him they would find salvation.

Next we have the Ark. and the Ark has a multitude of references. First of all it was built by the forerunners a "extinct" race of super advanced alien beings that the covenant worships. It can produce Halo rings it is where the halos come from. It is also a type of Safehaven from the effects of activating the rings. When the rings are activated all sentient life in the galaxy dies but this is not the case if you're on the Ark. And because it produces the Halo rings it could also be argued that by proxy it has the same devastating possibilities as the ark of the covenant.

Next we have the reason that halos exist. the flood the flood is an ancient parasite that If left unchecked could theoretically absorb and corrupt and mutate all life in the known universe into one massive super intelligence. and that's bad obviously there name itself is a reference “the flood” no doubt referring to the “great flood”.  pretty much the same thing happened when the forerunners decided to destroy the flood. that's why they're extinct they activated the Halo rings which killed all life in the galaxy. so the flood didn't have anything to eat so they starved to death however this also meant that many innocent lives were wasted. but many of those people were taken to the Ark. along with samples of life both plant and animal from all known planets. so that later the forerunner’s AI’s could reseed the galaxy

Okay so now we're getting into the deep lore references because the newer games like Halo4,5,and wars2 don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to references so these last two things are from books.

Okay with that out of the way. next we have the precursors. But the problem with the precursors is not much is known about them but what is known suggests that they're basically the Halo universes version of God or godlike entities. The reason this is heavily suggested is that it's stated in multiple books. That when they were around they had the power to create life, shape shift, terraform worlds in a matter of days, among other things. So they created the forerunners and they told the forerunners there will come a time when we leave this galaxy. and when we do you're going to be the ones who are in charge. but then changed their minds and said no actually we want to give the power to the humans. so the forerunners got really mad. and decided to kill all the precursors or at least try to. Basically the precursors got really mad at their creation. and remember how I said they could shape shift. well in a weird move they decided to change their form into a dust like particle. that would float throughout the galaxy and universe. and they would return in their true form when the time was right. This would've been a good plan. however this dust like particle that they had changed into became corrupted by a bacteria. and other means. And overtime this bacteria completely took over the particle. and the particles of the precursors evolved into the first flood spores. so in a way just as God sent the flood when his anger was at its highest. so to did the precursors only for them it was kind of by accident.

Lastly we have something I know very little about but it was brought to my attention by a fellow halo Lore enthusiasts. Some context is needed though so the forerunners made AI constructs that would continue there work even after they had all died out because since AI’s aren't organic they can't be affected by the firing of Halo. Now one of these constructs has a very interesting name but you'll have to excuse me because I forget the religious reference of it one of these constructs is called “Abandon” I've looked online apparently it might just mean the devil but it might also mean other things as well depending on which belief system you are a part of

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 321: Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters (1992)

Let’s not judge this one by its title screen . . .

                Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters

United States

Toys for Bob (developer); Accolade (publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS, 1994 for the 3DO console; later fan ports to other platforms

Date Started: 23 Mach 2019

When I started this blog in 2010, I had already played, at least in adolescence–most of the RPGs that everyone else knows. I may not have remembered all of the details, but I at least could remember the basic outlines of The Bard’s Tale, Might and Magic, Wizardry, Questron, Pool of Radiance, and all of the Ultimas. There were lots of games I had never played–never even heard of–of course, but those were games that most other people my age had never encountered either. It wasn’t until about a year into my blog, with Dungeon Master, that I truly felt I was blogging about a game that I should be ashamed for never having played previously.

For the first time since then, I am in that position again with Star Control II, a game that frequently makes “top X” lists of the best games of all time. My commenters have mentioned it so many times that my usual pre-game search of previous comments turned up too many results to analyze. This one, in other words, is really going to fill a gap.

        . . . even though the first game had an awesome title screen.

         There has been some debate about whether Star Control II is an RPG, but at least almost everyone agrees that its predecessor was not. That predecessor went by the grandiose name Star Control: Famous Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict, Volume IV (1990), in an obvious homage to Star Wars. It’s an ambitious undertaking–part simulator, part strategy game, part action game. The player has to manage ships and other resources and plan conquests of battle maps, but in the end the conflict always comes down to a shooting match between two ships using Newtonian physics and relying almost entirely on the player’s own dexterity. This combat system goes back to Spacewar! (1962) and would be familiar to anyone who’s played Asteroids (1979).

The setup has an Earth united under one government by 2025. In 2612, Earth is contacted by a crystalline race called the Chenjesu and warned that the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, a race of slavers, is taking over the galaxy. (Star Control II retcons this date to 2112.) Earth is soon enlisted into the Alliance of Free Stars and agrees to pool resources in a mutual defense pact. The Alliance includes Earth, the philosophic Chenjesu, the arboreal Yehat, the robotic Mmrnmhrm, the elfin Ariloulaleelay, and a race of all-female nymphomaniacs called the Syreen who fly phallic ships with ribbed shafts.

On the other side are the Ur-Quan, an ancient tentacled species with a strict caste system. They make slaves out of “lesser races” and only communicate with them via frog-like “talking pets.” Their allies include Mycons, a fungus species; Ilwraths, a spider-like race that never takes prisoners; and Androsynths, disgruntled clones who fled captivity and experimentation on Earth. Each race (on both sides) has unique ship designs with various strengths and weaknesses, some of which nullify other ships. There’s a kind-of rock-paper-scissors element to strategically choosing what ships you want to employ against what enemies.

           No “bumpy forehead” aliens in this setting.

          The occasionally-goofy backstory and description of races seems to owe a lot (in tone, if not specifics) to Starflight (1986), on which Star Control author Paul Reiche III had a minor credit. There are probably more references than I’m picking up (being not much of a sci-fi fan) in the ships themselves. “Earthling Cruisers” (at least the front halves) look like they would raise no eyebrows on Star Trek, and both Ilwrath Avengers (in the back) and Vux Intruders (in the front) look like Klingon warbirds. The Ur-Quan dreadnought looks passably like the Battlestar Galactica.

The original Star Control offers the ability to fight player vs. player or set one of the two sides to computer control (at three difficulty levels). In playing, you can simply practice ship vs. ship combat with any two ships, play a “melee” game between fleets of ships, or play a full campaign, which proceeds through a variety of strategic and tactical scenarios involving ships from different species in different predicaments.  The full game gives player the ability to build colonies and fortifications, mine planets, and destroy enemy installations in between ship-to-ship combats.

          The various campaign scenarios in the original game.

       The “campaign map” in the original game is an innovative “rotating starfield” that attempts to offer a 3-D environment on a 2-D screen. It takes some getting used to. Until they reach each other for close-quarters combat, ships can only move by progressing through a series of jump points between stars, and it was a long time before I could interpret the starfield properly and understand how to plot a route to the enemy.

          Strategic gameplay takes place on a rotating starmap meant to simulate a 3-D universe.

              I have not, in contrast, managed to get any good at ship combat despite several hours of practice. I’m simply not any good at action games. At the same time, I admire the physics and logistics of it. You maintain speed in the last direction you thrust even if you turn. You have limited fuel, so you can’t go crazy with thrusting in different directions. You can get hit by asteroids, or fouled in the gravity wells of planets. And you have to be conservative in the deployment of your ships’ special abilities, because they use a lot of fuel. Still, no game in which action is the primary determiner of success is going to last long on my play list. For such players, the game and its sequel offer “cyborg” mode, where technically you’re the player but the computer fights your battles, but I’d rather lose than stoop to that.

              One of my lame attempts at space combat.

           Star Control II opens with a more personal backstory. In the midst of the original Ur-Quan conflicts, the Earth cruiser Tobermoon, skippered by Captain Burton, was damaged in an ambush and managed to make it to a planet orbiting the dwarf star Vela. As they tried to repair the ship, crewmembers found a vast, abandoned underground city, populated with advanced technology, built by an extinct race known as the Precursors.

         The backstory is reasonably well-told with title cards.

       Burton reported the find when she returned to Earth, and she was ordered to return with a scientific team led by Jules Farnsworth. Shortly after they arrived, they received word from Earth that the Ur-Quan had learned about the Precursor city and were on their way. Burton balked at Earth’s orders to abandon and destroy the base with nuclear weapons. Instead, she sent her ship back to Earth under the command of her first officer and remained behind with the scientific team, planning to detonate nuclear weapons should the Ur-Quan ever arrive.

                   The team ended up spending 20 years on the planet, which they named Unzervalt, with no contact from Earth. During that time, the scientists discovered that the city had been created to build ships, and eventually they were able to activate the machines, which put together a starship. The machines shut down just as the ship was completed, reporting that there were insufficient raw materials to continue. About this time, Farnsworth admitted that he was a fraud, and all the success he’d experienced getting the machines up and running was due to a young prodigy born on Unzervalt–the player character.

          They’re not kidding about the “skeleton” part.

          Burton assembled a skeleton crew for the new starship, with the PC manning the computer station, and blasted off. Three days out, they discovered the derelict Tobermoon, damaged and bereft of any (living or dead) crewmembers. Burton took command of the Tobermoon while the PC was promoted to captain of the new ship. Tobermoon was soon attacked and destroyed by an unknown alien craft, leaving the new ship to escape to Earth. Here the game begins.

          What “plight”? You live on a technologically-advanced Eden where your enemies seem to have forgotten about you.

          The player can name himself and his ship, and that’s it for “character creation.” He begins in the middle of the solar system, in a relatively empty ship with 50 crew and 10 fuel. I intuited that I needed to fly to towards Earth, so I headed for the inner cluster of planets.  

             “Character creation.”

              As the screen changed to show Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, a probe zoomed out and attached itself to our ship. It played a recording from an Ur-Quan (with the “talking pet” doing the talking), informing me that approaching Earth was forbidden, as was my status as an “independent” vessel. The probe then zoomed off to inform the Ur-Quan of my “transgressions,” leaving me to explore the planetary area at will. I guess the war didn’t go so well for the Alliance.

             Well, we now know how the first game ended, canonically.

         As I approached Earth, the screen changed to show Earth, the moon, and a space station orbiting Earth. Earth itself seemed to have some kind of red force field around it, so I approached the space station.

As I neared, I was contacted by a “Starbase Commander Hayes of the slave planet Earth.” He indicated that his energy cores were almost depleted and asked if we were the “Hierarchy resupply ship.” At this point, I had a few dialogue options. One allowed me to lie and say I was the resupply ship. Another had me introduce myself. A third–more reflective of what I was actually thinking–said “‘Slave planet?!’ ‘Hierarchy resupply vessel?!’ What is going on here?'” The commander said he’d answer my questions if we’d bring back some radioactive elements to re-power the station. He suggested that we look on Mercury.

         I like dialogue options, but so far they’ve broken down into: 1) the straight, obvious option; 2) the kind-of dumb lie; and 3) the emotional option that still basically recapitulates #1.

           I flew off the Earth screen and back to the main solar system screen. At some point during this process, I had to delete the version of the game that I’d downloaded and get a new one. None of the controls worked right on the first one I tried. I particularly couldn’t seem to escape out of sub-menus, which was supposed to happen with the SPACE bar. The second version I downloaded had controls that worked right plus someone had removed the copy protection (which has you identifying planets by coordinates). The controls overall are okay. They’re much like Starflight, where you arrow through commands and then hit ENTER to select one. I’d rather be able to just hit a keyboard option for each menu command, but there aren’t so many commands that it bothers me. Flying the ship is easy enough with the numberpad: 4 and 6 to turn, 8 to thrust, 5 to fire, ENTER to use a special weapon. There’s a utility you can use to remap the combat commands, but using it seems to run the risk of breaking the main interface, which I guess is what happened with the first version I downloaded.

             Running around Mercury and picking up minerals. The large-scale rover window (lower right) is quite small.

            When orbiting a planet, you get a set of options much like Starflight. You can scan it for minerals, energy, or lifeforms, and then send down a rover (with its own weapons and fuel supply) to pick things up. Minerals are color-coded by type, and at first I was a little annoyed because I can’t distinguish a lot of the colors. But it turns out that the explorable area of planets is quite small, and you can easily zoom around and pick up all minerals in just a few minutes. In that, it’s quite a bit less satisfying than Starflight, where the planets were enormous and you’d never explore or strip them all, and you got excited with every little collection of mineral symbols. 

The rover doesn’t hold much, but returning to the ship and then landing again is an easy process, so before long my hold was full of not just uranium and other “radioactives,” but iron, nickel, and other metals. In mining them, the rover was periodically damaged by gouts of flame from the volatile planet, but it gets repaired when you return to the main ship.

         Returning to base with a near-full cargo manifest.

          We returned to the starbase and transferred the needed elements. With the station’s life support, communications, and sensors working again, the captain was able to scan my vessel, and he expressed shock at its configuration. Rather than give him the story right away, I chose dialogue options that interrogated him first.

               This seems to be everybody’s reaction.

           Commander Hayes explained that the Ur-Quan had defeated the Alliance 20 years ago. They offered humanity a choice between active serve as “battle thralls” or imprisonment on their own planet. Humanity chose the second option, so the Hierarchy put a force field around the planet, trapping the human race on a single world and preventing assistance from reaching them. But they also put a station in orbit so their own ships could find rest and resupply if they happened to pass through the system. The station is maintained by humans conscripted from the planet for several years at a time.

           Humanity’s fate didn’t seem so bad until he got to this part.

           When he was done, I (having no other choice, really) gave him our background and history and asked for his help. Pointing out that starting and rebellion and failing would result in “gruesome retribution,” he asked me to prove my efficacy by at least destroying the Ur-Quan installation on the moon, warning me that I would have to defeat numerous warships.

We left the station and sailed over to the moon. An energy scan showed one blaze of power, so I sent the rover down to it. The report from the rover crew said that the alien base was abandoned and broadcasting some kind of mayday signal, “but great care has been taken to make it appear active.” My crew shut the place down and looted it for parts.

            My crew files a “report from the surface.”

          Lifeform scans showed all kinds of dots roaming around the moon, most looking like little tanks. I don’t know if I was supposed to do this or not, but I ran around in the rover blasting them away in case they were enemies. I also gathered up all the minerals that I could.

I returned to the starbase, and the commander accepted my report. Just then, an Ilwrath Avenger, having found the probe, entered the system. The arachnid commander threatened us. There were some dialogue options with him, all of which I’m sure resulted in the same outcome: ship-to-ship combat.

            They’re not just “spider-like”; they actually spin webs on their bridges.

         This part was much like the original game, although with the ship icons larger and against a smaller backdrop. I (predictably) lost the battle the first two times that I tried, but won the third time. In my defense, the game’s backstory specifically said that I had minimal weapons. It was also a bit lumbering–slow to turn, slow to thrust.

          The alien ship destroys me in our first encounter.

        When I returned to starbase after the battle, Commander Hayes said he would join my rebellion, and the starbase would be my home base. He asked what we would call our movement, and there were some amusing options.

            The last option tempted me, but I was boring and went with the first one.

            Through a long serious of dialogues, I learned that as I brought back minerals and salvage, the base could convert them into “resource units “(RU) which I could then use to build my crew, purchase upgrades for the Prydwen (improved thrusters, more crew pods, more storage bays, more fuel), get refueled, and build a fleet of starships. I can even build alien ships if I can find alien allies to pilot them.

          My own starbase. Why can’t I name it?

          Hayes had a lot more dialogue options related to history and alien species, but I’ll save those for later. It appears that the introduction is over and I now have a large, open universe to explore, where I’m sure I’ll do a lot of mining, fighting, and diplomacy. In this sense, Star Control II feels like more of a sequel to Starflight than the original Star Control.

             One part of a nine-page starmap that came with the game. I’m tempted to print it out and assemble it on the wall in front of my desk. I suppose it depends on how long the game lasts.

          I appreciate how the game eased me into its various mechanics. I’m enjoying it so far, and I really look forward to plotting my next moves. I suspect I’ll be conservative and mine the rest of the resources in the solar system and buy some modest ship upgrades before heading out into the greater universe.

Time so far: 2 hours

****

While playing Star Control II, I thought it would be fun to have a look at co-author Paul Reiche III’s first CRPG effort, the Keys of Acheron expansion (1981) to Epyx’s Dunjonquest title, Hellfire Warrior. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get it working. (I’m attempting the Apple II version, but they all seem to have the same problem.) Acheron requires the original Hellfire Warrior to start, and the manual warns you that if you don’t do everything right according to the “Special Loading Instructions,” you won’t be able to play the game. While I can find the manual in plenty of places, I can’t seem to find the loading instructions anywhere, and trying the obvious stuff (e.g., switching disks before entering the dungeon) doesn’t seem to work. A couple of screenshots on MobyGames show that at least someone got it to work. I’d appreciate if anyone has any ideas on these special loading instructions; otherwise, we’ll have to continue to list the game as “NP” and put it on the “Missing & Mysteries” list.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-321-star-control-ii-the-ur-quan-masters-1992/