#i mean; dude comes from a technologically advanced society in SPACE : which is a lot bigger than just one planet as a whole

[blindtaleteller]

stuff in tags, and also some more road trip ideas forming..

On a Road Trip with Loki - Headcanons

Loki would be super excited

and total happy as he got asked

He buys Snacks and drinks

Loki would probably cause some mischief with your clothes in your suitcase 😜

On the Day of the Road Trip

I think he will be grumpy if you wake him up in the middle of the night

You are the driver - Loki couldn't sleep

He is curious about the Navigation system - gps

tell him it's like a Map 🗺️

He would tell you Story's about his favorite Places

I think there would also be lots of fun and laughter

After awhile he would start to ask ...How long till we are there ? I am bored ?Are we there yet? In how many hours are we there?

Loki comments on everything all the time... You can drive faster!!... Watch out!! ...did you blink? Why don't you overtake? I don't like the Music 🎶

he is kinda annoying and it's distracting

If you tell him that - Loki would get pouty and sulk the whole time

Please,say you don't mean it ... He just needs the Attention

Masterlist

[365days365movies]

May 9, 2021: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (Recap: Part One)

Welcome to the future.

At this point, we’ve mostly looked at the past, present, or the near-future (as in, the next ten years, if that). Additionally, we’ve looked either at nonexistent technology in a contemporary setting, or an extension of existing technology taken to a logical next step. But no more. No more realism, no more real-world rules, and nothing that we’re even close to in this reality.

Well...mostly.

That’s genuinely impressive, not gonna lie. Anyway, yeah, from here forwards (for a bit), we’ll be looking at the future and futuristic technology. Now, there are a couple of ways in which these films tend to go. The first big way that we tend to represent the future in film is the same way we always have: flying cars, futuristic technology, smart houses, and robots.

Now, there are countless examples of this future, and it always changes a bit depending on the present. Which, yeah, makes sense. After all, what I’m doing right now, at this moment, would’ve been seen by many people as a massive technological achievement, even around the time that I was born. Which, yes, I’m old, deal with it (because I can’t). Anyway, the way that this begins is with the first major filmed view of a seemingly idyllic future: Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis.

The overly mechanized (and politically dystopic) society seen in this film, as well as the visuals and technology, would inform our ideas of the future throughout the next century. Multiple themes and common objects reoccur throughout futuristic fiction. You know the stuff I’m talking about. Flying cars, automatic food machines, robotic assistants, video watches, holograms, jetpacks, so on and so forth.

But here’s the thing about the future. It’s always ahead of us, and eventually...well, we’ve gotten to most of those things to some degree. Either they already exist...

...or is currently being developed.

Well, one of them we’re still working on. And the development of more advanced AI is something we have yet to perfect, or even fully develop. However, the development of A.I. (and the consequences of that technology) are ALL OVER science fiction. Sometimes, they’re merely used for flavor to help establish the futuristic setting.

Sometimes, they’re characters with their own agency and conflicts, which may or may not define the plot. In these cases, they’re often simply there to back up the main human characters, and help with their development, and sometimes their own. You know, manic pixie dream robots.

And then, possibly most often, they’re the abject villains of the piece. they can be mysterious alien technology, like in The Day the Earth Stood Still, or a man-made danger that turns on the race that created and/or abused it.

But then, on occasion, an A.I. is given the chance to develop as a character, without being used to define the development of a human character. Sometimes, the question of what life truly means is raised through these characters, and we become attached to them outside of any other character. This isn’t nearly as common as the others, but it’s definitely not unheard of.

And for the record...things don’t often go well for those AIs. But still, some of those characters have quite a lasting impact. So, there’s quite a lot of potential for this type of character, from a dramatic standpoint. And that potential leads us to the guy who made this.

I WILL MAKE A JURASSIC PARK REFERENCE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE

Steven Spielberg gives us today’s entry, and this director of a classic science fiction story about science gone awry teamed up with the director of a science fiction film where an artificial intelligence went awry. You know, this thing.

I didn’t forget about HAL. And I won’t forget about him later, either.

Director Stanley Kubrick is pretty well-know for his mind-bending films, especially The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he also worked with Spielberg on this film before his death in 1999, as this was one of his dream projects for many years, and the two directors were well-known friends.

And so, eventually, Spielberg was given the reins from Kubrick, and results were...mixed. It’s funny, because I’ve never actually seen this movie, but I remember it through its surprisingly widespread ad campaign. I used to go to NYC as a kid a lot, and there was a massive building-side plastered with the iconic logo of this movie. So, I’ve been hovering around this movie for a long time. Enough navel-gazing!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (Part One)

It is, unsurprisingly, the future. A marrator informs us that climate change has caused the ice caps to melt, and global flooding drowns several countries. You could say that it’s a...Waterworld.

I genuinely considered watching that movie at some point, and then I decided I liked myself to much to watch 2 hours of Kevin Costner’s emotionless acting. Granted, it’s not much better now, listening to the emotionless acting of...

Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt) is a straight-up sociopath. OK, technically, he’s a robotics engineer, but dude’s making a speech, right? He talks about how far robots have come, dissing my boi Deep Blue in the process, and notes that pain-memory response can also be demonstrated by robots. He proves this by stabbing a woman in his audience, like RIGHT through the hand. Jesus, man! Why the hell would you do that?

Oh. Holy shit, I got fooled. Advanced technology indeed. But OK, so Sheila’s a robot, and a very advanced one...to us. But Hobby wants more, and proposes to his workers to make a robot that can really TRULY love. And through love may come a true subconscious, which means making a robot that can dream. And what better robot to make than a robot child? After all, all child conception requires a license in this futuristic world, so many childless couples are yearning for a child.

Which is why, twenty months later, the first robot child is offered to Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor), a couple...with a child. Um. Guys. You JUST SAID that there are legit childless couples who need a child, and those people would be best suited to love that robot child back (a VERY GOOD question raised by one of Hobby’s subordinates). So why give it to a couple whose son is still alive? Yeah, he’s got a rare disease that they don’t have a cure for yet, and is currently in cryostasis, BUT THEY HAVE A KID! Surely, that’s going to be a potential emotional conflict! And what if the kid wakes up or some shit? This is a TERRIBLE goddamn idea. Think this shit through, guys.

And yet...

This is David (Haley Joel Osment), Cybertronics’ first child robot, brought home by Henry to essentially replace their son. Which is AMAZINGLY FUCKING TONE-DEAF AND INSANE, GODDAMN. That’s extraordinarily messed up. And, for the record, I totally get what Spielberg’s going for, but Jesus Christ, man. This was a terrible way to go about this. And it gets fucking WORSE.

See, Henry (who actually works for Cybertronics) tells Monica that, once they sign the papers and complete the updates, David will imprint on them and see him as their true parents, loving them unconditionally. Which...yeah, fuck, that’s an entire DUMP TRUCK of ethics issues right there. And, while we’re at it, David is...creepy as shit. I mean it, dude, Haley Joel Osment is a VERY good child actor, but he’s laying on the creepy robot child thing THICK. And yeah, this is BEFORE he imprints on them. Jesus fuck, man, there’s a scene where the still uncomfortable Monica is outside of a glass door, and he looks back at her THROUGH THE DOOR like a goddamn SERIAL KILLER.

And I gotta tell ya, dude does not lay off that creepy-ass dial one iota. And for that matter, the music by John Williams ISN’T FUCKING HELPING. LISTEN to this shit, and imagine a robot child that you don’t know wandering around your house. It’s amazingly fucking creepy.

AND IT JUST. KEEPS. GETTING. WORSE. There’s a scene where they’re all at dinner, right, and David’s just staring at them as they eat, mimicking their actions. After all, he’s a robot, he can’t actually eat or drink anything because of his internal working. And then, out of FUCKING NOWHERE, he starts laughing like the FUCKING JOKER, and it scares the EVER-LOVING SHIT OUT OF ME. And somehow, they laugh alongside him, in the never-ending Stockholm syndrome that is this movie! And as soon as its over, he just STOPS laughing, spontaneously. Fuck me, man, I’m tempted to stop watching here and now, and I’m only TWENTY MINUTES IN! I need a fucking break.

And after that...OF COURSE she decides to activate his imprinting protocols to make him, let me remind you, LOVE HIM FOREVER! She reads out a series of words, and after “FREIGHT CAR”, he knows his mission is to kill the Prime Minister of Sokovia. But first, he’ll settle down and love Monica unconditionally (again, FOREVER), calling her Mommy and making me shit my pants in fear. IT WASN’T ME, IT WAS FUCKING DAVID

Oh, and by the way, isn’t it kinda shitty to do that without Henry being involved AT ALL? Like, cool, he has unconditional maternal love, but Henry wasn’t a part of that conditioning at all! And he still refers to him as “Henry” instead of Dad! However, Henry definitely doesn’t care about that, because he still sees David as only a robot. Hey, guys, maybe using these two as your first experiment with a robot child WAS A TERRIBLE FUCKING IDEA, YOU IDIOTS! No wonder William Hurt was cast as Thunderbolt Ross in the MCU. Already shown he can play a character with shitty ideas before.

Anyway, after this terrible series of events, David prevents the parents from leaving one night due to his childlike antics. When Monica goes to comfort him, he asks how long she’ll live, and tells her that he hope she never dies, a COMPLETELY NORMAL THING TO SAY. Look, I get that he’s a robot, but only a goddamn emotionless sociopath would program emotional responses like this into a robot. Which, given what we’ve seen of Hobby, makes sense.

In response, she gives him Teddy (Jack Angel), a technologically advanced teddy bear with sentience, a personality, and the voice of Astrotrain from The Transformers TV series. Because, yes, I am THAT MUCH of a goddamn nerd.

Soon after, the house gets a phone call, which David receives...literally. He takes the phone and allows it to speak through him. It turns out that, shock beyond shocks, THEIR SON IS CURED! Yeah, fuck. Maybe giving David to a family with a STILL LIVING SON is a fucking ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE IDEA, for about a thousand reasons.

And, fucking understandably, Martin Swinton (Jake Thomas) is a little upset to find out that he’s essentially been replaced by a robot kid. Although, to be fair, he’s also kind of a dick to David, holding his humanity over him and treating him as a toy that he attempts to manipulate and bully. My Lord, this is a massively stupid idea. And Martin immediately shows his dickishness by asking his mother to read Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio to them. Which is meant to be a punishment for Pinocchio. However, of course, David loves it.

Still, however, there’s trouble in paradise for David, as he tries to compete with Martin for being a real boy, and eats spinach at dinner one evening. Despite Teddy’s mildly ominous warning to him (”YOU WILL BREAK”), he keeps eating until he basically has a stroke and breaks, forcing him to be repaired by some of Cybertronics’ technicians. Monica has a bit of a break down as a result, which Martin notices. This causes Martin to go pure supervillain, manipulating David to do creepy things in order to insert doubt into Monica about David. Jesus, Martin’s a creepy kid, too. No wonder Monica grew to be cool with David, her actual son is a FUCKING SOCIOPATHIC MONSTER! Are there ANY truly normal people in this world? IS THIS WHAT THE FUTURE IS?

Martin convinces David to cut a lock of Monica’s hair while she’s sleeping. And lemme tell ya, a little boy holding scissors over someone while they sleep is not exactly comforting. Henry agrees, and after stopping him, believes that they need to return him. Monica disagrees, knowing that they’ll destroy him if brought back. But David, ever the semi-sociopath himself, ignores any signs of humanity in David and dismisses Monica's feelings for him entirely. He also says this thing about “IF HE CAN BE PROGRAMMED TO LOVE, CAN NOT HE BE PROGRAMM-ED TO HATE?”, which...no. No, he cannot. He didn’t learn to love, he was programmed to. And, again, that’s ethically FUCKED, but taking that into account...no. HE WASN’T PROGRAMMED TO HATE, HENRY. Goddamn, buddy, use your head here.

It’s Martin’s birthday, and his friends at the pool party expose David to the fun world of anti-robot (or Mecha) racism, and test to see if he has Damage Avoidance Systems by threatening him with a knife. And he does. Buuut, when those systems kick in, he goes to the nearest point of safety to keep himself safe. That point is, unfortunately, Martin, whom he gets behind...and accidentally drags into the pool.

Thing is, because of Martin’s recent illness, he can’t exactly swim, meaning that David almost drowns him. When Henry and other partygoers go to save him, they abandon David in the pool completely. And now, David’s fucked. Because although this situation isn’t even a little bit his fault, he also just nearly killed Martin. And so, after seeing notes that he’s been writing to her, Monica offers to take for a “ride in the country”. Which definitely means something good. In reality, she’s planning on taking him back to Cybertronics. But once in the car, there’s a change in plans. And hear me out...it’s arguably far more horrifying.

She decides to abandon him in the woods completely, despite how hard it is for her to leave him. She’s sparing him from death, sure, but also throwing him into a world he doesn’t understand, and for reasons that he doesn’t understand. It’s genuinely terrible. And then...yeah, she leaves him forever, to an uncertain future.

End Act One.

I think this is a good place to stop. It’s early, and I need more coffee to handle this shit. See you in Part Two. Of Three. Yup. It’s a long one.

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 2: 1x26 Errand of Mercy

Errand of Mercy is truly a trip. I’m swiftly losing my ability to be coherent because I need to go to sleep but here are some attempts:

First of all this is, of course, a straight-up, pure, unfiltered Kirk/Spock episode with a tiny bit of unrequited Kor/Kirk on the side. Like, we’re not even going to pretend to find stuff for the rest of the crew today. I see you, Gene Coon.

This is the first Klingon ep. I just... the actual Klingon-centric episodes ARE good, but the Klingons in general are pretty boring and I legit don’t understand why they became the standard Star Trek villain. (DC Fontana apparently thought that it was because their make up was simpler v. the Romulans, acc. to Amazon trivia and....I’ll buy that.)

Is the “cultural scale” called the Richter cultural scale? I seem to recall another scale with the exact same name....

I get why there would be such a scale but they are dead wrong about where the Organians fall on it.

Anyway not to harp on this yet again but @ fanom this isn’t the military right?? Lol

Oh, no, it’s Code One! No idea what that means but the music tells me it’s a big deal and it’s bad!

“Curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.” He’s talking about war but I can think of some other things that fall into this category.

I think it’s pretty funny that Kirk records his Captain’s logs in public.

CAPTAIN SULU.

“There’s a war happening, so Mr. Spock and I will just leave the ship... together.”

“You’ll get out of here, Sulu, and leave Spock and I... alone.”

“You’ll fall back to rendezvous with the rest of the Fleet in the Laurentian system.”

Why do these people show no interest in us beaming down into their village? Hmmm, I wonder. If the Organians really were what K and S think they are, beaming down in that way would be uh a bad idea.

Spock seems much less awkward at gesturing than Kirk does.

Finally, by the end of the season, they’ve figured out the context for the Enterprise: Starfleet, the Federation, etc.

I wish the Organians were our alien overlords and taylor.

So the Klingons are a military dictatorship.

Kirk finds them so frustrating. I feel like this ep falls into the genre “Kirk is frustrated by hippies.” All this generic peace talk and faultlessly chill attitudes are just not him.

“I’m a soldier, not a diplomat.” That’s why Spock likes him so much.

The Organians are trying to follow the Prime Directive but Kirk is making it SO HARD.

“Space vehicles.”

I know the Klingons are actually supposed to be in yellow face but you know what it looks like black face to me and I RE-ALLY wish they had not done that.

They look good in those Organian outfits. Love that they kept their command and science colors lol. I feel like this is the sort of outfit AOS Kirk wishes he had in that boring ass closet of his.

Mr. Spock does not look like an Organian.

I MUST know more about these “not uncommon” Vulcan merchants. “Dealing in kevas and trillium.”

KOR IS SO INTO KIRK. This flirting is the least subtle. “You’ll be taught to use your tongue.” “Where is your smile?” “You’re a ram among sheep.” “I need your obedience.” “You seem to be in command.” Is all of this supposed to sound sexual or...?

Right up there with “a stallion must first be broken.”

Whereas Kirk is so not into this. That expression says, “Don’t even think about talking about Spock’s tongue.”

The mind sifter is actually a crazy advanced sci fi machine and STID wanted us to think Klingons don’t have warp usdfsf go fuck yourself.

Kirk is so turned on by Spock’s mental strength.

Every spare moment of this ep is given over to K/S flirting. They legit act like an old married couple. “I thought you were going to fight that guy.” “I just might.” Or whatever.

I love that Kirk’s method of fighting is to literally launch his WHOLE BODY at enemies.

Whereas Spock’s there just running awkwardly in the background. He is Not coordinated friends.

Kirk’s speeches ARE admirable. He is lacking context here but in general if they WERE an oppressed people, this should be inspiring.

“For some reason, he feels as though he must destroy you.”

This Kor and Kirk scene... Kirk literally canNOT stop himself from flirting. His default smile is Charming. “Nothing...inconsequential [was destroyed] I hope...” Flirty smile, wink.

GO CLIMB A TREE I MEAN WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT.

We are the same species...tigers...hunters

Is this not the same cell they always use?

I feel an “and there was only one cell” fic coming on...

The Organians are actually kind of hilarious. They’ll basically let these rando aliens do whatever they want, as long as they do no violence. That’s it, that’s the one rule.”Your captors planned to do violence to you, and to that I said...naw.”

THIS is real Pacifism @ Commander Spock.

Kirk ready to go out in a blaze of fire for a bunch of annoying hippies like “I’m going to white savior you now, ungrateful Organians.”(I say this with love; I love him.)

Can you believe Kirk and Spock are about to die in an unwinnable fight of 2 against Lots of Klingons, and they’re using their last moments to FLIRT AGAIN?

Gene Coon loves writing dialogue in which Spock calculates statistics and Kirk is turned on.

Also can you BELIEVE he just pulls Spock along by the arm? Any excuse to touch him.

Okay the Organians are officially tired of your bullshit.

Too hot! Hot damn!

“We find interference in others’ affairs most disgusting.” Prime Directive! Like I said!

This is basically the plot of A Taste of Armageddon except in that ep Kirk was the Organians.

“People have the right to handle their own affairs.” Is he wrong though??

The Organians are like “okay, we all had our fun here, now get out. Seriously.”

Can you imagine how fucking weird it would be to just randomly see this alien dude materialize in the White House, or, like, Starfleet San Francisco HQ, or wherever the “home world” of the Federation is supposed to be? Just a little throwaway line in there.

By the end Kor is just straight up hilarious. He’s giving off real Ian McKellan in Vicious vibes when he says “I can handle them.”

“I guess that takes care of the war.” Yep! Very efficient!

The “it” in “It would have been glorious” is DEFINITELY not the war lol.

Good game, good game.

“I was furious with the Organians for stopping a war I didn’t want.” I’m sorry but could not THAT have been the plot of STID?

“Spock, your math was wrong the whole time.” And now Spock and Kirk can BOTH sulk lol.

Those were all of my liveblog thoughts and it’s late but.... I had so many additional thoughts on this episode... Like a lot more.

First, I love when humanoids turn out to not be humanoids, that’s one of the best things.

Second, I think this is a very gutsy episode to air at the time, and that it would still be a gutsy episode to air now. I feel like it’s one of the peanut gallery’s favorite criticisms of ST nowadays to say it’s “colonialist” but this ep makes it pretty clear it’s not--that’s the opposite of the lesson of this story.

To attempt to explain better: I completely and unironically love Kirk but I do recognize that like all 3 dimensional characters he has flaws. In this ep, I thought that while his speeches and general point of view and strategic plan were definitely right for situations a population is oppressed--that people do have the power to fight back against dictatorships, even when the odds are bad, and that it is worth it to have the courage to fight back against such oppression--he was ultimately shown to be wrong in this instance because he wasn’t actually coming into that situation. He didn’t understand as much as he thought he did. He thought he was going to be the savior here: taking control for peoples who didn't know better, saving them from oppression, and then gifting them with technology and advancement as he understood it. The Federation wouldn't have enslaved them, but the Federation did want to use them. But the Organians really truly didn't need help--the native people understood their own needs better than the outside people. That's the lesson I took from the episode. Your intentions can be good but if you're coming into a foreign situation looking to control it, without understanding the actual people involved, you’re not being a true friend or ally, and you're likely to do no more harm than good. Opposition to tyranny has to come from the source, the oppressed peoples themselves.

When he refers to “weak, innocent people” standing in the way of superpowers in the beginning--he’s not attempting to derogatory, but that is a pretty demeaning characterization.

I also thought it interesting that the Organians can take any form they want and put their society at any stage of "advancement" they want and they chose a basic agrarian aesthetic. Cottagecore rights.

Kirk really had a confirmation bias when it came to the Organians. He had an image of them--innocent, weak, oppressed--and he only took information that fit with that characterization, rather than listening to them and what they were saying.

My mom and I also discussed whether this was IC or OOC of Kirk. I’m of two minds, myself. I think Kirk at his best is much more open-minded than this. His core morality is good faith, peace, friendliness, and care for all life forms, and there are plenty of examples of this (Charlie X, Mud’s Women, and The Corbomite Maneuver all immediately come to mind.) But he does have a blind spot that I think comes up often enough to be canonically part of his character: if something is threatening or killing his crew, or his people more broadly (the Federation), then ALL he cares about is neutralizing the threat. Rare alien? Possible scientific discovery? Might not have the full details of the situation? Doesn’t matter. I’m thinking The Man Trap, The Devil in the Dark, Arena. He wants to protect aliens, but not if the alien is killing his crew. He wants to make overtures of friendship, but not if the new being has already been aggressive.

I mean like I said... a part of me is like "no he is better than this!" but another part is like... well he does have that 'soldier' side of him, he is intensely loyal to his people. The “evil” Kirk of The Enemy Within. I think he just sometimes gets these blinders in certain situations when he's just sure he's right, which is very human.

Also although he's between McCoy and Spock on the continuum of "an objective right thing exists for all people and in all situations and we should always follow that morality" and "morality itself is relative, we should be respectful of alien ways of living even when we don’t understand them" I think in general Kirk and the show is more like McCoy. There IS a right morality here. (I’m thinking of The Apple or even A Taste of Armageddon.)

I also maintain that to say in 1967 "the very personality trait of being warlike is a common denominator between enemies at war" is a dramatic statement.

My mother suggested that Kirk was “strangely appealing” in his desire to save the Organians, with or without their help, and I do agree... I think that’s the complexity of the episode. The overall thrust of the plot is that Kirk was wrong--he’s left embarrassed at the end. I stand by what I said above. And they certainly go out of their way to show that the Klingons and Federation have something in common--namely, as I said, their very capacity to wage war, and interest in waging war.

BUT, as much as I get the point that they have certain similarities with the Federation--and I think this concept of 'these war-worthy disagreements seem trivial to an advanced and neutral species' is interesting, and even more so in comparison with A Taste of Armageddon which, as I said, is this same scenario from the Organians' POV essentially--at the same time it's a bit irritating to hear the democratic Federation compared to the oppressive dictatorship of the Klingons. Like yeah, okay, none of them are light beings and they both wanted to destroy each other--point taken. But would the Federation park itself on a random planet and kill 200 people the first day? I think not. So in this sense Kirk IS right. The Klingons are an adversary worth fighting, just not over the Organians.

I don’t know what I would think of his position if the Organians were being harmed but were also just...actually sheep. Like I guess I would say "well they have to have a reason.” And in fact they did--their bodies cannot be harmed, so they really don't care if the Klingons pretend to harm them. But I just can't comprehend people being like really honestly okay with that level of oppression, as opposed to too scared or too beaten down or too brainwashed to fight it, which is different.

...And from there we went into a discussion of curative v transformative fandom and yet more on what’s wrong with AOS sdfasfjsaldf it’s past 1 am I can’t be stopped BUT I SHOULD BE STOPPED.

[faunusrights]

Hey so... How do you like... Find character voices, tones and speech patterns or mannerism for your characters? Especially with so any variations on the same cast members? I really admire it, and am having trouble doing it for a story I've had outlined and a cast I've had set for years, but now the writing time cometh and I cannot for the life of me put dialogue to any of this.

WOOF this is a Big Ol Question but i will do my best to explain how i work 😞🤙 the art of dialogue is a careful one and entirely too much practice BUT we will push on

as such, stickin this under a cut

so i’m opening up with a quick flex on y’all: my dialogue is the one of very few things that was always very Good abt my writing (to the point that in uni it was one of those things ppl never even bothered commenting on cause they were like ‘idk i cant make it better lmao’) SO ive been doing dialogue for YONKS and at this point i dont rly have to Think abt it so much as just. do it. lmao

but one of the reasons i got Good was because an a monotone autistic kid i spent a lot of my early years like... listening to how ppl spoke and mimicking it because yall i used to talk At The Same Speed In The Same Tone At One Hell Of A Lick for years and tryna sound normal took me just shutting tf up and having a good listen to how other people spoke, which is my first tip: listen to people!! sit in a discord chatroom!! listen to convos in a coffee bar!! be nosy and listen in on convos!! humans r VERY GOOD at talking and we love 2 do it and theres so many types of dialogue to listen out for that will help u get better!

the other tip is thinking a lot abt personality and how that shines thru; every person i write is a very different person to the character next to them, and how they are effects how they verbalise shit; let’s take, for instance, yang and weiss, yeah?

YANG comes from a backwater island off the coast of vale; it’s a rural, outdoorsy farming community that’s very tight-knit and quite remote, which means a few things for yang’s speech patterns. ONE is that she talks in a dialect native to patch, which is a more drawl-y (yet surprisingly staccato) version of vale’s accent. it’s also SLATHERED in local slang and terms that any valian will be thoroughly unfamiliar with. we’re thinking of a mix of rural southern america and also somehow californian/australian surfer dude stereotypes??? it’s a WILD mix.

WEISS comes from the very high-class, very technologically-advanced and Strict society of atlas, which has scandinavian/germanic origins! her speech is very measured and very articulate, given the high standard of education she’s been subjected to, and her atlesian accent (again, very german-esque) can be suppressed very well in the right crowd to better fit in (tho it shows when she gets Angery). she rarely uses slang, she’s speaks very clearly, and it’s all very... prescriptive, yeah?

so yang and weiss have literally two OPPOSITE ways of speaking, built in entirely different communities for very different NEEDS and personalities. of course they dont sound like each other; it’s not just a change of location, but a change of person. even if weiss had lived on patch and yang in atlas, what you could guarantee is that weiss could still be a stickler for grammar and yang would still learn all the slang that’s used in atlas/mantle/solitas, right?

this same process can be done for any character; ruby’s manic and talks REALLYREALLYREALLY QUICKLY CAUSE SHE HAS SO MUCH TO SAY AND IF YOU STOP HER SHE’LL FORGET WHAT SHE WAS SAYING AND THEN SHE WON’T REMEMBER AND IT’LL BUG HER ALL DAY SO PLEASE LET HER JUST JUST THIS ONE REALLYREALLYREALLY LONG THOUGHT OUT FIRST PLEASE HANG ON JUST A MOMENT--

but blake is very sort of. laid back and chilled and brooding and considering revolution so for them, they speak less often, and usually in much more succinct thoughts: we’ll see a lot of one-word answers, a lot of bluntness. of course, this backfires when theyre trying to be genuine because sometimes it gets in the way! of course, compared to, say, tribelands blake, who is chieftain and is REQUIRED to be more articulate, we see a blake who is still calm and collected and therefore they speak rarely with error. all very thoughtful, a lot more like weiss.

of course, thats not even going into how they TEXT as seen in frapp logs (since how someone speaks and how someone TEXTS is like, two diff ways for speaking) which is a whole other kettle of fish that’s still impacted by a BUNCH of other factors!

dialogue, when boiled down, is basically just an extension of a character’s personality -- and it’s an IMPORTANT aspect of their personality, because speaking is how we impart a lot of our ideas and thoughts into a space that other people can, uh, interpret! a character is, ultimately, a bunch of concepts that form a person, and when they speak is when those concepts are on show for everyone to see! so WHAT those ideas are and HOW they envision those ideas informs the way their dialogue will function. are they like ruby, who thinks twice as quickly as she can get the ideas out of her mouth? are they like blake, who likes to mull things over before jumping to conclusions (unlike theyre impassioned, of course)? are they like weiss, who had her way of speaking beaten into shape by academia? or are they like yang, who speaks in a way that best allows her to connect with her community and her people? these are all distinct people and ideas!

a good way to test if theyre distinct in your writing is to write down a transcript w/o any tags or names, and see if people can tell you how many characters are in that conversation. the most distinct their voice (even if they use similar words or one another), the better chance you have at having characters with distinct speaking methods. consider every word! consider every phrase! everybody approaches speaking differently!

[teddy-feathers]

look my problem with the au megamind where Roxanne is the alien and megamind is the reporter is i cant stop thinking about what i want out of that and how its probably not what other people want out of that which should mean 'oh shit i gotta write it' but really means 'in the next couple of months im going to rewatch megamind and be extremely frustrated because idk how to write these people as is let alone in an au'

but here are some thoughts

Itd have to take place on megaminds home world so like. have to develop that culture and frame it as the usual and other things as oddities

metroman still shows up at the same time the baby human does

roxan richie and metromans rivalry is less of a game and more of a metroman one up'd her ome to many times so now shes gotta take him out

its fine not because shes incompetent- in fact her death rays and pointy sticks are ingenious and have 0% public property or civilian causalities - but because metroman is not only impossible to kill, he adapts to anything that gets close (anything that doesnt kill him makes him stronger literally)

i guess this means theres a good chunk of the story that is centered around human adaptability vs perfect hero dudes adaptability

Roxanne Ritchie is actually a noted scientist or something at the local research facility - i figure blue people planet is really advanced and everyones at least a little technosmart but while it doesnt come as easily or naturally to Roxanne her way of thinking is really unique n shiz and shes an asset to every team....

but if you see her in a mask with some project from the lab macguivered into a gun trying to kill metroman well, no ones getting hurt and humans need hobbies and everyone respects the mask desptie the fact shes the ONLY human on the planet so its not like its hard to figure out who she is

she does spend a lot of nights having to rebuild projects and apologizing and such but basically everyone plays the plausible deniability card and asks her questions abiut what went wrong and okay so the masked menace failed after you let them steal our project but lets pretend for a moment the goal was to fix crops how would you say this did? and grumply shed revamp the guns weird side effect into an alien pollinating crop duster or whatever

got carried away when REALLY all I WANTED to say was

Whille Roxanne Ritchie is adaptable ingenuity and gets away at the last minute NOT because no ones trying to catch her but shes just that CLEVER and thinks ahead and shiz....

Megamind is the guy trying to interview her in the middle of a fight like he thinks he's cute - i mean he is but shes chasing after metroman and skids to a stop because this jerk stepped in for a comment. or shes lining up the perfect shot but theres a close up of megaminds reporter bag in the way

the thing is that maybe... blue people arent violent. a natural disaster hit recently and theyre coming back from it and if the two adopted alien kids want to play extreme tag well no ones getting hurt and Roxanne Ritchie will grow out of her competitiveness no doubt caused by just how superior EVERYONE on the planet is by finding her own niche and metroman will grow up and stop bating her because maybe he IS still better than everyone else and thats met with "oh very nice we're proud" but it doesnt really validate him or make him feel special because its just treated as a special thing he can do by everyong but Roxanne Ritchie and once he's found something that makes him feel good regardless of the attention or lack of it he'll stop playing too

but megamind? megamind has an imagination that loves drama and blowing things out of proportion and thats part of why his reports are so popular? like yeah everyones treating this super hero showdown with indulgence but megamind is good at framing theatrics so that this news story is actually a compelling narrative? and also everyone can see the tension is going to have one of these three "kids" confessing live someday

and maybe he gets carried away. one of those 'aw well next time you could do x or y' or has some technological creation that accidentally actually makes Metroman flinch during an interview

and Roxanne Ritchie starts paying attentionto him for the first time.

and minion warns him but he doesnt listen. minion is lower class and is afraid of being replaced like a pet like some people do but Roxanne Ritchie Ritchie doesnt have a minion and even if she did theyre Best Friends not like those other blue people minion uperclass people.

and he carelessly says something unforgivable and Roxanne Richie uses his ideas and actually succeeds in killing metroman

so she goes to prison - a place they had to build just for her because this hasnt happened since stars knows when

and somebody else is doing the camera because minion left just is gone and megamind looks defeated but testifies against her and is quiet and subdued and stpps being a reporter for a bit

and.... idk. i feel like we'll have to resolve the whole class system so minon goes underground and finds other minons who are unhappy with the way of things and if theyre ALREADY rebuilding society after that huge natural disaster that DIDNT blow up their planet thanks TO a minion well ehy cant they fix this too?

so theres a rebellion going on and theyve got a secret weapon to make blue people listen and idk but i feel like it's Metroman

and... how do stories like this go ive forgotten

minion wouldnt tell megamind or he would

metroman would break Roxanne Ritchie out of prison during the first riot of the minion revolt?

they talk and compare why they hated eachother and slowly work together and are actually a great team?

and then they need a reporter to make themselves heard as something other than minions going crazy

and so of course they go to megamind for help getting the story out

something something megamind is minions sidekick for this adventure

"Roxanne Ritchie was raised by the planet and turned against it and instigated civil unrest and killed a person who was also the good child etc etc instead of just growing up to face your problems"

"actually im alive and i finally found my place? helping out the real heros?"

"i mean i did try to kill him, but he forgave me and we're kinda working together because planet of moms and dads that raised us? yall actually are the ones who need to grow up and let go of the traditions that dont serve etc etc"

and megamind does a huge public apology to minion

and... uhhhhhhhhh fuck i really dont know how these storyies go

the blue people start making amends

metroman basically becomes a social worker for minion childern because finding their original families is a bit hard and most of these kids are just going to end up being raised by super dad but at least the rebellion minion families are actually geting to be their own family units and in a couple gens thatll be normal

Roxanne Ritchie goes back to being the token human in the lab and hangs up her super suit and is generally dissatisfied with this

until one night a hero breaks into her apartment to make her answer for her crimes and so for a legit hot second theyre fighting and megamind says something and Roxanne apologizes and then fighting stops being an argument and goes into banter flirting

the worss "where theres evil good will rise up to fight it" peob comes up a lot in this fic in different iterations

anyways megamind isnjust basically like hey wanna do this like. for the rest of our lives dramatic battle showdowns like its entertainment but like no theyre doing this for real?

the answer is hell yeah

and its a polyship and sometimes Roxanne is helping with the kids and then Megamind bursts in to "save" the family from her evil clutches and 90% of the time everything is improve

megamind kidnaps Roxanne to make metromind save her and a good half of the conversation is that hes an idiot for coming shes tried to kill him three times this week and hes bitching because do you know how hard it is to find a sitter for 30 odd minion kids this short notice and they better make it up to him

Roxanne is not superdad but the 30 odd minion kids adore when she comes over because they mob the villain so hard until finally mega comes to save her because hes actually very good with the kids

of course this poly ship isnt complete without minion and at some point minion and mega realize theyve actually been married for years and Roxanne and metro tease them shamelessly for it

minion and his race need a real name obviously

when Roxanne was a... graduate her senior project theses thingy was essentially "im going to go back to planet earth itll be great ive figured out were im from and how to go there in a reasonable amout of time" and everyone had to sit her down and explain that unlike metroman they knew where she was from the planet was just destroyed.

they never figured out where metroman was from because his direction sharply changed to follow baby Roxannes course and mirrored her coding despite very obviously how he had originated from elsewhere

this is important because his race is basically coming to conquer the blue people planet soon - the group finds out - and will download all the survival upgrades metroman has gotten to become unkillable and then just come down to the surface and be unstoppable taking the place over and whiping out the planet like theyve done many many times

a good chunk of the time trying to figure out how to stop them when this planet is REALLY against murder war and violence for good reason and even if they WOULD do that its impossible over looks some alone time that leads to megamind and metroman figuring out how to like kill him so when the bad guys show up theyll go "whelp better not fuck with them" and leave but between roxanne and minion they manage to not only stabilize metroman (Roxanne blood transfusions maybe???) but they manage to scare the aliens so bad they tuck tail and leave speading rumors that these are the scariest mfs in space (go minion)

metroman never lets Roxanne live down saving his life

eventually space humans show up to check the place out

megamind loves everything human despite most of the planet thinking theyre primitive and showing it

roxanne is reluctant to meet them at first but then really relates to them?

for a good long while it REALLY seems like megamind and Roxanne are just going to go on space adventures with the humans leaving metroman and minion - who really doesnt like them and also they kinda rub him the wrong way because he's non bipedal and they kinda make fun of him in a 'we totally dont mean anything by it lighten up' sort of way.

they don't go of course but they may have stolen a lot of atar charts n shit and who hasnt wanted to take a road trip through space with 30 odd childern who will need names and personalities and may be chopped down to a slightly more reasonable number by this point?

metroman loves space karaoke and his natural abilites mean he learns languages fast but no he still cant carry a tune

megamind and Roxanne still duke it out on various alien cityscapes

minion usually breaks them out of jail if theyre not to be let out the next day because nothing was actually damaged that didnt belong to them.

one memorable occasion it was metoman in a fight with megamind and they wont say what its about but both look very put out and minion looks smug

it doesn't matter in the end because Roxanne teams up with the childern to propose to them first

apparantly i had a lot more ideas about this then i meant to? i mean its not well thoughout out and despite the drama a good half the fic is just going to be cute relationship building stuff between the four of them

[orangeccreamsicles]

Dirk: => Theorize

TT: You know a lot about Sburb, don't you? TT: In the short time that I was a sprite, I cataloged as much information as I could, thinking it may come in handy. You could say that the knowledge granted to me could be categorized as "a lot". TT: That being said, I only know what a sprite would know. I’m not fucking omniscient. TT: Why? TT: I’ve been thinking about my future self.

TT: Ah. It’s not good to dwell on events out of your control or out of the realms of possibility TT: But it is still possible, is it not? TT: Under specific circumstances, I can foresee you becoming the you we were able to catch a glance of. Extremely specific circumstances. TT: And what about not becoming him, but becoming someone who ends up playing? TT: There is a greater possibility there. TT: That’s enough for me to want to do a little digging. TT: Fine. What is it you were looking to know? TT: Derse and Prospit are the two planets on which your dream self can appear, I know that already. Are there any conditions which must be met to appear there, and can they exist outside a session? TT: The game decides which planet you inhabit based, for the most part, on core parts of your personality, and just a bit of fuckery. TT: Alternates of myself have never appeared, separate from you or not, nor have any civilians, so I would deduce you must be an active player with their own form to appear. TT: I've known instances in which the moons and planets can be removed from their session along with its players, as well as instances in which a moon may be transferred to a new session, but there are no records of either Derse or Prospit existing independently from a session. TT: And my dreams? TT: They match very closely with accumulated descriptions of Derse. A purple planet, populated by black chitinous folks, violent in nature, and sensationalizing nobility not yet awakened. TT: A prince, a knight, a rogue, and a seer, tucked away in towers high above the general population, while a war stirs in the tabloids between the Dersites and Prospitians. TT: It is likely that your dream self has awoken early on Derse, but keep in mind that the possibility that these dreams are a reflection of your fears of the future taking form in rumors you’ve heard of a death game is also present. TT: Sure. TT: So. We may yet play the game. TT: We knew that the moment we realized who your future self was. TT: But the differences were large enough to disregard that future. What about now? TT: Now, it’s the same story. Nothing has changed, save for your newly acquired knowledge. TT: What about his cause of death? TT: That’s a different matter entirely. TT: Is it? Burnt to a crisp by a psionic. Have I pissed off any psionics that you know of recently? TT: The alternian empress has psionic capabilities. TT: Why the fuck would we be fighting the empress? TT: I’m not sure. TT: Who do you think it’s more likely would have killed me? An angry psionic from a separate timeline, unaffected by whatever may happen in this timeline but certainly affected by where I stick my nose and how far I take it, already known to be on bad terms, or a far off empress who barely acknowledges the Earth anymore, targeting some random fuck off already slated for death by a game created by who knows what. TT: We don’t know if it was just or heroic. TT: We can make a pretty good guess. TT: It could go either way. TT: One possibility is more likely than the other. TT: Perhaps. Don’t rule out other factors. You’ve met other psionics, we may meet more yet. TT: He was years in the future. We don’t know who killed him or for what reason. TT: We only know the cause. If that. TT: Didn’t he say you and Sollux were on relatively good terms? TT: He said that they were okay, but he fucked something up. I’d say this is as good of a fuckup as we’re going to get. TT: Fuck. I don’t want to see a worse fuckup than this. TT: Neither do I. It was pretty bad, dude. TT: Fuck off. TT: Oh, are we done? I can fuck off quite easily if you’re done wasting both of our times. TT: And by that I mean fuck off right back here, I’m not done. TT: Picking up on some of Vantas’ vocabulary, are we? TT: Pick up the pace. I may have all day but that doesn’t mean I want to spend it talking to you. TT: It’s still likely to turn out similar to the future we’ve seen. TT: It’s a possibility. One that’s more likely than, say, you turning into a murderous psychopath and killing everyone you know and love. TT: That’s comforting. TT: What else do we know? TT: He and Bo were matesprits up until his death. He and his session had yet to win. At some point he and Wig vacillated pale and pitch. TT: I can’t help but feel that last part is unimportant. TT: That’s all we know. What else do you want me to say? TT: Something more substantial than my imminent relationship drama would be nice. TT: I’ll be sure to let you know when you decide to talk about anything other than that. TT: Seriously, you do not shut up. TT: I’m lonely, I’m sad, I’m feeling angry and betrayed, can’t you find someone to vent to that isn’t me? Like Joanne! Or Roxy! Or Cass, I’m sure she’d love to know about how in the few hours after you came home and celebrated, you managed to fuck everything up! TT: Can we get back on topic? TT: Uncomfortable because you don’t want to confront your mistakes, aren’t we Dirk? TT: The future version of myself that we saw isn’t a self in which I’m able to become, at this point. TT: Correct. TT: But something similar is possible. TT: Likely, even, depending on how much of your dreams are real. TT: So. TT: So? TT: What do we do? TT: Don’t ask me, dude. you're the one this affects. I'm just the guy that runs the numbers and tries to keep you from getting too far into your own head. TT: By the way, I’m pretty sure that’s a thing you’re doing right now. TT: Is there a way to prevent the game if it’s already slotted to begin, or to stop it once it’s started? TT: Those two questions are, really, asking the same thing. TT: If it’s meant to begin, it’s already started. TT: In a sense, it’s always been running. TT: It’s already here, and all that. TT: The only solution I can see for now is to abandon this universe to be destroyed by the coming meteors, and escape to a new one. TT: Still, that is entirely hypothetical. Perhaps you’re doomed to play and it would simply follow you to your new world, dooming every subsequent place you choose to hide out in until the weight of the worlds you’ve killed drives you to face your fate. TT: Perhaps it doesn’t matter what you do. TT: ... TT: Too much? TT: I’ve been reading a lot lately. TT: You have a flair for the dramatic. TT: It has to have a beginning point, doesn’t it? TT: If it’s some sort of loop, there has to be a starting and ending point, even if they create themselves. TT: I have some theories regarding loops and Bro that you may want to hear out some time, by the way. TT: As if this conversation couldn’t get any more lighthearted. TT: The starting point would be the creation of the game itself, kickstarting events that would lead to the empowerment of the final boss, as well as the creation and destruction of the universe. TT: You’re getting a little off track. TT: Right. TT: The closest thing you could get to a starting point is the development and revitalization of old codes by the companies Skaianet and Crockercorp, depending on the universe. TT: Of course, those were only found, not created. TT: Those both sound pretty fucking familiar, dude. TT: They sure fucking do, man. TT: So Jane and Jade or Jake are responsible for the apocalypse game? TT: They had nothing to do with it in timelines I’ve studied. Plans for their development and release were far in development before either of them would have even be aware of their inheritance.  TT: So they could be in development now. TT: If they are, they won’t be released for a while yet. It’s kind of a big fucking deal in any timeline when they’re announced. TT: Great. TT: So the bottom line is, either I’m fucking delusional and seeing things where they’re not, TT: Entirely likely if you ask me. TT: I didn’t. TT: Or, we’re completely fucked, my dream self is awake, one of those companies are going to release a death game that we either ignore and go down with the rest of the world, or play and have an extremely high if not guaranteed chance of dying in some other horrific manner. TT: That sounds about right. TT: And even if we survive, that only heightens the chance that I’m going to fuck up yet again and piss Sock off enough that he burns me to a crisp. TT: The future is bright. TT: Fuck! TT: Lmao. The chances of any of these things happen individually are low enough, but the longer you go on the worse the chances get. TT: BUT. TT: If you’re so worked up about this then we can plant a copy of myself in Mom’s lab. TT: Skaianet has a subdivision studying and predicting meteor paths, that’s what she does. TT: Kind of suspicious that a company responsible for the end of the world VIA meteors has a branch dedicated to looking at them. TT: Or, it’s a major company that deals with all kinds of fields, the largest of all being the development of new technology, which happens to line up with the massive influx of advancements regarding space travel that communication with trollkind has brought upon us as a society.  TT: I like my theory better. TT: You would. TT: This is something that you’ve had on your mind for a while, yeah? TT: I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to happen, and if it does, we’ll be able to figure it out in time to make a real plan about it. TT: So stop fucking worrying about it. TT: If there were a problem, I’d tell you. TT: You’ve made sure of that.

[strangcrdoctor]

∞Guardians commentary time, because I was honestly too wiped out to get to it last night but I’m still very up for it now. 

1. So here’s my question about the opening sequence on Morag. If Ronan had hired the people that faced off with Quill in the opening sequence on Morag, was it just the case that Ronan’s men arrived 2.5 minutes too late, like Peter arrived just early enough to beat out Yondu? Because initially my impression was that they were indigenous and guarding it, but I know now that not to be the case because Korath is very much a devotee of Ronan, etc. But even if it is the case that Peter beat Ronan’s people, holy timing Batman. Seriously kudos to Quill for being even if incidentally two steps ahead of even Ronan’s game. 2. Okay one, Nova Prime Irani Rael is a hot piece and two she definitely deserves to be the girlfriend of General Leia Organa you can disagree with me but that makes you a suspect human being. Anyway, Rael making the diplomatic call to the Kree to denounce Ronan was not out of bounds for normal statecraft. Especially with a new and tenuous alliance, she’s not only right in calling bullshit that the Kree empire has said nothing to denounce Ronan, but she’s also right in advising they make a statement to stabilize their early peace because early peace is amazingly fragile. But like way to not maintain an alliance at all Kree Empire. You suck. 3. The actual diversity of felons on the Kyln is pretty neat, I’m not going to lie. Not just interspecies representation but also body type representation. There’s big very obviously non-straight criminals. There’s cool as shit looking alien species. There’s chubby feminine looking criminals! Tell me who they are Marvel! Tell me. 4. Now that Thanos’ real character has been revealed in the course of IW it is no damn wonder why Thanos thought of Ronan as a petulant child. Granted, Thanos’ logic is worse in that it is slightly better, but by comparison Thanos is an overly dire pragmatist were Ronan is very much just a racist bigot with a power complex. Thanos predictably find’s Ronan’s racial shortsightedness pithy, and I really have zero doubt that if Ronan had actually gone to piss on Thanos’ front lawn he would not have lasted long. 5. On the other hand, really Thanos. #1 piece of advice in the universe is don’t torture and dismantle women and then trust them to be complicit. You will die. 6. If anyone doesn’t feel pelvic sorcery during a close listening to Fooled Around & Fell In Love they are definitely soulless. 7. I also really really want to know what the hell they were drinking on Knowhere that got Rocket and Drax drunk (I mean who knows they might both be lightweights but I doubt it.), because Stephen wants some. 8. I’ll come right out and say it it’s a fucking shame that Tivan’s collection gets blown to hell. Not because Tivan isn’t twisted as hell keeping live specimens and slaves to himself, but more on the “holy crap what cool stuff just got destroyed that the universe will never see again” kind of way. It’s like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, only somehow worse. 9. The nods given to Thor: The Dark World and The Avengers are of course interesting given there’s a Dark Elf and a Chitauri, but I’m super curious about what made those particular specimens of each special enough for Tivan to keep them. Tivan deals with the depths and breadths of the universe coming in and out of Knowhere, and he doesn’t just snag one item from every species or race he comes across. So was there something interesting in particular about that Dark Elf and that Chitauri? Was the Chitauri one of the only remaining survivors after the nuclear explosion? Was the Dark Elf one of Malekith’s higher ups? I’m just curious about them, and curious about Tivan’s reasoning for keeping them. 10. Okay but adding to this whole Tivan’s collection tangent, Cosmo the Space dog cracks me up and not just because it’s funny for Tivan to have a doggie cosmonaut in his collection. Cosmo is a legit character in the Guardians comics, and he’s head of security on Knowhere and telepathic. So even if Tivan is keeping him in his collection or is just trying to keep him out of the way for something, just imagine what it’s like having an angry Russian dog thinking at you all the time because you’re getting in the way of him doing his job. 11. Slightly different bend on the Tivan train, but Carina legitimately just heard Tivan talk about how the stone was capable of destroying even a whole group of people who tried to wield it, and she was still willing to take the risk of being incinerated rather than living with her current conditions. Carina wasn’t resolutely making the hero play - she was making a suicide play knowing full well it would end that way if the hero play didn’t work. 12. When Yondu states that Peter doesn’t give a rip about Terra like. Dude. How many fucking references in this movie has he made to Terran culture? Music and movies and art and holy shit would you look at that, he sure as hell talks like a more culturally integrated human than anything else you twat waffle. Great way to piss him off though and get him to play it your way, which granted is what I think Yondu was probably doing the whole time but still. You don’t look at this boy who idolizes Footloose and knows who Jackson Pollock is and tell him he doesn’t care about Earth. Caring about Footloose and Jackson Pollock at all is a labor of love. 13. Speaking of Yondu, how the fuck is that the jewel frog bauble considered by anyone to be worth of the “high end” community? On top of it just hurting me, it does really raise the question of how is trite crap like that so valuable? Does it have some vector of worth and rarity because its origins are weird, obscure, or finite? Are the gems magical artifacts of some kind? Are the wealthy in space that mother-fucking self-ironic? Because if they are I want to know them. 14. Peter Quill, everyone, who makes a dick message to garner trust 15. Not for the first for for the last time will I say this, but Ravager tech is impressive. And I am amazingly intrigued at how Ravagers got such good technology and resources on their hands. True, they steal things and make money off of trades and pilfering. But that isn’t the only way to acquire goods and it’s not the only thing a viable pirating economic model can survive off of. Half the reason the Ravagers succeed is because they run like a business, have clientele, and are clientele for certain sects, right? So what kind of powerful connections do they have that allow them their advanced fleets? That’s the kind of shit I want to know about. 16. Also what the hell are Ronan’s pilots with the weird glowy psychic spheres on the Dark Aster? Is the Dark Aster itself Kree technology, or something Ronan got from Thanos who appropriated it from some other world he’s conquered? Because we know so little about the Kree in the MCU it’s hard to say, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if the Kree ever do become a part of canon so we can have more data with which to make a comparison. 17. Guardians does a pretty good job of taking at least some time to portray how terrible aerial dogfighting is on a mass scale because honestly it’s a bloody nightmare. It’s pictured so often and so carelessly in film that it’s not something we often think about, and the only movie I’ve ever seen that addresses how it feels in human terms is Dunkirk, but the intensity and messiness of it in Guardians is still pretty realistic and I give it props for that. 18. It occurs to me that maybe the younger, post-GOTG Groot is so bitter and antisocial for a while because of how giving the elder Groot was, and the seedling felt the sacrifice and his existence was under-appreciated? It was just a thought that crossed my mind. 19. Also Ronan you twat. “Engage Immolation Initiative” is just Big Mean & Fancy for “light ‘em up fuckers,” don’t pretend you’re any cooler than anyone else. 20. I really really appreciate the design that went into the Xandarian cityscape as a fully intergalactic multicultural society that shows it even in the way the city and buildings are assembled. The city isn’t uniform like a lot of science-fiction cities are - it’s got texture. Different sectors have different styles of buildings and different architecture. Like a real metropolitan area, it’s a patchwork of influences and it’s very well done. 21. Kudos to Rocket for identifying that ground-to-air is a super viable defense strategy. One thing that people tend to forget about ground-to-air is that aside from clouds, there’s no obstacles behind which to hide in the sky, so while ground defense might seem clumsy at times, air offense is hugely precarious because there is absolutely no defense mechanism against any attack except maneuvering, and when a defense is fully able to target that weakness it’s pretty damn effective. 22. It’s interesting to me how well superhero movies integrate climaxes within battle sequences? Some people might call it lazy but I call it interesting when when defense lines break, plans fail, and when teams encounter interference to push the plot forward. Plot movement in Marvel movies curry a lot of momentum from these events, but actually they’re pretty interesting replications of how modern society has been built on the results of such events within our own history. History has been moved by these exact same sorts of events, which is why they make sense to us in storytelling. 23. Peter protecting Groot from Rocket’s crash into the into the Dark Aster? Golden. And then Peter immediately going to Rocket from the wreckage? Stellar. Peter Quill you are a gem. 24. I will never forgive Marvel for hurting me as bad with “We are Groot” as Warner Brothers did with “Suuuuuperman” in Iron Giant. Stop giving Vin Diesel more opportunities to rip my heart out of my chest, please. 25. My mom and my uncle, her brother, both adored the entire GOTG soundtrack so much and it brought them so much joy watching it together that it got me into Motown. Even though it was oblique and dorky, Marvel did something amazing with this movie and gave my parents a piece of their own youth back, while giving me a chance to share in their knowledge and experience. It’s stuck with me ever since, especially because fundamentally that experience is the reason I got into Motown music, which I now adore with all my heart.

Alright, done with that. These are... just getting longer and longer I’m sorry guys no one should have ever allowed me to do this. Oh well. Too late to stop me now. Captain America: The Winter Solider is up next, and oh the pain.∞

[sassafrassrex]

@thegateway-seeker replied to your post:Consideration of sexual color dimorphism in the…

I once read a theory that suggested the Galra are more comparable to hyenas rather than cats, and in the hyena social order it's the females who hold dominance over the males (males are often terrified of the opposite sex because they're so vicious).

Oooooooh boy, what a can of worms this is going to be... *points to my icon* You may wanna grab a snack.

*deep breath*

Well, first of all, fuck yeah! Spotted hyenas (though not browns or striped hyenas) yes, I absolutely can see that! 

Now, if you ran labwork on a female spotted hyena and a male spotted hyena, you’d see a male testosterone level that’s... pretty average (as dude mammals go). But the female? SKY-HIGH! She is swimming in it. 

Lol, female hyenas, from a biochemical standpoint, are more manly than males.

It’s what makes them vicious, it’s what makes them domineering. The LOWEST female in a clan of hyenas, outranks the HIGHEST male. And as littermates, a female might bully her brother out of eating, all the way to the point where he starves (and mom won’t do a thing). 

Under the cut, is a brief frank discussion of some anatomy. If that is a source of discomfort, feel totally free to cease here. 

It’s also the reason the females’ labial folds close, hence the females having both pseudo-penis and pseudo-scrotum. Which is a plus, in that it makes rape near-impossible to accomplish (now granted, in mammals on estrous cycles (so... everyone but us) rape isn’t that frequent, anyway. Simply because most male animals want to avoid being bitten/clawed all to hell, much more than they want to bone a pretty girl. Getting all clawed up means infection, and sex ain’t worth dying over). A pseudo-penis means hyena sex requires... quite a lot of finagling, to actually manage it. Thus, the ladies have complete and total say over literally every aspect of how it happens, if it happens, and with whom it happens.

But the negative aspect of this, is that it makes female spotted hyenas THE WORST MAMMALS EVER at giving birth. Female hyenas urinate, copulate, and birth, all through that (tiny!) urogenital canal. Which means that they hemorrhage during parturition SUPER often, because Baby is just literally just bursting out of Mom (not unlike the Alien movie).

... SO.

There’s a lot of baggage that comes with the Galra being Space spotted hyenas.

But... yeah, I think it’s a pretty cool headcanon. Child-rearing would be quite the undertaking - gotta keep the girls from murdering the boys, because as a civilized society, I’m not sure if the Galra would condone infantile fratricide. 

Leaping further into headcanon land - that holds especially true, because 1) Zarkon needs soldiers, and 2) Every baby would have been so dearly won. Mom very likely might have died, in order to get these little tykes out into the world, you’re not just going to let one kill the other!!(!!!)

Oh, and if you’re a Galra, and you meet a woman who has kids? Your respect goes through the roof, simply because she ain’t dead.

Traditionally, anyway. With the caveat that, given modern technological advancement, I imagine natural births among Galra are not too common anymore.

Also, hyena clans can get up to ~70 members, sometimes higher. So, Galra families could be GIANT. Multiple generations living together, with the older ones all pitching in to help raise the youngest. Once you hit adulthood (before you disappear into the military) you might be expected to turn right around and help raise one of the brand new baby siblings Mom just had!! EDIT (with a shameless plug): Those of you reading WYCWYC know what I’m talking about ;)

Other fun headcanon-y implications... ... well, their endurance probably borders on indefatigable. So, good luck trying to outrun them. **There’s a “Humans are ungodly distance runners” thing floating around the Internet. And while YES, it’s true that we absolutely ARE, we would never outlast a hyena. Or a Galra (even withOUT the “Galra are space hyenas” headcanon. The explanation for this is semi-long, so unless someone asks we’ll save it for some other time).

So. Galra as space spotted hyenas. 

Two spirited thumbs up!!! (Lol, after seeing big BossLady General, I can’t say anything else.)

Obligatory sidebar: She’s half-something besides Galra. For a bit of further discussion, see here.

This got long. Sorry for that. *Points to my icon again* I really like spotted hyenas. 

[bforbookslut]

Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

I have given this book ☆☆☆☆☆. 425 pages. It is Book 1 in the Constellation series. It belongs to the Young Adult Fantasy genre. Hot Key Books/Bonnier Publishing published it. It was published April 6th 2017. I would recommend it to everyone, I mean, everyone because I’m obsessed. The blurb reads: “NOEMI is a seventeen-year-old soldier from the planet Genesis. She can fire weapons, and fly a single-pilot fighter.

ABEL is a young mech from Genesis’s enemy planet Earth, and the most sophisticated robot warrior ever made.

Stranded together on an abandoned ship in space, Abel and Noemi should be sworn enemies. But Noemi’s home is in peril, and only Abel can help her to save it. Together they embark on a heart-stopping voyage through the galaxy, one that will lead them to question everything they thought they knew about each other – and what it means to be human.”

“Where there’s no free will, there’s no sin.”

Phenomenal.

Like, so mind-blowing and perfect that I stayed up until 5am to finish it and then put off continuing it for an entire month because if I did, then the book wouldn’t end.

I know I overuse 'phenomenal’ when it comes to my reviews but if I could give this book any more stars, I would (but my blog rating system goes to five). That’s how good Defy the Stars was. Hot Key Books’ blurb doesn’t do it justice and when I first bought it and read it, I was very confused because I thought mech meant “mechanic” and I thought it was about a pilot and an engineer, haha.

Simply put, DtS tells the story of Noemi, the soldier-pilot chick and Abel, the super-hot-robot-dude. On a test flight of the Masada Run, basically suicide mission to prevent Earth’s mechs from invading Genesis and taking over it, the test flight becomes a sneak attack by Earth and Noemi’s best friend, Esther, is injured. They are too far from Genesis to get Esther the help she needs and Noemi spots a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. She goes for it to prolong Esther’s life and get both of them back to Genesis. Aboard the craft, she meets Abel and learns that a Gate, the portal that leads to all the worlds, can be destroyed. Of course, destroying a Gate would be far better than killing hundreds of soldiers in a suicide mission. Without spoiling DtS much further, Abel and Noemi travel the entire space universe together (chased by the universe’s mech police) and along the way, they meet many colourful characters, people, learn about a space rebellion and the true meaning of being human.

[may contain spoilers]

Abel and Noemi, oh how my heart beats for these two idiots. I shed tears, believe me.

While I’m not the biggest fan of young adult fantasy novels revolving around the central couple, I make space in my cynical heart for Abel and Noemi. One, because they’re my favourite trope. It’s the two MCs who don’t like each other at first and then, they slowly fall in love in the classic slow-burn. Abel is snarky and sarcastic and frankly, a little bitch in the beginning but the conversation is so witty, I make way for this trope.

“Why do you have to act so superior?”

Abel considers her assertion. “I am superior, in most respects.”

Noemi’s hands close around the back of the captain’s chair, gripping it too hard, and when she speaks again, she grinds out every word. “Could. You. Knock it. Off.”

“Modesty is not one of my chief operating modes,” he admits, “but I will try.”

She sighs. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Okay, admittedly not the best example I could find but when I started reading this book, I hadn’t planned on reviving my book blog. And while Abel is the snarky bitch, Noemi is the serious, no nonsense leader who pretends to be super stoic and hard but is a little softy who can’t help but care for other people.

But other than the characters who frankly are so big and vocal, they can speak for themselves, Claudia Gray does an excellent job at world-building the Constellation verse in the short amount of pages that she has. There are descriptions of:

the history of how Genesis came to be and why Earth is attacking them

how Earth came to be the dominant powerhouse of the universe

space travel and space-travel vehicles,

and my personal favourite: very, very vivid and beautiful descriptions of each planet (there are six in total: Cray, Kismet, Stronghold, Cray, Earth and Genesis) along with what the society is like and how the world is built/life sustained/purpose. It’s a well-thought out and detailed world-building, something that a lot of young adult fantasies lack these days. I never for a moment was lost about a certain function of the spacecraft or questioned what the fuck is this planet?

Abel and Noemi travel to all these planets, through the very clever placing of the plot which starts off as a simple mission to retrieve a component needed for Noemi’s master plan and turns into around the world in 80 days, with each planet driving them on to the next (and even into a sort of deep space, floating, empty area full of asteroids).

Speaking of plot, there’s more to DtS than meets the eye. Hot Key Books’ blurb does a bad job at telling you what the plot is and what to expect, which I suppose is a good thing in the end. The blurb on Claudia Gray’s website is much better. Part of it says:

“But Abel’s programming forces him to obey Noemi as his commander, which means he has to help her save Genesis–even though her plan to win the war will kill him.

Together they embark on a daring voyage through the galaxy. Before long, Noemi begins to realize Abel may be more than a machine, and, for his part, Abel’s devotion to Noemi is no longer just a matter of programming.”

But, none of it references Abel’s creator, Mansfield which although plays a massive part in the book, only appears towards the very end with a shocking revelation about Abel’s purpose in life. And there’s also another twist at the end about Noemi’s Genesis and even hinting at what it is will give away the entire twist. So, imagine a movie where two characters meet each other and travel on a massive journey across the world for some mission and boom, plot twist at the end. The next day, the news announces a sequel in the making.

There’s definitely a sequel.

Because I wasn’t a big fan of how it ended (I shed a couple of tears, in public, at a train station). But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that YA books always end like this.

[contains spoilers]

Plot, characters and world-building aside, my favourite part about DtS is not literal, but rather, one that you have to think about. Mechs are considered abominations on Genesis, literal pariahs because the people of Genesis do not believe in the rise of mechs and the human reliance on them, from healthcare mechs, babysitter mechs, pleasure mechs and so on. So, when Noemi first meets Abel, she hates him, treats him like dirt. But Abel is not just any mech. He is created specially with all the skills of all the other mechs, basically equipping him with supreme artificial intelligence.

That is as close to human as one could get, metaphorically. Humans are equipped with bits and pieces of knowledge and life, and not built for one sole purpose, like a robot.

In Abel’s years of isolation on board his spacecraft after being abandoned by his creator, he grows more sophisticated as he only has his mind, knowledge and thoughts to keep him company. Like humans, when we are left alone with our thoughts, we tend to ponder over them and come out with new ways of thinking, seeing and doing. We grow as people. That’s what happened with Abel.

It’s obvious to readers immediately that Abel is almost human; he’s got his own mind and thoughts, he’s able to override basic commands, act upon his own decisions and so on. But in the end, Mansfield is able to use a mech’s core programming to control Abel, to make him do what his creator wants, to kill Noemi. But, Abel is able to resist, to fight back. As he puts it, he is torn between his core programming and his love for Noemi.

Furthermore, Noemi realises that Abel has a soul; she has been treating him as human for a while now, coming to rely on him like you would a friend, boyfriend even, but how can a person be in love or friends with a robot? She realises he has a soul and says this:

Where there’s no free will, there’s no sin.

But on the other hand, Mansfield only sees Abel as shell, a host for his brain even though he realises that Abel is human-like, has free will and thoughts, dreams even. But all he can see is the metal casing that makes up Abel instead of bone.

Which then raises the question about what makes us human? 

Is it our physical bodies so different from that of animals? Aliens are always pictured as grotesque and foreign.

Or is it our ability to think for ourselves? To have independent thoughts and ideas?

Or is it perhaps free will? We have ultimate control of our bodies even if we are driven by coercion or force, it’s always a choice that we make. But free will can be taken away in instances of war for example, war victims didn’t choose to die.

So, what exactly is it that makes us human? What would be considered human?

A soul? But souls cannot be seen, touched and measured. How do we tell if someone has a soul? Is that the right way to see who is a human being when the technology has become advanced enough that artificial intelligence acts, looks and talks like a human being?

It’s an incredible dilemma that CG may or may not have intentionally included into DtS.

But fret not, because there is definitely a sequel coming and I cannot wait to see how far Abel and Noemi have grown as people, especially with all the twists that came flying at the end of the book.

Have you read Defy the Stars? If you have, tell me what you think about it. Did you experience the same questions about humans and mechs that I did? Do you love Noemi and Abel as much as I do and want to know more? If you haven’t read it, are you planning to? Come into my inbox~!

[tyranttortoise]

Well, shit. Not Alien!Anon, but now I wanna know what all those skeles will do if they break out of the underground and Alien anon's family comes in a spaceship to ask for their judgement of Earth/Earth's inhabitants, (would monsters and humans judgments be separate?) And possibly to give them a lift to their home planet for a report to their rulers (?) [Boy would Red's face be...Well, red. So would several others. Like, Surprise...?!]

( *Follow-up to the S/O is an alien ask )

*Okay, lemme give you guys a little set-up here.

The Barrier has been broken..  wait, scratch that.The alien’s family is the one that breaks the barrier.  They track the S/O somehow (maybe the S/O did have tech or something, or maybe aliens can resonate SOULs?) and just BURST INTO THE MOUNTAIN.  Straight up, they’re barreling through the mountain and into the Underground (they like dramatic entrances), and they barely notice the shimmer of the barrier in the now-gaping hole above Snowdin.  Of course, aliens/humans can pass through the barrier, but it’s a one-way deal or else the alien S/O would have already waltzed out.

So, once the family has figured out what’s going on, they break the barrier.  This could happen a few different ways.  They either break it by utilizing something on their ship or use their combined weird alien powers (maybe several–or even just one?–alien SOULs are equal to a human + boss monster’s SOUL).    

Or they just sacrifice a human they had abducted along the way, and then BAM.  The monsters have seven human SOULs, and the barrier’s broken.  

Soooo, now the aliens want the S/O to cast their Judgement on Earth.  Does the alien race enslave the humans/monsters and take over the planet?  And.. will the S/O go back to their family?  If so.. will the skelebro go with them?  

The S/O’s Judgement of Undertale– Monsters are wonderful, and the humans kind of suck, buuuut.. they made anime, so they can’t be all bad.  Earth is spared.  

The S/O decides to stay on Earth to be with their skelebro in both instances.

UT!Sans:

Sans is shitting himself with excitement the minute that spaceship crashes into Snowdin.  Is he dreaming?  Welp, looks like he wasn’t going crazy when he started believing the whole alien thing, and if he has finally lost his mind, there’s no getting it back.  He’s all about the technology, and his mind is rapid-firing questions and theories about how the spaceship works, but he’s too overwhelmed to voice any of them.  This dude can handle advanced quantum physics applications and is well-versed in astrophysics, but suddenly, he’s drawing a blank for any kind of intelligent response.  

“uh.. sorry, i got a little star-struck for a minute there.”  He winks.

On the Surface, Sans devotes his life to furthering (and accrediting) his degrees and makes quite a name for himself in the scientific community, thanks to his S/O’s knowledge.  Years later, the two travel through space for Sans to explore other worlds and meet their alien family.  Papyrus tags along, of course.  

UT!Papyrus:

Papyrus’s jaw is hanging wide open, and his eyelights have manifested to boggle in opposite directions.  He stays like that throughout the entire landing/crashing/alien meeting process, and it looks like he’s broken.  Of course, he believed his S/O when they claimed they were an alien, but seeing their family just crash into the Underground is quite shocking!  When he manages to pull himself together, Papyrus introduces loudly introduces himself.  "WHY HELLO!  YOU MUST BE S/O’S FAMILY!  WHY WEREN’T EXPECTING YOU TO COME VISIT OR I WOULD HAVE PREPARED FOR YOU MY MASTERPIECE ARTISAN SPAGHETTI FOR THE OCCASION!  INSTEAD, WE’LL JUST HAVE TO HAVE NORMAL SPAGHETTI, BUT LATER!“  He babbles on like that out of both nervousness and excitement for a while and spends the entire time he’s around them just trying to get to know them and make sure their stay is comfortable.  He offers for them to stay in his house, and Sans is beside himself.  While Papyrus cooks, his brother grills them and shares complex theories about space travel that Papyrus doesn’t understand, but he’s happy to see his brother so passionate about something.  It’s been a while…

On the Surface, Papyrus becomes the monster ambassador and takes these duties seriously, determined to bridge the gap between monsters and humans.  After all, he’s dating an alien and their family seemed to really like him, so why wouldn’t humans?  A few years later, the alien S/O asks Papyrus if he’d like to come with them to visit their family, and he excitedly agrees.  He’d love to travel through space!  It sounds even cooler than driving a sports car!  He only goes, however, if Sans agrees to go–and let’s face it, Sans is ALL OVER that opportunity.  

The S/O’s Judgement of Underfell– Monsters suck, humans suck.  Earth is doomed. 

The S/O decides to stay in Red’s scenario and leave in Edge’s.  

UF!Sans:

*……what?

His expression is completely blank.  His eyelights are gone, his skull is covered in a cold sweat, and he can’t process what he’s seeing.  That’s a freaking spaceship.  You mean his ex wasn’t lying?  Everything he had waved off as insanity was true?  The whole alien thing had ultimately been what caused him to break up with them, but.. actually, seeing this doesn’t make him regret the decision.  If anything, he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to add aliens to his endless list of problems.  They’re not even going to look his way as long as he keeps his head down and gives his ex a wide berth.  I mean, it’s not like his ex is holding a grudge, right..?

HA!  When has he ever been that lucky?

On the Surface, the aliens wait for the murderous monsters to extract their revenge upon humanity, and then when both sides are weakened, they easily take control.  Papyrus blames Sans because he dated the alien instead of killing them, and “IF YOU COULD JUST KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS, THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!”  Their relationship becomes even more strained than it was before, and the brothers become involved in a rebellion.  Usually, Sans wouldn’t even care enough about his life to be pushed into that kind of cause, but it’s his only shot at repairing things with the boss.  

Everywhere he looks, however, it seems like he runs into his ex, who makes some kind of cryptic comment on what’s to come and gives him a vindictive smile.  

UF!Papyrus:

Well, he asked his S/O to prove it, and it looks like they finally did.  Edge opens and closes his jaw several times, and he’s struck speechless for once.  As soon as he witnesses them break the Barrier with that kind of ease, he realizes just how much power the aliens have, and even with his LOVE, he knows he’s no match.  So, he tries to play as nice as he can around them, which still involves lots of grumbling and scowling.  

On the inside, he’s panicking.  He can’t handle this.  Does this mean his S/O is super strong and he never knew it?  What else doesn’t he know about them?  He starts to freak out and becomes much quicker to rile up, but when he starts to argue.. he abruptly backs down.  If he pisses his S/O off, could they dust him with some sort of death ray gun?  Sans told him it was possible one night (though his brother also seemed interested in the scientific side of the aliens’ appearance and got caught a couple of times snooping around their ship), but Papyrus didn’t know if they really had those kind of weapons or not.  Regardless, it terrified him–and he didn’t like the feeling.  

The same scenario plays out where monsters murder humans and both sides weaken each other before the aliens take over.  The S/O isn’t interested in sticking around for the invasion, however, and now that their mission is over, they’d like to go home.  They invite Papyrus along, but he declines; he’d rather stick with the hell he knows than be the single monster among incredibly-strong and advanced aliens.  After the S/O leaves, both brothers still become involved in the rebellion. 

The S/O’s Judgement of Underswap–monsters are good, but humans suck for locking them Underground.

The S/O decides to leave Earth in Blueberry’s scenario and stay in Stretch’s.

US!Sans:

WOWZERS, his S/O’s family has come to visit!  Sans has sparkly, star-shaped eyes, and he’s the first to greet them.  His S/O isn’t even around yet, but he’s telling them all about himself, that he’s currently dating one of them, and then launches into questions about what their favorite foods are, and oh–do they like tacos?  Do space tacos exist?  He babbles on until his S/O shows and takes over.  

The entire time, Stretch is there, looming behind Blueberry and staring with a really tight, frightening grin on his face.  If these aliens so much as touch Blue, Stretch is going to let them have it.  Speaking of, Stretch takes the S/O aside to have a freak out over their intentions with his brother.

When the barrier breaks, the aliens don’t take over Earth, but some would like to experience it.  So, they integrate themselves in with the monsters and help them fuse their society into the humans’– and even push for complete equality much faster (and with more success) than the monsters would have.  They’ve had experience fusing cultures.

The S/O needs to report back, and since Sans was already fascinated with space, they ask him to come.  He agrees instantly, but only if Papy will join them.  It goes without saying that Stretch wasn’t about to let Blueberry go into space without him, so although he doesn’t think it’s a great idea, he assents.    

US!Papyrus:

Well, he didn’t believe his S/O, and now he wishes he had.  The lazy grin is wiped clean off his face, and the cigarette balanced between his teeth falls from his slack jaw.  His mind is blown.

“i really spaced out there, hun.”

He chuckles and lights up another cigarette, but his hands are lightly shaking.  He really doesn’t care if his S/O is an alien, but meeting their family that literally just crashed into the Underground like it was nothing is rather daunting.  And his S/O’s report could determine whether or not the planet gets invaded?  That’s so much responsibility, and he’s sure to pull his S/O aside and go straight into that spiel.  He feels on-edge the entire time they’re there, and worries about Blueberry accidentally offending them and getting hurt. His S/O is one thing, but this is an entirely new variable.  

Once they make it to the Surface, the same integration of aliens and monsters occurs.  Blueberry’s taken on the role of monster mascot, so he works with the ambassador (who’s actually an alien) frequently, and Stretch eases up his worries and stops hovering so much.  His S/O recognizes that he felt out of his element with the aliens initially, so they don’t ask Stretch to leave with them; instead, the S/O stays with him on Earth.  Years later, however, they do take Stretch and Blueberry both to their home planet for a visit.  

The S/O’s Judgement of Swapfell– monsters kinda suck and they can see why humans sealed them away, so humans are all right.

The S/O stays on Earth with their skelebro in both scenarios.

SF!Sans:

He’s absolutely shocked because he’s not shocked.  Sans has been talking for so long about how he KNEW ALL ALONG about the alien thing that he’s actually made himself believe that he knew it all along.  If anything, seeing the aliens now just makes him feel triumphant because HE WAS RIGHT! BUT OF COURSE; HE’S ALWAYS RIGHT!  HE’S THE MALEVOLENT BLACKBERRY, AFTER ALL!

“observant as ever, m'lord.”

And it probably doesn’t help that Papy’s always there to stroke his inflated ego.  Sans runs his big mouth to the aliens at first, but he’s a bit off-putting and tends to rub people the wrong way, so his S/O tries to keep control of the conversation.  

On the Surface, the aliens decide to conquer only the monsters and take over their society, though the rest plays out much like the Integration portion of Underswap, only with the aliens being a little more ruthless toward the monsters and making all the decisions.  There’s quite a bit of dusting in the early rebellions, and Blackberry is reigned-in from becoming the center of those rebellions only by his S/O.  The alien S/O stays because they don’t feel like Sans would go over well with other aliens if they went back home with him, and well.  Ultimately, with the aliens keeping a leash on the murderous impulses of the monsters, Surface life goes well.

SF!Papyrus:

Holy crap, he really didn’t believe his S/O, but well.. there’s the proof.  There’s aliens in their hell now.  Papyrus is sweating just a little, but he hides it behind a lazy smirk and lets his brother do all the talking about how he knew aliens were a real thing and saw this plot-twist coming a mile away.  He looks at his S/O in a new light, but it’s not one that bothers him; he really couldn’t care less if they were an alien, human, monster, or some weird hybrid mix.  

On the Surface, he mostly tries to keep his brother from getting killed, and because of that, he ends up fighting a lot more of Blackberry’s battles for him than he used to.  It pisses his brother off almost as much as getting told what to do pisses Sans off–which is exactly what these aliens are doing.  Blackberry accuses Papyrus of being at fault since he’s dating the alien, and the two brothers start actually arguing for once.  Blackberry winds up upset that Papyrus would talk back and things spiral.  Sans ends up smack-dab in the center of the rebellion, and it causes a rift in their relationship.  

The S/O discusses leaving Earth and going back to their home with Papyrus, but.. he would never leave his brother, especially not now.  Never like this.  Of course, Paps will understand if his S/O wants to leave without him, but.. they actually choose to stay.  After all, he stuck by them even when he didn’t believe them, so the S/O decides to try to smooth things over between the aliens and the monsters and becomes the ambassador.  And yes, ultimately, Sans and Papy mend the rift.  The two brothers are too co-dependent on each other to be apart for that long.  

[resmarted]

we are in some of the same college courses, one being a stadium size where there’s way too many students to count and it’s all lecture and no discussion, and then there’s another one where it’s only a handful of us, but everyone is really annoying. we are both quiet for the most part and keep low profiles while everyone else trips all over themselves to reveal how much they do and do not know, what their strong opinions are, and they overuse the word society to the point of completely misusing it altogether. what they don’t know about us and what we don’t even know about each other yet is that we are from different worlds - literally. we are interdimensional travelers and we came from parallel earths where lots of things are the same as this one, but everything is just slightly different. in mine ketchup is purple and the beatles are still alive, still touring and as popular as ever. in our worlds the ability to travel to alternate versions of earth has been available to the public for years, but here we must keep our heads down and not disrupt the order of things as they are in this primitive reality. there are rules that apply to us that everyone abides by, to stay anonymous and to keep your higher knowledge to yourself, because the people of this earth have the free will to stay shielded from the unknown and kept away from truths that would otherwise drive them to insanity. our worlds are more evolved and while similar, still different in small technical ways. we both live in similarly ruled governments, hillary got elected in both of our planes, and kylie sells candy flavored vape pens instead of lipstick and she snaps videos of her personalized diamond encrusted vape pens each fully charged and organized by flavor. most people where we’re from travel here to help or for fun or to be in awe of how stupid everything is, sort of like to become more grateful in a way, because common earth is so sad compared to the ones we have seen. people can usually tell something is a little off about us, but eccentricities are normal in college so it doesn’t do much to cause alarm. it isn’t until you speak up in class one day that my own gaze is lifted and i see the flags being raised all around you. somebody tries to make a point about time, and humans of this earth are all just big dumb babies anyway so it’s not even worth engaging in debate on most days, but on this particular day i hear you let out the most exasperated sigh and it’s the first time anyone in class has ever heard you make a noise. you launch into this rant where you say things like think about it, why would they be geoengineering the weather all the time, using all this time and money and resources, just to put manmade tornadoes into the sky? you think that’s all just for research? the professor is too stunned to respond, we all are. nobody was even listening to this lecture, even i was zoned out, and here you are suddenly waking up the room and everyone is alive now. nobody seems to know what to do or say and i hear myself speak before i realize i’m chiming in with, “she’s right!” and i walk to the board to start drawing a mathematical geometry type thang like, it’s all about perception. what we know to be the sky is actually just a perceived concept of what the sky is as mankind has discovered thus far. if we just change our perception with a mere 90 degree angle, the sky becomes the wall. if the sky is the wall and we are limited by gravity to get to it, then how do we get to the other side of the wall and what is beyond it? and more importantly, does that phrase the sky is the limit apply to a more sinister meaning if the sky is truly just a wall between us and a more advanced- and you stop me before i go to far and stand up shouting, “exactly!” the one jerk looks at us both and goes, so what you’re saying is they’re manufacturing tornadoes into the sky to open portals to another dimension? we both sigh a loud yes like finally, now you geeks are starting to get it. i remind him that the sun he knows isn’t just the sun, it’s one of many, many suns and that there are many other planets orbiting each of them. so if there are many suns, and many galaxies, then why wouldn’t there also be many dimensions? you come to the board and draw a figure of the sky as a wall and a tornado connecting to the earth and pushing through the other side. somebody in the back who isn’t rolling his eyes but actually in awe shouts out an emphatic, it’s like dorothy, dude! and we both shout yes! even dorothy was sent to another dimension through a twister, all warps in the time-space continuum look like tornadoes, the whirlpool effect has everything to do with- and then i am the one stopping you this time. what she’s saying is that if you had access to the money and technology it takes to make synthetic weather, why wouldn’t you try to break through the wall? this is the first time either of us has spoken a word all semester. the professor is looking at us now like she’s a character in a bad movie and is just like uhhh ok, very nice. now back to the aztecs and quantitative social science 101. after class you tell me that was really close back there, you could get reprimanded by the council for that. i laugh at you like bish wut? and say i was only trying to cover for you cause it was actually your ass that was about to be on the line. you tell me you could hold your own just fine and we exchange information on which planes we are from and how we got here, what’s our story, why we came, and i tell you i spotted your insignia pinned onto your bookbag amongst all the other buttons and punk bands, and that you seem to be adjusting to this world rather nicely. then we exchange numbers on our primitive iphone 900s, and there is a strict policy against falling in love during transcendence, but surely that doesn’t apply to you and i. we can both see with all three of our eyes, it’s not like the consent isn’t legitimate? i drive you to your earth home in the suburbs and we listen to everyday chemistry, the now infamous beatles album that was robbed from my earth and brought back to this one, and i tell you how i know that guy and how much trouble he got into over that tape, and how it was a good thing everyone on reddit accused it of just being a mashup and written off as fiction because otherwise- and you stop me again but this time it’s to make out, and oh fuck it, let’s do it anyway. let’s fall in love over and over again in every world we can find, no matter how forbidden it may be, cause what are rules anyway?