#idle speculation

[manogirl]

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about this, and I want to make it clear that I feel TERRIBLE for Chimon and I hope he's okay and getting better and taking care, and I'm sad for him and Perth, but um, are they recasting him in Perfect10 Liners? Or are they gonna recast both roles?

Perth and Chimon had both said in the past that when P'Aof asked them to do Dangerous Romance, they only agreed because it was each other; they felt comfortable enough with each other but no one else. There's always the possibility that it's a load of hooey, because well, duh. Media and stuff, and changing minds and so on.

IF THEY DO RECAST JUST CHIMON, WHO? Some thoughts, and honestly my brain keeps yelling Fluke Jee, Fluke Jee. But Perth and Fluke together is almost like, uh, too much gorgeous together. I honestly can't think of another GMMTV guy that feels like it's a fit. So then are they headhunting other BL guys? Hmmmm.

IF THEY RECAST BOTH, WHO? Oh baby oh baby can it be BounPrem? I mean no it probably won't be, especially if they do intend to shoot Revamp this year. And so many of the other pairs who are in We Are are ALSO in Perfect10 Liners, and then the other big pairs are shooting other shows in this second half of 2024, so who does it leave? MarcPoon would be great, since they have CRUMBS in We Are, but Poon is already shooting as part of Book's character's friend group.

[duhragonball]

The Future of Dragon Ball

I was going to play Mega Man X5 tonight, but it's acting kind of buggy and I'm not in a mood to try to troubleshoot my copy of Legacy Collection 2, so I'll write about Dragon Ball instead. Specifically, what happens next?

Let me make this clear up front: I don't actually know the answer to this. I'm not an "insider" claiming to have "leaked" information. All I want to do is discuss the possibilities, and the culture of speculation that seems to persist in the fandom.

I tend to call this "modern" era of the Dragon Ball franchise a "renaissance", because very little official material came out between 1998 and 2012, and then after Battle of Gods ushered in this new wave of Dragon Ball movies, TV episodes, web series, and comics. I've been covering this all year in the #2023dbapocryphaliveblog, in case you're new to this blog, and while much of it hasn't been very good, there were a lot of bright spots. Battle of Gods, Broly, and Super Hero were classics, the Tournament of Power basically saved and otherwise lackluster Dragon Ball Super anime, and the Granolah Saga in the DBS manga is a fun read with a great cliffhanger.

However, things have slowed down a lot this year. The Granolah Saga ended and the manga began a long, long adaptation of the Super Hero film. There was some hype about a new Tenkaichi Budokai video game, but there's been no word on when it'll come out what we can expect to see. I get the sense that the fans are champing at the bit for some big announcement, like a new movie or anime series, but it hasn't happened.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but back in my day you just had to wait and see, and accept the possibility that you may never get what you were hoping for. The vibe I get from DBTwitter is that people think they can somehow manifest a new animation through sheer force of will. News will spread of some Toei panel and fans will cling to the hope that there must be some big Dragon Ball announcement, and it must be nothing less than a teaser trailer for Xenoverse 3, a DBZ remake, and release dates for the next five movies. Then the panel will come and go, and it just ends up being a fluff PR thing where a spokesperson says "Dragon Ball is very fun and Goku is cool." and that's it. And all the fans get upset until the next panel, where they put their clown makeup on all over again.

"No, this can't be happening. Dragon Ball 2uper is real..."

When I was still new to the fandom, I always wondered how Dragon Ball AF could be such a potent fantasy for so long. But now I've lived through the Dragon Ball Super era, and seen fans chasing similar dreams. People have been waiting for Xenoverse 3 for over six years. They've been expecting "Dragon Ball Super II" ever since Dragon Ball Super I ended five years ago. And I'd say it's a pipe dream, except fans held out hope for Tenkaichi 4 since 2010, and it looks like we're actually going to get that one? You never can tell with this franchise. My kneejerk reaction to Dragon Ball Magic is to dismiss it as fake, but I can't be completely sure.

The weird thing is that 2uper, Magic, and XV3 have been hyped up during a boom period for the franchise. Dragon Ball Super had a 131 episode run, followed by two feature films. It's still going, but people want 2uper to animate the Moro Saga. People want a new web anime, but there's already a web anime. Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been running since 2018 and it's still going. Xenoverse 2 is still releasing DLC packs. I recognize that some of this content isn't what everyone wanted, but it's weird how fans are demanding new projects before the old ones have run their course. At least when AF became a legend, there weren't any official works to compete for its attention.

It occurs to me that maybe this is just part of the fan culture, and every so often fans will collectively agree on some imaginary premise and Goncharov their own series. Maybe that's what AF was then, and what Magic is today. They're not hoaxes, but rather some sort of mutually-agreed-upon daydream. I'm not sure I get it, but it is what it is.

Anyway, my position has always been that Dragon Ball has ended before and can end again, so there's no reason to assume that there will be some new anime or movie or video game to look forward to. I watched Super Hero fully believing that this could be the last one, even though the box office numbers suggest that a sequel is probably inevitable. But nothing is guaranteed. Dragon Ball GT started strong in the ratings, only to get canceled about a year later.

And yet, there seems to be some kind of guarantee, because of this guy:

I think there are a lot of fans who believe that Dragon Ball Super has a lot of loose ends to tidy up, and the series can't end until Goku and Vegeta surpass Jiren, Beerus, Whis, and Orange Piccolo. And maybe this is true, but I'm not so sure. But Black Frieza isn't just a loose end. This seems like a pretty big honkin' deal, and it would be pretty weak if they wrapped things up without some kind of reckoning here. Frieza's the main villain of Dragon Ball Super now, and in his most recent appearance he revealed he can defeat Goku and Vegeta with frightening ease. And yet, he spared them. Why?

So that seems like the obvious direction going into 2024. This is why fans are so burned out on the manga this year, because they know a Black Frieza arc is coming, but they have to wait for Toyotaro to retell Super Hero before we can even find out when it's happening.

My guess is that Toei/Shueisha decides to tease this out even longer. We get to chapter 100 of the manga and it starts some bullshit arc about Goten and Trunks playing superhero park rangers on 17's island. Or... that dumb android from the Moro Saga comes back and they jerk around with that guy for 18 chapters. They'll get to Black Frieza eventually, but I suspect that they're holding off until they can set up a Black Frieza movie. Then the manga can just adapt that movie and everything gets paid off around the same time.

Either way, I'm a little skeptical about it just being Goku and Vegeta training to beat Black Frieza. I keep coming back to how he let them live at the end of the Granolah arc. Ostensibly, he just wanted to frighten them, and make it clear that he no longer sees them as a threat. But maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe Frieza needs them alive for some reason. Like he plans to use them to achieve some goal, or he needs their help to stop some even greater menace that we haven't seen yet.

Maybe that's what Frieza was talking about at the end of the Broly movie when he said he wanted "one other". I kind of thought he meant to use Broly as an ally against Goku and Vegeta, but maybe he's planning a campaign against some other guy, and he sees Broly as a potential resource. And maybe that's why he spared Goku and Vegeta on Planet Cereal. If he kills them, he might not be able to find Broly when the time comes. Or maybe he just needs all three Saiyans, so he has to pull his punches.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this, and it just turns out that Black Frieza ends with a manga arc where Goku turns "Ultra Instinct (Defined) (Remastered)" and wins a paint-by-numbers battle. Or Roshi beats Black Frieza, because that sounds like something Toyotaro would do.

So what would happen after Black Frieza? See, that's where I wonder about the future of the franchise, because so much work has gone into mining past arcs. The first DBS movie was about bringing back Broly, Bardock, and Gogeta. The second movie brought back the Red Ribbon Army, the androids, and Cell. Frieza will almost certainly get another turn, and then what? What's left?

I mean, let's break this down by the major antagonists we've had so far.

Pilaf Saga. The Pilaf gang are still living in Bulma's house, apparently, so that comic relief bit from Battle of Gods shows no signs of ending.

Red Ribbon Army. DBS Super Hero brought them back and opened some interesting doors for future Red Ribbon stories. It's hard to imagine the Army making another comeback since Cell Max destroyed their secret base and all their top leaders were killed. But the Red Pharmaceutical Company still exists and someone must have taken over after Magenta's death.

Tien Shinhan. Tien never left, and while I'd be down for a Tien-centric saga, it seems pretty unlikely after all these years. At best, he gets a prominent role in a story featuring some more important player.

King Piccolo/Piccolo Junior. Piccolo never left either, and now he's got his own movie in Super Hero.

Saiyans Saga. Vegeta never left, and DBS: Broly pretty much covered the idea of "here are some new Saiyans we didn't know about before."

Frieza Saga. Resurrection F, Tournament of Power, DBS: Broly, this upcoming Black Frieza thing, I think this has been covered.

Androids/Cell Saga. 17 and 18 never left, and the idea of more androids and a new Cell was already covered in Super Hero.

Majin Buu. It's been 27 years and no one seems to want to do anything with this guy. Maybe 2025 is the year when Akira Toriyama finally does some big Buu story to justify keeping him around this whole time.

Zamasu. I mean, the dude got erased, so it'd be pretty bullshit to bring him back. Then again, it was pretty bullshit of Toriyama to create this idea in the first place, so I can't rule it out. "Whoops, more Zamasu" might be the storyline that would force me to quit the Dragon Ball fandom for good.

Tournament of Power. I mean, they could do another Tournament of Power for funsies, but it probably wouldn't live up to the spectacle or the novelty of the original. More likely, I could see some adventures featuring prominent characters from the event, like Jiren, Hit, the U6 Saiyans, etc.

Moro. I did not enjoy the Moro arc much at all, so it kind of bums me out when people suggest that Toei should do an anime adaptation of it. To me, that would be just as big a waste of time as the DBS manga doing the Super Hero adaptation that's going on right now, but it would be even worse because Moro kind of sucks. In the same vein, doing stories that follow up on the Moro arc would be difficult because you'd have to refer back to the Moro arc, which only appeared in the manga, which not everyone read. So it's this difficult spot where you'd have to animate the Moro arc first, just to do a new arc about Merus and Jaco or whatever. It's probably not worth it.

Other Z Movies and GT: The success of DBS: Broly sort of opens the door for similar reboots of guys like Cooler, Turles, Janemba, Baby, etc. But honestly, this seems pretty far-fetched to me. Broly was a much, much bigger star than any of those other characters, so what worked for Broly isn't necessarily a road map for a guy like Bojack or Omega Shenron.

Looking over all of this, I kind of wonder what's left to do. Maybe something with Majin Buu, or the big shots from the Tournament of Power, and after that, I think they'll have used up all the viable nostalgia. After that, Dragon Ball will probably have to come up with something brand new, which is kind of a dicey proposition, because they've been hit-or-miss with that. Granolah and Tournament of Power were good, Moro and Zamasu were bad, so when I hear they're doing something all-new, I get kind of nervous.

But in the end, I don't know what will happen, which brings us back around to where I started. We'll just have to see what shakes out.

[lhs3020b]

Was Vashti a Morlock ... ?

Today, I'm considering the possibility that EM Forster's "The Machine Stops" is actually set in the same world as Wells's "The Time Machine".

Consider.

Both stories posit deep-future worlds that have experienced social change we would find disorienting. Both have canonical subterranean societies. Both also have a surface-dwelling population who are isolated from the undergrounders, and relations seem to have a hostile edge. The Time Traveller asserts that Morlocks predate on the Eloi; meanwhile, according to Kuno, the Machine will directly-attack any surface dweller who gets too close.

Of course, this idea leads to the amusing conclusion that Vashti and Kuno are actually Morlocks - though, Vashti is described as being short and very pale, which actually does (slightly) fit with what little we see of the Morlocks in "Time Machine". (Neither she nor Kuno are described as being furry, but on the other hand, neither of them is described as not being furry either, so make of that what you will!)

The inconsistencies are that Vashti's world is described as brightly-lit, at least up until the end - though, it is notable that she turns the lights off when she's on the videophone thing to Kuno, and also there is my speculation that Morlock eyes actually work in what we'd consider the infrared. Maybe it's brightly-lit to Vashti, but it wouldn't be to us. (A tangential speculation, in this case, is to wonder whether the shift to seeing in the infrared happened naturally, or whether it was deliberately-engineered at some point - perhaps as a cost-saving measure for lightbulbs or something. There is more-than-a-suggestion in "The Machine Stops" that the population are subject to a program of eugenics, though its intentions are ones we would find surprising even for eugenicism.) The other major inconsistency is that the Time Traveller never sees any airships - that said though, perhaps he's simply in an area which isn't under any Machine-regulated flightpaths, so in that scenario, of course he wouldn't, would he?

Also the Time Traveller's 802,701 AD is described as being uncomfortably warm, whereas Vashti and Kuno both consider the aboveground world to be cold and bitter - but, this could simply be an acclimatisation effect? Living underground, Vashti is simply used to it being very warm? Given that the Machine civilisation is subterranean, it could be that we would consider it very warm in their tunnels and pods. After all, temperatures start to rise the deeper you go, as you're getting closer to the mantle (and, ultimately, the Earth's inner core).

Another detail of similarity between the two settings is that the Morlocks' world connects to the surface through apertures that the Time Traveller compares to wells. The old access tunnel that Kuno finds distinctly-reminds me of one of those Morlock "wells", complete with the rung-steps up the inside.

One more possibility is that the Time Traveller arrived some time after the Machine stopped; this would explain both the disrepair of what infrastructure he observes, and also possibly the Eloi-phagy. After all, following the collapse of the Machine civilisation, its survivors are food-insecure! (This, of course, assumes we accept the Time Traveller's interpretation of the Morlocks as cannibals; as I've discussed before, I'm not convinced of that.)

The one remaining detail that doesn't quite fit is that the air of the aboveground world of the Machine is apparently somehow toxic, and the Time Traveller has no difficulty breathing. But perhaps the toxicity is overstated, and Vashti and Kuno are simply too used to a highly-filtered gas mix? There is also some evidence in the text that the Machine, or its agents in whatever government their civilisation has, have been lying about just how toxic and dangerous the surface world is. Kuno's experience proves that some sort of human life is still possible up there, and indeed some passages imply that he may have eventually been able to adapt to the outer air in time.

In fact, the narrative may hint at an alternative explanation for the "toxic" air. When Kuno tries to open the pneumatic plug at the top of the shaft, he and the plug are apparently blown clear of the shaft, popped out like a cork from a bottle. And, the air from the shaft is at such a flow-rate that it's able to keep his respirator floating aloft above it for several hours. It's not clear why exactly the catacombs were designed like this, but it does seem clear that the air pressure inside is much higher than out on the surface of the Earth.

When Machine-denizens emerge onto the surface and feel ill, are they actually being poisoned, or are they experiencing a form of altitude sickness? One that perhaps the respirators mitigate by supplying extra oxygen? Perhaps the cause for the collapses Machine-people apprarently suffer on the surface isn't chemical toxicity, but rather something like a pulmonary embolism caused by a sudden change in air pressure? Perhaps if they had time to acclimatise more gently, they might be fine.

Anyway, all of this is far from proven, but it's an entertaining scenario nonetheless.

[vicshush]

Someone may have already posited this, but I think it would be very funny if one of the guests suddenly got up and left the table, right as their character is about to do something, and Erika Ishii takes their chair, and the character is revealed to be Yu, the unseelie changeling.

I don't think it necessarily makes sense with the current batch of guest players' characters, but it would be a neat "Did you forget about me? Did you think we'd forget about you, and what you did to our malleus key?" dramatic curveball.

[danieldrivesfast]

Why do you think its his last season?

Because there's nowhere for Daniel to go.

VCARB isn't giving him a car that can consistently perform how he needs it to perform, especially when they're having him do the testing/researching. It doesn't look good to shareholders that your star driver is where he is, because shareholders don't care about anything other than the bottom line.

I have zero doubt that if he was given a spin in the RB20 he could out-pace Checo. But RBR re-signed Checo, for performance or sponsors, I won't get into it. Even if there are performance clauses in Checo's contract, they're not going to kick in until long after this season. By that time, it's too late for Daniel. ETA: Unless it's a clause that permits a swap to VCARB, but that would need to be this season, and that's highly unlikely with Daniel's record.

Unless something wild happens, and, to be fair, it could, the writing is all over the wall. Like it or not, they have Lawson and Hadjar in the wings. (Personally, I'm team Isack.) I feel like if it wasn't Honda-owned Yuki in the other seat, we'd have Daniel and Liam/Isack in there, but hands are tied.

Daniel was expected to come in, wipe the floor with Yuki, and lead the midfield. He isn't. I'm not saying that's fair or not and that the car could even do it, it doesn't matter. We know shareholders are meddling and we know what space is and isn't available. It's all business.

Personally, in my fantasy, Merc uses Daniel as a stand-in while Kimi gets a year or two in a Williams. But that's a pipe dream. I think Red Bull/Visa/CashApp/etc have him tied up with sponsor clauses and money to the point it's a Red Bull sponsored seat or nothing - and I guess if anything could give him a seat next year, it's also that. Maybe he'll just do PR/SIM, maybe he'll do some other form of racing, who knows?

My only concern is that Daniel is in a good place mentally and is okay with whatever situation he finds himself in. I think he understands this all has been a bonus round, and even if he's going out, he's going out swinging.

Unlike the "sources," I will openly say this is only my thoughts based on what actual people from the team have said and vibes. 😂

[king-of-men]

Prediction market thought

Hey hold up a minute, are prediction markets going to work correctly in this new interest-rate environment? If I think there's a 99% chance of X, where the contract resolves in a year, and the price is currently at 0.97 - then even if I'm correct I'll make more expected money with a one-year Treasury.

Of course the Correct solution is to make the payout for one-year bets, into percentages of a bond payout rather than of the original dollar; but that's not how they're implemented currently. Intuitively it seems that rational market actors should never drive the prices to the extremes, in this case, at least not for reasonably long-run markets. Of course prediction markets may not be running on people's serious-investment money anyway. Nonetheless, is it possible their growth was an artifact of the long time we spent close to zero real interest rates?

[esters-notepad]

What kind of writing was on the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments? Moses probably lived in the 13th century BC, but the Hebrew alphabet is much younger than that. Even its precursor, the Phoenician alphabet, only appears in the 11th century BC.

On the other hand, Moses was a prince of Egypt, raised at the Pharao's court. The Egyptians had a writing system since 3200 BC, and Moses was probably taught how to read. I think God would have used the kind of writing Moses already knew.

Therefore, I propose that the original Ten Commandments were written with hieroglyphs.

[lhs3020b]

A small detail that's always nagged me about the derelict Reaper in ME2: while its interior is spooky AF, I've never felt that it quite matches Benezia's description of Sovereign's interior from ME1.

While I forget the exact quote, she says something to effect of "rooms with oddly-angled walls" or something like that. While the interior of the derelict in ME2 is eerie and Geigeresque and quite creepy, nonetheless the angles all seem fairly regular to me? While the interior is claustrophobic, it also has a clear directionality on all the tunnels that we see, and all the components we see look like they go somewhere, all of them are plugged into something or seem to have some function (even if it's not immediately obvious what that function might be). The disorienting, dizzying, borderline-non-Euclidean sense that Benezia described just ... isn't really there?

I suppose the key difference is that Sovereign was an active, functioning Reaper. It's plausible, I think that its guests directed into compartments or chambers that it had chosen for them. While we have no evidence that Reapers can internally remodel themselves, we have no evidence that they can't, either, and perhaps that's exactly what Sovereign did? Given that part of its modus operandi was manipulation, it would make sense for it to create internal environments that promote confusion and suggestibility (presumably as a way of speeding up or amplifying the indoctrination process).

Meanwhile, the derelict is heavily-damaged - it's quite plausible, I suppose, that Cerberus accessed a part of the Reaper that was never meant to be seen by organics. In fact, given that the corridors feed through to its mass effect core, I suppose this is quite likely, all considered?

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

U.S. Army Airborne Snipers in WWII

In my admittedly not especially extensive research, I have only seen one image (above) indicating that the US Airborne used M1903A4 sniper rifles in WWII, in Bill Rentz’s book Geronimo! 

The above, as its caption indicates, shows a GI with the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne division holding an M1903A4 in North Africa, presumably in advance of jumping into either Sicily or Salerno in 1943.

As far as I can tell the M1903A4 has a mixed reputation; few really want to come right out and say that it was terrible but people make a lot of interesting faces trying to describe its effectiveness. Some people insist it’s a legend like everything else the U.S. cranks out of its armories. 

There seems to be unanimous agreement that the Weaver 330C scope, designated the M73B1 for military use, was not very good for field use as it was fragile and not waterproof.

I have one piece of anecdotal evidence that would by no means prove admissible in court but that nevertheless colors my feelings about this rifle. A friend with whom I used to re-enact had one of the Gibbs M1903A4s for a while and at one event he “took a hit” and in the process of falling to the ground holding said rifle, the reticle in the scope broke away. Granted, the earlier replica scopes they used on those were notoriously fragile even for Weaver style scopes and I am not sure whether he had the earlier or later model scope on that rifle. But I have handled other scopes of that era of comparable quality and they do not inspire tremendous confidence.

As other points of anecdotal data, I have myself felt the shock of an opening parachute and the impact of a comparatively light landing. Static-line jumping of the WWII (and modern) variety notoriously involves much harder landings; broken legs prove(d) a common injury.

So I have a hard time imagining that a 1940s scope like the Weaver 330 could handle the forces involved in jumping out of an airplane. Granted, the Enfield No. 4 Mk I (T) that the British used was issued en masse to the Airborne and survived, but the scope on that thing was built like a tank and--critically--we have plenty of evidence of that rifle’s use among the British Airborne. The M1903A4 does not appear with that kind of regularity in the records I’ve seen related to the U.S.

All that’s to say, I wonder how many jumps the above rifle survived.

But also, as this guy had the foresight to tote an M1A1 Carbine for backup, I am left with the tantalizing albeit unobtainable object of an M1903A4 with an M1A1 Carbine as an accessory

[ariadne-mouse]

I know I made a comment about M9 animated series and that if there's new Essek content I'm not going to be normal about it, but if Essek actually shows up in C3 in the next bit here (if BH need to go to Aeor and M9 have found their way to the centralized allies camp with Keyleth, best tour guides would be Caleb or Essek, the chances are small but do exist) I am absolutely not going to be normal about that either. You're all in danger

[orcelito]

ok forreal. in trigun 98, vash singing Rem's song alone while looking at the stars & then Meryl joining in as she goes to sit with him... means So Much to me...

they are Everything...

[pearlescentpearl]

We’re all familiar with the Fëanorion Time Travels Before The Oath, Tries To Change Things By Not Taking The Oath plot idea, right? Generally filled with the angst of How Many Of My Brothers Can I Convince Not To.

I often find this idea to be very sad, that not all of them can be saved. That they are overwhelmed with the enormity of the task of saving something, anything of their family from their grisly fate all by themselves.

So imagine with me, if you will, the comedy of errors of all seven Fëanorions time traveling and not knowing the others have time traveled. They are all running around in different directions like fluttering moths trying to be better people for the sake of love for each other, yet they can’t help but be incredibly suspicious of each other bc a. Future Crimes and b. Why Are You Being Weird.

Does this culminate in all seven of them trying to heist the silmarils out of Formenos before Melkor gets there only to catch each other in a seven way spiderman pointing meme?

I would like to think so.

[trek-tracks]

The funny thing is, I think the Kobayashi Maru is a very odd test, psychologically, depending on what it’s actually trying to determine. It changes over time.

Particularly after it’s been around for a while, you know it’s unwinnable going into it. Not only does that promote a sense of fatalism, but it paradoxically absolves the participant of any responsibility. If you can’t win, then you can rest secure that it wasn’t your fault, your choices didn’t matter, and the system was rigged against you. It’s not an especially good lesson to teach, though I suppose it does get you ready for evil Starfleet admirals and bureaucracy.

In a way, what Kirk did was more than change the conditions of the test for himself; by opening up the possibility of winning, he changed the psychological value of the test for everyone who came after him.

This raises the question: what is the Kobayashi Maru test really trying to measure, and what kind of captain is Starfleet really looking for? Someone who will accept an unwinnable situation with grace, or someone who knows the situation can’t be won, but fights anyway?

…or, possibly, someone who can change the parameters of a situation before it even happens?

[lhs3020b]

At the risk of digging up old issues - no, I will never not be salty about the ME3 endings! it's gonna go on my tombstone, dammit! - I think there's another reason to be sceptical about a lot of what the Catalyst says. It claims the Reapers only target high-tech species - leaving aside the rather-weird morality of all this (just leaving that aside! just! aside!), there's at least some evidence from the rest of the trilogy that this simply isn't true.

In ME1, we're told Ilos has almost no animal life left, and it's clear that this happened recently (in the geological sense). Then In ME2, there are all the ruined garden worlds that you find, like Aphras above. Aphras is particularly-notable as it apparently had a sapient species who were in their version of the Bronze Age when bad, bad, bad, no-good things happened to them. While we don't quite have a knock-out blow linking this directly to the Reapers, the MO matches their behaviour (impact craters centred on population centres, etc.) and, well, it's not actually like there are that many societies out there with the technology required to do something like this. And we're told, canonically, that what happened on Aphras was clearly not a natural event (asteroids don't target cities, disaster movies aside).

While we're not told a specific date for the Aphras extinction, it's implied that it wasn't recent, and there's no evidence to link any of the "modern" species to it, or any "modern" events either. The planet doesn't appear to have been collateral damage during either the Rachni War or the Krogan Rebellion.

So if we've eliminated all of the usual suspects, who are we left with ... ? There aren't a lot of choices, are they? Could it be ... was the Catalyst lying?

[knights-unwelcommentary]

I've got the suspicion that Vriska's lusus was a mutant

I don't think it's normal for lusus naturae to exclusively eat trolls considering they're symbiotic to them and that troll blood tastes really bad. Maybe they'd be willing to eat trolls if the opportunity or need arises but to have them be the entire diet of a whole species of giant spiders? Either the spiders would have to be exterminated or trolls would go extinct pretty fast

[toadslug]

Some doodles of Specs being salty <3