#including plant independents apparently

[yayee-pspsps]

Trimax au where the twins live with wolfwood and livio at the orphanage.

[a-court-of-lust-and-stardust]

Elain represents a kind of femininity I wish I had. It’s so disheartening coming across posts that say she’s too boring or spends too much time in her garden or in the kitchen cooking and baking, as if there’s something wrong with that. As if she's lesser because of it.

Elain finds joy in things that society would consider traditionally feminine. What’s wrong with that? What is so wrong with her planting flowers and creating something beautiful that makes her happy? What is wrong with her trying out new recipes and making delicious food for her friends and family? What is so wrong with her being a more quiet and peaceful presence amongst her loved ones?

Despite being exposed to so many horrors and having her previous life ripped from her in an instant, Elain hasn’t lost what makes her…her. She’s quiet. Soft. A calming presence. A person who finds beauty in simplicity in an extremely complex world.

This does not make her pathetic and it sure as hell does not make her weak. I, for one, am excited to see where her story goes because I want her to prove everyone wrong, the book characters included. To be honest, I feel like she already should've proven people wrong when she killed the King of Hybern, but apparently she's not tough enough. Not mentally or emotionally strong enough to handle tragedy and darkness.

It seems like so many people have written her off because she doesn't fit the "strong, independent woman" framework, which I think is quite silly and truly insulting. Women can be strong, independent, and secure, and still enjoy gentle activities. Elain has already shown that she can be a strong woman when she needs to be, and a soft woman when she chooses to be.

[shantalangel]

Since new canon information is here, I decided to make a list of all non-human and semi-human species of creatures that are currently present in Trigun Stampede. There are surprisingly many of them here; much more than in manga! Which is very intriguing, because it will certainly create new story arcs.

1) I called it Proto-Angel for clarity; on the art it is simply named "Plant". The mummy of a certain humanoid alien, which humans found during excavations on Earth – before Gunsmoke. For a long time they could not understand who it was and whose flesh it was, then they decided to resurrect it, but succeeded only by mixing it's DNA with human DNA.

2) And thus Plants were created. One of the first experimental ones had the same type of power as Vash - the opposite of most Plants, sucking energy from the surrounding world rather than producing it, - and with its help destroyed the laboratory of the creators (maybe it was Tesla? It’s not for nothing that her and Vash’s files on the ship were in the same folder). Most Plants are clones of each other. A small percentage are born by breeding (both subtypes with each other).

For convenience or some specific purposes, two types of Plants were created:

- Dependent: female humanoids living in water or some liquid (since the concept art of Rem is shown on the same slide with them, I now wonder if it was her DNA that was used...), playing the role of a bioprinter, energy source and gravity generator, but unable to live without connections to certain equipment (as far as I remember, they need some kind of artificial regulation of the energy supply)

- Independent: ground-based and autonomous, wielding bio-weapons of enormous power (maybe everyone has them or only specific individuals. In manga, according to Nai, Tesla did not have weapon, but in both manga and anime her hand was held in a separate capsule, while Independent’ weapons are generated from the hand). And capable of merging both with Independent and Dependent; if that one being is not stronger than the other and their consciousnesses do not conflict. Both sexes; I think the Proto-Angel was asexual, and the sex of Plant is determined by female and male human genes - this would explain why in the first subtype there are only women, while in the second are both.

3) Conrad decided to create modified humans who would find it easier to survive on Gunsmoke. How exactly he wanted to do it is unclear - given that Plants may have many of their unique characteristic because their body always connected to an alternative dimension through the Gate; where is their energy source and their mind lives in the form of the Core. Conrad began to somehow crossbreed humans with Plants. So, it’s already the formula of triple hybrid: (Proto-Angel + human DNA) + human.

The result was Nicholas, Livio, Monev (Rollo), E.G. Mine (the guy in bandages from 3 episodes); other test subjects did not survive. How far this four are from humans and how closer to Plants, with what and how they were modified, is still unclear. Can they do something superhuman like Elendira in the next experiment with hybrids is also a very intriguing question. But at least the healing blue liquid has the same glow as Plants.

4) But the first experiments didn’t turn human into Independent Plant, so Conrad started others. Judging by his words from episode 10, he began to genetically modify not children, but human embryos, resulting in Elendira. In the context of this process cloning and Nai’s help are mentioned, but who is whose clone and a genetic relative is not yet clear. Based on Elendira's apparently implanted eye, maybe this time humans were transplanted with Plant's entire organ - like in the old anime Vash's arm was transplanted to Legato and from it he received all his abilities, - and such a hybrid became closer to the Independents than to humans (including bio-weapons). Or that was some kind of attempt to create a human embryo through a sisters’ “bioprinter”: that is, they seem to be human, but at the same time human genes are Plant cells converted into them.

What is the fundamental difference between such hybrids from №4 and №5, the Independents and Nai’s future biological children is not yet clear to me. Perhaps new hybrids are weaker in terms of abilities, although they also have bio-weapons (Elendira’s nails). Whether hybrids can grow together into a single being and whether they have Cores in another dimension is a very interesting question.

5) In the same room with Elendira are several capsules with other newborn cubs of indeterminate gender, similar in appearance to little sisters, but with strange fur or feathers on their arms and legs. After the art below, I had a guess that these are the pilots of Gray 9 Lives.

Gray in this anime is a giant robot the size of a mountain, inside of which are spheres with control devices and certain creatures connected to them, whom are literally built into it without the possibility of escape. On the art below, the pilots clearly resemble these babies because they have Plant's petal appendages on their heads.

And here, in the center of a small city, apparently lies the same sphere, around which people built a fence and carefully covered it with a tent. The light inside is exactly the same as Plants’ one.

In other concept art, though, the pilots look completely different and completely mysterious, because they are not even close to any of the creatures on this long list. These are not humans, and not Plants, and probably not even mutants (although in manga there were also very strange creatures - the golem servant of Legato, the original Gray and one mercenary with a face of the undead and big tusks from his chin). What is this even, who was it born from?!

6) Nai and sisters’ biological children. How they might differ from other Plants, and hybrids from №4, and why he even needed this whole “ritual”, I have no idea.

7) And, finally, Legato - he is a separate interesting person.

Manga: a completely inhuman long narrow tongue, the ability to control the flesh (but not the mind) and the processes of many living organisms at the same time (including animals and dying - cut in half Nai after July), as well as in his own body (judging by the battle with Vash in at the end of the manga, he could even heal himself, or at least improve body characteristics), and even resurrect the dead (the head of the maniac who kept him in slavery; the murdered Elendira). I very much doubt that an ordinary human would have any possibility to do this, even with some special gadget with wires. Legato's connection is essentially a weaker version of the Plants' merge. Not to mention control over Nai (in the fortress, when he was a slave - did not allow to kill himself with other people) and Vash, whom he restrained for 7 months in a row. Plus, in one art, Legato has huge black claws on his hand.

Old anime: Vash's arm was transplanted to him, and he received all his abilities from it. It’s just gorgeous when Plants just merge with humans like that, even without consequences. 

New anime: beside controlling others gained new ability - to crush giant parts of mechanisms like tin cans, on a very big distance. Also, as far as I remember, only in Stampede his hands are completely covered with gloves.

His child concept art, in addition to another version of the gadget, has some interesting device on those eye that is always covered with bangs.

Another interesting art, where he is holding some kind of complex automaton. Apparently, an analogue of those controlled by Leonoff.

[tomorrowusa]

Ukrainian drones blew up a large Russian arms depot west of Moscow. The blast was large enough to have been detected by earthquake sensors.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a large Russian weapons depot caused a blast that was picked up by earthquake monitoring stations, in one of the biggest strikes on Moscow’s military arsenal since the war began. Pro-Russian military bloggers said Ukraine struck an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a historic town more than 300 miles north of Ukraine and about 230 miles west of Moscow. Videos and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame rising high into the night sky and detonations thundering across a lake, in a region not far from the border with Belarus. The strike was part of a broader Ukrainian drone campaign targeting Russian oil refineries, power plants, airfields and military factories, and highlights Kyiv’s enhanced long-range drone capabilities. Earthquake monitoring stations registered what sensors thought was a minor earthquake in the area.

The blast was so big that in the first couple of seconds it appears to be during daytime.

The Kyiv Independent has additional details.

Arms depot in Russia's Tver Oblast built to withstand nuclear explosion heavily damaged by Ukrainian drones

Back in 2018, the Russian Defense Ministry bragged that this facility would be prepared to withstand even a nuclear explosion. Six years later, the claim was proven to be false. According to the SBU, the arsenal stored ballistic missiles, including Iskanders, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery ammunition, and KAB guided bombs. The attack "literally wiped off the face of the earth a large warehouse of the main missile and artillery department of the Russian Defense Ministry," the SBU source said. The construction of the arsenal, controlled by the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, began in 2015 in the town of Toropets, located 480 kilometers north of Ukraine. The construction was part of a 2012 government program set to improve Russia's storage of missiles, ammunition, and explosives. According to Russia's Defense Ministry, the program, worth 90 billion rubles (nearly $980 million), called for 13 modern arms depots to be built. [ ... ] Yet the source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told the Kyiv Independent that a "very powerful detonation" occurred, and the affected area was 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide. NASA satellites also recorded a surge in thermal activity in Tver Oblast, where the 107th arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate is located. "The arsenal seems to have been built correctly, with bunkered storage facilities that can hold up to 240 tons of ammunition each," Serhiy Zgurets, military expert and CEO of the Ukrainian media Defense Express, told the Kyiv Independent.

As Joe Biden might put it, this is "a big fucking deal". Months worth of ammunition, missiles, and other ordnance which was waiting to be used against Ukrainians has been eliminated.

In total, about 30,000 tons of ammunition were stored in the arsenal in Toropets, which could have been enough to conduct attacks for months, according to the expert. Russia most likely stored 122 mm Grad ammunition, 82 mm mines, and missiles for Buk medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, among other munitions, according to Zgurets.

Ukraine apparently destroyed 30,000 tons (i.e. 30 kilotons) of ammo. For comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the equivalent of 15 kilotons.

Ukrainians are intelligent and resourceful. They are now building drones which cannot be jammed by electronic warfare. They may have used those to get to Toropets.

And it seems a bit weird that Russia would build a gigantic arsenal just 4.51 km (less than 3 miles) from downtown Toropets – a scenic town and local administrative center.

So Ukraine has now penetrated and destroyed an impenetrable arms depot. Previously, Ukraine has stopped unstoppable Kinzhal Russian missiles. This war is unwinnable for Russia but the country continues to humiliate itself with its unmistakable military ineptitude.

[ultraviolet-cello]

Aw man. Today's the last day of @tristampparty and I am surprisingly sad about it. I'll be catching up the days I missed at some point, but I've chucked all that I've written, including today, into a google document and I apparently wrote 7.5k words over the course of episode 6 to today.

That's! A Lot!

I really wanna thank everyone who reblogged and gave me their additional thoughts/commentary, and special thanks to Revenantghost for organizing this whole thing! you do good work for this fandom i am giving u a gold star

With that, here we go into Episode 0 - High Noon at July. CWs for pregnancy discussion and a less detailed than last time but still present analysis of sexual assault and transphobia, marked with a [CW] Ofc, spoilers for Trimax and Tristamp

Cowboy kid Knives is something u can pry from my cold dead hands but it's also,,, I don't watch a lot of westerns, but the way Knives describes it seems like he likes the high action and justice. Which yea. yeah.

A lot of ppl interpret Vash then saying that he doesn't like that sorta stuff as him having always had pacifistic tendencies but I don't really read it that way? I just see him being rather similar to Trimax Vash - chill kid with his own interests and hobbies and Knives being the very oversensitive kid so outshines him initially.

Regardless of version of Trigun (except 98. 98 didn't know shit about knives lmao), Vash and Knives have always started off wanting to coexist and be peaceful; it's just how they reacted to it later that differs. In this case, Knives wants to stand up for his friends and make a peaceful world through that, and Vash is more passive in that he just wants to have faith in humanity.

Not to mention they are kids. Young, idealistic kids. This is pre-Tesla, they don't know the extent of how horrible the world is. The loss of innocence and subsequent breakdowns relating to The Horrors is yet to come.

[CW] Mmmmm they really don't make the pregnancy imagery subtle now do they dfgkjdfjk

I also think there's like - merit in also interpreting Knives as trans. Not Just because i think he's also very trans coded (A lot of his breakdowns and story arcs have reflections in how some trans men overcompensate masculinity in a Bad Way. That's a very small subsection of trans guys btw but I am speaking from experience. I got better tho). Anyway it makes the fact that Knives is disregarding Vash's bodily autonomy very much Worse if you take the male plants are trans analogy into it.

He's so far gone that he's willing to do to Vash what would be the worst thing to be done to him; Violating his body to rebuild and make him a perfect independent ("remind him of biological reality"), physically overpowering him ("taking the aggressor, commonly masculine role in sexual assault") to do what he wants. Disregarding the wants and needs of the Plants ("women +fem-presenting ppl that he originally set out to protect because he knew their experience and wanted to help and still has that trauma from witnessing that trauma")

Ofc that's just a reading of the scene, but I quite like it as a trans guy because that makes a really good villain with trans themes/motifs! I hate him so much (affectionate)

No, no she doesn't. Meryl is making a choice and she's gonna damn well stick to it! She's been given agency and she's gonna spend it in the most eldritch horrific scene that someone on that planet could spend it lmao. Well, no Knives takes most eldritch and horrific. Meryl's second tho

Okay this fucking scene drives me INSANE. This is a memory, clearly, but it's one that's being tampered with. Vash asks Knives if they can get along with humans, and then Knives immediately messes with the memory to make sure that he says that he'll protect Vash no matter what. But that is very clearly not what was originally said, so... What did he say? What was present day Knives so desperate to cut off?

I've talked about the narrative being biased against Knives a lot, but something I haven't talked about is that Knives kinda tries to contribute to that narrative a lot. He wants to seem like he never cared about humans, he wants to seem like he always planned this and was going for justice ever since he was a kid. He tells Vash the Tesla incident was just a small grain of sand, he uses Luida to tell everyone he wants to kill Rem, he's unbearably cruel to Vash to make his point. The only difference is that he wants to be right.

So he doesn't let us see what the kid version of him says, because that would contradict the narrative he's built for himself.

I really wanna give props to Studio Orange here for both the design and way they modelled the wing here, that's a really difficult task when the guy you're putting a wing on has a tight as hell bodysuit. But the anatomy holds up surprisingly well!

Also many people have pointed out that the plant mech looks a lot like Rem, and Knives staring into the face of a Plantish representation of his mother that is created and controlled subconsciously by his brother and saying he was rejected is. It sure is a scene!

ONCE AGAIN. INCREDIBLE EFFECTS. I also would like to once again point out the angelic motifs of Knives' design here.

Also Vash saying this is SO important because Meryl!!! is so important!!! I see a lot of people brush Meryl's space in the story off and it Enrages me because Meryl is one of the most important people to Vash. Aside from our frontline yaoi soldier Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Meryl has one of the most tangible impacts on Vash's character.

When Vash is in his breakdown in Trimax, Meryl is the one to kneel at his side and believe in him; When Vash is having his god awful horrible mindscape time in Tristamp, Meryl does the same. When Meryl is kidnapped in Trimax, Vash instantly jumps out of a window in the chance of getting her back. Vash trusted her enough to fire the ion cannon in the sand steamer episode. He immediately went to July the moment she and Roberto were kidnapped.

Meryl has so much faith in Vash and she's insane for that, but Vash recognizes her and that faith pays off in giving him the strength to carry on. He heard her voice, too :]

Also oh to be floating slowly down to the floor while you're a meter away from a cube with the power of an atom bomb while someone named Millions Knives is summoning millions of knives in front of u. Meryl has guts, man.

And now that Vash has gotten his gun back, he's back to using it as a tonfa! (check I think my analysis of episode 7 for more on that). Watching for the swing blocks, the forearm guard, and thwacking the knife tendrils out of the way

This fight scene has soooo much love and care and detail in it I love it so much actually. From seeing Vash's bullets to all the expressions and beautifully detailed firing, there's so much detail in a quick space that you really have to slow it down to see everything.

Seriously how strong is Knives to be able to have a feasible chance again Vash's prosthetic - and Vash matches him! Also the chomp

Now something that I have the shakiest of theories on is that after summoning The Cube, Vash starts moving in a far more controlled manner, he stands still when reloading, he has his movement flurries and then stands still to aim. Which uh. Studio Orange works in 3d, but those are 2d animation techniques. He's moving like 98 Vash.

There's a lot I admire about Studio Orange's use of 3d (I am a mid-tier 2d artist lmao) but I love love love that they're able to get all these really nice, creative camera shots that would be impractical in 2d (all those overhead shots, for example, have a chance of turning about bad/looking weird in 2d, and puts more strain on animators, but 3d you have the models from every angle already. 3d isn't easier by any means, but it does have its strengths)

Also. how Did Wolfwood get over here, dare I ask. mans climbed a tower in just a few minutes what is Wrong with him

Also a nice detail, Vash usually has perfect trigger discipline, but he falters here against Knives, probably because he's been already shooting, but hey, he's stressed. I'll give him a break.

I also appreciate exactly how superhuman Wolfwood is now. Tristamp Wolfwood is on a different level. Like 98 Wolfwood is just some (attractive) guy, Trimax Wolfwood has a lot of gory body horror going on and a subtle kind of endurance/strength, but Tristamp Wolfwood just jumped off a very tall building holding a grown woman and the Punisher and was fine.

Oh hey, same symbol on the tower as was on the sandsteamer and on Vash's wanted poster - symbol of July, probably

Very horribly, Knives probably did just save Vash's life here. But also the rest of July's life (though ofc he just extended the timer)....

I'm not quite sure When Vash started using plant bullets, but he's definitely using them now. Also the nails on his prosthetic are a nice touch!

THE FLYING SAUCER STRIKES AGAIN. I wonder if that's gonna be the basis of the Ark, if that's the route season 2 goes.

I also. Was that allI the Plants collected that escaped in this, or were there a bunch still running in July that get obliterated too? Did Knives inadvertently cause the death of more plants? I mean, when Knives gets revived in Trimax he definitely causes the death of at least 2 plants (there are a couple of bulbs in the background of the blast radius, plus the one that was used to revive him... she uh. Didn't look like she was doing so hot)

Vash's little speech is always so,,, intense. He has such a strong sense of character and it's admirable how well he sticks to his morals despite it all.

On a more body horror note, Knives can survive a long fucking time trying to grab The Cube. In Trimax he gets hit with the angel arm and practically disemboweled instantly, but Tristamp Knives can take over a minute of just like. being right in the direct path of fire. They're really gonna have to work to reconstruct him. Good luck, Legato!

UFO SPOTTED !!! LEAVING JULY AS IT IS DESTROYED !! NOT CLICKBAIT !!!

^ I made that long ago and needed to use it somewhere dfgkjdfg

[RAUCOUS CHEERING]

And ofc I have to bring up Eriks :] I don't actually have too much to say abt him. Studio Orange strip this man and make him bark like a dog next season or we will riot

CHRONICA MENTION!!!!! YAYYYYYY

And that's kinda. It.

Man I have had such fun over the last 12 days, I've really discovered a love for analyzing and theories and putting that out there and chatting with people about Trigun :] I should do this more often lmao but I do want to get back to drawing. I'll find a balance, then!

Thank you all for coming, and Wow if you made it this far I must be doing something right lmao.

[yuhi-san]

The fact that vash doesn’t age and will outlive anyone, including any possible love interest, is something that shapes him and the way he interacts with others. Its tragic. Knowing that even if no violent death comes for them, he will watch them get old, remain the same himself and outlive them.

But while writing my fanfic, I thought but what was before that? Like in stampede, vash came to live on ship three when he was still a young child.

They knew absolutely nothing about independent plants. They had no idea about tesla, no access to any records. All they knew was what vash could tell them. (that he was born less than two years ago and apparently went from newborn to young child in that time. That he had a brother but unlike said brother he couldn’t create anything.)

And that’s the thing. They knew vash looked, ate, bleed, hurt and generally appeared far more human than plantlike except for the fact that he grew so fast. It did slow down some because in 5 years on ship three he went from young child to young teen. Still maturing faster than a human would.

At some point he would have become an adult. But at what point did they realize he was not only physically fully matured but did not age further? Like talking as someone who was regularly mistaken to be in my late teens until at least my mid to late twenties, how long did it take for anyone, vash included, to realize his body didn’t age anymore? I don’t think they really had any reason to expect vash life span to be that much longer than a humans. They had nothing to go on when it came to figuring out what his deal was and neither did vash really.

In fact, what was before that turning point when they realized vash was no longer changing?

He grew from a newborn to a young child in less than two years. From a young child to a teen in roughly five years. Asides from his plant healing ability, vash was painfully human in most ways but matured so much faster. Did luida, brad and the others worry about what that meant for vash? Did they wonder if it meant that he would die young, maybe just after 20 years or so? Like a cat that is fully grown and all by two years, in contrast to a human baby, but will likely not make it past 20. Were they worried that vash rapid maturing would also mean rapid aging, rapid dying, like a human live condensed into a forth or so? Was there a time when they realized vash wasn’t rapidly aging anymore but at some point the relief about that must have turned into a new kind of concern. If vash stopped aging completely, for how long would that be the case? How long would he live if nothing cut his life short. What would it mean for his mind and soul?

Yes vash is an independent plant rather than a human but one of the things that sets him apart from his dependent sisters is in fact his mind. That he has a sense of self, more conscious, complete thoughts and feelings as an individual. Vash is mentally very human, especially because he clings to said humanity a lot (in contrast to knives).

But humans and their mind aren’t really made for immortality or such an extended lifespan. And plants normally don’t have the same sense of self and awareness and interpersonal connection. So as the bridge between plants and humans, where does that leave vash with this?

[eldritchneuro]

I think my favorite thing about plant biology (in particular going by Stampede's lore) is that there's no reason for it to make any sense. Like:

Are connected to a higher dimension that can presumably create any basic material with the right code, likely including things like sustenance and biological material needed to sustain themselves, meaning no evolutionary pressure to hunt/eat/drink/what have you besides 'get a human to key in the code for some amino acids from the sister that produces them'

If essentials for survival are spread out between different sisters, this may provide an explanation for the hivemind thing. RIP the one sister who produces nutrients and who ends up being used by the whole colony as an alien menulog

Can apparently produce an entirely different being in the form of Independents, who are apparently almost human in their genetic makeup (does this mean that they could theoretically just... birth random animals other than humans or something? Is this like, convergent evolution? Vash says Dependents need humans to survive, are Independents a way for plants to create their own caretakers?)

Stampede lore has it that Dependents are essentially GMOs, being created from a basal 'angel mummy' infused with human DNA, meaning that there may not be any evolutionary reason for looking half-human besides from the fact that some rando thought it would look cool

On that note, this means that between the transferal between common ancestor to Dependent to Independent, plants probably have some fucked up genetics. Independents are essential the plant equivalent of horrifically inbred dogs that have been designed to look like humans, so really any biological feature would probably make sense given that plants probably have the most not-normal evolutionary history like... ever.

Side note: are plants like... literal plants? Are they like fungi, which look like plants but are actually more similar to animals? If you put plant cells under a microscope would you find cell walls and chloroplasts?

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Fekthrud

Happy Liminalmas, everybody! We've got fewer results than usual this week, which I would speculatively credit to a variety of factors:

Weird liminal space at the end of the year

It's Another Bird

Not a ton of fun details

It's easy to guess what the animal is

Anyhow, if you want to see the context for this, the page where I collect these posts is here: https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. (Hmm -- looks like I forgot to update the page last time around. Maybe that's part of the issue too.) And the entry that people are working from is here:

So, our results, roughly chronologically:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has given us these very well-rendered pheasant-like creatures. They've given their Fekthrud a head like a Pachycephalosaurus*, which I think is a great way to interpret the whole business about the hard skull; like, that had not occurred to me when reading the entry, but now that I see it, it makes perfect sense. In general these are excellent birds here, and you can see some brief notes on design decisions in the post linked above. I like the justification that a ground bird makes the most sense if they're adapted for falling on rocks and/or running into stuff head-first.

*Proud of myself for spelling "pachycephalosaurus" correctly without looking -- being a former Dinosaur Kid pays weird niche dividends.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) continues to impress with her medieval-style drawings. (And to provide alt-text, thank you.) I really like how colorful and generally very pretty she's made her Fekthrud. I also appreciate the decision to show them attacking someone who is trying to take that "iron rod" advice. Very correct response -- get 'em, birds. If you click the link to her post above, you can see some discussion of design decisions.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has made the excellent decision to pose their Fekthrud like it's giving a speech. (And the generous decision to provide alt text, thank you.) This bird absolutely looks like it's saying "Ave!" -- I can clearly imagine it addressing the Roman Senate. Cheapsweets has also taken inspiration from Pachycephalosaurus, and I love that two of our artists got there independently -- like I said, it's an idea that makes perfect sense once you think of it. The post linked above contains a detailed discussion both of their design decision and of their artistic process, including an image of their tools and materials. Go read it.

@pomrania (link to post here) has decided that, rather than make the actual bone of the Fekthrud's skull thick. it should have a thick cushion of feathers. I don't know much about birds, but I feel like that makes sense: thick and heavy bone might be a weight issue if this thing is supposed to fly, so a feather cushion might be more practical protection. The goofy look with the tongue lolling out is also quite charming. In the post linked above, you can see some brief notes on design and process.

And... that's it for this week. Like I said, not a lot of people did this one. So, the Aberdeen Bestiary version:

Yeah, so, of course this one is the parrot.

The medieval illustrator is actually pretty close, I think. And they've used one of my favorite styles of Generic Medieval Plant, even though it doesn't look like it can support the parrot's weight.

The entry is broadly accurate, except for the bit about the skull and the iron rod. There are parrots in India with the coloration described -- multiple species, actually, as far as I can tell. They do talk, though I can't speak to the tongue anatomy thing.

Moreover, if you were a parrot trainer in India who wanted to impress medieval Europeans with your talking birds -- maybe so you can establish demand for them in a new market -- of course the first thing you'd do is train your parrots to greet people in Latin and Greek. Latin is the obvious catch-all, and Greek is the majority language in Constantinople, which is the trade hub you want to target. So I bet all the parrots from India that medieval Europeans saw really did say "Ave!" and "Kere!" (And we do know that people in the Byzantine Empire had pet parrots, so I guess it worked.)

I've never heard the thing about parrots having a hard skull and beak. I kind of wonder if, at some point, someone saw a parrot being struck by its owner (or the aforementioned hypothetical merchant) and asked if it was really necessary to beat the poor bird like that -- and got a line like "oh, they have really hard skulls, it doesn't hurt them as much as you think"... and then that just stuck.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Hope y'all are enjoying Birds because you're getting another one next week.

[mariacallous]

Russia's military intelligence unit known as Sandworm has, for the past decade, served as the Kremlin’s most aggressive cyberattack force, triggering blackouts in Ukraine and releasing self-spreading, destructive code in incidents that remain some of the most disruptive hacking events in history. In recent months, however, one group of hackers linked to Sandworm has attempted a kind of digital mayhem that, in some respects, goes beyond even its predecessor: They've claimed responsibility for directly targeting the digital systems of water utilities in the United States and Poland as well as a water mill in France, flipping switches and changing software settings in an apparent effort to sabotage those countries’ critical infrastructure.

Since the beginning of this year, a hacktivist group known as the Cyber Army of Russia, or sometimes Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, has taken credit on at least three occasions for hacking operations that targeted US and European water and hydroelectric utilities. In each case, the hackers have posted videos to the social media platform Telegram that show screen recordings of their chaotic manipulation of so-called human-machine interfaces, software that controls physical equipment inside those target networks. The apparent victims of that hacking include multiple US water utilities in Texas, one Polish wastewater treatment plant, and, reportedly, a French water mill, which the hackers claimed was a French hydroelectric dam. It’s unclear exactly how much disruption or damage the hackers may have managed against any of those facilities.

A new report published today by cybersecurity firm Mandiant draws a link between that hacker group and Sandworm, which has been identified for years as Unit 74455 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Mandiant found evidence that Sandworm helped create Cyber Army of Russia Reborn and tracked multiple instances when data stolen from networks that Sandworm had attacked was later leaked by the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn group. Mandiant couldn't determine, however, whether Cyber Army of Russia Reborn is merely one of the many cover personas that Sandworm has adopted to disguise its activities over the last decade or instead a distinct group that Sandworm helped to create and collaborated with but which is now operating independently.

Either way, Cyber Army of Russia Reborn’s hacking has now, in some respects, become even more brazen than Sandworm itself, says John Hultquist, who leads Mandiant’s threat-intelligence efforts and has tracked Sandworm’s hackers for nearly a decade. He points out that Sandworm has never directly targeted a US network with a disruptive cyberattack—only planted malware on US networks in preparation for one or, in the case of its 2017 NotPetya ransomware attack, infected US victims indirectly with self-spreading code. Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, by contrast, hasn’t hesitated to cross that line.

“Even though this group is operating under this persona that’s tied to Sandworm, they do seem more reckless than any Russian operator we’ve ever seen targeting the United States,” Hultquist says. “They’re actively manipulating operational technology systems in a way that’s highly aggressive, probably disruptive, and dangerous.”

An Overflowed Tank and a French Rooster

Mandiant didn't have access to the targeted water utility and hydroelectric plant networks, so wasn't able to determine how Cyber Army of Russian Reborn got access to those networks. One of the group’s videos posted in mid-January, however, shows what appears to be a screen recording that captures the hackers’ manipulation of software interfaces for the control systems of water utilities in the Texas towns of Abernathy and Muleshoe. “We are starting our next raid across the USA,” reads a message introducing the video on Telegram. “In this video there are a couple of critical infrastructure objects, namely water supply systems😋”

The video then shows the hackers frenetically clicking around the target interface, changing values and settings for both utilities’ control systems. Though it’s not clear what effects that manipulation may have had, the Texas newspaper The Plainview Herald reported in early February that local officials had acknowledged the cyberattacks and confirmed some level of disruption. The city manager for Muleshoe, Ramon Sanchez, reportedly said in a public meeting that the attack on the town’s utility had resulted in one water tank overflowing. Officials for the nearby towns of Abernathy and Hale Center—a target not mentioned in the hackers’ video—also said they’d been hit. All three towns’ utilities, as well as another, in Lockney, reportedly disabled their software to prevent its exploitation, but officials said that service to the water utilities’ customers was never interrupted. (WIRED reached out to officials from Muleshoe and Abernathy but didn't immediately hear back.)

Another video the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn hackers posted in January shows what appears to be a screen recording of a similar attempted sabotage of a wastewater utility in Wydminy, a village in Poland, a country whose government has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in the midst of Russia’s invasion. “Hi everybody, today we will play with the Polish wastewater treatment plants. Enjoy watching!” says an automated Russian voice at the beginning of the video. The video then shows the hackers flipping switches and changing values in the software, set to a Super Mario Bros. soundtrack. The Wydminy facility didn't respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

In a third video, published in March, the hackers similarly record themselves tampering with the control system for what they describe as the Courlon Sur Yonne hydroelectric dam in France. In fact, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed Wednesday that they had instead accessed the control system for a small water mill running through a village of 300 people. That video was posted just after French president Emmanuel Macron had made public statements suggesting he would send French military personnel to Ukraine to aid in its war against Russia. The video starts by showing Macron in the form of a rooster holding a French flag. “We recently heard a French rooster crowing,” the video says. “Today we’ll take a look at the Courlon dam and have a little fun. Enjoy watching, friends. Glory to Russia!”

In their Telegram post, the hackers claim to have lowered the French dam’s water level and stopped the flow of electricity it produced, though according to Le Monde, they failed to even affect the small water mill they actually tampered with.

In the videos, the hackers do display some knowledge of how a water utility works, as well as some ignorance and random switch-flipping, says Gus Serino, the founder of cybersecurity firm I&C Secure and a former staffer at a water utility and at the infrastructure cybersecurity firm Dragos. Serino notes that the hackers did, for instance, change the “stop level” for water tanks in the Texas utilities, which could have triggered the overflow that officials mentioned. But he notes that they also made other seemingly arbitrary changes, particularly for the Wydminy wastewater plant, that would have had no effect.

“You can see them flipping through all kinds of stuff just to click the button,” Serino says. “I would say there’s some level of understanding but not a full understanding of how the system works.”

Signs of Sandworm

Mandiant found multiple strong clues that Cyber Army of Russia was, at the very least, created with support from Sandworm if not entirely controlled by that unit of the GRU. YouTube accounts for Cyber Army of Russia were set up from an IP address known to be controlled by Sandworm, Google’s Threat Analysis Group found. (Mandiant, like YouTube, is a Google subsidiary.) On multiple occasions, Sandworm has also carried out what Mandiant’s Hultquist calls “attack-and-leak” operations against Ukrainian targets: Sandworm would penetrate the victim's network and infect it with wiper malware to destroy the contents of machines—but not before stealing the data from the network, which in several cases was later leaked in posts on Cyber Army of Russia Reborn's Telegram account.

Hultquist notes that Cyber Army of Russia Reborn's relatively “haphazard” hacking—and its entirely faulty targeting of what the hackers may have believed was a French dam—doesn't appear to match the style of Sandworm, which has, despite its incredibly callous cyberattacks, shown somewhat more deliberation in its targeting and methods. That may suggest an unusual situation, one in which a state-sponsored group created a more grassroots front that has now gone on to carry out even more reckless operations of its own. The GRU, Hultquist says, has “probably been involved in creating this group and running it. If someone even more aggressive than them comes along and operates in that space, carrying out these attacks, they’re not entirely blameless.”

Even as Sandworm's apparent spinoff carries out its chaotic attacks, Mandiant's report notes that Sandworm itself has shifted somewhat away from the more opportunistic disruptive operations it has carried out in the past. In the first year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it launched repeated wiper attacks against Ukrainian targets—many of the relentless, quick-and-dirty data-destroying strikes that Mandiant had previously attributed to the GRU as a whole were specifically the work of Sandworm, it has now concluded. Sandworm also carried out a third blackout attack in 2022, this time in concert with a missile strike on the same area. More recently, however, Sandworm has increasingly taken on an espionage and support role for Russia's physical war effort, the company's report notes.

That more careful coordination with Russia's physical forces has included an operation in which Sandworm used a piece of spyware that US government agencies dubbed Infamous Chisel to infect Android devices used by the Ukrainian military for command-and-control, an apparent effort to gain battlefield intelligence. Mandiant also points to a website set up on a Sandworm-linked server that appears to be a tool for Russian troops to exfiltrate data from captured smartphones, including links for extracting messages from apps like Signal and Telegram.

“As their war aims have evolved, we've seen the group evolve as well,” says Dan Black, a Mandiant analyst and coauthor of its Sandworm report who served as NATO's deputy head of cyber threat intelligence until last year. Black says Sandworm, like much of the Russian military, has had to change its approach, adapting to that espionage and support role as Russia's initial aim of quickly toppling Ukraine's government has shifted into a protracted war of attrition. “What we see is a real pivot away from that wiping activity toward espionage for battlefield enablement,” Black says.

Even as Sandworm shifts into that more traditional military intelligence role, however, the Cyber Army of Russia group that it likely helped to create continues to run wild with disruptive operations, far beyond the front lines of Russia's war in Ukraine. If that spinoff hacker outfit is truly independent of Sandworm, Mandiant's Hultquist notes, that may mean it will continue to demonstrate even less caution or discretion than the GRU's own hackers have.

“Someone under this persona is doing some really aggressive stuff, and they’re doing it globally, and they could ultimately cause a very real incident,” Hultquist says. “If this is just some random group of hacktivists who lack the structure and restraint of a military organization, they may cross lines in ways that no one anticipates.”

[deludedfantasy]

Trimax Vol 12 Ch 1-4

This volume is extra long so figuring out how to divide this up is tricky. Hopefully, this post isn't too long because I have many, many thoughts about the showdown between Knives and Vash.

Ch 1

Chronica and Domina and honestly the entire Earth fleet present some really fascinating questions about Plants and how things work on Earth. I mean, the implications of something like this having happened before, and being so destructive and unpredictable that Chronica tells Domina not to rely on the data from previous encounters.

Also, the language they use around the data. “We already share all our data.” It’s a very sciencey way of referring to what is basically telepathy, I think. We haven’t had language for how any of this works before and that’s part of where the terror and uncertainty comes from. When Vash accidentally went all rogue angel and anyone touching him got a front row seat to his memories, that was probably “sharing data.” But that kind of clinical description sure as hell wasn’t what it felt like for anyone involved. Then, it felt more akin to the supernatural, to cosmic horror, because it was so unknown and out there. But for these Independents, it’s just sharing data, it’s just what they are and how they work. There’s a split between the level of mysticism that Plants have acquired on No Man’s Land (due to the lack of resources and how heavily they rely on them) and the more (seemingly) scientifically oriented Earth fleet. 

This entire sequence where Vash looks back at his past, everyone he’s helped and fought for, all the enemies he’s faced, is so gorgeous and hard-hitting. He’s steeling himself for the final battle and reminding himself what matters, what he’s fighting for. It’s so telling that the last images are of Rem and Wolfwood. But it’s also telling that we don’t see Wolfwood’s face. Is it because the grief is too fresh? Is it because Vash feels guilty? I’m not sure. But the juxtaposition of a solitary cross among a sea of faces is hard to beat. It’s a punch in the gut. 

And another thing! Razlo and Livio are included when he considers the Gung Ho Guns even though he never fought them directly. But Vash doesn’t place Wolfwood there though he also was very much so one of them. He doesn’t see him as one, Wolfwood has become so much more to him and he’s refusing to acknowledge some of Wolfwood’s last words, that all he is is a monster. 

There’s something about this page that reads to me like a prayer. Vash’s pose, his lowered head, his hand and gun centered, it’s his own form of prayer. To who or what, I can’t say. He’s not asking for anything except strength to reach the end, to protect those tough and tender days he loved so much. 

It hurts me that he doesn’t expect to make it to the end. Tellingly, his hair is almost entirely black here. He’s used up most of his life force. In some ways, I imagine he’s performing some kind of final ritual for himself. He’s reminding himself what he’s fighting for because the person that gave him hope again when he thought all was lost is gone. 

Is the Earth fleet planning on dropping a nuclear bomb on Knives to stop him? Because that’s really what it sounds like. I get that he’s dangerous, but wasn’t the whole point of coming here to help the people on this planet, not kill them? Seems like the Earth fleet aren’t quite the good guys we were hoping they would be. 

But then Knives just disappears! That’s not terrifying at all or anything.

Ch 2

Knives just teleported, a power apparently completely unknown for even fused Independents to have. That’s wild. But also not. He’s probably fused to more Plants than other Independent has before, to the point that his own body is losing shape and he seems to be becoming one of them. It’s weird to say that he’s becoming less human, since he’s always been so focused on not being human, but at least in form he was. Not anymore, and it’s signaling a dangerous change in his power levels. 

Domina experiences a Knives jumpscare, which doesn’t bode well for her. It’s never a good thing when Knives suddenly appears in your mind. 

Panic and fear for your life can make people do insane things, but truly shooting guns into the air at a massive airship that is far above the city is such an incredibly useless and stupid thing to do. 

Knives did say he had enough power to reach past the boundaries of the planet. But man, that’s horrifying. He took complete control of another Independent. He fused with her like he was originally thinking of doing with Vash. He spoke in her voice and everything, even convinced Chronica that it was Domina for a moment. That’s…really scary. Can you imagine if he had done that to Vash? 

Knives straight up doesn’t have anything resembling a body anymore. He’s getting into biblically accurate territory here. The body horror is real. 

Also, I’m not surprised that he calls Chronica and Domina slaves of humans. He’s always looked down at Vash for helping them and living among them. Of course he’d say even worse things for the ones actively working with humans in their military. Though I’m still curious how much actual choice Chronica or Domina had in taking this assignment and becoming part of this crew.  

Ch 3

Sometimes I forget Trigun is actually scifi. But now we have a spaceship battle! Though I’d actually argue Trigun is sci-fantasy but that’s another discussion entirely. 

I’m still not over the fact that Knives fused with another Independent and is using her like a puppet. Like, that’s a terrifying capability for Independent Plants to have. Imagine what else he could do like that. Imagine if he had Vash’s power behind him. Imagine if Vash had decided to do something like that. Truly, I can’t put into words how horrifying that is. I’m not surprised anymore that humans would find a way to alter Independents so they can’t do that. 

Shooting straight into the air when there’s nothing to hit up there really isn’t a smart move. But people are scared and aren’t known for thinking straight in those circumstances. 

I have to agree with Luida here. I don’t like how quiet the military is considering how adamant they were about fighting back earlier. That doesn’t bode well at all. 

Vash fired his angel bullets at Knives! They kinda look like a black hole in the form of a bullet.

His power and accuracy remain unmatched. He’s way too far away from Knives for his gun on its own to have the power to reach him. That means he’s using his Plant powers to gain more speed and distance. 

It also looks like he severed the threads connecting Knives to Domina. Or disrupted them? It’s hard to tell, but either way, he’s showing his hand and letting Knives know he’s here, and he’s not going to let him get away with his plan.

Ch 4

It strikes me that we’ve never seen Vash openly use his powers like this before. He might move inhumanly fast and dodge attacks that would kill most people but he hasn’t actively created gates and used them against people. His powers don’t work with his version of pacifism. Add to that his fear of them and what they’re capable of, and it’s no wonder he never used them.

Things have changed now. He’s throwing that aside now. He’s not on the defensive anymore. He’s not scared of himself either. He’s got nothing left to lose and he’s going to throw everything he has at Knives because he has to protect humanity (and everything Wolfwood fought to protect). 

But also, his face here. It’s empty, slightly unhinged. He chooses this moment to put his glasses on. Is he hiding? Putting up a shield? Or is he actively turning himself into diablo, the angry avenger he keeps inside himself? Either way, there’s just something cold and entirely unlike the Vash we know in these panels. Including the very antagonistic way he’s talking to Knives, which is also quite a change. He’s done trying to reason with him. He’s finally realized there’s nothing he can say that will stop him. All they can do is fight until there’s only one man left standing. 

Knives has also decided he’s done with Vash. If he’s so willing to attack him, Knives is done trying to protect him. But even as he says that, Knives covers his face. Like he can’t stand to see his brother’s death. He knows he has to do this for his mission to succeed, but deep down, he hates it. Now I’m wondering if that’s why Vash put his glasses on too. To give himself that barrier between himself and the death of his brother. Because I maintain that no matter how much Vash said he was out to kill him for revenge, until this moment, his actions said that he didn’t truly mean it. 

“I’m disappointed. I don’t even want to see your corpse.” Knives, that’s—that’s a lot. He wants to destroy Vash so utterly, there’s nothing left of him. But he’s lying to himself again, because I don’t think it’s about how Vash still fights like a human, so he’s disgusting and beneath Knives and deserves a destructive death. It’s about not wanting to see the dead body of the brother he would’ve done literally anything to protect. 

Vash’s hair is getting blacker and blacker by the page and it’s hurting me deeply. He doesn’t care about surviving at all. There’s just Knives and him. 

Interestingly, when Knives realizes that Vash has fashioned his powers into bullets, he becomes complimentary again. He’s basically thinking, “Well, at least you finally put your powers to good use.”

But Vash says no. He’s accepted who and what he is, he’s accepted his power, but at the end of the day, he’s still just a gunman. He’s a simple man fighting to protect what he loves. He is not “other” like Knives. He’s part of this world and he’s fighting to protect it. Vash reaffirms his beliefs and who he is before Knives and that’s really, really powerful.

[chibivesicle]

Trigun Stampede - Episode 8 - Our Home; time for a flashback since Vash passed out.

With all of the paradoxical pacing of the series, we were due for a flashback to give us more Vash information since we got Wolfwood with a side of Livio, last week.  This is sort of taking various elements and hits of flashbacks from the original anime and manga and with our breakneck pace, compressing them down.

We get the birthday celebration with Vash and Nai.  It seems this version is in line with the manga where only Rem is awake at the time on their ship as opposed to the anime with several crew members manning the vessel.

We are not surprised that Vash is elated at the party and Nai is being grumpy.  It also points out early on that despite being twins, Vash does not appear to have any plant abilities; thus, he needs to eat, sleep etc while apparently Nai does not.  Thus, the brothers aren’t parallel in their abilities at this moment in the Stampede narrative.

In the artificial park, Rem is being a doting mother on the two of them, happy that they have come into her world.  We haven’t learned yet that her long term significant other had passed away yet, spurring her to take the current job as a Seeds team member.  There is also the subtextual fact that it is clear she’d been thinking of having a family with that man. 

Of course things take a turn for the worse and it jumps to the point where their escape pod has crashed it Nai’s monologue is more complete including the line that Vash gave him a passcode that allowed him to hack into the system and change things.  Thus, this makes his previous statement of being an accomplice to the events makes more sense now.  However, instead of being forced to travel with Nai after the catastrophe and sticking with his brother out of guilt and not understanding Rem’s last message to him, in Stampede Vash flees from the start. There is a horror scene of dying people reaching out to him and Vash runs off screaming and apologizing before collapsing in the desert near a group of survivors.

He wakes up on a ship with a woman confirming that he’s an independent plant.  The apparently are on ship three which did not crash and are trying to survive what happened.  Wow, love how simple it is for Luida to confirm that Vash is a plant with a simple flashlight!  It was better in the original that it was not all that obvious that he was a plant.

We also learn that the woman with dark hair is Luida from the original uncrashed ship and the man is a much more mature version of Brad.  The Doctor with the hat appears to not exist in this story line at all - or at least is not a senior member of the leadership team at this point.  The ship is surrounded in a sandstorm that conceals it from the outside with bursts of lighting soooo . . .

yeah, the sandstorm at the end of episode seven is clearly and indication that they caught up to Vash.  And Vash is currently passed out having the flashback like he did on the Sandsteamer in the original anime and manga dreaming about Rem.

It is also cannon that the uncrashed ship is protected by the harsh winds around it.  The difference is in the anime, Wolfwood is the one who points out that they can’t avoid reality of the surface while in the manga, they are working much more covertly to assist on the surface.  As they can still send out a distress call to humans elsewhere which becomes important later on in the manga with the return of humanity and more independent plants.

Anyhoo, as the flashback continues Luida tries to be compassionate to Vash while Brad is a dick.  The writing for this entire flashback is meh at best.  We get it, they don’t trust him because he’s a plant and Vash at the moment isn’t very interested in living.

We learn that they tried to recover the black box from ship five and any of Rem’s possessions which appear to be a journal and some photos.

Brad is trying to recover the data from the black box and the flashback follows a tried and true plot point.  They don’t trust Vash, keep him locked up and he’s not too motivated to eat. This is much more subtle than the manga where Vash actively did try to commit suicide and was saved by Rem upon learning about Tessla’s fate.

Finally, to give Vash a plant ability, he learn that he can talk to the plants.  So, when a plant starts to malfunction he comes in to save the day.

Of course for dramatic plot purposes, this happens right when Brad was able to recover Rem’s last message to Vash and we get to hear her line that the ticket to one’s future is blank.

With Vash saving the day and helping the group survive, he gets upgraded from questionable plant independent to normal person with a room!  Luida also notes that Brad helped convince the rest of the crew and things progress as we would expect.  He slowly integrates into ‘normal’ life and starts to interact with people like a human.

Time passes and he continues to grow and we see a change in him.  He’s lost the weird plant markings on his body which marked him as youth and no longer appear on his teenage body as he travels around with Brad assisting in plant mental health counseling.  What does he do?  Chat with them, make them feel better and it fixes the problem?  If only it were that easy and additionally, it is skirting around the manga issues of plants having lifespans and the horrible abuse and suffering that dying plants are subjected to.  Maybe we will learn this later?

His hair has become messier and the darker undercut is now visible.  Honestly, having Vash be a plant whisperer is cute and all buuuut . . . if you look at his personality in the original manga and anime, him being friendly with the plants is expected of his personality, since he was.  Of course he’ll talk to all the plants and help them calm down or assist.  We get this early on in the anime as he consoles a tired and exhausted plant with a bottle of Wild Turkey as a tribute.

This also is the key plot point that ultimately is how Vash is able to defeat Knives.  Knives could also communicate with the plants but convinced them to work with him out of any anger or resentment towards humans or consumed them by sheer force and willpower.  Which he then mentally cut them off from him to keep his independence and force them to his will.  It was the fact that Vash knew each individual plant from his 150 years of wandering that he was able to convince them to turn on Knives - no group of individuals are a monolith or united in a single goal.

I yawned as the episode progressed since it went as expected.  Vash gets a thank you from the rest of the group for being a plant whisperer and saving people etc etc.

I do think the scene was exceptionally well animated.  Though the backgrounds are rather lacking and sterile despite Vash’s photo wall, which looks just like White’s various photo walls in her UK childhood home or in the HL hospital where she’s trapped.

Vash is thankful for his gift of new clothing and the scene where he hugs it while thinking of Rem is touching.  We get the link to red geraniums and Rem’s love of them as well as how that determination will manifest through Vash’s own actions as he gets older.

But we gotta stick with the writing on easy mode and generate an unnecessary conflict between Vash and the ship three crew which is only there to force him to run away.  Brad eventually is able to discover that Vash lied about what happened.  Knives is alive and we can be certain, tricked Vash into giving him the access codes to cause the disaster.  Brad spouts of xenophobic nonsense making a very snap judgement as Vash flees out into the desert night.

The two of them search his room and Luida finds his hand written note that he needs to atone for the sins of his brother.  Ah, yes, here we get a glimpse of the massive amount of guilt that Vash is always carrying in the originals masked by his silly behaviors.

Of course, Brad feels bad and Luida declares that they need to rescue him.  The flashback then briefly returns to the present timeline.  Vash wakes up in a room, similar to the one he had on ship three.  For the first time we see him without his sunglasses!  Took you long enough Studio Orange.

He bolts up from his dream/flashback and orients himself in the moment and we see a picture is on display on the table facing him.

The picture reveals the team from his wall when he was a teen as a plant whisperer.

And we know Studio Orange isn’t subtle, so Vash asks aloud if ‘they’ saved him.

Of course they did Vash!  I said last week that was what the sandstorm was that approached and picked up our four person team.  He then looks forlorn and glances down at his robotic arm.

The episode then shifts back to end on the flashback where Vash met up with Knives five years after he’d been rescued by ship three.  The man in the white coat has to be Conrad along with two generic copy paste goons with a mirror tool applied.

They are on an abandoned ship with red and implied to be dead plants.  With that they then zip to the ending credits!

Overall, this episode was a bland back fill.  The only positive was that, for once, they took a few seconds to breathe and slow down the all action all the time pace.  However, this would have served the narrative a lot better around episode four or five.  The pacing not the actual story reveal.

It sounds weird, but getting the motivation to watch episode eight was real as the series is losing my interest an attention.  Part of it is just a ‘me’ thing.  Reflecting on my initial reaction to the series, I realized that I came into Trigun Stampede with unrealistic expectations for this new version of it.  And now that the artistic directions are super clear, it doesn’t have much overlap with the original anime and manga.

And as I’ve stated many times previously, even with the vast differences with the ‘98 anime and Trigun Maximum both stories get at the same moral questions and dilemmas.  Is Stampede going to get there? Right now, no.  It isn’t going in that direction.

One element of Vash’s flashbacks that I have missed is the song he associated with Rem.  In the manga, it is simply sung indicated by musical notes and makes him reflect on her and the ‘98 anime was storytelling gold with a creation song being implied on humans re-creating civilization out of the ‘wild’.

Rem’s song - Sound Life was brilliant in the original anime.

It is things like this which really added to the vibe of the series and set a theme. But, I am biased to the original OST and really think it was totally on point for the anime.

Overall points from this episode:

1.) Characters that again, have changed - Luida and Brad.  In the original manga, neither of them are older than Vash.  This already implies a compressed timeline.  The entire point is that they are younger humans who grew up always knowing Vash from being children to adults.  We have lost their unique perspective which was crucial to understanding how others viewed Vash. Brad is even more simple minded than in the originals which is a disappointment but we know the writing is threadbare.  Luida again is stripped of her strong female leadership qualities and becomes Rem 2.0 for Vash.  They are shadows of their former characterizations.  Boo.

2.) Female characters continue to be stripped of their character and qualities from the originals.  We’ve already lost Milly Thompson.  Meryl Stryfe was uwu-ized and made junior to Roberto.  Now, Luida has become Mom 2.0 to replace Rem.  Can there be a single female character who has the original independence and not being pigeon-holed into an extremely outdated gender norms/behavior?  It is 2023 in a sci fi anime.  If the ‘98 version was less obsessed with gender roles and the manga wasn’t obsessed with gender roles - why does Stampede want to go down this path?

3.) Reactions to the series in general.  I wish there was an easier way to get data about the reactions to the series.  I want a Gallup Poll for all the data on the viewers of this show!  However, I can’t help wonder if there is a clear divide in the reaction to Stampede based on viewer demographics.  My gut is that likely women and the strong LGBTQ fanbase of the originals are not as impressed by this lackluster effort at Trigun.  The Golden Kamuy fandom had a lot of women and queer readers and I can see how the same group would like the original Trigun and Trigun Maximum.  It seems counter-intuitive at first, but the more you think about it, they easily would have a similar type of readership besides the typical seinen demographics.

Most of the youtubers who have made comments appear to be men, and they are like - oh its fine, sure, I miss Milly but its alright that I have found.  I wonder if they don’t realize that by removing a key female character from the cast is a disappointment.  Yet, I’m not going out of my way to determine who has the loudest voices on the internet either singing praises of Stampede or hating on it hardcore.

I partially disagree and agree with a recent review that dropped today.  I agree with that review that it is an entirely different series, that there is nothing wrong with the CGI and that the loss of Milly was a bad idea. However, I disagree with that review feeling that it is still Trigun and the review is overly optimistic about Stampede thinking the Gung-ho Guns will be better (? some are already dead or likely eliminated due to not fitting the vibe) and Wolfwood will get the chara development which he deserves.  And mainly that the review says that Stampede is more in line with the manga and I’m guessing this follows with the assumption that the manga is always better than the anime with the terms of ‘filler’ and ‘too slapstick’.  I’ll have to wait until that reviewer speaks more about the manga, but I am not of the mindset that manga = better than anime but reading the manga helped me to understand aspects of the anime and also appreciate the differences between both forms of media.    I don’t want to fall into the diversity/representation rabbit hole, but those were things that the original content got.  If you stop and look at Kekkai Sensen/Blood Blockade Battlefront, Yasuhiro Nightow continued on to create another diverse cast of characters.  He cleverly shifted human racism to be xenophobia towards Beyondians in the world of Hellsalem’s Lot.  Leonardo Watch is accepting of all species and friends with them as well as the entire rest of the Libra main cast.  The fact that a part of Manhattan excludes Beyondians with armed guards speaks volumes to the author’s critiques of modern day society.

The homogenization of Stampede makes it seem sterile, unrealistic, and out of sync with the sci fi element.  Thank back to the original Macross and you have a more diverse cast than in Stampede.  Macross has a lot of other issues like the horrible sexism that is of the 80s, but hey, at least a future society is global and represents the visual diversity of humanity. I’m a bit scatter-brained today, but what I’ve gotten from Yasuhiro Nightow’s works whether it be Trigun or Blood Blockade Battlefront is that he has comments on diversity and acceptance along with morality of a society and of individuals.  Coming from a much more homogeneous society that still struggles to deal with its own indigenous peoples that have been relegated to second class status for over four hundred years and all dressing that come along with that form of governmental and cultural oppression.  Golden Kamuy did a good job of this up until the final arc which fell flat (see my previous metas on the topic) and even a series like Samurai Champloo brings in those groups  focusing on Christians, Ryukyuans and Ainu characters either as main charas like Mugen or having an impact on others.  Fuu’s father being a Christian who had to abandon her and her mother and the Ainu character they cross paths with, on the run from the Edo government in its early days of the ‘civilization’ of the north which gets the spotlight in Golden Kamuy’s late Meiji era focus.

Nightow’s stories thrive on having a larger society in which his main casts exist in and work to protect.  This was highlighted by the comment I got about the loss of all the normal people on the planet - which existed in the ‘98 anime and manga.  This also explains why B3 works so well in NYC turned into HL.  People are working to allow others to have normal lives and protect what is important to them.  It brings a realistic humanity to the stories which is what Stampede is missing.  These series never shy away from all the terrible things humanity may do, but that it is always balanced out by those who strive to follow a higher calling/moral code etc.

Anyways, I’ve blathered on far enough with this week’s episode which didn’t really give me all that much to chew on.  It was necessary Vash backstory.  We have a different timeline of events.  We have all the characters who are both older and younger at the same time.  It was predictable and boring.

Clearly, the next episode will continue the flashback and Knives is gonna cut of Vash’s arm like in the manga, Luida and Brad will help him and we should see Wolfwood, Meryl and Roberto as well.

[nimrodinked]

A Tale of Two Triguns

Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the PLANT

Hello out there. I recently finished up watching Trigun: Stampede with a friend, after having a rather viscerally negative reaction to the first episode. Well, I've come here after watching the whole show to say that it doesn't get much better. My ramblings below were meant to be sent to a friend initially... but I had so much to say I figured that a blogpost would be easier to share around my frothing rage. So if the prose starts rather garbled and stream-of-thought-like, I apologize, but bear with it to the end, or at least as long as you can stomach. So, the show is a mess as far as a timeline goes. Looking at it compared to the original, there are similar beats, but they don't line up right. And the show is trying to tell the Vash vs Knives story, but in a garbled way. To spoil it, the entire 12 episodes is a small timeline of events that happen in the original show. The problem is that aside from the overarching event, everything else is wrong. It could be trying to tell a prequel to the original, but if that's the case then they didn't do a good job because plenty of plot points from the original are in the prequel. Vash encounters a number of Gung Ho Guns that he would meet in the original show, not to mention meeting Meryl and Wolfwood, all before the event in the city of July. So, if it's intending to be a prequel, why does it just throw in a bunch of extraneous details?

Speaking of extraneous details, the new show has a cultish obsession with the lore of Vash the stampede. Not who he is or what he's done. In truth, Vash accomplishes very little in the realm of deeds, that aren't done off-screen or talked about as past heroic actions. But the show absolutely loves to talk about and involve the Sci-Fi parts of the original show in all facets of the new show, including adding special powers to Vash and Knives. Episode one has Vash save a PLANT that's going bad somehow. The nutty thing is that, despite the increased focus on PLANTs and Vash and Knives as weird offshoot PLANT entities, the new show explains very little when it matters. At one point near the end, a scientist man just asserts that the PLANTs are energy sources because they're conduits for accessing a higher plane of existence. Out of nowhere. He also "Explains" that Vash somehow has the ability to access that higher plane. This is only an explanation of why Vash's arm was consumed by a black hole in an earlier episode, it's never talked about as to why Vash has the power to do this while Knives, who is also an "independent plant" as they describe, cannot. This is one of many examples of the show treating PLANTs as some kind of common knowledge while really flippantly, if at all, discussing what they are and why they are around.

On the matter of not explaining, and to touch on the earlier issue of "temporal problems", the show has a nasty habit of progressing story beats off-camera, to an almost baffling degree. To give a few examples, Meryl and her partner (The infuriating exposition reporter "Robert De Niro") are marveling at vegetation in a biodome, and robert wants to go find a smoking area. The scene ends, the episode continues on. two scenes later, Meryl and Robert are in the middle of the PLANT storage facility, in….. somewhere. It's never shown how they got there, they simply appear. Hilariously, both characters don't know how they got there either, and since it's never addressed it's almost as if the storyboard itself shunted these two hapless side characters into the next exposition dump scene without them knowing. That's perhaps the most blatant example, but little fragments like that happen constantly. A character blows up, end scene. An episode later he's shown with bandages on him, so apparently he survived. In that same episode a child falls out of Meryl's grip in a static shot, then the shot ends. Come episode end, he's bandaged up and wounded somehow. It adds up to the show being a disorienting mess to watch at times, there's just too many blocks of missing time seemingly hacked out of the plot.

Oh, and the plot. The wonderful plot. So, this is already a spoiler talk, for both the new show and the original, but this is where I really burrow into those details so if you really don't want to be spoilered, stop here. The plot is a topsy-turvy mess that can't seem to muster up the brainpower to make sense of it's own details. The opening of episode one reminded me of the first star wars prequel. That's a great sign…. Anyhow, you meet the twins when they're young, at the Big Fall event where the entire Seeds project fails and crashes to earth due to Knives' meddling. How did he meddle? Guess. No I'm serious, the show simply states that Knives did it somehow, and apparently Vash "gave him the passcode" which makes him "an accomplice" which is it's own infuriating mischaracterization, but we'll get to that. So, Knives crashes all the space ships because "humans bad." After that, Vash runs away, and that's the last we see of (new) flashbacks for a while. They love to use the same flashbacks so the first few episodes have kid Knives saying "Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash~" in his silly voice, which is an amusing anchor point. Not amusing in a good way. Every flashback is a sore reminder of how awfully they're piloting the show.

Now right off the bat, the show has problems because it's trying to fit in references from the original show in a season that's half the size. Our first nostalgia story is Vash Vs the Nebraska Duo, which starts out much the same. Unfortunately it starts out under different circumstances that make it a more infuriating ride. In the original, Vash saves a diner from some small-time crooks, driving them out and receiving a free meal as a reward. However, upon realizing that he's Vash, the 60 billion Double Dollar outlaw, the town decides that they can turn in this relative stranger for a huge reward. The diner owner, who I believe is named Rosa like in the new show, says she feels sorry for doing it because he seems nice, but the town needs the money to survive. Antics ensue, because this is the og Trigun, and Vash is still his happy-go-lucky normal self. The Nebraksa Duo come in, hold the town hostage, and Vash swoops in to save the day, even after they all collectively tried to kill him. This warms the peoples hearts, how sweet etc etc. now, onto the new.

The storybeats are the same, with Vash saving the town… but here the ship leaves port, drifting away from believable into wishy-washy emotional gobbledeegook. So, episode one Vash saves the town from July police officers there to arrest him. The officer, for no real reason other than to show off a big flashy budget, fires a cluster missile into the air that breaks apart and will scatter all over town with bombs, destroying probably the entire area, PLANT included. Vash saves the day, though he does so in the rather ludicrous method of throwing a rock at a cluster of missiles wide enough to saturate the town with shrapnel, then shooting the rock so that it spreads and somehow air-explodes the whole cluster missile payload. Again, it seems to just want to be flashy, and having any sort of sense or logic isn't a concern. So, Vash is the hero of the town, and they all celebrate. Now, before I say this next story beat, Rosa, the tavern owner now, explains that, in addition to him just now saving the town, Vash also came by sometime in the past to save their plant. So that's twice he's saved the entire town out of pure charity. So, they decided to hold him up for ransom. The given reason is…. the same, they need the money to survive. What? No, seriously, what? They don't explain anything, Rosa just says she's a mom and has children and needs to feed her kids. So they're going to cash in 60 billion double dollars… for groceries. They can't be using the money to fix the PLANT, because Vash fixed it already, for free. And if the power structure around it was failing and they had to make repairs Vash couldn't do, then… why not say it? They don't, they just do it because this is the "town tries to ransom vash" episode. Antics ensue, although much more toned down (in tone, not in wacky spastic animation) antics this time around.

More differences come as the Nebraska duo show up, and instead of Vash escaping the town, they catch him, and the Nebraska duo decide to just steal him and take the bounty. A short lived and lame chase sequence happens, and then the duo is defeated. They immediately return to town and decide that they'll just steal the PLANT instead, marking the beginning of the new show's obsession with the hitherto mysterious space-age power source. They take the PLANT to the top of a long hallway, presumably to attach it to a crane because it's quite large. This also serves as an ultra-obvious setpiece for a confrontation. A confrontation is had, and in contrast to Vash using his gun and bullets to beat the Nebraska's without even really wounding them, this Vash just hops around like a 3d jumping bean before finally drawing to counter the Nebraska father's gunshot. Yes. He shoots the bullet head-on with his bullet. That's…. Alright for those that haven't watched, the original trigun had Vash pulling some really incredible stunts with guns and gun avoiding. The closest I can reckon to this feat of improbable "accuracy" is the water thief episode. To make my point simply, Vash is able to dodge someone's bullets fired at him from close range. The one firing realizes that he's able to read the trajectory of the bullets whizzing by by carefully watching the gun in his hand and how he aims it. That's far-fetched, sure, but it at least makes some semblance of sense for Vash to have learned over the many years of getting shot at. And while the explanation of "bullet trajectory" isn't entirely accurate, at close range and with proper spacing, Vash could make enough room to dodge where the bullet could go. Because gun's aren't laser-accurate, but the body can be flexible enough to give it the extra space to whizz by.

Now, going back to that gun's aren't laser-accurate point, Nebraska Sr. fires what looks like a standard handgun (I'm not going to go super nerdy because I'm not a gun nut, but I understand enough to go through this) at Vash, and Vash fires back with a .22 revolver. From what I can tell, he draws while Nebraska is firing, and is able to hit the bullet dead-center before it travels too far from the gun. That's… I barely know why I'm focusing on this one dumb shot among a million other issues I have, but It's not so much an issue of "a normal person couldn't do that" and more an issue of a level of superhuman not only required of the person, but the gun they're firing. And considering Vash is shooting just a regular revolver… sure, it's a nitpick, but it's one drop in the pan of this nonsensical stew I'm trying to chew through. Let's move on.

So, after that "gunfight", the beam the Nebraska's are on begins to fall. Sr makes a run for it, but Jr grabs the big PLANT because it's valuable. He almost makes it, making sure the PLANT gets to safety first which seals his fate of falling. Thankfully, he's got extending rope-arms like in the original, so he's able to grapple upwards, but his arm is slipping. Vash naturally grabs it, and Nebraska Sr is about to as well, when Rosa comes in again to bravely shoot at him for taking their livelihood. She's going to gun him down, the villainous scientiest… but he has a son and he loves him! It's about family, that's what makes it so powerful, truly words to live by. After that the story goes off on it's own strange and strained beat, which leads me into my next point.

Characters. Vash, centrally, is barely given anything to do in the new show. He's mostly relegated to moping around, and trying not to use his gun at all, except for a bizarre scene where he's beating up thugs with it as a makeshift tonfa. Not to say that Vash was a powerhouse of awesome might in the original show, but he was a much more active protagonist that got a lot more work to do. Almost half of the total runtime are small stories about Vash's character, his past, and the kind of person he is. Just looking for clips I was able to find 4 different episodes where Vash is either helping to save people, or trying to talk someone down from the ledge of killing someone else. Compared to the almost saccharine sweet message most often played in the new show. Vash just wants to help everyone and save them. It's the same message… but it's barely portrayed outside of him directly saying it. Adding into this teeth-cracking sweetness is the bizarre character choice to make him a character with a guilty conscience.

So, as far as I can reckon (because again, they do not show the backstory of the Big Fall, it just happens and Knives talks about how Vash was part of it), Vash feels guilty because of the just-mentioned help that he offered Knives. This "help" equates to him knowing a passcode that Knives doesn't, when the twins are snooping around ships records in the specimen storage room. They find a supposed third independent child, and pulling up their file also happens to release them from the floor, in what probably should be a horrific scene. It is on it's own, but that traumatic event is never talked about or discussed, only vaguely alluded to in the future. The event in full is a series of glass containers that house the third child, or what remains of it. It's rather gruesomely torn to pieces, and the bio-signs read out that it's still alive even in it's flayed state. This is, in what appears to be a theme, never expounded upon. Who was the third child? No idea. Maybe it's the same child shown later on in the show, although the scientist that created him certainly didn't make it sound like his creation was stolen from the body. Maybe I need a supplementary brochure to understand the deep lore that this show insists on bringing up, only to drop like so much trash soon after. Getting back to the passcode, however.

Apparently Vash knows the master passcode. Somehow. Not explained. Him using it to access the third child documents apparently was enough for Knives to memorize the password. Or he copy-pasted it? Again, it isn't explained, but it's the only "password" shown in the show so I have to just assume that's it. If that is the case, Vash having a guilty conscience makes no real sense, because even if he gave his brother the password, he did it in a completely unrelated outing that they both thought was innocent snooping. Sure, it certainly turned out to be a horrific event (that they never bring up again) but that's a flimsy foundation for his guilt. It could be that he's motivated by the desire to stop his brother's plans as he states in a later backstory section, which would make more sense at least, but once more, that resolution is brought on by his foster caretakers discovering the black box that recorded Knives telling Vash that he helped him by giving the password. He has no other stated reason for wishing to atone, so once more I must assume that his desire stems from the guilt of helping Knives. Helping knives in an unrelated scenario when neither of them knew better. I understand that emotions like guilt are strong and often irrational in real life… but when the foundation of your narrative is built on the sci-fi equivalent of a rom-com misunderstanding, the story will suffer for it.

And oh, does the lack of character not stop with Vash. Knives has argueably come out much worse in the hack job. He's been boiled down from his old self, remade into a strange and cartoonish brooding villain that is almost never, ever, not playing a piano. The man who systematically tracked down the blood-relative of Rem Saverem, killing him before Vash got there entirely to break his brother. Who then forces him to activate his angel arm and scour July from the map (yes, the city of july in the og was a past event if you recall my earlier ramblings) and is still angry and hurt when Vash aims his PLANT-mutated death-cannon at him. Because Knives is a deeply disturbed individual with a central idea that humanity is a waste of space, but he does love his brother. NuKnives maybe loves his brother, it's unclear and not well explained because he, like many other characters, is obsessed with PLANTs. His only real stated reason for wanting to kill the humans is when he's shown to be reading a history book, and he comments on how humans never change, and always have wars. Which is sophistry, to the highest order. He is a child so it's not as if that's an unreasonable take-away from an alien's perspective, but once more, the narrative suffers from weak motivations like that, regardless of how "realistic" they might be. Knives' motivation is also skewed off-kilter, as instead of living on a new world with his beloved brother, he now wants to create a new generation of stable, independent PLANTs that will survive and thrive in the new world. Again, not inherently terrible, but it's confused, muddled, barely explained until the ending where everything is dumped all at once. In fact, Knives and Vash's relationship can be shown by looking at each respective ending.

At the end of the original show, the climatic battle is between two brothers with opposing ideals that can't reconcile them with each other. They have a gunfight with each using one of the guns the Knives made for them to have. While Knives gains the upper hand, Vash hears the voice of Wolfwood, and uses his gun to regain control of the fight, and win. It's simple, it's really fun to re-watch, and can even be a little symbolic, with wolfwood's cross representing Vash's connection to human beings as a whole, that burden to them turning into a blessing that helps him win. Contrasted to the end of NuGun, which is an obnoxious orchestral-blaring city battle where Vash zips around on his magical devil wing while Knives follows and blasts away with magical PLANT-conjured knives. Of course shortly before this epic big big bigly battle, there was an episode where exposition and nonsense was shovelled down the viewers face as Knives unveils his master plan to turn Vash into a tree which will simultaneously engulf the world to kill all the humans, and forcibly impregnate all of the PLANTs he's collected to birth new independent PLANTs which he will imbue with souls by going to the higher dimension and tapping into the consciousness there, using his brother which he turned into a tree as the portal to go through, after erasing his memories, because apparently in order to turn into a portal tree person you have to have no attachments or memories. Vash turns the tables after his memory is wiped of Rem, by remembering a song that she taught to him (off-screen). Now, Rem's song is a motif in the original show, but from what I can tell with an untrained ear, the little melody Vash is singing isn't that, just some song he was taught. So, Rem Saverem, a character that has had less on-screen impact to Vash than his adoptive caretakers on the crashed ship, is the magic spark that re-awakens his memories. That would make sense… if you've seen the original show, and know the background of just how much Rem meant to Vash. Here… it's just a copout really. Now, If all of that sounds like nonsense, you're correct. If you think there should be more explanation, well you're also right, but the show has no answers for you. At once too much and too little explaining happens so that a slew of new pieces of information are cast to the wind, without a single string to ground them to actual NuGun-established reality. Vash is still saved by his connection to humanity, but keeping with the new show's theme, he is captured and loses all his memories over the course of 2 and a half episodes, before finally mustering up some main character gumption to fight back. It doesn't hit nearly as hard. Frankly it misses the mark of a hit at all.

To finish off this confusing mess of a story, Knives dies trying to reach a mcguffin cube, because Vash is able to "condense the gate energy into a tesseract" that will still open the gateway to the higher dimension…. which, I suppose is still bad? Honestly I don't know why it's still bad, obviously Knives doesn't have pure intentions and wants to kill humans, but as was shown, his actions already resulted in a bunch of pregnant PLANTs. If they don't get souls from the higher dimension will they… just become normal PLANTs? Search me. Vash wants to get rid of the cube because Knives wants it and will eventually do bad things with it. Okay… alright, there's such a deluge of nonsense at this point that I barely registered that initially, but okay. So, in what I'm sure was cool to see for those still invested in the show, Vash unleashes his Devil arm. Looking back at the clips from the og, Vash had the angel arm, and Knives the devil. It was a simple characterization, and as shown in the finally fight, the arm isn't connected to the person; it's connected to Knives gun's. But Knives didn't make guns in this show, so now Vash can summon the power of the devil arm with his newfound power of anti-creation…. or whatever (look he sprouts a black devil wing and flies around while holding a cube made of gate portal energy that he also made and condensed apparently by accident, or maybe on purpose. There isn't time for explaining, it's time for BIG BIG BIG ACTION SETPIECES!!!!) Vash uses his devil arm and wing to fly up into space to blast away all the tesseract energy, but Knives won't let him. So, Vash blasts, and Knives, rather than go around the massive beam, puts himself directly in it's line so he can get melted down in slow motion. I feel my stomach churn as I write that sentence because it sounds like a cinema-sins nitpick. It kind of is, but it's also another ridiculous bit of contrivance that Knives can't bring himself to pull out of the death beam stream and grab the cube from it's completely exposed side-hole, so I'm touching on it. Vash kills Knives, even if accidentally, and Knives' last words to his brother, are "Nai is dead, you killed him." I am baffled, on the verge of hiring a private eye to research just what the hell that even means. I don't know where Knives feels this big betrayal happens, since he's literally using his brother as a frozen in time gateway to achieve his perfect world, with no promise that he'll ever unturn him from tree back to brother. But he's still sad about it? Suddenly? After all of this? Because he has shown not a lick of remorse or sadness towards his brother ever since they parted ways after the Big Fall? I'm rocked to my core at how nonsense this line is. Anyhow, that's how the story proper ends, which moves us, blessedly, onto my final point.

Everyone knows Marvel properties. Everyone knows the Marvel movies. And at this point, many of you probably know about the more recent movies and how they have an audience clap-pause for when something you recognize comes on-screen. Famously used in the third spiderman movie, where Toby Maquire comes on-screen to dead silence for just a bit to allow the marvel fans time to clap and holler in the theatre. Thank the lord above there are no such egregious references in Trigun, but there are an insulting amount of "remember the old property?" moments. To name a few, obviously there are the members of the gung-ho guns that Vash fights in this new show, including Zazie the beast, who has been turned from tragic esper child who can control massive sandworms, to strange native-dressed child that can still control worms… but might also be a worm? She bursts into literaly swarms of flying little glow-bugs when shot at, but they don't explain that. Go figure. She's just made of worms now. There's Legato, who is a reference for old fans, not a character. He appears in 2, maybe 3 episodes back to back to meddle with Wolfwood, then fades away without even a face reveal. Maybe that's for the planned second season. I say that these are all references, not characters in the new show done differently, because they really don't have a lick of substance behind them, beyond the most forgettable of the og gung-ho guns who has been turned into a roided-up bane out to kill Vash. He also serves as the "wolfwood murders a child" catalyst, although again, there is almost nothing done about that issue, and Wolfwood continues to hang out with Vash after it's over (Seriously, stakes in this show are so low they're nearly subterranean). Beyond that there are bits of a large robot that looks like the Nine-Lives gun from the og. Cute. The most offensive nostalgia and sequel bait combined references are saved for the last minutes of the final episode, however.

Meryl pays her respects to the annoying exposition reporter Robert De Niro at the wrecked city of July. A voice comes over her radio, telling her that if she doesn't stop slacking, she'll be sent over to the insurance agency (she was an insurance agent in the og, which is a funnier occupation and makes more sense, as she and her partner are following Vash because he's a walking liability.) The voice also tells her that she's been assigned a new partner, a woman by the name of Millie Thompson. Yes, stun-gun Millie, one of the more jovial and light-hearted members of the original cast. She was an amazonian woman with a minigun that fired "stun-rounds" which seemed to consist of metal bars that would whack into people's chest and stop them in their tracks. Possibly also break ribs, but Millie isn't known for being smart, yet she's a wonderful part of the cast that adds to the initial levity. She's also Wolfwood's implied romantic partner, though they do only share a single scene together. The scene is adorable though, I would look up Trigun Pregnant scene to find it. I know that sounds like a bit, but that's the youtube title of it. Anyhow, after that stomach-churning force-feeding of 'member berries, the scene changes to a familiar face, telling Vash that he'll be okay and get over his "amnesia" soon, calling him Eriks in a reference to the mini-plot where he went underground under the same name in a fit of manic depression. It's unclear whether he actually has memory loss now, since the July incident did cause him to lose his memory. But really, with the amount of faith I have in the show's writing for this season, an eventual season two will probably botch that plotline over 3 episodes.

So… that's it. That's the entire thing, I've been expelling the bile built up in my neck after watching his sad trainwreck for quite some time, so if you're still reading then I both applaud and thank you for being interested. I truly didn't wish to hate on a show, but it's because Trigun is such a beloved property for me that this new rendition being made sloppy and shoddy gets to me so much. It's a confused mess that's riddled with a baffling number of cliches, bad writing, over/under explanation, an obsession with a sci-fi aesthetic, and a desperate attempt to have flashy animation that is a poor, slipping mask for the rest of the trainwreck. I mean… the animation did (mostly) look quite good. Having 3d models affords a great deal more general movement and crazy action on a tighter budget. They seemed a bit too Gung-ho (hah, reference) with the movement though, as some scenes of just talking featured quite a bit of bouncy wobbling model flailing, which just looks off-putting. The animation team clearly cared and tried their best to get creative, and there's a fun amount of camera swings and reels for the few actual fights the show has. Who knows, the friend I watched this with said a season two was already confirmed. I was appalled at the ending of Dragon's Blood season 2, and then 3 had me in tears. Maybe they'll be able to scrape and salvage this flaming pile, and get their nonsense together for a season two, as that will probably be a re-telling of the original story, considering this first season ends with what was a past event in the og, and ends with setup for Millie. But…. Oh dear god, but…. The season also ends with a shot of Earth, and a radio broadcast as a few personnel confirm that the SEEDS project fired a signal, and Zazie the plot-exposition Beast warns Meryl… for some reason, that humans will be coming. I am not even going to ask why the sentient pile of bugs that looks like a child knows that. I'm just not. I can't imagine that MORE sci fi, more bigger blastier actionier flailing, and more over-explaining concepts will benefit this show, and I don't have much hope that their "humans are coming to the desert planet" plotline will be anything but disappointing.

But hey! I like to remain positive, so at least the original show is still there. I have the Blu-Ray box set of it, I might just dig it out to watch once more! I mean, what's stopping me from re-living the amazing show from my youth? And for that matter, what's stopping you? There's plenty of ways to get a hold of it either online or physically, and I promise you that the original Trigun is at the least a better-written show than the new trashfire. It might be antiquated, I'm aware that not everything ages gracefully… and I'm also aware that some people just don't know what good media is. Pearls before swine and all that. But I won't judge! Honest. So give the original a watch. And hey, you could try the new show, if you really wanted. I don't think it will hold up, but…. Well, again, some people don't know what good media is. Any way you slice it, again, thanks for listening to the longest ramble I've had in a good long while. I hope it gave you something to chew on, or something to chuckle at. I'll see you next time.

[shantalangel]

An interesting theory came to me: What if the Independents are not subspecies of Plants (naturally possible or obtained by DNA modification), and not a consequence of that Plants species, looking at humans, decided to mimic them (by the way, I have other theory that they could thus try to infiltrate humanity and destroy it to save themeselves :)). What if Independents are the result of an attempt to generate a human inside the female Plant? After all, they can create absolutely any matter, including Earthly animals (which people eat), so why not a human? The only thing that could be a problem at first was creation of not just bodies / matter, but full-fledged living beings with a working brain. And, apparently, the survival rate of such "printed people" is low; they are born either unviable, like Tesla, or something extraordinary, like a upgraded version of Plants (Vash and Nai).

Regarding Tesla: in the translation I read her appearance is called an accident, which in this case can mean, for example, that they did not expect this experiment to work. I basically have other theory that although Plants can replicate the DNA of other living beings (i.e. the meat that people eat), but could not until a certain point create a living being with a functioning brain in the same way. Otherwise, it would be strange that their cubs born different way than the creation of matter (in manga at least) and they would for sure be able to reproduce simply by copying themselves, like dividing bacteria. Plants have a very strange and complicated way of reproducing, which is not explained at all in the manga; it is not even clear whether they have males of non-humanoid "subtype" and what they look like.

I understand that I already confused everyone here and myself :), but in total and in short there are two theories about Independents I come to:

Natural evolution caused by the fact that the Plants tried to mimic humans to be left alone, or infiltrate and kill them :)

Humans played with genetic experiments including the non-humanoid subtype.

[quotient-12-3]

Toyota's Impact on the Global Automotive Market

Introduction:

 Toyota's Effect on the Worldwide Auto Market

Toyota, a name inseparable from unwavering quality. Development, and supportability. Has left a permanent imprint on the worldwide auto market. From its unassuming starting points in Japan to becoming one of the biggest vehicle producers on the planet. Toyota has reliably set industry norms and affected worldwide car patterns. This article investigates Toyota's effect on the worldwide car market. Featuring key advancements. business methodologies. And its obligation to manageability.

Toyota: A Tradition of Development

Toyota's process started in 1937, and from that point forward. The organization has been at the front of auto advancement. One of its most huge commitments to the business is the improvement of the Toyota Creation Framework (TPS). A progressive assembling process that underscored productivity. Quality, and waste decrease. TPS presented the idea of "without a moment to spare" creation. Which limited stock expenses and further developed creation speed, setting another norm for the business.

This way to deal with assembling changed Toyota into a worldwide force to be reckoned with as well as impacted incalculable different automakers. The standards of TPS have been embraced around the world, shaping the reason for lean assembling rehearses across different ventures.

Toyota: The Introduction of the half breed Unrest

The effect of the Prius reached out past Toyota's item arrangement. It provoked different automakers to foster their half breed and electric vehicles, speeding up the shift towards greener innovations. Today. Toyota keeps on driving in mixture innovation, with a great many crossover vehicles sold universally, adding to diminished outflows and fuel utilization

Worldwide Extension and Market Authority

Toyota's worldwide extension technique plays had a significant impact in its effect on the car market. By laying out assembling plants in key districts around the world. Toyota has had the option to adjust to nearby market needs, diminish creation costs, and keep up with its strategic advantage. The organization's obligation to quality and development deserves it a dependable client base across the globe.

In business sectors like North America, Europe. and Asia. Toyota has reliably positioned among the top automakers as far as deals and piece of the pie. Its different item setup, which incorporates all that from minimized vehicles to extravagance vehicles and business trucks, permits Toyota to take special care of many shopper inclinations and requirements.

Obligation to Supportability and Development

Toyota's impact on the worldwide car market reaches out past its vehicles; the organization is likewise a forerunner in maintainability drives. Toyota's obligation to lessening its ecological effect is apparent in its drawn out procedure, known as the "Toyota Natural Test 2050." This aggressive arrangement expects to accomplish zero fossil fuel byproducts all through the vehicle lifecycle, from creation to end-of-life reusing.

To accomplish this objective, Toyota is putting vigorously in innovative work of elective energy sources, including hydrogen power modules and electric vehicles. The organization has previously taken huge steps with the presentation of vehicles like the Mirai, a hydrogen energy component vehicle, and the continuous improvement of electric vehicles (EVs) as a feature of its more extensive system.

Molding the Fate of Versatility

Toyota isn't just centered around creating vehicles yet in addition on forming the fate of versatility. The organization is effectively associated with creating independent driving innovation, associated vehicles, and savvy transportation frameworks. Toyota's vision for what's in store incorporates making a reality where vehicles are more secure, more productive, and consistently coordinated into the more extensive transportation environment.

Toyota's interest in independent vehicles, especially through its auxiliary, the Toyota Exploration Organization (TRI), features its obligation to advancement. The organization's attention on computerized reasoning, mechanical technology, and high level materials research is driving the improvement of cutting edge vehicles that will reclassify the manner in which individuals travel.

Difficulties and Flexibility

Like any worldwide company, Toyota has confronted its portion of difficulties. The 2008 worldwide monetary emergency, cataclysmic events like the 2011 seismic tremor and tidal wave in Japan. And the later semiconductor deficiencies have tried Toyota's versatility. In any case, the organization's powerful production network the executives, versatile business methodologies. And obligation to constant improvement have permitted it to really explore these difficulties.

Toyota's capacity to rapidly recuperate from mishaps and keep developing has supported its situation as a forerunner in the worldwide auto market. The organization's emphasis on long haul supportability, consumer loyalty, and mechanical progression guarantees that it stays a prevailing power in the business.

[tieflingkisser]

‘This Genocide Is About Oil’ (29 Nov 2023)

Given the billions of barrels worth of oil in Palestine, some advocates believe that fossil fuels are influencing Israel’s attacks.

“This genocide is not about the claims of Israel protecting itself,” said Shereen Talaat, founder and director of MENAFem Movement for Economic, Development, and Ecological Justice, which approaches the climate crisis in the Middle East-North Africa region through a feminist lens. “This genocide is about oil.” Both off the coast and beneath the occupied lands of Palestine, over 3 billion barrels of oil are estimated to exist, according to a 2019 U.N. report. These numbers don’t even include the gas potential in Palestine. The Levant Basin, which sits in the Mediterranean, is estimated to have some 1.7 billion barrels of oil while over 1.5 billion barrels are estimated to lie beneath the occupied West Bank area that Handala calls home. Despite the billions of dollars these resources offer if extracted, Handala would prefer the oil and gas stay where they are—the world cannot afford more fossil fuel extraction.  “We want more clean energy,” he said. All of this, of course, is aspirational. Right now, it’s downright impossible. Though the U.S. is reportedly pushing Israel to allow Palestinians to profit and build an independent energy system from offshore gas post-war, under Israeli occupation, Palestinians cannot drill for oil and gas. Many communities are not allowed to build out solar energy, either. Israel, on the other hand, hasn’t wasted time in claiming these dirty resources for itself. On October 29, its government approved 12 licenses for six companies to look for more gas fields offshore. Since the launch of the war between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, Europe has been in need of an energy provider that can fill in the gaps. For years, Israel has been trying to build a pipeline to export gas to European nations. “In the Middle East, you can never talk about conflict without the corresponding associations of oil and gas,” said Atif Kubursi, a retired economics professor at McMaster University who authored that 2019 U.N. report. “This is particularly problematic now that Russia has cut its oil and gas to Europe, and everybody is looking for alternatives.” Many advocates feel that foreign interests in extracting these resources from Palestinian lands are contributing to the potential genocide Palestinians face, at least in part. Historically, foreign policy in the Middle East has often involved fossil fuels. Could it be different this time?

[....]

Local Palestinian environmental activists would prefer to leave fossil fuels alone: They don’t want their people’s hands sullied by contributing further to climate calamity. Handala wants to see the land heal, especially after all the destruction it’s faced. He says that before the Israeli occupation in 1948, Palestinians were creating green spaces and planting forests.  “[Palestine] was one of the only green areas in the Middle East,” he said.  He dreams of a future where biodiversity thrives again—where creatures like the black iridescent Palestine sunbird can fly free, where the olive trees can once again grow old. The burning of bombs and fossil fuels pushes these dreams farther and farther away. For Yasmeen El-Hasan, an advocacy officer with the Palestine-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees, there’s no way to untangle the global thirst for oil and gas from what’s happening to Palestine. None of this is a coincidence, she said. “It is quite apparent that the international complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza is intricately tied to the capitalist interests of global actors and corporations, where financial gain is prioritized over Palestinian lives (and preservation of our environment),” El-Hasan wrote via email.  She believes that this is “only one of the many reasons” why much of the international community is standing by Israel. “As the Indigenous people and stewards of the land, these actors view us as an obstacle to their profit,” El-Hasan said. 

[robobirdie]

Some Fan Story Fun Protagonists interviews: Creatures and Robotics

While working when stuck with writers block I sometimes would take a break and have a little fun writing down what I felt the characters thoughts would be on certain things in the story. Some give some minor spoilers but nothing too serious about the main story or events in the story. They are fun humorous little tidbits some of which helped me with working out some concepts in my story namely character relations. This one is on the creatures and Robotics of the Lost Realm:

Ancestor Wing

Jay- I guess they’re not too bad. They are kind of cute and very friendly plus they eat bugs including the bad ones. They’re nice to have around especially at night when all the big freaky bugs come out.  Cole- They’re cute and real soft just be careful when petting them that you don’t accidently poke them in the eye. They don’t like that and will bite in defence and those little needle teeth of theirs can leave a pretty nasty bite.  Zane- Their looks are what others would consider adorable and their biology is quite interesting. They are capable of keeping both wing structures in synch while flying yet can move their arms independently from the winglets when moving on surfaces.  Nya- They are cute and their fun to feed from your hand. They’re so tame and gentle.  Lloyd- I find the mythology around these creatures interesting; that they can commune with and be messengers from those in the departed realm. I wonder if it’s true.  Kai- Their not too bad. I defiantly don’t mind having these around.  Aaron- They’re totally cool; soft, gentle, friendly and eat all the bad bugs who wouldn’t want these things around.  Axl- Did you know they can eat almost their own body weight in insects in a day! Sure they don’t weigh much but it still equals a lot of biting insects.  Clay- They are cute and very beneficial. They keep both crops and people safe from harmful insects, I get why the people treat them with such high respect.    Macy- They’re so cute you just want to hug them but you have to be careful. They have hollow bones like birds so you have to be careful not to hurt them.       Lance- Finally a creature that’s not creepy or annoying in this place.    Jestro- They are cute and very friendly.

Ash Walker

Jay- Huge and can eat me no thanks.  Cole- They’re not too bad. Yha they’re big and kinda scary but surprisingly gentle.  Zane- Despite what some think they are surprisingly gentle and empathetic to others. They will aid and protect other animals even those who could hurt them. They have great respect for all living things.  Nya- Despite what Jay says they’re not bad. They’re actually kind of sweet. If their babies get too tired or can’t cross a river on their own the parents will let the babies ride on their backs. How can such a caring creature truly be a monster?  Lloyd- Yha they are nice and not too bad but they are a bit scary looking.  Kai- I guess they’re not too bad, I just worry about accidently getting stepped on by them.  Aaron- They’re pretty rad. They don’t mind if you take a ride or even nap on their backs. They apparently let animals do it in the wild all the time.  Axl- Big and powerful yet gentle and caring; I like them. They remind me of me.  Clay- Contrary to what some believe they haven’t had very many attacks or problems from these creatures even wild ones. The real biggest danger you have with being around these is being under the wrong end at the wrong time.  Macy- I like them, sure they’re big and moody but they’re not really that bad; no worse than Axl when he misses a meal.  Lance- Luckily they have people whose jobs are to clean up what these things drop around town. What they drop strangely doesn’t smell too bad but I still don’t want to get that stuff on me.  Jestro- They might not be bad but their size still kind of scares me.

Creatures of Blackreach

Jay- Just more nightmare fuel. Dark glowing beasts that have no qualms with eating you and plant mutated zombie creatures controlled by mushrooms no thanks.  Cole- Some are kind of creepy yha like those Gloam-beasts but the others aren’t bad; kind of cool actually.  Zane- I find these all rather fascinating. The way they have adapted to a world without sunlight and dominated by fungi is rather intriguing. I would love to learn more about them and visit them and their home.  Nya- I guess the thought of creatures controlled by fungi is rather creepy but these things apparently aren’t as bad as you’d think. They don’t seem to have any desire to hurt others. They just want to protect their home I can respect that.  Lloyd- Yha it’s a little unnerving to think of but it actually doesn’t seem too bad. It might actually be interesting to see this place. I wonder if the fungi are annoyed by the caverns inhabitants eating them? Maybe they have some sort of symbiotic relation so don’t mind it.  Kai-I guess they’re not too bad, there could be worse things to come inhabit such a place.  Aaron- This place and its inhabitants seem so far out, I’d love to take a trip their and explore the place.  Axl- They don’t sound too bad so why are the people scared of them.  Clay- I get to come across one of these things in a dark place might be rather scary but I doubt they’re as scary as many proclaim.  Macy- How’s this whole controlled by fungi thing work? Is it some sort of magic or can it communicate with them in some way? Truly I’m more curious than scared of these things.  Lance- They sound cool but I don’t want to encounter these things in person. They probably are not very friendly and likely reek of an earthy rustic smell; I’m no fan of that.  Jestro- Even though many look like creatures above ground something about their dark with glowing markings appearance sounds kind of unsettling.

Insects

Jay-Why! Can’t bugs just stay smaller than sparrows for once? Then again even the little ones are kind of creepy here too. See through spiders, beetles that shock you in defence, mean crabs that make better deterrents than guard dogs, wasps that can burn you with a heat worse than Coles chilli do I need to go on? I guess though not all are bad. The Torchbugs are cute and those Rockipods aren’t too bad just be careful not to sit on them. It’s a bit embarrassing to fall off them when they curl up when you do that.  Cole- Yha quite a few are kind of creepy even if they don’t wish you harm but most aren’t too bad. I do kind of like those Torchbugs though. Rockipods are kind of cool too and very chill not to mention their shells are made of rock isn’t that cool. Don’t try to kick them like they’re a ball when they curl up though. As Kai found out those shells are rock hard, they’re a bit heavy even when they’re the size of a small dog so you can almost break your foot on them.  Zane- They’re not too bad. I don’t fear insects and find many just as fascinating as other animals but I just wish they would stop being attracted to my eyes. I keep accidently swallowing a couple of the small ones each day because they keep getting in my face especially when it’s not very bright out. It doesn’t feel or sometimes taste pleasant and those Shalk beetles really hurt. So do any species with spines, horns, large pincers or mandibles or other decorative or defensive structure. The noises of some like mosquitoes and flies near my ears are really annoying too. I do like the Torchbugs I just wish they wouldn’t be so interested in my eyes when it’s dark.  Nya- The big ones yha kinda creepy but some of the others aren’t bad. The Torchbugs are cute and the Lava moths rather pretty. The spiders I could go without. I wonder if those hornets are as hot headed as my brother; from what I’ve seen they seem like it. I wouldn’t doubt they are; I also wouldn’t doubt he’ll probably do something stupid around them and get stung. Just because they like the heat I don’t think they’re fans of fire. I won’t feel sorry for him if he gets stung, he probably will have done something to deserve it.  Lloyd- A lot of them are kind of unsettling yha especially when you find them hiding under things like your pillow. Sure I believe Zane that ant is harmless despite the spikes and horns and just scouting not wanting to hurt anyone but it still creeped me out. Thankfully he took it out of my bed and put it in the planter outside our room. How can he hold them without getting creeped out? Anyway not all of the insects are that bad or creepy though. Most beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, moths and butterflies aren’t too bad even if they are a bit big. The Roly-poly bugs aren’t bad and I do like the Torchbugs; it took some patients but I managed to get one to actually land on my hand. It was cute.  Kai- Not going to lie I’m not a big fan of bugs especially when their bigger than a songbird but I do like the glowing Torchbug, they’re kind of cool and those burning hornets are kind of cool they can wield fire just like I can. I wonder if that would make them see me as a sort of king or god to them? I should test it out. Also when these things are wearing a rock armour don’t try and give them a kick; I’ve never stubbed my toes so hard before.  Aaron- I don’t get why others are so creeped out by bugs. Sure they’ve got more limbs than we do but they’re not that bad; unless you accidently swallow one while speeding around on your hover shield that is. That’s not pleasant. Having them ping you in the face under the same circumstances isn’t pleasant either especially if they’re quite big. That can sting and not in a good way. Outside that they’re pretty chill and rad.  Axl- I guess they can be creepy especially the spiders but they’re not that bad, just don’t make them angry. Some have some pretty nasty powers and aren’t afraid to use them but aside from that most are pretty harmless. This is good cause then you can have some fun with them. That ninja Jay really gets spooked over a lot of the creepy crawlies. Me and Aaron like taking those little Embers Ants and spooking Jay with them. It’s funny to see his reaction to them especially when he finds them where he least expects them.  Clay- I’m not much for insects and yha some of these are creepy, defiantly the spiders and those big ants and their little cousins, but they’re really not that bad just creepy. Luckily most of them are generally easily to scare off even the spiders. Not all are bad or creepy. The butterflies and Torchbugs are pleasant and so are the Isopods. Even though they’re a bit creepy the little Ember Ants are harmless and a lot more even tempered than their large Spiny Ant relatives. It is a bit creepy though that you can find them hanging around everywhere in the city and people aren’t bothered by them even if you find them somewhere you don’t want to find them like in your bed, on the table while you’re trying to eat, in your helmet when you go to put it on... they do eat them here so I guess they’re not that bothered by them but it’s still unsettling. I guess it could be worse though. Other regions here have some that are much worse like sparrow sized mosquitoes, crocodile sized millipedes and bear sized spiders. Thank goodness we don’t have to go to those places.  Macy- Yha I’m not much of a fan for many insects especially spiders or things with too many legs like centipedes; millipedes and isopods aren’t too bad though. They’re not fast or as creepy looking as centipedes, they even look a little cute in that these are creepy crawlies but their nice and not too bad kind of way. Not all of them are bad or creepy and some here are nice and not too bad. The Torchbugs are cute and so are the moths. The little ants aren’t bad just more of annoying; gotta feel a little sorry for them. Some of us, you can probably guess who, have been using them to freak out that ninja Jay. Can’t be nice being used to scare someone like that.  Lance- Bugs ew no thank you; they’re gross always crawling around in the dirt and many have too many legs. It was funny though that one time Aaron collided with one of these Torchbugs while flying around it pinged him in the face and left a colourful glowing mark on his face for a few hours even though he had cleaned it off. I’m not sure why it was like that, the ninjas metal man said it was something to do with chemicals being absorbed into his skin or something I didn’t hear or understand much of what he said. It was a lot of science-y stuff I couldn’t care much about but how that ninja Jay reacted to it was hilarious. He acted all paranoid to Aaron for a while.  Jestro-I guess they’re not too bad; they’re not monsters just animals; well I’m not sure about spiders but the rest are just mostly harmless bugs even if they have strange powers like those shocky beetles. They really hurt. Sure some of them freak me out yha but they’re not too bad and the glowing torchbugs are pretty.

Ekhindahogs

Jay- Finally one of the few species that isn’t mean, ugly, creepy, wants to eat me or dangerous; these are cute and so funny to watch.  Cole- Cute little burrowers with comical attitudes; plenty to love about them though they can be a nuisance. They have pretty tough claws so the town does have problems with them digging through the walls of the Under-city and peoples basements and getting into trouble.  Zane- They are cute and have a rather interesting biology and social structure. Apparently to combat the harshness of their environment they developed so that both males and females can care and feed the young so if one of the parents dies their offspring won’t risk dying either.  Nya- They are cute and enjoyable but that whole males giving milk like mothers I find kind of weird. Nice to see a species where dad plays such an important role as mom but still I find it a bit weird.  Lloyd- They’re cute and playful and it’s kind of relaxing watching them playing around. It must be nice being so carefree; I bet the fathers also have good relations with their sons… sorry did I say that sentence out loud?  Kai- They’re not too bad just watch where you sit when these are near. They might kick dirt in your hair while digging in planters… well I’m hoping it’s just dirt in those planters and not well you know; I hope they don’t fertilize with manure in those things or I’m going to need another shower.  Aaron - First off the milk thing is kind of weird second they don’t lie about that venom; I didn’t mean to startle that one during training… man that sting was nasty. Felt like having the worst case of pins and needles ever combined with all your muscles being pulled at the same time! My leg was paralysed from the pain!  Axl- I like them. They’re not very soft and those beaks have a surprisingly strong bite but they’re overall enjoyable to have around.  Clay- They are cute but can be troublesome. A pair somehow got into our room and tried to make off with my shield. I can’t have that; a knight should never lose their shield.  Macy-They are cute but don’t let that fool you, they can be real troublesome especially when in groups and they want some of your lunch. I think they know their considered cute and use that to get lots of treats.  Lance- I found a social media page dedicated to these things that has way more followers than I do; how’s that possible? Sure they’re cute but can they act or pose no… though looking at these photos and videos I kinda see the appeal. Maybe I should add some pictures of these with me to my social media pages.  Jestro- They aren’t too bad but those quills hurt when they get stuck in you.

Fabricants

Jay- Combining dangerous animals with dangerous machinery; why would you want to create such monsters!  Cole- The thought of them is kind of strange. Do the creatures know and understand they are now half robotic? How do they feel about their situation?  Zane- I find them intriguing. I can understand them and what they have to say is interesting. Some understand what they have become, others aren’t too sure. They know they’re different but they all love what they’ve become. They feel it improves their life and lets them view the world with a deeper understanding making them deeper in aware to the beauty of the world around them. They also enjoy that they can now play with and take advantage of the machines people make. One of those for the training arena apparently has learned to hack vending machines to get treats from it.  Nya- I find them interesting; I wonder what inspired their creators to merge animals with machines and how did they do it? It can’t be an easy process.  Lloyd- They’re kind of cool but also a bit unnerving, those Venom-fang ones especially are creepy looking especially in the dark.  Kai- Animals merged with technology, something about that I find very unsettling. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand technology very well but they kind of creep me out.  Aaron- I think they’re cool. Did you know their cybernetics give them the ability to play video games? Imagine giving your pet that ability, you know how much fun you could have!  Axl- They kind of sound cool but also very dangerous.  Clay- Animals with the calculating and precise thoughts and movements of machines. That sounds like a dangerous combo to me. Hopefully they have measures in place to keep them from causing harm and chaos.  Macy- Sounds like a cool concept they’d probably make for good training partners but they can also hack into your phone when you’re not aware of it. Imagine your pet being able to tattle on you when you plan to sneak out for a party?  Lance- Why not just make the machines into animals in the first place instead of merging them with animals? You just make them smelly and drooly that way.  Jestro- Is it just me or does anyone else get goose-bumps from the thought of these things?

Fear

Jay- It’s in the name that’s how I feel about this thing!  Cole- Yha I’m not too keen on ever encountering one of these. Good thing they’re technically extinct.  Zane- While I may be a bit more resistant to damage than the others to attacks by this thing I still would not do well against it and likely receive fatal damage from it.  Nya- Yha I can see why they would give it the name they did. It probably wasn’t pleasant dealing with these things when they were around.  Lloyd- I think for things like this it is one of the few times I’m glad to hear something’s extinct.  Kai- big, lots of teeth and sharp clawed dangerous reptile no thanks. Let them stay as fossils.  Aaron- I’d want to say add the term less to its name and that’s how I’d feel about meeting one of these but that would be a lie.  Axl- Just the name of this thing unnerves me.  Clay-Luckily we won’t have to worry about facing one of these, I don’t think we’d do to well against one.  Macy- I wonder who the brave warriors to take these things out were. They must have been pretty tough to face one.  Lance- big nasty and drooly reptile, no thanks. Good thing this monster is extinct.  Jestro- Good thing these are extinct. I saw a stuffed one in the museum and nearly wet myself. It mustn’t have been nice having these around.

Hoofivore

Jay- It’s not a bug or reptile but I still find it a bit scary; it is after all a massive meat eating animal that could eat me. It’s sad what happened to them though.  Cole- These things actually sound so nice. They bond for life and are caring parents. They even look cute like giant horned dogs. Why would those snakes want to hurt them like that?  Zane- These creatures sound rather pleasant, it is sad that they are now so endangered all because of one races hatred to another.  Nya- Poor things, hopefully they can bring them back.  Lloyd- It’s a good thing what they are doing for this species considering what was done to them.  Kai-That’s not right attacking innocent animals just to spite other people.  Aaron- That wasn’t cool of these snake people to hunt down these creatures purely out of hatred.  Axl- Poor things, hopefully things get better for them.   Clay- Does the cruelty of some people know no bounds? At least now these creatures are in good hands.  Macy- I hope they taught these snakes a lesson for their actions.  Lance- Why would these snake people go after these creature? What purpose would wiping them out honestly have?  Jestro- Just because these creatures weren’t on their side didn’t mean they had to be destroyed, that’s a pretty monstrous act and I should know. I’ve worked with monsters.

Hyenoids

Jay- This will probably upset Zane but no thanks, they should just scrap these things.  Cole- I’m not sure what to think of these things. They’re not Zane that’s for sure but are they really the monsters everyone claims they are?  Zane- Why does everyone hate them? Haven’t they ever tried to get to know them? I doubt they’re truly the monsters everyone says they are. They’re not mindless machines; they are thinking feeling living beings just like animals and people.  Nya- I think we’ll need to be guarded with Zane around these things. I don’t think he fully understands they’re not like him. These ones were created for evil and don’t share his views or values. They are likely no more than monsters.  Lloyd- I find these things very worrisome. I’m pretty sure they’ll see a kinship towards Zane and may try to get him to join them. Given who they serve that would be a very bad thing.  Kai- No offense to Zane but I don’t like these things simple as that.  Aaron- They sound cool but at the same time worrisome; they’re very dangerous and might want to turn the ninjas cyber-bro to their side. That could be a very bad thing given what they serve. Even if they aren’t inherently evil they serve a monster who is.  Axl- I think we should try to avoid these things as much as we can; I don’t like the sounds of them.  Clay- We shouldn’t trust these things. From what I’ve been told the ninja are having a bit of trouble with their droid brother becoming over trusting to these things. That could be very bad.  Macy- From what we’ve heard these things are very unsettling; defiantly nothing like our friendly and helpful Squirebots.  Lance- The town should capture a bunch of these things and change their programming to make them servants then maybe the place wouldn’t be so peasenty… then again with this Stag thing around how would you be able to trust these things wouldn’t want them to enslave you or worse. Maybe they should just leave these things in the wild.  Jestro- Monstrous machines so human like you can’t tell the difference between them and people; does that sound a little unsettling to anyone else? How do I tell who’s who? I don’t want to fall to this monstrous leader of theirs; I’m done with the being evil kind of life.

Kaguar

Jay- Scary looking reptilian like beaked tusked cows; I’m not sure what to think about that but it does seem weird.  Cole- I like them, they taste like beef and I hear their meat is healthier than cows meat.  Zane- They are very helpful creatures and materials from them don’t taste too bad and are rather healthy you just have to be careful with those tusks; I hear they have been known to disembowel droids with them. I find that kind of unsettling.  Nya- They’re not bad, they kind of smell odd but you won’t notice a difference between their milk and meat and a cows.  Lloyd- Just pretend they’re a strange breed of cow and they don’t seem so alien even though they don’t sound like cows or look anything like them.  Kai- They may taste like cows but they ain’t docile like them. When they flaunt those tusks at you don’t take that as a sign that their showing off. That means they’re mad, trust me I found out the hard way.  Aaron- A cool looking mix between some reptile and a cow plus you can eat them. Not a bad creature.  Axl- I found some good recipes for their meat if you’re interested.   Clay- They’re not bad and useful but something about how they look at you when you walk by makes me uneasy. They look angry all the time.  Macy- Compared to some of the other things people keep as livestock these are one of the less strange.  Lance- Others can use such rustic methods of travel like these I’ll stick with my mecha-steed thank you.  Jestro- I guess they’re not too bad even though they’re kind of scary to look at.

Parrot Cruncher

Jay- I guess they wouldn’t be too bad and be rather cute if it wasn’t for their venom, those quills and their strong nut cracking parrot beaks. Luckily they usually won’t bite with their full force on you with those but I’m not going to take the risk. They can bite with enough force to break your arm!  Cole- They’re not too bad though very annoying if they try to steal your lunch. I think they know they have a venom that messes with us cause they don’t have much fear to people even wild ones. Trust me if they take your lunch just let them have it. Just touching them will make the parts you touch them with go numb and you lose functioning to them which can mean a full body paralysis if you try to wrestle them to get your lunch back.  Zane- It’s creepy to have venoms affect me. I can feel the stuff mess with my programming when it contacts my nervous system. I’m not sure how it is affecting me, I think it’s some sort of magical effect, but it’s very unsettling and I am unfortunate to not benefit from anti-venom shots so I have to suffer the full effects of the venom for its full time. It’s not pleasant.  Nya- In ways they’re cute but I think their dangers really hinder their cuteness especially if you’ve dealt with their venoms. It’s very unpleasant and removing those quills is pretty hard especially when you have to pull them out of a droid. You have to wear gloves when touching the quills and they can easily get stuck in metal.  Lloyd- Cute but rather annoying. We’ve all had the unpleasant misfortune of getting affected by their venom and quills at least once while here. Most of them were by accident usually from training though Cole kind of asked for his the one time when he tried to wrestle it to get his lunch back from it.  Kai- Yha the venoms not too nice but at least it’s not lethal and wears off quicker than you’d think about four to five hours. Truly that’s not too bad. The creatures aren’t too bad themselves and very passive. Unless they feel threatened they won’t attack.  Aaron- Their pretty cool; they’re like someone mixed a parrot with a capybara then gave it quills like a porcupine. They like to chew like all three animals too. These creatures have a habit of chewing up wooden items to keep their beaks trim. The towns taken to making all important posts and signs within these creatures reach out of metal to keep them from chewing them up.  Axl- While they eat largely plant matter like fruits, vegetables, leaves and stuff like that they do and will eat meat. They’ll eat smaller animals, carrion and bugs. Luckily they are very food orientated so you can use that to herd them away from where they aren’t supposed to be so you don’t have to actually touch them.  Clay- As far as the creatures in this place go these ones aren’t too bad; yha the venoms annoying to work with or around but they aren’t too big and while annoying the venom isn’t lethal. Quite a few people like to keep these as pets. They’re apparently very dog like in temperament. If you want to keep them as pets though you have to get their venom sacks removed or you can’t really touch them and they will leave traces of their venom all around your house.  Macy- They’re kind of cute, probably would be cuter if it wasn’t for the fact that you can’t touch them without getting poisoned. Sure it won’t kill you but the poisonings not fun. Imagine needing to scratch your nose but having both your arms paralysed. It’s not fun.  Lance- Not a fan of the venom but at least it doesn’t mess with your looks. It sure doesn’t feel pleasant though, I prefer to just sleep it off unlike some who try to fight it. You should remember though if you’re going to pass out from the poison do so behind a locked door where others can’t get you; I’m still pretty mad about what Axl and Aaron did leaving me on a bench in the Under-city like that. It took hours to fully clean off all the makeup and markers people drew on me with!  Jestro- They are cute and friendly but someone should have told me of their venom. I hadn’t read the book yet and Lance told me they were safe to pet; he purposely messed with me. It was scary when I lost feeling and use in my hand.

Pryphon

Jay- Cute, Playful and friendly but loud defiantly loud! They wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t loud and full of attitude and if they couldn’t guilt you into giving them things; they especially love food. They also love to watch TV and when you play video games just don’t let them near the controllers cause they’ll chew off the buttons.  Cole- Cute but watch out for that bite. They can crack coconuts with it so you don’t want them using it on you when they’re mad. They can also chew up a wooden chair in around 20 minutes if you let them. Also unless you want to give some of what you’re eating or hear an earful then don’t eat around them. They’ll beg for food and if they don’t get any they somehow give these really sad eyes or will throw a tantrum and yell… I had to share a sugar cookie with one. They can’t really pull off facial expressions but somehow it gave me such a sad look I just had to give it a piece. I felt guilty for not sharing with it.  Zane- They are what many would consider cute along with entertaining, caring, intelligent and emotional creatures who enjoy being a part of the family. They are defiantly an enjoyable species though loud at times and have surprising mimicry abilities. Thought I kept hearing some of the others phones ringing the other day even when they weren’t around for over an hour turned out it was one of these just messing with me; I know it was messing with me because it laughed when I caught it in action.  Nya- Cute, playful and friendly defiantly one of the more enjoyable creatures here and I’d have to agree with Jay they can be quite loud and are full of attitude. Trust me if they’re being loud or moody don’t yell back at them. They’ll just get louder and start throwing things at you and you don’t want them to bite you.  Lloyd- I like these. They’re cute, friendly, family orientated, caring and playful. It’s enjoyable to watch them play together. Did you know they have a noise just for play that gets everyone in the mood to play? You should be careful though they are quite destructive. They’re playing often involves tearing things apart and causing mayhem and they like to steal things especially if there’s food involved. I’ve even heard of them breaking into people’s homes to steal things and cause mayhem.   Kai- I can defiantly see the appeal to these creatures. They are cute and entertaining but loud and messy. They like to play with your hair for some reason and enjoy stealing things so keep an eye on your belongings… had to distract them with some food to recover my phone the other day.  Aaron- These are fun and rad looking but their loud calls waking you up while you sleep is so unpleasant. I think they do it on purpose too, I’m pretty sure I heard some of them laugh when they did it.  Axl- They’re so friendly you can get the more tame ones in the city to eat rate out of your hand. They love peppers, apples, watermelon, corn rate off the cob, potatoes and chicken. I heard they’ve actually on rare occasions been known to hunt chickens; they must really love chicken.  Clay- These are cute and enjoyable to have around but you can’t let them distract you when you’re working. I will admit it is a bit hard to stay focussed when they’re playing near you especially when they are in groups. Somehow they know how to catch your attention and if you’re not careful get you involved. While I was watching two play fighting another stole my shield and took it into a tree. I went to retrieve it then it dropped down and started running around with it. The other two joined it and they played a game of keep away with me for longer than I would like to admit… around thirty minutes. Even worse it was in public, it was embarrassing.   Macy- Their so cute you just want to hug them. I hear though that’s a bad idea. They are quite nippy and can do a lot of damage with those beaks. They also apparently don’t take kindly to being hugged unless they want to be. They’re very opinionated creatures.  Lance-They are cute but they don’t like to have their pictures taken and can be quite rude; most of the pictures I got of them are them trying to bite the camera or giving me their butts!  Jestro- They’re so funny and adorable I get why they are sometimes called the jesters of the wastes. If only I could be as good at entertaining as them then maybe everyone wouldn’t think I was a failure.

Retch

Jay- Floaty leathery jellyfish things; sure their relatively harmless but they still creep me out. I think it’s because of how they just float there kind of mindlessly and they have no eyes and the noodly tentacles, the glowing bits which make it creepier in the dark like all you see is their glowing markings just floating in the dark… that’s so unsettling! I’m not scared of them just more of creeped out by them. They apparently have smaller relatives you can find in some swampy forests, some caves and places underground. I don’t know if shrinking these things would make them less or more creepy. Cole- What do I say other than they just confuse me; they’re apparently some sort of Jellyfish, I can kind of see the relation a bit but other than that they just confuse me and I think I’m with Jay in that how they just float around is weird and unsettling. Their kind of mindless too like regular jellyfish and just randomly float around eating bugs especially flying ones like flies and the plant debris off the floor. They don’t seem to have much going on in their brains though they don’t have a brain… I guess that explains why they’re so mindless. Zane- These things are very confusing. How are they staying in the air without wings or artificial forms of propulsion? How are they staying a float and how do they keep from floating away? I get their tail helps them move but they have no eyes at least I cannot see any though apparently they do have photoreceptor cells, the structures in organic organisms that are precursors to eyes. They apparently have quite a few of these in their head region. Is that how they navigate? If not then how do they sense the world around them? Can they sense it much? They don’t have a brain so can’t sense the world like we can. They can’t be made or share a similar anatomy to jellyfish despite relations because a jellyfishes anatomy cannot survive outside water so what are they made of and how do they work? They are cool but all that is confusing about them un-nerves me. Even though it is a bit creepy how they just float around is kind of relaxing and calming to watch. Nya- So they’re like air jellyfish; I guess that’s not too bad. They’re not venomous like normal jellyfish so it won’t hurt you to bump into them or have the tentacles touch you; they can however produce electricity to shock anything they consider a threat so you have to be careful around them. Luckily they are rather docile but yha they’re kind of creepy; especially during a dark night. Strangely these things will also go underwater sometimes; I don’t know how they do it. They’d probably have to eat a bunch of rocks to counter the rising effect that lets them float unless they have some sort of magic that lets them do that. Lloyd- Yha something about them is unsettling yet strangely relaxing; seeing them floating in the dark yha very creepy but watching them mindlessly float around during the day can be oddly calming. I know they’re harmless but I just can’t get myself to get close to them. You know they made some of our armour from their skin. It doesn’t seem any different from normal leather. It stretches more than normal leather and apparently has some resistance to elemental magic. Other than that it’s no more different than regular leather. Kai- In one word they’re strange. Jellyfish like creatures that float in the air and can be just as sparky as Jay. Even stranger they farm them here. Not as food since their meat is poisonous to humans and will make droids sick but for their skin to make leather and this jelly that they use to make paralysis poisons. Apparently it’s not easy to farm them. Hard to contain something that can float away and they can wield electricity like Jay making them hard to work with. Truly I don’t see why they would bother with that. Did I also mention they can be creepy to look at especially in the dark? Aaron- I would say they are cool if they didn’t confuse me so much; all that confusing just makes me a bit nervous about them. I can tell you though accidently flying into them is not nice. They’re not as soft and squishy as jellyfish, that’s thanks to the armour plating and some internal hard parts that help their bodies retain their shapes without water to support them. Those though are not what makes hitting into them bad. Luckily they’re not venomous but that shock they can give you is pretty wicked, not as bad as Jays when he panic shoots you with a bolt of lightning but still it hurts pretty bad. Axl- How can something pretty harmless with not much of a brain that looks like a balloon made of leather be so creepy? If the floating isn’t unsettling enough seeing them floating in the dark where all you see is their glowing markings is even worse. Even weirder they are like insects and are attracted to lights which can be very unnerving to see these things suddenly float up out of the dark to come bump into the lights. Luckily the big ones usually won’t show up to your porch but they have a smaller relative that’s no bigger than a large pigeon found near swampy regions here that will and it’s more decorative with more glowing spots than the big ones so they’re even creepier to see in and float out of the dark. Clay- Yha I’m not sure what to think of these. Defiantly seeing them in the dark is creepy and the floating is weird. Their whole anatomy is confusing too. They are pretty passive at least so that’s nice. They could be worse. I hear these things have small pint sized cousins in some mountainous areas known as Sky Lamps that are parasitic feeding off others like mosquitoes and have a set of sharp spear like tentacles to help them grip their victims. I would not want to encounter those. Macy- Yha even after being here a while I still find them creepy particularly at night. A lot of the natives don’t mind them I guess they’re used to them though most from regions where these things and their relatives aren’t found feel the same as us; creeped or unsettled by them. They’re at last passive, if they weren’t they probably wouldn’t be very pleasant to have around. They at least can be humorous at times such as when they float into a clothesline or decorative light strand and get them stuck on them as they float around. Lance- Apparently this creepy floating jelly thing has a jelly they harvest that can be used as a decorative hair gel. It can give your hair a colourful glow in the dark. Sounds interesting but the extreme numbness, strange tingling feelings like someone’s sending electricity through your skin, some get rashes and have their hair fall out and the possibility of paralysis you can end up feeling from or having using it will have me steering clear of it. It sounds cool but I would rather not risk the possible effects. Who knows what damage they could do to my looks. Jestro- Weird and a bit creepy, the fact they can shock you with those tentacles makes them even more unnerving. Did you know the Ashers think these are a delicacy; obviously they must be immune to their poisons. The meat is poisonous. They like to force their prisoners to eat a tiny bit of this or anything else that will make you sick or weak to weaken them so they won’t fight back. Trust me that isn’t pleasant.

Constructs

Jay- Nothing against Zane but conscious calculating machines no thank you! You know most of the types don’t have eyes that can blink; they could secretly be watching you whenever you least expect them too! That young knight Robin found one of the snake ones and fixed it up and I found it the one day on a shelf in the main room. He claims he just left it there earlier and it was inactive but I swear there was light in its eyes and it was watching me slowly moving its head to keep an eye wherever I went! Cole- Yha these things are a bit unsettling but they’re not evil or monsters like what some think. They’re just machines. Whether their as special as Zane or not I’m not sure, most of them probably not; they’re really simple compared to my buddy but that doesn’t make them evil besides I’m pretty sure I’d side with them on some things. If I had a stranger walking into my house uninvited yha I’d attack them too especially if they’re there to take things without my consent.   Zane- I get they are kind of unsettling but they are not evil. They just want to protect their homes so why does everyone hate them? I know they are not as advanced or special as me, some largely the militant ones, are barely more than machines but they still don’t deserve to be hated so much. They are just doing what they were made to do how does that make them evil? Why do humans hate things that aren’t truly human… I’ve never done anything wrong to the people here so why do they see me as an evil machine like these things? Nya- They’re cool but they’re also dangerous and unpredictable. We should be very cautious with these things. Many were designed to protect their homes and masters even if their main purposes were in other tasks so they come with some pretty serious defensive abilities. Despite what Zane thinks these things aren’t like him. Generally they’re way more simple than him and I don’t think they’ll consider him an ally at least not on first sight. He shouldn’t be as trusting to them as he is; that could prove dangerous. These things can hurt him just as much as they can to the rest of us. Also on record I don’t think they’re spying on us like Jay thinks; I think he’s just a little paranoid there. Lloyd- In general these things kind of unnerve me. The fighting ones I defiantly wouldn’t want to get in a fight with them but those little ones the snake, beetle and rat ones are scarier. They’re stealthy and they can be there without you realising they are there… I think I’m with Jay a bit here that some of them like to watch us. That Serpeton Robin has I found under my pillow once and I saw it sneaking behind me trying to remain hidden once. Even creepier I once woke up in the middle of the night and saw it curled onto the bedpost staring down at me... that was very unsettling. Kai- Me and technology don’t get along very well, odd cause me and Zane get along pretty fine then again he’s special, very special and he’s nothing like these things. These things are very simple, some of them are kind of animal like, they are no way as smart, they don’t really have feelings at least I don’t think they do… that snake one Robin has though was acting all dramatic once when I wouldn’t let follow me to the bathroom when I went to have a shower. I had to let it in to keep it from drawing attention… it just wanted to sit on a counter and watch me do my hair and brush my teeth… it was creepy. Anyway they’re dangerous and unnerving so I’m no fan of them. Aaron- Sure they’re dangerous but so is a blender and you don’t see people freaking out and hating those when they get hurt by them. That makes me wonder maybe if these metal dudes gave you a milkshake or smoothie before tossing you out of their home then maybe people wouldn’t be so scared of them. Anyway personally I think their pretty cool and their danger makes them cooler. Axl- They’re kind of cool and can be very helpful when programmed right, that one Robin found can be very helpful. If you need help finding something it can find it for you though it might not have the strength to bring it to you. A can of pop sure it can handle that, your axe when you misplace that yha that’s too heavy for it. Even though they can be helpful something about them still unnerves me. Clay- I get they’re not inherently evil but it’s easy for dark forces to sway what they want and some of these things are easily corrupted by dark forces. We should be careful with them. I’ve asked Robin to keep that Serpeton he found and refurbished shut down when it is not in use and I trust his word that he is doing so but somehow it keeps ending up active and somehow sometimes the best I could describe it as is observing us. Even odder it’s locked up at night yet Lloyd has told me he has seen it in their room at night… maybe he was just seeing things if not I’m scared to think of how and why that thing was out. Macy- I guess they wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the fact they can easily be controlled by dark forces and are pretty tough combatants. They can defiantly give you a work out and a scare. Came back into our room the one day after having a shower and Robins little snake one he found was sitting on the dresser in our room staring at me. It wasn’t there before and it seemed to watch everything I did. That’s kind of creepy. Lance- A living machine that can burn my hair off by spitting fire from its face no thanks plus these things have brains that can connect to technology like your phone or tablet right. Do you know what kind of damage they could do by hacking your devices… especially to your social media profiles! That would explain why that robo-snake Robin has was playing with my phone the one day and how some of my selfies ended up with those fake moustaches and paintings on them. Did that thing think those were funny? I wonder if Ava could program something to keep that thing from hacking my stuff. Jestro- I don’t know they kind of unsettle me. How can you tell when they’re actually sleeping or if they’re pretending to spy on you? I’m pretty sure the others are using the snake one Robin has to keep an eye on me. I’ve seen it following and watching me wherever I go.

Skeever

Jay- Garbage eating scavengers with bone crushing jaws not to mention they sound scary, are bold for wild animals, just as stubborn as Kai, as possessive of their foot as Cole, just as resilient as Zane and people want to keep them as pets?! Why? Why would you want one of these? They’ll try to rip each other’s ears off when they’re mad at each other, they rarely get infections no matter how many or how bad the scratches and bites they get are and even when young they fight each other just to get fed by their mother. Why would you want such a creature for a pet?  Cole- I don’t think they’re that bad. They’re just animals not monsters. Sure they sound a bit scary especially when you hear them fighting at night and they’re hot headed like Kai but other than that they’re actually pretty nice unless they have food. I don’t blame them though for that, I’m not going to let others near my food either. Well maybe I’ll let Zane near it cause he won’t take everything if I offer him some unlike some others. Offered Jay some cake once and he left me a sliver of it! Yha I get why these creatures will bite your fingers off for taking their food, I’d do it too especially if you take most of it when I said you could only have a small piece!  Zane- These creatures are not that bad. Much of their supposed aggressive behaviours are over exaggerations due to dislike of the creatures. They get a bad rap because their lifestyle and appearance does not match with what humans find cute or desirable but when you look past what people don’t like about them you will find there is plenty to love about these creatures. They are kind, very intelligent, actually quite gentle most of the time and quite caring especially to family members. They’ve even been known to come to the aid of others of their kind when they need it and will aid their injured companions. They’re fighting is used to establish dominance and in truth is no more aggressive than many other social carnivores.  Nya- You’d think for an animal that will eat anything even dead and rotting things would smell bad but they actually don’t smell any worse than a cat or dog. They actually like to keep rather clean and enjoy bathing and relaxing in water. Also Jay thinks their fighting while kids makes them unpleasant, obviously having never grown up with a sibling he doesn’t get that yha sometimes you’ve got to fight with your siblings when you want something. There’s nothing wrong with that it’s normal. Lots of siblings do it both human and animal.  Lloyd- At first they seem intimidating especially when you get them in a group but after a while you’ll see they’re not that bad well except when food is around but even then they’re not too bad; they’re no worse than Cole when he’s hungry and you bring food around. Especially if it is cake; I think Cole beats the creatures there especially if you take too much of it or don’t ask before taking some. Anyway they’re not as bad as many make them out to be.  Kai- Will eat anything and gets cranky around food, are we sure we’re talking about this creature and not Cole :).  Aaron- I don’t care what others think I think these little critters are quiet rad. I wouldn’t mind having one as a pet. I hear they’re actually quite good pets like a weird cross between a cat and a dog. They’re easily trained, love boxes and things to scratch and chew, they’ll play fetch and follow you around and they can also use a litter box. They are though apparently hard to keep out of places you store food when they’re hungry; that’s no different from dealing with Axl.  Axl- Why is getting moody around food a bad thing? I get their mood I wouldn’t want someone touching my dinner when I’m trying to eat either.  Clay- Truly they’re not bad. Defiantly a bit of a nusciance especially when some leave food and garbage lying around because they won’t pick up after themselves, I won’t say names but they know who I’m talking about. They left the parts of our meal one night that they refused to touch because they found it too gross and peasenty in his words to eat anything made with bugs on a table in the common room. It drew in a pair of these which I had to remove. Every time I took one out the other just rushed back in, I had to get Macy to help me remove them because he refused to fix the problem he had made not wanting to touch or get close to the creatures.  Macy- Yha not really dangerous or bad; really not much differently from feral cats. Luckily you can grab them on their scruffs to keep them from biting, scratching and squirming just like cats. Really helpful when you have to move them from places they’re not supposed to be like in the living quarters after someone won’t clean up after himself.  Lance- They may be clean but they still eat dead and rotting things including things that had some pretty nasty diseases. I’d rather not get close to something like that. Sure they’re immune to the diseases but I’m not and I’d rather not catch something especially if it messes with my looks and they have a few of those here.  Jestro- I feel for them. They get hated just for doing their thing and being themselves. I know what that’s like… it’s not nice.

Tree-bill

Jay- I guess they’re not too bad. Friendly and playful, they are cute especially the babies but they are loud though, sometimes very loud, and their nimble fingers can get into a lot of things. Watch your pockets when they’re around, they like to steal candies and cookies. Cole- They’re cute and very friendly; I get why people like them and why they like to feed them even though the city officials don’t want you to. They don’t want to encourage the creatures to be too friendly or become dependent on people for their survival. It’s fun and rather relaxing to interact with them though. Their faces kinda look like a ducks and like ducks people like to feed them bread. That however is not the recommended thing to feed them though. It’s bad for their health and the environment. Zane- They defiantly are highly curious, a little too curious sometimes. One found the control panel in my arm and kept trying to play with it. I was not comfortable with that. Thankfully Cole got it distracted by handing out some bread for them to feed on. Nya- They are cute but you shouldn’t let that fool you. They are very mischievous and seem to enjoy getting into trouble which can be really annoying. The town has a bit of a problem with them chewing through things especially wooden items and measures to discourage them never work. They’re smart enough to find ways around them. I also found spraying them with water doesn’t discourage them from their mischief, in fact they like that. Lloyd- I love how they are very family orientated with everyone helping each other though they also cause mischief together. One stole my phone while I was petting one of them. It distracted me so its family member could steal my phone! Zane managed to get it back for me though it found out about the panel in his arm and kept bothering and messing with him through it. Luckily Cole was able to get it to leave him alone. Kai- They are cute but can also be very annoying especially when they keep trying to steal your food and I found they aren’t affected by hot sauce so dousing your food in that won’t stop them from stealing it. Aaron- These little things are quite rad. You know they can swing through the branches using both their arms and tail to grab branches; pretty cool huh! Axl- These things are crafty. They know they can trick people into giving them food by taking things from you. They also know how to break into things like coolers, rubbish bins, sheds even people’s homes! Clay- They wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the mischief they like to cause. That one Ghidorah found Robins Mini-trex and began playing with it even with Merlok still on it. He drove it around the hall in the bedrooms and crashed it into one of the planters. He gave Merlok quite the scare. Macy- Don’t let their cuteness fool you. They’re loads of trouble. If they can get into trouble they’ll do it. I’ve heard some of those hear describe them as eternal toddlers with pliers for faces. Seeing what they can do and the mischief they can cause I can see why they say that. Lance- Their not bad and you can take selfies with them. People here like seeing selfies with them. I think the creatures like it too. They seem to enjoy being the center of attention. They also like to try and groom your hair; I wouldn’t mind it if they had clean hands. I’ve seen what they do and handle with those paws of theirs. I don’t want that in my hair! Jestro- They’re fun and funny to play with and they don’t seem to mind my comedy routines in fact they seemed amused by them. They also like to play keep away with anything you drop while juggling and they will bite if you try to get it back without bargaining with food.

Venom-fang

Jay- Fast, agile bird lizards with a lethal venom. How can people feel safe with these things around? At least they have anti-venom shots for these. I carry two on me at all times. One for me and one for Nya; she doesn’t think it’s necessary but I think she misjudges the danger of these things. Their venom can hurt Zane; you know it’s bad when it can hurt him! Cole- Honestly you see a picture of them and they don’t look too bad but to experience them first hand is something else and that venom… you don’t even realise you were bit and are hallucinating. Zane- I don’t like how their venom can mess with my mind and senses and worse I could not even tell it was affecting me. Worse to prevent problems the others had to clean the venom out of damages they left in me and I accidently gave Nya a black eye… I didn’t mean to I thought she was a bear trying to tear me apart. Then again it wasn’t much of my fault she and Jay should have waited for the venoms effects to wear off before helping me. Nya- I get Jays fears but I don’t think we need to be carrying these anti-venom shots all the time. Yha these creatures are a bit scary especially the strange reflective quality to the stripe on their sides in the dark but unless we give them a reason to attack I don’t think they will. Also when some ones affected by their venom wait for it to wear off before helping them; you could get hurt from their hallucination especially when they have metal skin and bones. Lloyd- If it wasn’t for what they can do and how creepy they look in the dark they could be cool. Having to deal with the aftermath of their venoms isn’t a pleasant or easy affair either. After they got poisoned by that session in the arena with the maze Zane gave Nya a black eye and Cole started eating the wooden table coasters to put cups on in the main hall thinking they were cookies. It was not easy keeping both under control. Kai- Yha something using hallucinating venom that also turns out to be lethal no thanks; I’m going to steer clear of these things; very clear. The hallucinations however were funny to see especially Aaron when he got bit that one training session. He gets even more crazy and a bit wild like a cat on catnip with that stuff. I managed to trick him into biting Jay and his panicking afterwards was priceless. He thought he was going to get whatever curse he believes Aaron has and made Merlok and Clay hit him with a bunch of spells to cure him. Lance has gotten footage of all those that have been infected by these venoms, I’m goanna get some copies of those; they’ll be fun to have. Aaron- Yha I’m a fan of extreme beasts but these are something I feel are best admired from a distance. I’ve experienced quite a few of the venoms from the creatures from this place all were unintentional despite what that ninja Jay thinks and man they are not pleasant. The hallucinating effects of some like these guys is not a pleasant feeling, it really messes with your head. Axl- Trust me they may be small but they’re no less nasty than the bigger guys especially when they’re in a group and with that venom, it was not pleasant. Clay- Despite how dangerous they are and the problems their venoms create these creatures don’t often attack people and when they do it is strictly because their hungry not to be evil. That being said they are not creatures to mess with. They are very dangerous and that venom can really mess with people. That stuff had Axl thinking Aaron was a were-wolf for several hours, I think some of Jays paranoia influenced that. He kept trying to muzzle Aaron so he wouldn’t bite anyone and kept trying to get Merlok to cure him. Aaron was not pleased by the activity nor Axl constantly trying to lock him in a dog cage when he kept removing the muzzle. He bit Axl to scare him and that worked too well. He locked himself in a dog cage the rest of the time thinking he would become a were-wolf. Macy- Yha they’re dangerous but they’re just animals not monsters. You make a lot of noise and wave a weapon or even just a stick around and they flee. Sometimes a couple good whacks to their hides helps drive them off. No special weapons or Nexo Powers needed. You do need to be careful not to get bit though. Their venom is pretty dangerous and has some rather unpleasant effects. Not sure whose harder to deal with when under the hallucinating effects of some of the venoms here Axl, Aaron, Zane or Cole. Axl didn’t give us much of a problem well except for Aaron but the rest of us had no problem, Aaron goes a bit crazy and did become a bit nippy. He can bite quite hard but he isn’t made of metal nor do either of them have super strength or powers like those ninja so I guess we’ve had an easier time than the ninja when we have to deal with those affected by these venoms. Lance- I like the golden markings to them but I’m not a fan of these things. Seriously dangerous bird lizards that can figure out how to open doors; I saw one do it. It used it’s jaws to manipulate the handle and open it! That aside that hallucinating effect of their venom and some of the other venoms is hilarious; along with footage of Aaron while he was under a few of these venoms I got footage of Axl and those two ninja Cole and Zane. When we get back to Knightonia I’m posting them on social media despite what they think; everyone will enjoy the laugh and I’ll get such a following…(gets a text message then whispers ‘Clay why’d you have to tell them’) or maybe I’ll hold off posting them until I get their permission. I’d rather not face any of their wraths… Axl and Aaron can be dangerous enough I’d rather not find how dangerous those two ninja can be. Jestro- There are a lot of pretty scary things in this place and these are one of them. Sure in the day when they’re not hunting you I guess they’re not too bad, no worse than you’d expect from something that’s a cross between a reptile and a bird but when you see them at night… as if that glowing effect animals eyes normally have isn’t eerie enough that strange reflective strip they have just makes them creepier. Not to mention that venom, I don’t want to know what it’s like to be hallucinating from it. From what I’ve seen and heard it can be quite scary.

To read the story this is related to you can find it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34894561/chapters/86888878

You can also find images pertaining to the story here: https://www.deviantart.com/nerdy-hyena/gallery/72478681/story-project