#post 3 star ending

[shiningstarr15]

The 3 Star Trio

First official “promo” art for my fic, *Reassembled* Takes place after the end of the events of Security Breach and the Princess Quest ending. The problem is… these three, are not a family. Not at all. They aren’t even FRIENDS, save for Gregory and Freddy and even then, they’ve only known each other for a few hours under dire circumstances. And then you have Vanessa, whose guilt drives her to the point of feeling obligated to return the favor to the child that saved her (that she also tried to kill as Vanny, and berated as herself). As well as Freddy, whom she was INCREDIBLY hostile to and threaten to decommission if he was helping the child. So.. they shouldn’t even like her, right? So then how does this unlikely trio of traumatized misfits… become a family?

OR

My take on origin of the 3 star fam, with more nuanced takes on the characters and their relationships, oh and psychological exploration :3

Important details

-this story is driven by the idea of my own “fragmented mind theory,” in which the glitchtrap virus created Vanny, the dark version of Vanessa, using a combination of trauma, intrusive thoughts, and perceived negative traits and amplifying them to an overwhelming degree. So they are, in many ways, the same person, but Vanny still would not exist without glitchtraps heavy influence

-the entire 3 star trio (pre-relationship 3 star fam) are autistic coded, and much of the actions and psychological implications is centered around this

-all of the characters are morally grey. There is no “Vanessa fully good and Vanny fully bad” shit. I’m not a fan. To me it’s way more nuanced and deserves to be explored as such

-the story will take place in 3 acts, with act 1 already complete and act 2 on the way :3

So if anyone’s interested in reading this monster I’ve poured my blood, sweat, tears, and trauma into creating. Well, here ya go

[tawnysoup]

"You never know, you could surprise us all in time. Who’ll ever know if it was you that caused the crime?"

(video lyrics under the cut)

"I heard a word that they paint mirrors on their face And soon forget that they reflect but don’t create.

I suggest that you address your appetite For to be seen to cast your beam across the night."

[buttercupshands]

Accidentally created a semi-comic (not connected as much) with melt Frin because of isat ss discord

@starry-night-sky6, @a-weepin-willow, @fastrainbowdas, @gosteon, @kitcats-1-braincell to let you all be as happy as you can be about being bubbled on Tumblr too teehee

[remxedmoon]

this was. supposed to be a warmup. i don’t know what happened. help.

(greyscale version + sketch below!!)

this drawing spiralled WILDLY out of control but i think it turned out sick so :3. also!!! i figured out a way to prevent tumblr from crunching up my art!!! tumblr won’t compress images if they have any amount of transparency in them, so i added two very thin (like. 1 pixel wide) lines of transparency on the top and bottom of these pics. they’re basically unnoticeable and they keep my image quality nice and hd!!! yipeee!!!!

anyways!! don’t mind how janky the sketch is. it sure is Something.

[bumblingbabooshka]

People honestly portray Tuvok as far too "rolling his eyes, reluctantly going along with Janeway's silly little shenanigans" - he's literally so serious about being right there with her on every decision she makes. Janeway's like "I'm going to stay behind if the ship blows up" and Tuvok's like "I'm staying with you." Janeway's like "I'm going to deliver every member of the Equinox crew into the jaws of death via an alien revenge massacre" and Tuvok protests a grand total of one time before being fully on the bridge assisting her. He was the only one with her when she made the decision to honor the caretaker's wishes and save the Ocampa, dooming them all. He was willing to get court marshalled in order to fulfill a wish she couldn't grant by her own hand: Get them home [no matter what happens to me] <- wherein 'me' is Tuvok. This was the same wish that spurred him forward when he had to leave her on that planet and everyone left thought him cold for trying to fulfill it without her when in his mind it was akin to a dying wish, the last thing she'd ever express to him: Get them home [no matter what happens to me.] <- wherein 'me' is Janeway. He told Seven that the golden rule to follow is that the captain is "ALWAYS RIGHT" <- (His ACTUAL words) and when Seven asks if the captain should be followed even if someone KNOWS she's wrong he says "Perhaps." This man is perhaps the most ride or die dude in the universe about Janeway. Despite her labeling him her 'moral compass' he is by NO means impartial or unbiased. He'd defend her to his last breath. He canonically makes detailed psychological observations about her and has for years. He accounts for her luck when calculating the success of certain plans. It's implied in 'Twisted' that Janeway typically listens to Tuvok's suggestions and follows them nearly without fail - to the point that he's surprised and obviously irritated when Chakotay doesn't. Despite this they've been inside one another's quarters so infrequently that Tuvok can remember each instance. They call each other "Captain" and "Mr. Tuvok" even though they've known each other for twenty years. There's something wrong with them.

[lucabyte]

So does anybody else ever think about how Loop felt the need to demonstrate that the party's deaths wouldn't have any effect on the loops. I know I do but that's besides the point. Anyway I don't think Loop actually needs to bathe, they just like to feel included.

[fangirlforeversthings]

Don't you just love🎀 when they go like:

I TOLD YOU WE

Mewp - NEEDED MORE

GLITTER

The bigger the hunk - the brighter the smile the lighter the personality the sweeter the heart

[insertsomthinawesome]

Made myself a celebratory art piece for getting IL Dan Heng 🥺💚❤💖

-NO ROMANCE INCLUDED-

[cj-kenobi]

Day 6 of @codywanweek! todays prompt was touch starved

No fic today but the art is still up on ao3!

Other days: 1 2 3 4 5 7 8

[shiningstarr15]

SORRY FOR THE DELAY! Issues with work plus I spent a whole week on Vanessa’s bday drawing 😅🫡

Anyway next chapter! Lots of lore dropping, angst, and hurt/comfort, and also some very cute fluff in the end bc I’m not that mean lol 😆

Enjoy 🩷

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thoughts on Echo as amputee/disability representation

First and foremost, I am not disabled or an amputee and I don’t claim to speak for those communities (and if I was I couldn't speak for everyone). What little I do know mostly comes from this youtube channel (@oakwyrm), this post, and other research I’ve done for my writing (and like one amputee I kinda knew in passing). By all means correct me and add to the conversation, I just have some thoughts I want to share because I haven’t really seen this discussed anywhere

Overview

So Echo is interesting. He is a triple amputee which is pretty rare in media. His disabilities come from extremely traumatic circumstances: injured in a near-death experience, imprisoned and dehumanized as an experiment with no autonomy over what happened to his body.

There are a few moments in the shows where Echo is treated… questionably. Like this bit where Rex uses him as an example of the Separatists' evils to convince the locals to fight back:

To be fair, yeah Echo’s treatment does prove that the Techno Union is not neutral like they claim. The modifications that everyone is gasping in horror at here obviously weren’t made with comfort and accessibility in mind, nor with Echo’s consent. But you still just want to be sure that “They took away his freedom, his humanity, they tried to turn him into a machine” is about using him as a living computer, not the fact that he is missing limbs. 

The Batch is also pretty insensitive toward him and his trauma imo, which is weird considering they've supposedly also faced discrimination for their mutations

Disabled people do have to deal with stuff like this in this day and age so I guess it can speak to those experiences. I think especially him being mistaken as a droid (and Hunter going along with it (bruh)) might resonate with some people. 

Aside from that stuff, Echo isn't really treated any differently as a character/person which is really good (as low of a bar as that is).

We get this moment in CW where Echo contemplates that yeah things are gonna be different now

While also (imo at least) showing that he is still the same person regardless, evidenced by the fact that he just echoed Rex :,) I also think it's significant that he joins the Bad Batch on his own terms and we're given a really emotional scene to specifically show that he's not just like 'lumped in with the other misfits' but that it is his choice to go where he feels his place is.

A lot of people, myself included, are disappointed that TBB didn't have more time to explore Echo's PTSD, but I think the one panic attack scene we did get is really good. Even thought it's minor it at least is an appropriate reaction from a guy who was medically tortured (which is more than I've come to expect from Star Wars shows lol)

And it's really sweet to see Omega showing Echo some empathy and consideration.

It would have been nice to see more of his adjustment period, and other side effects like chronic pain and maintenance, but there’s a lot of daily life stuff the show never had time for (i.e. we don’t know if he removed his prosthetics to sleep, but we also never saw him sleep anyway). His disabilities might take on a background role (much like the character himself sadly) but for the most part they aren’t invisible or erased, nor do they define his character and arc.

Physical Appearance

Okay this one is bit dicey, bc on the one hand, yes complaints that Echo’s paleness (most likely caused by burns from the explosion or chemical burns from the cryo-chamber) is whitewashing are totally valid. But I also think you can draw comparisons to real life conditions that affect pigmentation/complexion (like you know burns). So while I understand why a lot of fanart will depict him with his original skin tone and with hair, consider that there are real people who have to live with temporary or permanent changes to their appearance, and the idea of “fixing" him by making him look more like his old self can be problematic.

It's also interesting to note that Echo could act as a reversal of the 'disabled/disfigured = evil' trope. He's pale and bald and wears black and red, which is so often visually associated with villains, but we all know Echo is the bestest boy™

The Headpiece

Echo’s headpiece is interesting because within the show we don’t actually ever learn much about it (idk if there is more info in books or whatever bc i don’t have them so?). He didn’t have it in CW so we know it didn’t come from the Techno Union and therefore Echo probably had more choice with it. We don’t know its exact purpose but it’s most likely related to his scomping abilities. When he is hacking with his scomp in CW, before he has his headpiece, it’s clearly very mentally straining:

We don’t see him struggling like this in TBB once he does have it (though that could be bc he got more used to it over time). There doesn't seem to be much of an impact when he removes his headpiece in s3 ep14-15, except that he gets stuck in the ports every time he uses his scomp which is not something we’ve seen before: 

There might not be an exact real-world equivalent, but the headpiece is some kind of accessibility aid. It means that someone specifically designed a device to help him adapt to the changes the Techno Union made, as well as a helmet that integrates it. It’s removable and visually very present, much like a cochlear implant would be. (A lot of people actually headcanon it to act partially as a hearing aid, since it makes sense that Echo’s hearing would have been damaged in the explosion, but there isn't really any indication of this in canon.) The headpiece is never really acknowledged in the show, but I think that's a good thing. It's something he needs/wants and it just exists, completely normalized, and that's pretty cool 👍

Legs

Sigh... So from the very first episode of TBB I was really disappointed that the animation team or whoever completely visually erased Echo’s prosthetic legs (I think we all were, honestly, if fanart is anything to go by). It’s one thing when he’s in armor because he would probably want to protect his prosthetics, but we literally see him in his blacks and there is no indication whatsoever that he lost his legs even though it was not left up for debate at all in CW:

Like ??????!?

This is just really strange to me! Idk what went on behind the scenes with this decision but I don’t really see why it would be that much harder to animate or anything since it’s 3D and they've done it before. We do see some pretty sophisticated cybernetic technology in Star Wars canon that mimics real limbs:

But Luke’s fancy hand is technically 20ish years from now, so Anakin and Maul are more of a representation of what level we could expect here

So yeah, for no apparent reason, his leg amputation is effectively, visually and narratively nonexistent. Which is not great 👎

Arm!

The scomp on the other hand (uh lol!) is the complete opposite and I kinda love it!

At first I, like many others, thought it was a bit odd that they didn’t give Echo a prosthetic arm. Losing hands is basically a Star Wars tradition at this point, so robotic arms/hands are well established within the worldbuilding: 

We aren’t necessarily given a canon reason for why Echo doesn't get a cybernetic arm (again unless it's in some lore book I haven’t read, sorry). General fanon explanations I’ve seen are that he either couldn’t because the Techno Union wired the scomp too far into his nervous system, and/or the resources to give him one were deemed too expensive for a clone (what about his legs tho?), or that he chose not to, usually because he thought the scomping was useful. 

Regardless, I actually really love this choice (and it's the whole reason I made this post), because here's the thing: There’s a lot of problematic tropes out there that either erase/cure disabilities or compensate them with perks (like how pretty much any blind character is actually not blind by some sort of magic power). With amputees that is done with robotic arms. The character is still an amputee or course, and there is still value in that representation, if this story from Mark Hamill that makes me tear up is anything to go by:

but for the most part these characters function like anyone else, just with a limb that looks a little different. It’s no more than a video game skin, an able-bodied actor with a green screen glove. It “cures” the disability, or it actually makes the character even stronger than usual: 

It usually makes sense within the world of the story, but the reason it’s not so great in my opinion is that in the real world we just do not have technology anywhere close to that yet. Prosthetics can more or less replace any mobility from lost legs, but not for all the complexities of a hand (and even if they could the average person wouldn’t be able to afford it).

So

I think it's actually really super cool that Echo’s scomp bypasses the canonically-established amputee erasure and functions much like a stump would irl. He integrates it into his movements and everyday life and it’s (as far as I know) a lot closer to an everyday amputee’s experience. 

It doesn’t define his character, it doesn’t hold him back, he lives a full life, the other’s don’t treat him any differently, and he’s still a total karking badass 

The only additional thing is that he sometimes uses it as a weapon (which given his story, I think it’s cool to see him taking back autonomy in a way, and we only see that like twice)

And also the scomping, which could be seen as the 'added/compensating superpower' trope. But narratively it's no different than if he was plugging in with a hacking gadget of some kind (he didn't necessarily "need" to lose his arm for it) and it’s not like Echo is completely defined by this skill. Personally, I think it's well worth the positives of him actually having a visible and realistically impactful amputation. 

I see a lot of posts or comments out there that say stuff like “how come Echo doesn’t get a hand?” or fanworks that do give him one and I just think it’s a bit of a shame. If he did get a robotic hand, it just would have disappeared the same way his legs and Anakin’s arm did (aside from that one time he got yoinked by a magnet). When Echo did “get a hand” in the last two episodes there were comments like “yay he finally got a hand! but it doesn’t even work” but I was actually so relieved that it didn’t! Bc for one thing that wouldn’t make any sense, he grabbed it off a droid, it wasn’t designed to implement with his scomp, that would be really complicated. But more importantly because it again refused to erase/cure his disability! It functioned like a real-world cosmetic prosthetic (useless beyond appearance) which is exactly what he needed it for, so that he could blend in better with his disguise.

And he continually took it off throughout the episode and ditched it at the end. He only used it for the necessity of a stealth mission, he doesn’t feel the need to visually “fit in” in his daily life. 

And, last but very much not least, he made a dad joke and from my intel that is very accurate representation!

TLDR: Echo’s scomp is actually really cool from an amputee representation perspective, especially within Star Wars, and I think that deserves some appreciation 

[cloud-the-forgotten]

Loop but they actually have a secret mouth (they don't know that though) and just don't need to eat anymore.

Loop figuring out how to use their star head to blind people on purpose (they only used to do it on accident) and immediately use it to blind someone when that person says/does something they don't like.

Loop finally figuring out they have a mouth when Bonnie tries to feed them food and Loop goes "well it wouldn't hurt to try" (they miss Bonnie's cooking *cough*) and actually takes a bite out of it.

The first thing Loop does after discovering they have a mouth is turn around and bite Siffrin. And then bite him again. This becomes a biting war. Nobody knows if it's serious or playful.

Loop becoming the best way to ambush a sadness by blinding it and then immediately biting it (possibly to death). The rest of the group (Isabeau, Mirabelle, Bonnie, and Odile) stares at Loop, then at Siffrin, and go 'Yeah, we're gonna need more stuff for these two to chew on.' 'You guys really shouldn't be biting Sadnesses?? We don't know what they've touched???' 'Wow that seems like something Frin would do' '... Huh.'

Cue both Siffrin and Loop sweating nervously.

[graff-aganda]

HELLO I MUST SCREAM ABOUT UR ENTERPRISE ART. THIS IS ME SCREAMING AT YOU. I LOVE IT SM. PLS KNOW I LOVE IT. UR STYLE IS SO COOL.

what!! 😭 you're way too kind omg... ;; take this doodle of the lads <3

[lucabyte]

been doodling in class so i dont fall asleep in the middle of lectures. here's some of the isat ones so far. love using cheap felt tip pens

[radicalhoodie]

my illustration for this year's @klapollo-minibang!!! this is a scene from @goodboypolly's lovely star trek au fic, Suspended Animation (A State of Bliss)!!

i also got to work with @ulenehlervu, check out their work here!!