#secret gov't mind experiments

[sapphire-weapon]

In re4 it says in the intro:

Specifically want to focus on "protecting the new president's family"

In the OG it's his first time meeting ashley, but would this presumably have meant he was planned to be on the president's secret service? We never really see this in any of the other material following RE4 (I think???), so I'm not sure if he ever follows through with this.

We also don't see it in the remake! So would you say this was retconned, or did I maybe misinterpret this?

Leon also says in the intro of OG:

"Soon after [the incident at the Spencer Mansion (aka the events of RE1)], the news was out to the whole world revealing that it was the fault of a secret viral experiment conducted by the international pharmaceutical enterprise, Umbrella. [...] With the whole affair gone public, the United States government issued an indefinite suspension of business decree to Umbrella."

and yet in RE6 the entire inciting incident that kicks off Leon's campaign is that the president is going to "reveal the truth about what happened in Raccoon City"????

Like???

Literally what is still being kept secret, exactly??

And it bothered me for the longest fucking time until RE4make was announced to be in development and someone went and interviewed Shinji Mikami regarding his thoughts on it, and Mikami's response was (paraphrased) "I support any attempt at a remake as long as they fix the story and give it a better one. We wrote literally the entire story of RE4 in two weeks because we'd spent so much time perfecting the gameplay that we legit forgot to write a story."

And then all the pieces clicked together and it finally started to make sense.

So we really gotta keep in mind what RE4 OG actually was at the time of release. Prior to RE4, the last two major RE releases were REmake and RE0, both of which completely and utterly fucking bombed. Mikami, to this day, considers REmake his magnum opus, and for it to sell like complete and utter dogshit to the point where it almost legit ended his career was literally traumatic for him. In 2013-2014 leading up to the launch of The Evil Within, he would say in interviews that he still had nightmares about how badly REmake performed after he'd poured so much into it.

In those same interviews, he also talked about how RE4 was a make or break moment not just for his career, but for the entire RE franchise. If RE4 underperformed, not only would he get fired from Capcom, but they were going to pull the plug on Resident Evil all together. This is a huge reason why RE4 took so long to come out compared to previous RE titles and why two different completely viable builds for RE4 got scrapped (one became Haunting Ground and one became Devil May Cry) before they settled on the version of the game that was actually released.

It's also why they fixated so hard on the gameplay and let the story go by the wayside.

So, Leon's voiceover in the original RE4 literally only exists for two reasons:

to get players who have never played an RE game before relatively up to speed with what's happened in the story up to this point

to give some explanation to existing fans why Leon is in Spain looking for the game's escort mission when, the last time we heard about him, he was just... nebulously with the government and was working as a point of contact between Claire and Chris in CVX.

Basically, neither Mikami nor Capcom had a plan for Leon's character at the time RE4 was being made. It had already been established in the RE3 epilogues that Leon and Sherry had been kidnapped by the US Government and that the gov't was holding Sherry hostage and forcing Leon to work for them, but... that was about it. That was the only sort of baseline that Mikami and his team were working off of, so they basically were making it up as they went along and taking whatever liberties with his character and the base lore that they needed to in order to make the game coherent and successful.

We also need to keep in mind that Mikami left Capcom in the time between RE4's Gamecube release and its PS2 release (and that's a whole fucking drama all on its own), so he was not at all involved in the writing or creation of Separate Ways.

So, the father of the entire Resident Evil franchise, who developed the whole fucking idea himself, and who created and directed RE4's base game fucking dipped out right after release, leaving absolutely no notes behind because Capcom fucked him over, which left the PS2 team to just kind of fucking... figure it out on their own during the creation of Separate Ways, because Sony wanted exclusive content for their version of the game. So now, in addition to Mikami taking liberties with Leon's character for the creation of the base game, the B-team now had to take even more liberties because they didn't know what the fuck to even do.

Like.

Degeneration is a bad fucking movie and it's a huge shitshow, but I do not at ALL fault or envy the writers or directors of that movie, because I wouldn't even know where to START when it came to working off of the spaghetti plot that RE4 just kind of threw at the wall and hoped stuck.

And there's more I can go into about Degeneration, too, and why that's such a shitshow and how half of it doesn't make sense, but. That's for another post.

So, all of this to say... don't take Leon's voiceover in the intro to RE4 OG too seriously. It was literally just a way for Mikami and his team to really quickly just be like "okay, so, there were zombies and shit in the previous games, but now that's over and Leon's a government agent, and he's going after the president's kidnapped daughter. everyone follow me??? yes??? ok good let's start the game." because the story was a rush job, and the game was developed under extreme duress, and all that mattered was that it made enough sense to not put people off.

Like... does it suck, as a Leon/Ashley shipper, to see in the intro that he was actually, at one point, specifically assigned to her? And that the rest of the series then just ignored that? Yes. It does suck. But, the only reason why that was said in the first place was just as a scene-setter, and, realistically, there was no way to keep Leon relevant in the RE series if he was just assigned to presidential security detail. And of course they were going to want to make sure Leon stayed relevant in RE because of how much of a cultural phenomenon RE4 actually became. They'd have been stupid to not change the role of his character to one that could be used over and over and over again for different stories.

But at the time, Mikami and his team didn't know -- and had no way of knowing -- just how successful RE4 was going to become. It was just as likely that RE4 was going to go the way of REmake, and the series was going to die with its release. So, if it died, at least it ended with Umbrella being defeated and long gone, and Leon having a mostly happily-ever-after in a cushy gov't job protecting the president's family.

We know now that that's not how it went, so things had to change, but. It would've been a fine way for things to have ended, if they did, in fact, end there.

So it just kind of... is what it is.

[uraniumnm333]

back on the vocal synth/bsd au i've got going on. first of all more vocaloids

VFlower - Abnormality Dancing Girl and she basically has these. Big metal pins she can summon. Kind of like pins you use to pin up a butterfly. But also only three at a time

Kaai Yuki - Ikanaide and she can freeze moments in time. These frozen moments can be accessed through her memory

GUMI - Disappearance Addiction she can erase people's minds and will them to do something, but only for 8 minutes

also time to start explaining my ideas !!!

Crypton Detective Agency: Kaito, Meiko, Luka, Rin, Len, Miku, Teto

basically the armed detective agency yeah. they solve crimes uncover secret gov't plots and point n laugh at people. :skull:

Miku: Miku is 16 and basically a fill-in for dazai tbh. so basically i go back on what I said earlier bc i decided it would be MUCH cooler for her ability not to have a name. and basically her whole disguise thing comes from her going into other realities and borrowing the "other" her's appearance. kinda like beast. so she knows all these crazy wacky things n knows she isn't real and there's all these other realities n whatnot. but instead of telling len that servant of evil was given to him because he dies or that teto isn't even actualyl a vocaloid or that she and luka have had very intimate moments, she instead makes it a running joke n everyone else thinks she just gives these wacky disguises of hers origin stories. > Miku: "And the reason I look like THIS is because we were all in an evil circus and got experimented on so we all suffered horribly at the hands of others." > Len: ":thumbsup:"

Rin & Len: Twins who were more or less sent to the agency for their rather disruptive abilities. Also I changed my mind AGAIN Rin and Len are Servant/Daughter of evil bc yknow matching. and Rin's ability is that she can grow roses n stuff but she has to prick herself so it'll work. basically they came from bouncing around homes before landing at the doorstep of CDA bc they didn't want to be separated. no this is not a tanizaki siblings moment.

Luka: She's fucking normal !!! my girl enjoys painting and drawing and carries around a sketchbook with her and you can see where she has trapped people in paintings (girlboss). anyways she also works at a cafe bc girl's gotta make a livin. she is honestly the mose well-adjusted out of them and also co-runs the company. also rin and len live w her

Meiko: She has a hard time controling her ability when she's feeling any sort of intense emotion so she'll be scrolling on her phone during work and then randomly set the fucking desk on fire bc she saw a vaguely funny minions meme on her facebook. she works for the agency bc she was in kahoots w the authorities (smh... hate to see a girlboss commit arson on accident) and was hired and put under protection. so she doesn't set people on fire [at least not anymore] lolzies !!!

Kaito: Changed my mind bro is Doctor=Funk Beat now.

Teto: changed my mind about sound and smell bc i think it would be sillier if she could make a small bubble where time stops, and use an umbrella as a weapon. anyways her hashtag backstory is that she used to work with an underground gang of sorts (vippaloids LMAOO) before leaving them behind and joining the CDA. miku was the person who kind of got her out of there and has been sort of mentoring her since then.

other thoughts lmao:

everyone in the CDA is hoping and praying kaito and meiko get together because it is so terribly cringe watching them pine after each other

piko's ability is Chelovek and he can manipulate mannequins.

i got nuthin else for rn i just wanna get a post out for today

[agonycrossbow]

Leon says in the intro of OG:

"Soon after [the incident at the Spencer Mansion (aka the events of RE1)], the news was out to the whole world revealing that it was the fault of a secret viral experiment conducted by the international pharmaceutical enterprise, Umbrella. [...] With the whole affair gone public, the United States government issued an indefinite suspension of business decree to Umbrella."

and yet in RE6 the entire inciting incident that kicks off Leon's campaign is that the president is going to "reveal the truth about what happened in Raccoon City"????

Like???

Literally what is still being kept secret, exactly??

And it bothered me for the longest fucking time until RE4make was announced to be in development and someone went and interviewed Shinji Mikami regarding his thoughts on it, and Mikami's response was (paraphrased) "I support any attempt at a remake as long as they fix the story and give it a better one. We wrote literally the entire story of RE4 in two weeks because we'd spent so much time perfecting the gameplay that we legit forgot to write a story."

And then all the pieces clicked together and it finally started to make sense.

So we really gotta keep in mind what RE4 OG actually was at the time of release. Prior to RE4, the last two major RE releases were REmake and RE0, both of which completely and utterly fucking bombed. Mikami, to this day, considers REmake his magnum opus, and for it to sell like complete and utter dogshit to the point where it almost legit ended his career was literally traumatic for him. In 2013-2014 leading up to the launch of The Evil Within, he would say in interviews that he still had nightmares about how badly REmake performed after he'd poured so much into it.

In those same interviews, he also talked about how RE4 was a make or break moment not just for his career, but for the entire RE franchise. If RE4 underperformed, not only would he get fired from Capcom, but they were going to pull the plug on Resident Evil all together. This is a huge reason why RE4 took so long to come out compared to previous RE titles and why two different completely viable builds for RE4 got scrapped (one became Haunting Ground and one became Devil May Cry) before they settled on the version of the game that was actually released.

It's also why they fixated so hard on the gameplay and let the story go by the wayside.

So, Leon's voiceover in the original RE4 literally only exists for two reasons:

to get players who have never played an RE game before relatively up to speed with what's happened in the story up to this point

to give some explanation to existing fans why Leon is in Spain looking for the game's escort mission when, the last time we heard about him, he was just... nebulously with the government and was working as a point of contact between Claire and Chris in CVX.

Basically, neither Mikami nor Capcom had a plan for Leon's character at the time RE4 was being made. It had already been established in the RE3 epilogues that Leon and Sherry had been kidnapped by the US Government and that the gov't was holding Sherry hostage and forcing Leon to work for them, but... that was about it. That was the only sort of baseline that Mikami and his team were working off of, so they basically were making it up as they went along and taking whatever liberties with his character and the base lore that they needed to in order to make the game coherent and successful.

We also need to keep in mind that Mikami left Capcom in the time between RE4's Gamecube release and its PS2 release (and that's a whole fucking drama all on its own), so he was not at all involved in the writing or creation of Separate Ways.

So, the father of the entire Resident Evil franchise, who developed the whole fucking idea himself, and who created and directed RE4's base game fucking dipped out right after release, leaving absolutely no notes behind because Capcom fucked him over, which left the PS2 team to just kind of fucking... figure it out on their own during the creation of Separate Ways, because Sony wanted exclusive content for their version of the game. So now, in addition to Mikami taking liberties with Leon's character for the creation of the base game, the B-team now had to take even more liberties because they didn't know what the fuck to even do.

Like.

Degeneration is a bad fucking movie and it's a huge shitshow, but I do not at ALL fault or envy the writers or directors of that movie, because I wouldn't even know where to START when it came to working off of the spaghetti plot that RE4 just kind of threw at the wall and hoped stuck.

And there's more I can go into about Degeneration, too, and why that's such a shitshow and how half of it doesn't make sense, but. That's for another post.

So, all of this to say... don't take Leon's voiceover in the intro to RE4 OG too seriously. It was literally just a way for Mikami and his team to really quickly just be like "okay, so, there were zombies and shit in the previous games, but now that's over and Leon's a government agent, and he's going after the president's kidnapped daughter. everyone follow me??? yes??? ok good let's start the game." because the story was a rush job, and the game was developed under extreme duress, and all that mattered was that it made enough sense to not put people off.

Like... does it suck, as a Leon/Ashley shipper, to see in the intro that he was actually, at one point, specifically assigned to her? And that the rest of the series then just ignored that? Yes. It does suck. But, the only reason why that was said in the first place was just as a scene-setter, and, realistically, there was no way to keep Leon relevant in the RE series if he was just assigned to presidential security detail. And of course they were going to want to make sure Leon stayed relevant in RE because of how much of a cultural phenomenon RE4 actually became. They'd have been stupid to not change the role of his character to one that could be used over and over and over again for different stories.

But at the time, Mikami and his team didn't know -- and had no way of knowing -- just how successful RE4 was going to become. It was just as likely that RE4 was going to go the way of REmake, and the series was going to die with its release. So, if it died, at least it ended with Umbrella being defeated and long gone, and Leon having a mostly happily-ever-after in a cushy gov't job protecting the president's family.

We know now that that's not how it went, so things had to change, but. It would've been a fine way for things to have ended, if they did, in fact, end there.

So it just kind of... is what it is.

[i-am-very-heck]

okay well, immediately my brain shot to ibis being like. chief milkman or something. which like. he still would probably be, but. thinking about it, he'd probably be like the evil fda or something. making sure food is just tolerable enough for human consumption, yknow? the food is just shit enough for most people to dislike it, but not revolting enough for people to cause an uproar about it. government cheese hoarder. he would likely be in charge of things like cigarette production too. i would compare it to the food that people are given in the book 1984, but technically that didn't come out until 1949. ibis would hate the food too, but hey, it's part of the job.

if jerry was part of the shadow gov't i feel like it would be like. much more of a creature than anything. like, yknow like the myth about gremlins who got into your airplanes and messed up the machinery to sabotage you? that but like, she does good for the government's machinery and messes up anything that doesn't belong to the government. she would probably be considered a cryptid to anyone who isn't high up in the chain of command and is in the know about it. it's a literal cryptid to the gov't valley working class. jerry would also be queen of contraband. revoking anything she finds that breaks a rule or is off limits and just throwing it in the collection.

deliri... i feel like he would work with designing things for the shadow government, specifically the uniforms for various areas. as i've stated previously, he has experience with designing clothes since he made his usual outfit by hand, so designing government mandated clothing doesn't feel off the mark. he would be focused on making designs that are cheap and quick to produce, but still practical in a sense. wouldn't want your ballet outfit to tear on you in the middle of a performance, right? or for your army uniform to be easily slashed through by a knife. and of course, starched and stiff suits for the office workers are a must.

v is the only one i don't have a good idea for though sljdfssl.. like, sure they could be the person in charge of the fine arts enrichment areas (the amphitheater and ballet stage), but where's the evil in that? my other thought was like. they're the one they send traitors to in order to get secrets out of them. the interrogator, if you will. using various cruel and unusual punishments to get people to confess. a bit of mind fuckery too perhaps. or maybe, they could just. possess the person they're interrogating, since ghost, force them to admit it outright. or maybe, to reference 1984 again, they would be considered the room 101. (aka, the room where your fears are used against you in order to gain information.) v would be very sadistic with this tbh.

Weekly question(s) time again!

Given that this would be an alternate timeline or universe, what kind of position would your OC hold in the Shadow Government? [Ex. Valentine being a (Well, Bruise assigned it so it IS technically military... Guh.) Military postal officer; Jimmy the janitor a la @ samthecookielord ]

As a follow-up, if your OC would replace one of the main four completely, what would they do differently than the rivals in base-game? How about their motivations? How would they feel about their coworkers?

EDIT:

YOU DONT HAVE TO BE LIMITED TO GOVERNMENT POSITIONS IRL NOËL IS LITERALLY THE OFFICIAL WIZARD. Make up new positions or whatever but you can base them off irl since. Well, something has to work around here.

These maybe-swaps are not meant to be 1:1 replacements either! And heck, maybe your character can multiclass stats too lol. Valentine is Mysticality and Moxie. The possibilities are endless and you can make a fresh timeline where everything since the beginning of the game has changed bc of your characters' interference.

The world is your oyster. Get cracking!

Be sure to reblog and/or reply to this post! Maybe even comment on some other people's interpretations? I'll be doing the same here all week as long as there's new responses!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Camp Hero in Montauk Point, New York- a former military base abandoned in the 1980s, and the alleged site of sinister government experiments. Its buried sinister past was the inspiration for the show “Stranger Things.” 

Today, Camp Hero is a New York State-run public park with nearly 800 acres of wild beaches, dense forests and wetlands. But dotted around the park you will find the ruins of its past life, that we’re going to look into, today.

From its beginning, Camp Hero was built with deception in mind. It was the height of subterfuge, disguised as a fishing village to fool Nazi reconnaissance.

Concrete military buildings were painted with fake wood sidings and false windows to resemble cottages.

But Camp Hero would soon become overshadowed by whispers of something much more sinister: A series of highly top secret, government run experiments, known as the Montauk Project.

US intelligence embarked on a fiercely aggressive program to track down as many Nazi scientists and technicians as possible. Codenamed Operation Paperclip, nearly 1,600 captured Nazi scientists were secretly relocated to the US, and put to work on a wide range of  projects. (A lot of them are smiling.)

But, apparently the covert Operation Paperclip also included German scientists & doctors who worked on biological research and medical treatments, such as  the use of mescaline – a powerful psychedelic comparable to LSD. Their mission: To create a powerful new weapon that could control human minds.

A sealed entrance to Camp Hero’s alleged underground facilities. It is claimed the subterranean floors were flooded with cement once the project was shut down in the early 1980s.

Most of Camp Hero’s conspiracy theories center around the enormous 126 foot radar dish, that is perched on a windowless concrete monolith that towers over the other abandoned buildings in the park.

The giant radar would give the United Sates a 30 minute warning should the unthinkable happen.

Around New York City alone, there were 19 secret and heavily guarded Nike missile sites, part of what the US Army called a ‘Ring of Supersonic Steel.’ (An abandoned silo is pictured above.)

Nike missile control room.

But the giant radar dish had a peculiar side effect: It produced a signal as high as 425MHz, a frequency that routinely disrupted TVs and radios in the homes of  residents. It was also a frequency that was rumored to disrupt the human brain.

According to the 1992 book, The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, the facility had 12 levels under the radar station, where psychological warfare techniques using electromagnetic radiation on homeless people and runaway teenagers, known as ‘the Montauk Boys,’  ranged from mind control to psychic abilities and even time travel.

One explorer said he discovered an underground tunnel at the end of which was a “heavy door, and it had a heavy wheel, like a bank vault.” Alongside other sealed entrances, he uncovered rooms decorated with highly psychedelic patterned wallpaper.

Most intriguingly of all, he found records of vast quantities of food being ordered to Camp Hero in the late 1980s, at a cost of $80,000 a month, years after the US Military had decommissioned the base.

Sceptics, however, should delve into the documents entered into the public record by a 1977 Congressional investigation into a CIA run project called MK- Ultra.

Approved by CIA director Allan Dulles in 1953, Project MK-Ultra conducted hundreds of experiments under the title of “Research In Behavioral Modification.” Some of the participants in the experiments were volunteers. In one study, volunteers were given LSD for a consecutive 77 days. Other experiments in ‘mind control’ would use electro-shock therapy, hypnosis and radiation.

Even more disturbing, the CIA would often drug US citizens and conduct experiments on them without their knowledge or consent. These experiments in mind control caused at least one death that we know about.

The MK-Ultra project was swiftly shut down in the wake of the Watergate scandal, and CIA director Richard Helm ordered all files to be destroyed. The gruesome project might have never come to public light were if not for 20,000 documents that were discovered in a financial records building.

When the deeds to Camp Hero were handed over from the gov’t to the New York State Dept of Parks and Recreation in 1984, they stipulated that New York State would own everything on the surface of the base (what is today the public park), but the gov’t retained ‘ownership of everything below the surface’ – indication of a larger facility lying hidden beneath…

https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/10/08/buried-secrets-of-montauks-menacing-military-camp-that-inspired-stranger-things/