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scruffyplayssonic · 1 year

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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 48: Benign alien visitors

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! My last two updates focused on the evil aliens who gave Sonic (and Shadow) grief, but now it’s time to turn our attention to the nicer ones.

Episode 48: Benign alien visitors

Well first of all let’s get the obvious ones out of the way. The Wisps had limited appearances in the ArchieSonic comics, unlike in IDWSonic where they’ve shown up quite frequently. Their first appearance in the comics was in ArchieSonic #219, which featured an adaptation of the opening of Sonic Colours. This story was classified as, “Another Time, Another Place,” meaning it wasn’t canon to the ongoing storyline of the comic. ArchieSonic did this from time to time when new Sonic games came out, essentially just making them glorified 5 page advertisements. It wasn’t as satisfying as getting a full adaptation like what was done with Sonic Adventure, but at least this way it didn’t completely disrupt the ongoing plot in the comics. Let us not forget that at the time they had to squeeze in the Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation that Knuckles was green and Tails was a doppleganger.

…actually, in hindsight? Having those storylines interrupted for six months would have been quite welcome. 😛

Aside from the Dark Arms hybrids that Eclipse created, the Wisps didn’t really show up following the reboot of the comic either. However, Tails did mention that the events of Sonic Colours had already happened in the new timeline and that Silver had been involved, suggesting that it may have followed the DS version of the game that included appearances from many of Sonic’s friends.

But do the Wisps really count as benign alien visitors, considering that Dr. Eggman dragged them kicking and screaming into orbit around Sonic’s homeworld? Possibly not. So let’s at long last talk about an alien race who actually showed up of their own free will: the Bem.

The first appearance of the Bem was in Sonic #118, not long after the nuking of Robotropolis by Station Square. Eggman and Snively, having made several attempts in previous issues to download themselves into new robotic bodies only to be foiled by Sonic, finally succeeded only to be confronted by the Freedom Fighters again. After confirming that Eggman was no longer able to roboticise people by touching them, Sonic and Tails immediately leapt into battle. But the four of them were rudely interrupted as an alien race called the Bem teleported them aboard their ship and into a prison pod.

The Bem wanted to run an experiment to see if organic or robotic beings were superior, so to test this they roboticised Sonic and Tails and de-roboticised Eggman and Snively. Setting the two teams against each other, the Bem announced that the winning team of this duel would be reverted to their previous state, while the losing team would remain stuck as what the Bem had just changed them to. Setting the four of them loose in a holographically projected battlefield, the Bem watched their experiment play out.

It was over pretty quickly, which is one of the things I hated the most about the stories from this era of the comics. They always felt so rushed because a chunk of the book was being taken up by stupid Ken Penders’ stupid green Knuckles story. But anyway, the Bem kept their word and returned the four of them to Mobius, all of them now flesh and blood again, and with Eggman ranting about how this just proved that robotic life was superior.

Pin in that.

Not long after that in Sonic #123, a strange phenomenon occurred across the entire planet.

All the people who had been roboticised, whether they’d had their free wills restored or were still mindless drones serving Eggman, disappeared without a trace. This included Antoine’s father, Mina’s mother, and Sonic’s entire family - his parents, Uncle Chuck, and pet dog Muttski.

But several weeks later they all started reappearing again, now deroboticised and with no memory of how they’d been changed back to normal. The one exception was Sonic’s father Jules, who was eventually returned but still as a robot.

Sonic thought that this must have been a cruel prank by Eggman, but Eggman denied having anything to do with the mass deroboticisation phenomenon, leaving Sonic and his family to wonder who was really behind it. I mean, surely it couldn’t have been that group of weirdos that had abducted Sonic recently and proved themselves able to roboticise and deroboticise people almost effortlessly, right? Right?!

Well if readers at the time didn’t already suspect that the Bem were involved, the confirmation that their ship was in orbit around Mobius in the very next issue should have told them everything they needed to know. This was when the Xorda showed up to raze the planet, and the Bem dropped off Super Shadow to defend them while they escaped.

…honestly, I think Shadow needs to get slapped in the face like this occasionally to keep him humble.

The Bem’s involvement in the mass deroboticisation of Mobius was finally confirmed in Sonic #129, when Sonic arrived on the planet Argentium as the final stop on his Tossed in Space tour. Having been told that the key to his getting back home was on this planet, Sonic tried to land but was told he was only permitted to visit if he was attending the trial of Ceneca-9009.

Sonic decided to play things straight and headed for the courthouse, where it turned out the trial (or if you prefer, exposition dump) taking place had a surprising amount of relevance to him.

Thousands of years ago Ceneca-9009 had been part of a scientific exploration crew that discovered Biotex, a planet of robotic beings, and had petitioned the high council to allow them to create a machine that would transform the robots into organic creatures. They were given permission to do so, but they hadn’t realised that the species in question had become robots as an evolutionary defense mechanism to protect them from a toxic environment. So when the Bem deroboticised the Biotexans they all immediately died, and the Bem outlawed deroboticising technology from that day forward to prevent another disaster like that from happening.

Thousands of years later Ceneca-9009’s ship would discover Mobius and observe the beginning of Robotnik’s coup of the Acorn Kingdom, including the roboticisation of Tails’ father, General Amadeus Prower. When his wife Rosemary was also captured, Ceneca-9009 decided to intervene and teleported both Rosemary and Amadeus onto her ship, also deroboticising Amadeus. Having witnessed the devastation that Robotnik was wreaking on Mobius, Ceneca-9009 took the Prowers back to her homeworld of Argentium and once again went before the High Council, requesting permission to deroboticise all of Robotnik’s victims. However this time her request was denied, and she was thrown in prison for using the forbidden deroboticisation technology. Sonic was outraged at this revelation and called the court out on it, alerting the Prowers, who had also been witnessing the trial, to his unexpected presence on the planet.

But their reunion had to be delayed so that the trial could continue.

Travel to Mobius had been forbidden following Ceneca-9009’s imprisonment, and so the Prowers had been unable to return home. They were however offered asylum on Argentium. Twelve years later Ceneca-9009 had been released from prison after serving her sentence, and she had once again asked the council for permission to deroboticise the victims of Robotnik’s takeover of Mobius. As she had actually asked permission this time the council were more open to her request, but wanted to ensure another disaster like what had happened to Biotex wouldn’t happen again. Unfortunately their idea of doing the best thing for the planet was to arrange an experimental duel to see if robots would overpower organics or vice versa, hence what happened to Sonic, Tails, Eggman and Snively in issue #118. The end result of this experiment had been the council agreeing with Eggman’s complaint that robotic life had been proven superior, and so they had ordered Ceneca-9009 to roboticise the entire population immediately.

Ceneca-9009 had gone against their wishes though and instead deroboticised everyone (with one rather glaring exception), as shown in issue #123.

Having gone over all the facts, the council found Ceneca-9009 guilty and sentenced her to be executed at dawn the following day. Sonic refused to accept this and planned to break Ceneca-9009 out of prison, but found himself without a means of escape when his spaceship was ordered to be dismantled due to the ongoing war between Mobius and the Xorda, which the Bem wanted no part in.

However the head magistrate also disagreed with Ceneca-9009’s sentence and approached Sonic with an offer to provide another spacecraft for him and the Prowers to escape in with Ceneca-9009, if he could bust her out of prison. Sonic easily accomplished this task, but unfortunately on such short notice the only ship that the magistrate had been able to obtain was so small that only one person could fit in it.

Considering that Ceneca-9009 was marked for death Sonic told her she should be the one to take the ship, but she insisted that one of them should take it instead, rationalising that as long as her pursuers thought she was onboard the escaping ship that they would not look for her on Argentium. Sonic also offered the ship to the Prowers, but they refused to leave each other and sent Sonic on his way with a gift for their son.

When Sonic finally crashed back down on Mobius, the first thing he did was…

okay, well the first thing he actually did was get pulled back into the fight against Eggman immediately. Seriously, he’d touched down for maybe ten seconds when he spotted trouble and raced to the rescue. But after he’d stopped Eggman from launching a pair of nuclear warheads and gotten settled back at home...

...and come to terms with the fact that he could now understand canine speech patterns, Sonic was finally able to answer a question that had been hounding his family for a year.

After that, he linked back up with Tails to tell him some news that would shock him to his core:

Tails wouldn’t be able to do anything with this information for awhile, but eventually his uncle Merlin helped him get to Argentium to rescue his parents.

Just in the nick of time too, because they probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer with the Black Arms and the Xorda waging war in the skies above.

The Bem did not appear in the comics again after that, but their impact was felt for a long time afterwards. When Ceneca-9009 had deroboticised all the victims of the roboticiser, she had also been able to nullify roboticiser technology across the entire planet. Eggman could no longer turn anyone into robots after that, and he had to make do with equipping his living forces with cybernetic body parts instead, a process he called “Legionising,” in honour of the Dark Legion, who were among the first of his forces to undergo this process. However he was eventually able to at least partially work around that when he got his hands on a Chaos Emerald and used it to rewrite reality with the Genesis Wave.

Those who had been deroboticised personally by the Bem, such as Sonic and even Eggman himself, were still immune to the effects of the roboticiser. Everyone else though…

Grim.

So here’s a thought. If Eggman created the Genesis Wave in response to his robotic slaves being permanently transformed back to normal, then that means that everything that happened afterwards, such as Sally’s roboticisation, the disbanding of the Freedom Fighters, the second Genesis Wave rewriting reality again (creating the reboot era of the comic), and the shattering of the planet - that can all be traced back to Ceneca-9009’s actions in the back-up story of a single issue. Who could have possibly known that the effects of that single story would still be felt when the comic ended, over 165 issues later?

That’s all from me for today. Were there any other benign alien races that visited Sonic’s homeworld in the Archie comics that I missed? Be sure to let me know in the comments! Next time will be another instance where I struggle to come up with good examples from ArchieSonic: “Hero becomes blind. Magoo jokes aplenty. Ableism ages episode horribly.” How will I tackle this head-scratcher? Tune in next time to find out!

#archiesonic syndicated

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francescatelford · 3 years

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I was thinking how Evil Gideon can create both robots and clones based on human DNA and that if she really wants to win over the Legends she may need to build someone that could encapsulate the main qualities of the captains in order to take them down..(Maybe even the other parings 😏)

I love this season so far it’s one of the best and most organic of the Legends with an actual plot so whatever direction they are taking I’m pretty excited about it, it’s a perfect balance of humor and darkness, I think after 7 seasons they finally found a perfect formula for this crazy little show, it won’t surprise me if the keep going for 2-3 more season honestly, the writing is getting fresher instead of stale like many other CW superhero show…

I also think it would be cool for Gideon(maybe as cliffhanger end of season 7or later on) to create a Avalance human teenagers (maybe with fake memories and stuff) make her kinda evil in order to eliminate the legends and eventually the clone/human/avalance kid learning the truth, having an existential crisis and coming to terms with who she is and eventually join the legends and stuff.

It could be cool to have a teenager in the WaveRider and having each legends help her (yeah for sure a girl btw) growing up and learning from them the good, the bad and the crazy fun

Can you imagine a mix of assassine chaotic vibe from Sara and the OCD history nerd of Ava? I’d love to see it (babies usually ruin a show so I’d rather see a grow up avalance kid)

Also the perfect actress to be their teenage kid is Taylor Hickson imo

Leaving this here, I really think it would be cool and hoping for it

First of all thanks for this ask, my inbox is literally dead and i love this.

Yes i think this is their best season yet and im absolutely loving it, i don't want it to end either ): I think with these ratings we can easily get a season 8 and a 9, lets hope!

Like you i think babies ruin shows and so i don't want a pregnancy storyline and toddlers ect.. I would actually be a little sad bc i dont want them to have kids yet but it would be super cool if their kid from the future made an appearance! it would be funny because i think after a while they would catch on because they'd see some qualities of Ava and Sara in them for sure, plus i really want to see Sara's reaction too. it would be hilarious if Sara is like "she reminds me of my younger self- wait a damn minute".

This reminds me of another show that ended recently, i don't wanna mention it because its a huge spoiler ig. I ended up loving this character from the future and she was the perfect mix of her parents too. I would actually love it if we would see Avalance try and bond with her too. Probably would spend some quality time with Ava doing binders and rules lmao. Imagine if Evil Gideon's fake memories consists of being abandoned by her mums, maybe like they never have time for her or something and thats why shes rebellious and such, so then when Avalance connect the dots they're like "we would never abandon her, how is this possible??" and this is further confirmed as they bond. They eventually grow to love her. Plus how funny would it be to see Ava stress about two people now not just Sara cause Sara goes along with her shenanigans lmao. I kinda see her running around the ship twirling knives lmao.

Bonus: she flirts with other people her age (lowkey see her as a raging queer but-) from different time periods on missions like older seasons Sara and Sara is like "thats my girl!!" meanwhile Ava is like "stOP THAT1!!11!!! YOU WILL RUIN HISTORY!!1!!1 SARA DONT ENCOURAGE HER OH MY GOD"

YOOO YESSS I CAN TOTALLY SEE HER AS TAYLOR, SAME HAIR AND ALL AS EVIL SARA

#this was so fun to answer lmao #enjoy my adhd rambles #avalance #thanks for the ask

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moonlayl · 3 years

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Thoughts on ScarletVision?

You mean WendySiri? Just kidding, just kidding. (sorry for the late reply). I assume you’re talking about the show ‘WandaVision’ but since I’m not sure I’ll also share my thoughts on the actual ship.

(long and negative rant)

Okay so throughout the entire show, I was kind of conflicted. Marvel did a really good job with all the clues and the suspense, and also the whole sitcom-through -the-decades kind of thing, and I applaud them for that. it honestly was really good and interesting and I really loved it. The show had so much potential, but that’s where things went wrong.

A part of it is on me for assuming, or more accurately, wanting, but I was waiting for the reveal that Wanda was being controlled or manipulated. Obviously that didn’t happen, and it just ruined the character for me. This show literally took everything that I liked about Wanda, and everything that made me sympathize with her or even defend her, and then changed it for the worst. I was a fan but not anymore. Wanda’s character through the other movies was someone who tried to do better. Like she joined the avengers to fix her mistakes and to help people. She hurt people in civil war and was guilty over it. She killed Vision to try and save the world and stop Thanos. WandaVision took a big dump on all of that.

I know many will use the “she’s grieving” card, and while it’s important to note, does it really excuse torturing and mindcontrolling a whole town? “But it was an accident. She didn’t mean to.” Yeah, at first. She discovered what she’d done way back in episodes 2/3 and decided to keep it. “She didn’t know she was hurting them.” But she knew she was violating them and keeping them captive. She knew they were actual people. And she still went with it. She didn’t care.

Fake Pietro says he admires what she’s done and she goes “you don’t think it’s wrong” Like she is literally self-aware. Vision, the man she loves is literally scared and confused and she goes “can’t I?” when he says she can’t control him. Broooooo. Wtf was that? Like she literally admitted to wanting to control him, or at least doing it, and wasn’t even ashamed? And in one of the episodes, despite literally dying and being in pain, he still tries to escape Westview so that he could fix her problems. So that he cold get away from her. So she brought him back, and had children, and just decided that she gets to control them along with the whole town??? I’m sorry but the show literally made her a terrible partner, mom, and avenger. And here’s the thing. I don’t think she’s evil, and I sympathized a lot with her. But she just got worse.

So not only did she willingly keep a whole town hostage (where everyone was suffering and separated from their families and children literally stayed asleep which means they were in a constant state of seeing her nightmares) but this woman got scared and angry when Agatha freed them. She’s like “I kept you safe.” Wanda literally would’ve kept them in that prison if Aatha had never arrived. She wouldn’t have cared about them. Like Agnes said, heroes don’t do that.

And then there’s her treatment of Monica. Wanda literally tried to kill her multiple times, and Monica only tried to help. Then she doesn’t even apologize in the end. I hated how this show wrote Monica or how they included her. From the Wanda only starts to use her powers when she sees Monica (when literally everyone else is pointing a gun) to how she automatically grabs her and tries to kill her, and then later has the audacity to say “don’t make me hurt you.” And Monica basically being ignored and used just to defend Wanda and prop her up. Like it was just bullshit. The way they treated their only black character. They even had her say she’d do the same. wtf? Even Jimmy Woo, their asian character, was more of a sidekick to Darcy in those episodes and ended up not contributing much. It sucks.

And as a person who criticizes Tony Stark, it’s really weird how a lot of his haters use the same arguments as his stans when they try to defend Wanda. ‘She has mental illness” “she paid for her mistakes.” No, giving up her family that only existed because of the torture of innocent people doesn’t win you any points. It’s the least she SHOULD’VE done.

And the thing that bothered me the most is that she never even learned her lesson? Like she took the darkhold and is trying to find a way to bring her kids back. mf, didn’t the entire show and mess start because she accidentally brought back vision? She literally didn’t learn a thing. What grief did she process if she’s just going to go and try to use dark magic to bring them again?

And then there’s all of Sword. First Maria was killed off, and then Sword was introduced as this thing that’s always existed, yet we’ve never heard of it??

And there’s also Agatha. “Agatha All Along” umm. What exactly did Agatha do all along? The show set her up to be this big bad and then Wanda took her down it was not satisfying at all. Wanda, who doesn’t know how to cast spells, managed to learn a spell and use it without Agatha knowing in 5 seconds? As Agatha was taking her powers? BS. And then I hated Wanda’s plan. She decided to take her back to the past for what? Agatha’s own family to kill her? And then later she traps Agatha into her nosy neighbor counterpart? And I’m supposed to go, “what a hero’?

Obviously Agatha isn’t a good person, but the entire mess happened because of Wanda. It felt wrong for her to use the same prison on innocent people on another person and it be celebrated. And then there’s the whole “They’ll never know what you sacrificed for them line” i literally lost all sympathy for that character after that.

And I still don’t understand the romance between Wanda and Vision. I can’t get over the fact that he’s a robot. All in all, there are many aspects of the show that I didn’t like, but the number one reason is that it completely ruined her character. There was so much potential. But no. First they changed her age. “it was never said that she was a teenager.” Hawkeye literally said “if you want to go to high school.” no one says that to a 27 year old. Maybe he meant it as something else but in aou, he was the one to form the closest bonds with her and Pietro and it was the same movie that showed us that he had kids. it would make sense if it was supposed to be like a “he wants to help them because they’re young and he’s a dad so he knows how to deal with young people. And everyone referred to her as kid, so it just all fit. (also the actress looked a lot younger in aou than in her other works before that movie so the make up department probably tried to make her seem young.) And the way she dressed and acted.

second, apparently even though aou had us believe that they thought they were signing up to save their country, wandavision literally just went “yeah Wanda knew it was a terrorist organization’ and she didn’t even seem to regret it?

The show went about the entire situation the wrong way, and really ruined her character.

#messages #anon #anti wandavision #anti wanda maximoff

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juvellita · 4 years

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Genshin Impact theory

So this topic kind of digresses from what I usually post, but I felt the urge to make this post bcs i am too lazy to do my assignments rn. Jokes aside, I wanted to make this post on tumbler bcs not many ppl posted genshin theory on tumblr ( from what i seen).

While everyone has been shipping different characters and fangirling/fanboying over them, my friend and I talk way more about the story line and make guesses/theories about what might happen in the future stories. Yes, I have read several theory posts online, and a lot of character related things to come up with my own theory (mixed with what I have read of course).

Spoiler warnings under cut. If you are under AR 29, I suggest you to scroll through unless you want to be spoiled.

Long post below.

Okay this is going to be a hella of messy post. I have made so many theories about the game itself and I am going to organize as I go.

First things first, lets first talk about twins origin.

From what has been told so far, it is rather hard to guess what really happened after unknown god (sustainer of heavens) separated them. Who are twins exactly? Well, we don’t know for sure but we can theorize from what we know so far. Let’s list out things that we already know about the twins.

1. Your twin is the ruler of abyss order

2. Your character (MC) possess special power, where you can basically change any element you want

3. There is a BIG time gap after you got separated from your twin, and before you fish Paimon out of water.

4. MC does not remember what happened during that time gap

Don’t these information raise any questions?

How did your twin fall “bad” and what is his/her goal? Is she just playing along to achieve whatever her/his goal is or did she/he actually fall bad?

Why can your character change element? Who is your character exactly?

What happened during those timeframe?

Another big question is, do you think your character is going to stay “good” until the end? I actually have not thought too much about this until I came across this one vid:

(watch it with captions)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0pkwZVL_GQ

If this vid is really referring to the the twins, maybe it is foreshadowing the future route for our mc. It hints that our mc might turn bad like the other twin (does that mean, the other twin is being brainwashed like what they did with Dvalin?). Was our mc evil before she/he lost memory? or are we just being toyed with?

Characters /Storyline (so far)

There are several character I want to talk about.

1. Paimon

Theres SOOOOO many discussion posts about Paimon and theories about her. The most theory thinks that Paimon is actually that unknown goddess (whom we meet in the beginning) in its weakest form. If this is true, big chances are she is just fooling mc and waiting for the right moment to take over the world. Another theory I read was that maybe she actually forgot all her memories too and she doesn’t know who she is.

While I think all of these are very convincing theories, I want to put my own version of theory out there: what if Paimon is the Pearl from the video, the one who is trying to make mc walk in the path, believing she is the queen/king of darkness?

Paimon might actually turn out to be good, but who knows? She might be our biggest plot twist.

2. Childe

Not much of a theory for this guy, but do you guys think this guy can be trusted? After ar 29 story, I started believing this guy has ulterior motive.

There weren’t that many theory about this dude so I will come up with my own:

Theory 1: In lvl 23 story, Childe helps you because he wants you to believe him. It would be way easier for him if there were someone he can “use” , especially when the entire city suspects you (bcs he is a Fatui). He urges you to go tell your version of story to 3 guardian mtn birds (idk what to call them) so that they will listen to your story, before Qixing members got to explain their version (If they believed in Qixing’s story, it would trouble fatui so much).

Skip to lvl 29, Childe’s actual goal is to take Geo Archon’s Vision (how La Signora took Venti’s). Knowing this, Ningguang and Geo Archon related ppl (adepti) or maybe ever geo god himself, plan to fake death- so that Childe/fatui will give up

Theory 2. Childe is actually a double spy- he got into Fatui to find their ulterior motives and their goal.

3. Ningguang (Geo mage)

At first, I thought Ning was a bad person. However, reading about herself, she is just a big business person. I think she is working closely with adepti from Liyue (in secret of course). She knows too well about how letting things out in public is not always good.

4. Zhong Li

Geo Archon yet to be revealed. Do I need to say more?

5. Katheryne (Adventure Guild Receptionist)

Theory: she is actually a robot:

*Mondstat and Liyue has exactly same looking Katheryne

*If you chill out in front of her for long, she murmurs “error” or “rebooting”.

Is someone spying on MC using Katheryn? or are we in a “virtual world” within the virtual world? Is everything in this game “fake”?

Fatui and Abyss Order

My biggest question rn is... Who are fatui?? What are their goals? What do they want to achieve? Are they related Abyss Order?

One theory is that, Fatui and Abyss Order ARE related (fatui working under Abyss Order). Thats probably why La Signora left MC unharmed, while she attacked Venti. Either mc is/was someone important to Abyss Order (eventually), or maybe the other twin ordered them NOT to harm his/her twin in any way.

But then this is JUST a theory.

Conclusion

Well, this is pretty much it. We could go on about different characters too, but that would take forever lol

But what are YOUR thoughts?

#genshin impact #genshin impact spoilers #genshin impact theory

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timefirewrites · 4 years

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COMIC SANS INTRO

Taglist (ask to be added/removed): @black-lakritz-dragon @marewriteblr @spacetimewraithwrites @emmaschoutenwrites

ID under the cut would’ve prefered to put it here, but the post is already super long, sorry

[ID: thirteen google presentation slides, all written in the font comic sans, black text on a white background.

1. Title: “Gay Space Pirates", subtitle: “thats it thats the story”

2. Title: “What.” Text:

Okay so, everyone is queer

Literally, there’s not a single cishet character in this story

I’m not sorry <3

Most of the cast are non-humans, but the ones that aren’t are super diverse

Transfem muslim gal, intersex nerd with vitiligo, nonbinary overweight dumbass, I’ve got them all

There are also some disabled and mute characters

Oh, also they’re all neurodivergent because I said so

3. Title: “Setting!”, Text:

So, humans discovered aliens are real

and joined their Intergalactic Union

(which is definitely not evil)

That happened about 300 years ago and humans are now vibing all over the galaxy

Sounds great, right?

Well, for most humans, sure, but the ones who had to stay behind on Earth because they couldn’t afford space travel don’t like it as much

The situation on Earth is kind of shitty, and some people want to leave

4. Title: “pLoT??”, Text:

Neb is one of those people

They got an amazing plan to “borrow” a spaceship and never look back

Problem: Neb didn’t account for a robot to suddenly accompany them

The plan kind of fails real bad, but in the end the two escape from Earth

And immediately get picked up by space pirates

Fortunately, they don’t get killed

Because those pirates could really use an extra pair of hands or two, for their biggest mission yet

Which is retrieving a weapon apparently powerful enough to destroy the universe before someone else does

Nobody knows what it actually looks like though

5. Title: “Neb”, Text:

Nonbinary, aro and ace (they/them)

overweight

has idiopathic hypersomnia (basically means they sleep a lot)

also chronic migraines

pretty impulsive and says what they think

has a hard time trusting others

dreamt of going to space for as long as they can remember

On the right side of this slide is a picrew image, showing a person with brown skin, dark brown eyes and black, curly hair. They’re wearing a red bandana as well as a torn yeans jacket and have multiple scars on their skin. The background is the nonbinary flag.

6. Title: “Ahdia”, Text:

Transfem, bigender and pan (she/they)

mute

mechanic of the ship and the only one with a sense for fashion

happy go lucky and just overall fun to be around

pretty laid back, but would absolutely hunt you down if you hurt one of her friends

proud holder of the single brain cell this crew has

On the right side is an image as well, it shows a woman with fairer, but still brownish skin and brown eyes wearing a black hijab and a long-sleeved light blue shirt with clouds on it. The background is the trans flag.

7. Title: “Cap”, Text:

intersex, queer (they/them)

First time they show up, they’re holding a soda and pizza

likes organization in theory

wants to appear like a badass, but is too chaotic for that

needs to wear glasses, but doesn’t bother

Captain of the crew that picks Neb up

certified mess

Again, an image of the right shows a person, this time with dark brown skin and vitiligo, dark brown eyes and long, black dread-locks. They have some silver piercings in their ears and wear a dark purple hoodie. The background is the rainbow flag with the brown stripes on top.

The next three slides feature two columns each, each with an own title.

Title: “Com”, Text:

AI of the ship

shy and nervous mess

wants to visit all kinds of planets

loves taking care of plants

panromantic and ace

uses she/her, but doesn’t really care about gender

spends most of her time watching trashy romance movies

Title: “Coal”, Text:

The robot Neb befriended

Realized they were self-aware not even a day ago and already got anxiety

easily overwhelmed by everything

Has no idea what to do with themself

they/them

someone tells them knitting is a thing and they never do anything else ever again

Title: “Laser”, Text:

genderfluid, uses he/him or she/her

weapon specialist and tired of it

suffers from chronic neurogenic pain

speaks in a very monotone voice

writes poetry, but nobody is allowed to read it

canonically wears crocs

Title: “Lifo”, Text:

gender? no thanks (uses fel/fels pronouns)

tiny, but deadly

lost an arm and half a leg and replaced them with robotic parts (same for fels spine)

usually very loud, but can be completely silent if fel wants

cook of the ship

loves collecting trinkets

Title: “Nova”, Text:

He’s absolutely enormous, huge, colossal and every other synonym for really big you can think of

looks like he can kill you, is actually a cinnamon roll

licensed medic and mom friend of the crew

I lied when I said Ahida is the only one with a brain cell, Nova knows what he’s doing too

loves painting

Title: “Mer”, Text:

Don’t tell anyone I said this, but Mer is my favorite

if the name wasn’t clear enough, his species is aquatic

he’s beauty, he’s grace, he’ll punch you in the face

killed a man and will do so again

don’t cross him, he will get his revenge and you will regret your actions

seems like he has everything under control, but really doesn’t

11. Title: “some of my favorite lines”, Text (in no particular order):

“What’s up with your display?” Their voice sounded more steady now, which was good.

“I do not understand.” Their voice on the other hand just sounded confused.

“Oh, right. You probably can’t see it. You’re currently displaying an error message. Which just reads ‘error’. Not very helpful.”

“Fuck. I didn’t deactivate it.”

“We could just go in and race to the top.”

“What? No. Why would we do that? We can’t afford to get caught, we need to make a plan, Coal.”

“You said you wanted an adventure. Plus, I do not think we could create a plan, seeing as we know next to nothing about its defence and security.”

They said that because of them? They were just rambling earlier, not really thinking about it, just talking to fill the silence.

“Okay. But if anything goes wrong, it’ll be your fault.”

“Uh, I don’t think so? Better not touch it, though.” As Lifo said that, Cap could see fel fighting against the desire to do just that. At least Com would be happy.

Chapter 13 - they did surgery on a grape Neb

“Oh. I’m the ship. Nice to meet you?”

Whatever the hell was going on, they didn’t sign up for this.

“I am fine.” Perfectly fine. Mhm.

Coal nodded, then just stood around?

"You're outnumbered now! Coal agreed to watch Love On A Foreign Planet with me. So, uh, get moving, Fishsticks."

They settled on two things they were pretty sure were edible: a soda labeled “SpacePop: the best soda in the universe” with a “multiple sunsets on Madoras” flavor and some leftover pizza. (They were pretty sure Madoras didn’t exist, they never heard of that planet before. Maybe they shouldn’t drink that soda after all.)

“I’m Laser, my gender is a burning trash can and my pronouns depend entirely on the mercy of the universe.”

12. Title: “Homegrown memes”, this slide is filled with six different memes.

A windows error message, but the title and text is just screaming. The two options are “AAA” or “AAA”. It’s labeled “Coal”.

A photo of two people in wedding clothes. They’re labeled “Laser and Lifo”, in the background is a person falling from the sky, labeled “Com”.

Spiderman (labeled “Mer”) is holding a screen labeled “dealing with a breakup like a normal person”, in the next frame that screen is being thrown away as spiderman looks at a pc being held by someone else labeled as “commiting murder”.

A person is being kicked into a lake by someone else. They’re labeled “Coal trying to figure out what to do now that they’re self-aware”. The person kicking them is labeled “the plot”.

The “is this a pigeon” meme, but the guy is labeled as “Cap”, the butterfly as “wearing a hoodie and truly horrendous shorts” and the caption now says “is this formal dress attire?”.

The last meme is a chart, with five rows and two columns.

Row 1: Regularly says fuck: Coal, Lifo

Row 2: has sworn of saying fuck, but said it at some point: Cap, Neb

Row 3: has not said fuck before, but can if so desired: Laser, Ahdia, Mer

Row 4: has not said fuck before and refuses to say it: Com, Nova

Row 5: legally cannot say fuck: also Coal

13. This slide is an image of Earth as seen from space. Above it white text reads “the End”. /end ID]

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pleasureryland · 3 years

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here is my track by track explanation of why I believe that while the city sleeps is about a space cyborg resistance who is based in a strip club.

1. being from jersey: this is the prologue. it features the figurehead cyborg dying bc he was caught by the space anti-cyborg people. probably took a risk and died for a cause or smth

2. send my love...: the mourning for the above cyber leader. they celebrate his life in the dance hall that he owned as a front for his resistance. Probably suggests that the death of this leader made the situation “real” for people and so this is the final night something like a dance party can happen. (These two first songs conclude the story/ show you what’s to come)

3.church of hot addiction: recruiting people into the resistance. either people who are cyborgs and being hunted or people who want to be cyborgs. gabe is leader. He has electric eyes.

4.the kids are all fucked up: the OG members talk about their time in the resistance. Reminising on those they’ve lost, mostly about the organization works tho (at night)

5. It’s warmer in the basement: Maybe an interlude about those taken by the anti-cyber people? reveal that some aren’t killed but used for propaganda...

6. Keep it simple: a flashback to recruiting the OG members showing that the dance pulled them in originally and then they got hooked for the resistance. Early days of resistance

7.it’s amateur night: maybe a contrast to keep it simple: about how recruitment works now? Resistance is an immediate hook, portrayed as freedom. Also the resistance movement is called the Apollo Creed. Unrelated to the guy from rocky (Apollo comes from moon missions)

8.snakes on a plane; plan is fabricated! Plot! Some sort of plan to take down anti cyborg system- the OG’s unite to carry out this plan. snake probably stands for like. slithery robots they put on the evil spaceship HQ and they get into the engines to crash the ship. Victory!

9. Ballad of Big...: hm. maybe a love song TO the Apollo Creed? from the OG’s

10. Pop-Punk is Sooo: oh nooo a traitor!! the traitor got caught by the Creed and are being chewed out. basically bravado by the Creed in the face of fear, it’s unclear whether they snitched or not

11. You can’t be missed: mourning for those they’ve lost but promising to remember them through the Creed. This is told from the perspective of one of the OG’s about the leader.

12. there is only 11 songs but this is around where 1 and 2 fit chronologically. the traitor DID snitch and the leader dies, etc.

#my phones on 2% and I think this might genuinely be the plot to a fanfic I just ripped off #so sorry to the author if that’s what I did #if you read this: I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me

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huntsman-ash · 4 years

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RWBY V8E5 LiveThoughts

And now for the last episode before the HUGE break they’re taking. Seriously, February? Damn, whats going on at RT?

It matters not. Lets see what this weeks episode has for us.

And here we see Aminety Colloseum, the place that Atlas SHOULD have weaponized the moment it rolled its way back here. Seriously look at it; floating free away from everything else...you could mount missile launchers and laser batteries and CIWS batteries on it, launch fighters from it, let dropships deploy through its base...a floating aircraft carrier of unprecidented size.

Or maybe turn it into a weapon...use its drive system to focus Dust energy into some kind of gravitational force...thats just me though.

Missed oppertunites...ah well.

You CAN see its been adjusted though, it looks less like the sports arena from its last apperance and more like a floating coms hub, with those dishes on the outside and the huge spire.

Intersetingly if you look in the upper right corner the moon is there but almost completely covered by the storm Salem summoned. Interesting.

Wait why is PEITRO out there? With like...no supports? Seems kinda dangerous to send the weak old dude out there...

...thats a bomb. A Dust bomb in pipe bomb style form but thats very much a bomb. Yes, Penny, danger indeed.

Atmospheric orbit. Ahhh that must be the low-level orbit path that they need to ensure it doesnt loose power. The part where you coast along with almost no drag. Like what the X-15 hit in our world, and punched through at least once.

WAIT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT. Thats some kind of loader mech. THATS A FUCKING UTILITY TITAN. WHEN DID ATLAS GET ONE OF THOSE?!

Also thats a jet engine.

And Maria’s piloting it. To quote Daimon Baird; I know wha thappens when you let an angry chick loose with a power loader.

Multiple bombs...wait. Thats the mine that RWBY fought in with the Aces, the one that almost blew the fuck up. They’re... Oh. I get it now. They’re gonna use the blast to fling Amneity into upper orbit and stabalize it. Clever. Not exactly SAFE, but clever. Just hope the mine doesnt go anywhere important. Those tunnels are going to turn into firestorms.

Cute, she thinks she can stay and help. Trust me, Penny. You’re better off running.

MARIA CASUALLY DOING THE MEXICAN GRANDMOTHER THING WITH HER MECH...THE HIP HAND. MY GOD.

Oh, and his chair has gravity restraints too. They...gonna handle the impact of the launch? I mean thats literally a fuel/air bomb under them. Dust/air...

Well Maria seems alright with it.

OH GOD DAMMIT. Its Cinder isnt it? Fucking bitch...

On the positive side if she DOES hitch a ride then they get a chance to give her the ol’ “Long fall special”. Lets see your maiden powers save you from a fall from near orbit.

Well then, she burned right through the floor. Interesting. Maiden powers or her own, who knows...I do admit seeing her ride the ship in like that is kinda cool.

The eagerness in Cinders remaining eye interest me. Also, even when using maiden powers, her dead eye emits nothing. So that whole parts just gone.

Secondary note, I think they’re standing on the...Shade emblem? Shade is the swords I think. Vale is the axes, Atlas is the staff, Havens the lamp. Doubt it means anything.

Ahhh, okay I was gonna say, that launch was...kinda lackluster. But the blast is being used as a BOOST on top of the four existing external thrusters. Like the yellow emergency turbines on the outside of the Pillar of Autumn in the end cutscene of Halo Reach

Dust explodes in its own individual colors. The blast under them looks like a Pride festival.

Also Penny just going WHAP like that amuses me, whereas Cinder just crouches. Guess she knew what was coming.

I dont see how the blast is helping through...maybe its the pressure wave and we cant see it right.

Now THAT is a command and control table!

Based on the image I can see, the map is showing “Atlas Mantle” in the middle in green, Aminety in red to the north, and the whale as its own red marker just off to the west a bit of Atlas/Mantle. So now we know where everything is stationed.

The scales all kindsa weird tho

Ah THERES the G-force. Emeralds literally stuck to the floor.

And because Cinders an unoriginal bitch, fire swords. Im not impressed ot say the least. On a side note that DOES mean that radiobandit was right about her powers, so theres that. I’d wager this is a combination of her semblance and the maiden abilities.

For those who follow me, Cinder’s blades here are similar in look to what Ash Vulcan can summon, minus the fire. His are more of a cooled obsidian look. They are, however, as sharp as these are, but much less sturdy. Ex; the one that pins itself to the wall by Penny’s head would have shattered on impact, which Ash uses as a secondary ability. Because no one likes a hundred glass shards in their eyes...

OH HELL YES. Maria with the mech. Now, Cinder...TASTE METAL FIST.

RT...I salute you. Angry mother figure piloting a giant robot screaming “get away from her you bitch”. ALMOST had it. Almost.

What smacked into her though. Neo?

Yes, Neo piloting their escape craft. Interseting.

Emerald looks completely useless and confused and Neo is suddenly very much in a realization shes inside a tin can and MARIA IS OPERATING A GIANT TIN CAN OPENER

Emeralds semblance works on Maria. Interseting, so it must bypass eyes. Effect the brain specifically. Note to self for Chrys on that...

WHY did Neo take Ruby’s form when shes fighting Maria? On that Maria seems very happy to brawl on the ground now. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Additional math note; “broadcasting range” is, by this numerical, 543.523 of...whatever Remnant uses as units. On Earth, the edge of outerspace is almost exactly 100 km, or 62 miles, straight up. So going by that measurement... (Doing the math here hang on)...1 km is equal to 5.43 of Remnants distance units. Lets just say 5.5. Assuming Remnants edge is the same (but everything we’ve seen so far hints that it is, or at least very close)

Alternatively, since we heard klicks used in V4, but miles used in After The Fall, we can assume this is one of those, meaning that either broadcast altitude on Remnant is ABSURDLY HIGH, because 500km is literally 5 times the edge of space on earth, and 540 miles is ALMOST 9 TIMES AS HIGH. Either way Im pretty sure this is the first measurement of Remnants units we’ve seen.

Alternatively alternatively, judging by the arrows we see, these might be required velocity to maintain orbit, which MAY make a bit more sense but it doesnt really fit. Low orbital velocity on earth for example is 17,000 KPH. Even with the math above, theres still a TITANIC difference.

And now we see the numvers going down again because CINDER BURNED A HOLE IN THROUGH ONE OF THE STABALIZERS. Bitch.

Again on th e weaponizing the colleseum; look at all this empty space. They didnt even remove it from when it was a consorse for the festival. You could put SO MANY weapon emplacements...the landing pads are still there!

Oh so now Cinders a Dawnblade from RWBY is she.

And exploding arrows too. Alright then, sure, why not.

Not sure what the point of this little bit was, aside from Penny trying to draw Cinder off and Cinder going back because...evil? Bait for Penny? Who knows.

Oh yeah, Marias having a GOOD time. Also, Neos face when she gets kicked in it; “NO, NOT THE SANDEL!”

Also the disrespect from Maria. Yes. Suck it, Neo.

Also theres some timeskippage, as there is NOT a 2 minute gap between when we see the clock the first time and when we see it now. I dont think, anyway. Im sure theres math to be done but it serves the purpose its suppose to, for tension.

Uhhhh...Cinder, please. Your Salem’s most bottom of bitches right now. She favors Hazel and Tyrian over you.

Did Cinder really just try for a does not compute moment. Or is she just out of ideas.

Cinder stealing the maiden powers reminds me of the Grip of the Devourer perk from the Necromatic Grips in Destiny 2. Mainly the green energy flowing. I know thats Pennys aura stuff but it does remind me.

Ahhh they got a plan with Emerald then. Interesting. Also Neo taking advantage of a distraction sounds like her.

And Penny ONESHOTS Neo. Lets be real here, without aura? She’d be LIQUID. Or maybe ash. Not sure how Penny’s funnels (THEYRE STILL FUCKING FUNNELS DAMMIT) works.

Annnnddd you forgot shes a robot and sees aura didn’t you. Again, without aura, she’d be dead. Actually, she might legit be dead considering that scream. That sounds like the noise someone makes as their organs are fried by high intensity radiation. Not too mention the MASSIVE BURN MARK on the back wall there.

Either way; GET FUCKED BITCH.

Very dramatic, Emerald, but really, come on. Penny has lasers. You would get maybe one more shot (from a weapon that has, at best from my viewpoint) a caliber equal to MAYBE a 9mm pistol. That stuff doesnt have the penetration power required.

If Penny wasn’t nice and more interested in saving Peitro...you’d be dead. Ripped asunder and Cinder made even worse.

A pity, really, Penny has a heart. But...hey. Real girl.

I feed upon Emeralds tears though. Mmm. Simpy.

What the HELL is hitting them. Grimm?

Oh boy here we go, more of this. Like...bruh. Just set down for a bit. Always gotta be dramatic dont ya

Aww. Touching. But pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Interesting note but she puts her gloved hand on his cheek, not the one with the glove burned off. For what thats worth again.

Holy shit, that map wasnt lying. That whale’s almost as big as Atlas is from this angle. Mind you, might just be a trick of the location but it would make sense if they were afraid of a Grimm THAT GOD DAMN BIG. I was just seeing it as like, about the size of a normal sperm whale, maybe as big as the Leviathan from the series of the same name, but even that was barely 150 feet long. This things HUGE.

Nope. Pretty sure its about the same size as Atlas is long.

Also the Moon seems smaller from this angle oddly enough.

Wait is she gonna superman this fucking thing?

Okay yes, the numbers were based on distance not velocity, as Penny is pushing the stadium UP, rather than accelerating it in proper stance.

The noises she makes...huh. Glad my sister didnt walk in on those. Sounds...not like someone straining.

Hey look, its clumsy shitface McGee. HES NOT DEAD!

Note about the message; whos the chick with the eye patch next to the faunus in the back left of Ruby.

Im going to assume the first place we see the message played is the Mistral Black Market. Seems fitting for how it is, and the design matches Havens ascetic.

OH MY GOD THE LITTLE EARED FAUNUS GIRL IN THE HOLE. OH NO. SHES TOO CUTE.

Also in that same shot we see the old Karen from two episodes ago, a mouse girl, Fiona’s mole uncle, and someone new I think. Plus the huge eared girls mom who has a fox tail. And also one of the thirsty moms and her kid maybe?

Hey, Sun and Neptune! Out in the middle of nowhere in Vacuo. So this is the first time we’ve seen it in the show.

And Ilia’s still alive too!

Hey and Goodwytch too. No voice, of course...she got fired ages ago.

Also hey, so this is where Ironwoods been. I love how Hare turns it off before Ruby finishes.

I will note that technically Ruby’s not wrong. Ironwood cant be trusted. But then, he couldnt before because (gestures to Atlas’s pathetic, scraggy SOFT “military” instead of THE CHAD FORCES OF...uh...) (Rapid sounds of shuffling papers and files labeled “UNSC” “Coalition of Ordered Governments” “SRPA” “GAR” and “Yukon Confederacy” fly off the table)

Several others. Yes. Lets go with that. (Accidentally bumps paper labeled “Vanguard” off the desk)

Watts is back out I see too.

Wait wait wait. Penny’s blades operate via chips...part of her, sure. So WHY does she need wires on them? AGAIN. WHY ARE THEY WIRE FUNNELS AND NOT SEPERATE ONES.

Interestingly the inside of the one Watts has resembles a Scroll...did Peitro commender that technology?

No focusing system for the laser. No chamber for acceleration or direction. Odd.

Salem looks oddly glad for this. Probably cause she thinks this is going to spread more fear.

And Ruby gets to the heart of the deal. You dont beat something that cant be killed. You capture it. Hurt it. BREAK IT. A sentient being can only take so much punishment before it shatters into madness and controllable fragments. You just. Need. To. Hit. It. HARD. ENOUGH.

Additionally Ruby’s got a point there too. Salem played the shadows until this moment when everything was going her way. So...whats she afraid of.

Annnnddd thats all it takes to hijack Penny? Seriously.

Fuckin god damn useless Atlas bullshit fucking...(LONG SUFFERING SIGH OF A TECH NERD)

Hey theres Taiyang. Where’s Raven?

Wait hold on a second. She catches fire literally two seconds after she falls? You gotta fall a bit more than that for shit to start happening. WHAT THE FUCK IS REMNANTS ATMOSPHERE?! Or is it just dramatic...

Also as a small note the way the coms between her and Peitro cut off like that is accurate to reentry; during the hottest part of a splashdown, a space craft creates such a huge trail of energy behind it, rattling and burning its way down, it creates a blackout with its own passage. So based on the massive Apollo style reentry fire cone shes already putting out shes most likely going to be out of coms until she slows down orrrrrr craters into Remnants surface with the force of a meteor.

And no. I dont think shes dead. The fact that, DESPITE being surrounded by the kind of fireball that worked its way into the fueltank of the space shuttle Discovery and blew it and its crew to bits on reentry, she was still intact...shes probably going to be fine.

Hacked, certainly, but fine. It takes more than that to finish her. Besides now that shes hacked, she has to fight Ruby. We all want that right?

Ahh good to see Winter in full armor now. Or...close to it. Im sure some of its a support rig for her injuries but I like to think this is the start of Atlas’s Specialist Weaponization Program.

Ironwood makes a good call here. Same thought process as mine.

Salutes in this world are the same as ours. Interesting. Must change that for the HKs

Annnndd of course Watts steals the busted Scroll because IRONWOOD IS A FUCKING DUMBASS

...um.

Im...not even going to COMMENT on what the FUCK this thing is that Jaunes detachment found.

Also why is there A TREE in the tundra?

Oh, caustic. Interesting.

Mmmm. (Pause. Fingers to lips)

Thats your plan, Salem? To literally leak liquid Grimm into Mantle.

More silence.

Ladies and gentlemen...Salem is, officially, THE WORST VILLAN. OF ALL TIME.

The level of incompetence and stupidity I have seen here today completely obliterates the LAST person to hold that title, President Snow from the Hunger Games.

The amount of unnececary back door work and seecret plotting here astounds me. Shes doing this because she can, Im SURE of it. Theres no other reason.

Unless...she kows in a straight out fight, she’d have Ironwoods metal arm up to her colon in seconds. Which I wouldnt be surprised about.

Either way uh...thats it. Thats the end of the episode.

Nice fight, at least.

See you all in Febuary!

EDIT: NOT FEBUARY, the break is a few more episodes after this

#spoilers #rwby spoilers #rwby #rwby v8

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years

Text

mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :(

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!!

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

#lj rereads mtmte

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exaltedviolinist · 4 years

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tlok rewatch 2020 - book 4

this is it...

- 5/10. this book is the worst book of the four and it’s not even debatable to me. i think 5/10 is the fairest assessment i could give it: it has, at its very core, some really interesting concepts, like korra’s healing journey, humans abusing of the spirits in a post-harmonic convergence world, republic city being used as the final battlefield... but their execution always flops ultimately, and beyond that, some pretty evil things go down in this book (korra being completely devoid of her usual personality, korra being "cured” by her abuser, korra validating the pain and torture she endured in order to learn compassion which she already had before, tenzin calling book 1 korra selfish, tenzin validating korra justifying her abuse, etc.). as a whole, the book is not good. there were some interesting parts for sure, but most of them were visual delights. if you even care about korra you would recognize that she is sidelined and her personality is toned down for the sake of appearing as someone she isn’t. the pacing is pretty bad and the show struggles to find its footing in the grand story it wants to tell. i’m thankful to say at least that book 4 was a... better experience to me than i anticipated. i won’t be AS negative as i was for over 5 years about this book, but i will never actively defend it for anything. - artistically, i feel as though this book isn’t as memorable as the previous three. i simply can barely recall tracks or sceneries that shook me to my core: the ones that DO come to mind all come from the finale - mako’s sacrifice, goodbye, and that shot of the republic city skyscrapers being sliced from afar. i saw the whole book just a few days ago! it’s really not a bad book visually or sonically but i can recall book 1, book 2 and book 3 shots/soundtrack way easier than book 4. - let’s start with the positives.... korra’s journey to healing started out great. her visions are realistic, the way she goes around dealing with them and reacting to them is accurate and to me having korra fighting an evil within herself would’ve been a much more compelling story than what we got. they really started dropping the ball after korra extracted the remaining poison out of her. dark korra shows up one last time against kuvira (which i thought was excellent!) but then is never brought up again? what was that about? i didn’t think it was realistic korra miraculously was rid of visions, trauma and ptsd symptoms once ZAHEER (of all people........) helped her with her spiritual block? one can accept something happened to the one without making it completely disappear. it doesn’t go away so simply. and a toe-to-toe face off with dark korra is something i fully anticipated yet never got. on that note, korra alone is a great episode but i think this is what the standard should’ve been for book 4: korra at the center of the plot and diving into her trauma and healing process. all they needed to do is replicate that recipe, put in supporting characters like the rest of the krew and tenzin/lin/the air nation and we’d be golden. - they had a good idea in making kuvira use spirit vines for her gains - why wasn’t anybody reacting to this? the spirits who now share this world were never outraged that humans were being damaging to them. there was a lot of potential to make this a human vs. spirit conflict that korra could’ve been able to resolve in this modern world where the portals are permanently open. spirits and humans alike simply let kuvira take the vines and use them for a destructive weapon. the one time vines reacted in anger to that their qualms with kuvira/humans were never dealt with or appeased - korra only saved humans in this episode, nothing more. and it was never addressed again. - republic city being used as a battlefield WAS. AWESOME. i WISH they didn’t have this ugly robot ruining it all for me. imagine if korra was facing off against kuvira in a fast-paced intense battle in which they collided in buildings, sliced skyscrapers and blew up the city..... that would’ve been sick. - and... that’s about all i can credit book 4 for honestly. kuvira isn’t compelling as a villain (just a repurposed ozai with viewer sympathy thrown at the end for some reason, probably because they tried so hard yet failed to paint a parallel between her and korra), the 3 years time skip is absolutely fucking evil and i rejected it years ago, i still do and for all times, the krew only fully regroups in episode ELEVEN and their separation creates the same problems the first half of book 2 experienced, the krew reuniting in the reunion episode was so basic and disgustingly anticlimactic, the beifongs take way too much space again, toph made her epic comeback only for her to brutalize korra for a whole episode before being actually sort of helpful, varrick and zhu li are main characters now and i will never forgive that (how did zhu li get more lines than korra in some episodes is BEYOND me), prince wu (and meelo to that extent) is an abomination of a character and nothing can redeem that, korra is devoid of personality (or is exhibiting a washed out version of her personality), korra is antagonizing her old self and justifying the violence she suffered from, tenzin was a terrible mentor this season and not even remotely helpful in any way, hiroshi is only brought back to be sacrificial lamb at the end and not further develop asami’s lackluster character which gets NO justice this book either and stagnates lower than her character in the book before it and worst of all korra isn’t the protagonist of the show she is the titular character of anymore.

- i tried my best to like this book, i really did. i did not want to resent this book anymore - it’s tiring to have this awful book constantly remind me that korra never got the proper ending she deserved. the worst season had to be the departing one!! and i don’t know who is to blame for all this ugliness really: nickelodeon and their terrible promotion/scheduling of tlok? the writers who tried to appease to fans by rewriting korra and constantly torturing her from 3x13 to the end? the creators who had some anger to let out on a brown woman? what happened??

- i don’t even want to address this final episode but i shall. the first 10 minutes or so are good. as soon as the portal is created though, that’s when everything turns to shit. korra and kuvira talking is fine but i still don’t buy the “kuvira is like korra” argument they kept forcibly bring up because they couldn’t find a way for us to organically create potential similarities but the rest is trash. the westernized zhurrick wedding can kiss my ass, korra not having a final scene with bolin or the krew as a whole can kiss my ass, the final episode not being named avatar korra can kiss my ass, tenzin and korra celebrating her abuse and attempted murder can kiss my ass (and on that note, it makes me laugh thinking that they thought korra needed to be taught compassion through torture as if her saving kuvira, sparing her life and being selfless was more compassionate of her than surrendering herself to terrorists in order to save a nation she had just brought back from their ashes) and korra apologizing to asami can kiss my ass. korrasami itself being a thing was a surprise for me back then but let’s be honest: as much as we like to see it we can simply cannot avoid the fact that the pairing had no romantic buildup the entire season - korrasami was only somewhat pushed in book 3, particularly at the end of it. i don’t feel like makorra had that much more anyway so know that this isn’t an attempt to put one against the other either - but i will say that mako accompanying korra to the spirit wilds of republic city and to zaheer’s prison was meaningful to me and to korra, as well as mako’s desperate look to jinora when they were looking for korra’s body after the spirit blast. to sum up my thoughts on the pairings: i think bopal and kainora are cute, and i only actively shipped makorra and korrasami in book 3 where they were written well. that’s about it. i’ve made my peace with this book. it doesn’t poison me as much as it used to be but i’ll always be angry at it for being the way it is. it didn’t need to be, and there were very easy fixes. it boggles my mind. this will probably be the last time i rewatch book 4, at least in a very long time. my favorite episodes of this book: Korra Alone and Reunion. i actively disliked: The Coronation, Enemy at the Gates, The Battle of Zaofu, Remembrances and the second half the The Last Stand.

in conclusion: book 1 > book 3 > book 2 > book 4. and korra’s bob isn’t as pretty as the pigtails/ponytail sorry not sorry.

#the legend of korra #tlok rewatch 2020

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electronicdelusionstarlight · 4 years

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So... Doctor Who is having reruns here on National Television. I've ended up catching up with the series (Against my will mind you), so here's the thing:

Around Last Week, the "Capitalism in SPACE" episode happened, the one in the Moffatt Era, with the 12th doctor. Saw it, was pretty anti capital, ends with Capitalism and Corporation getting disbanded after a violent uprising of the Workers after a clamorous case of a board of directors trying to cut their losses by killing workers cause they consumed too much oxygen while working or some shit.

Anyway, this week we're in Season 11 proper, with the 13th Doctor. We have 2 episodes per day, the first was the one about the Partition of India and Pakistan ("Who is to blame?" BRITISH PEOPLE, THE BRITISH PEOPLE ARE TO BLAME YOU DUMBASSES), it was a good episode even if it only skims the role the British had in the thing, and introduces YET ANOTHER secret society of Time Travelers obsessed with going sonewhere where people die and look vaguely evil about it, but at least they weren't the main focus, thing was still pretty grounded in the true horror and shit...

A N Y W A Y

Second Episode was the Amazon Episode.

OH BOY THE AMAZON EPISODE.

So, far future, The Doctor receives a amazon drone with a fez in it and a request for help, like she does, and decides to investigate the Amazon Warehouse on a alien planet where they found it.

So...

1) due to automatization (IE Robots), Amazon tried to get rid of all "organic" workers, unemploying many of them.

2) This causes mass uprising over the sheer desire to work, so now policies are in pkay to mantain a 10% of Organic Workers in place.

3) Doctor and Co. Infiltrate the amazon warehouse as workers to see what's going on, and are costantly being monitired by the Amazon Drones.

4) The Director of the Place is incredibly dismissive toward workers, and belittles a female worker working the conveyor belt. Shifty guy all around, lording over the workers

5) Disturbing work conditions aside, typical of many a amazon warehouse, even with the 1 hour break in the local, internal park, thing seems to be pretty clean cut. As a reprise of Oxygen, the Board of Directors are killing his workers and replacing them with autonomous work or some shit, and a worker managed to ask for help...

6) Except, no. The one asking for help are the robots/System. That's a cool concept, it's not the robots killing the people, but they try to protect them from their superiors, developing cosciences and shit, not submitting to the tireless march of capitalism.

7) EXCEPT, NOPE! THE EVIL PLAN WAS MADE BY A TERRORIST. A LONE WOLF TERRORIST INFILTRATED THE PLACE, HACKED THE AMAZON DRONES, AND PLANNED TO HAVE THEM DELIVER BOMBS ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE.

8) Why? Cause that way he can vilify Autonation, who has forced 90% of humanity out of work ("the work nobilitates us, we need it to be fulfilled" says, unironically, the female worker from point 4), and return to human workers. Human worker he has being experimenting on for a whike too.

9) They stop his plan by blowing him up, as you do, and the director guy, who is actually a good person and was actually trying to investogate the disapearances GUYS, promises that ALL WORKERS HAVE BERN GIVEN 2 WEEKS OF PAID LEAVE, A FREE SHIP TO RETURN HOME, AND THAT THEY'LL TRY TO ADVOCATE FOR MORE HUMAN WORKERS FROM NOW ON.

10) THIS IS THE MOST CAPITALIST ENDING IN A EPISODE OF DOCTOR WHO I'VE EVER SEEN.

And you know why they did it? Cause otherwise Amazon would have thrown a fit and YOU KNOW IT, making such a Blatant Amazon setting with all the shit it entaols and do NOTHING to criticize it, presenting the only one advocating for change as deranged AND advocating for the WRONG THING.

Come on guys, this is WEAK! Yiu do not ask for work after society passes to automatization. You ask for a society where humanity doesn't have to work to survive anymore because THEY DON'T NEED TO DO IT ANYMORE.

A MOFFAT EPISODE MANAGES TO DO THAT.

A MOFFAT EPISODE.

#doctor who #eh

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crqstalite · 5 years

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15* day swtor challenge.

*didn’t take fifteen days. not even five.

the challenge <<<

anyways, decided to finally get around to this bad boy that i reblogged like a week ago or smth. our toon of choice for this one is our darling darth tri’ama amarillis-quinn.

1. PROLOGUE. Where was your OC before the class story? How’d they end up on the starter planet?

Tri’ama was born pure Kaasian (or so she assumes) to two unknown humans. There’s evidence there was another child born to her parents, making Tri’ama a twin to someone but she isn’t aware who. Adopted by two Sith Pureblood Lords, Raegia and Yusaits Amarillis, Tri’ama was raised rather well at the height of power. She had always been destined for Korriban, and routinely trained with her parents.

2. FAMILY. Is your OC’s family a large part of their story? Why or why not? Are they on good terms? Are any of your characters related?

Tri’ama’s parents have always been her biggest supporters, but were always very withdrawn with their loving. Often their childrearing would be considered extremely odd, from the violent training and the fact they’d continually push her past her physical boundaries. However, Raegia and Yusaits were careful to allow her to grow close to them, so they’re always on good terms. Tri’ama is aware that she has a twin, but assumes they were stillborn or abandoned, so doesn’t care much for it. They don’t appear much in story yet, but they will soon.

3. NAME. How did you come up with their name? What is it in-game? What do people call them? What do *you* call them?

Tri’ama was because I was beginning to realize ‘holy crap you can use apostrophes?!!!!’ hence why at least a 1/3 of my characters have an apostrophe somewhere in their name. It’s the same in-game, Tri’ama Amarillis (though I don’t have money for my legacy name). Sometimes Vette calls her ‘sis’ when they’re alone (which she LIVES for), Malavai refers to her as ‘my lord’, ‘my love’ when he’s feeling particularily adventerous, and her name when they’re alone, Jaesa refers to her as Master, Pierce is always ‘my lord’ or ‘my greatness therefore our one and only savior’ if he’s feeling like being annoying (thankfully he has a so-so friendship with her, so he’s in no danger of dying), and half the time she can’t figure what Broonmark is saying. I, call her bitch boy because she’s an asshole to literally everyone else.

4. COMBAT. What’s your character like in a fight? Is there anything you wish they could do in-game that isn’t an option? Favorite in-game moves? How did you decide their specialization?

Tri’ama is chaos and mayhem on wheels, but organized. Everyone has their position and what they have to do, and when things go according to plan, things are wonderful. I think force leap is my favorite thing for Sith Warrior’s and Jedi Knights to do because I love just leaping towards enemies and going to town. I decided her specialization because I really, really like double sabers and the abilities that come with them.

5. WARDROBE. How many outfit slots are filled? Did their look change over the course of the game, or stay consistent?

1. Literally one because I can’t afford to buy anymore. Also because I do more functionality than looks, so it depended on the planet. Whatever a Warrior on Hoth wore, she wore on Hoth. However, fic wise she did, going from having her hair short and slicked back, to having her hair long and around her shoulders during the endgame.

6. HOME. Where is home? A place? A person?

Home is Dromound Kaas, in her old family home. Home is with her parents, with the smell of good food and the quiet nights as the rain patters against the windows and she falls asleep.

7. PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS. Who are their closest friends? Do they have a lot, or a few? Do they trust easily, or does it take time?

Her closest friend is easily Vette, being the first person who began following her. They have a sisterly relationship, and always has a joke for her when they return to the ship. She’s one of the two people that can get her to laugh (the other being Malavai). She doesn’t have too many friends, being not only a Sith but also being Darth Amarillis. It takes a lot of time for her to trust someone, after being betrayed by not only Baras, but Malavai as well. But, it’s easy to see that those she does trust, are there for her life.

8. ROMANCES. A companion? An NPC? One of your OCs? Someone else’s? Nobody? Explain!

She’s married to Captain Malavai Quinn. Though it’s been a trying relationship (due to his betrayal and her inability to trust), Tri’ama loves him with her whole heart. They spend time together a little more sporadically than either would like, but what they do have, they treasure.

9. RIVALRIES. Who do they hate most? What’s the fastest way for someone to earn their dislike?

Mierrio. Hands down they despise each other mutually and don’t even try to fight their corresponding lovers on it. For a reason that still has yet to be revealed in-universe >:)

10. SLEEP. What are your OC’s sleeping habits like? Healthy? Terrible? With someone else?

Tri’ama actually sleeps rather well at night. She goes to bed when work is done, wakes up and then going back to work. In that way, she didn’t sleep with Malavai for nearly a year after his betrayal (she believes she’s most vulnerable while sleep), but now she can’t do so without him. Other than that, she’s the most well-rested Sith in the roster.

11. CANON DIVERGENCE. Are there parts of their story that don’t line up with in-game information? Why? Where?

Yes. When Baras asks the Sith Warrior whether they know the Sith Code, it’s assumed the PC has no idea what’s going on, and has been rushed into the Sith lifestyle. Tri’ama has been part of the Sith lifestyle since she was adopted by her parents, and of course would know the Sith Code, and what it means to be Sith. She wouldn’t have been rushed to Korriban either, though she was heavily advanced compared to other students and would’ve had no problem murdering Vemrin out of sight of the overseers without the assistance of Baras or Tremel. Other than that, no.

12. AUs. Do you have any alternate universes for them? What’s different? What’s the same?

One AU I have is the Faction Swap AU, where obviously, the characters switch their factions with the opposite class. Tri’ama became a Jedi Knight, which isn’t much different from her usual form, except that she murders less and doesn’t have an Imperial accent. Doc would’ve pissed her off, but she probably would’ve came around eventually, making it very clear that she was the one wearing pants in this relationship. The second AU I have is the Heritage AU, where she and Malavai have an unknown amount of children and...well it’s not written yet. Another AU is the lover swap AU (where I swap the companion lover and the PC’s roles), and Tri’ama would be the one stuck on Balmorra until Malavai arrives. She’s rather suave about how she enjoys her time spent with Baras’ apprentice and is extremely forward. Tri’ama, with her own trust issues, nearly refuses Baras before her life is threatened, and she purposely makes the robots much weaker than they should be.

13. ALIGNMENT. Light-dark, or D&D style, or both, whatever suits you. Did you plan for them to be the way they are, or did your ideas change as you played?

Dark side, mostly. Of course, I didn’t intend for her to be merciful to some characters, but it ended up that way because Malavai was partially light-sided as well and Tri’ama wanted to please him. Her D&D Alignment is Lawful Evil.

14. POST-OSSUS. How have they changed over the course of the thirteen years? How do they feel about their past self? How would their past self feel about them now?

Assuming we’re following my very fractured ‘Made of Star Dust’ universe, Tri’ama has changed because being seperated from the one person that promised to never leave her again, and the person that she trusted most in the whole galaxy snapped something inside her. Some call her the Melancholical Murderer, because she kills due to her own sadness and straining sanity. Things don’t go right back to normal after Malavai and Vette return, and she struggles to trust those in the Alliance as well. While Ezridivia has tried to reach out to her, along with Lana, surprisingly her remaining trust in the Barsen’thor (Naji) and Mierrio. Tri’ama sees her past self as weak, for not being able to deal the killing blow when she should’ve. Her past self would’ve seen this version as insane, and downright scary.

15. FREE DAY. Anything you’d like to talk about that wasn’t covered goes here. Fun facts? Not-fun facts? Go wild. I don’t own you.

Tri’ama loves, loves, LOVES, pets. She begged Malavai to adopt an akk dog (they didn’t, he made a remark that they already had Broonmark), and always checks out the wildlife on any planet that they land on. She also adores silk underclothes, and Malavai always complies. <3

@wolfboywarmachine !

#swtor15 #swtor #star wars the old republic #swtor fanfiction #swtor fanfic #swtor headcanons #malavai quinn #tri'ama amarillis-quinn

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momestuck · 5 years

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Epilogues: Meat ch 1-8 [Epilogue 1]

I’m eating so you get one more of these before I try to salvage a bit of work from today.

We’ve read through the whole of the ‘Candy’ branch of the story. It went places! Spoilers for it below.

Somehow Jane turned into a fascist dictator, Karkat became a heroic resistance leader, a whole lot of ships were made and broken, Dirk killed himself but somehow it was fake (???), John went through multiple existential crises and a failed marriage, Jade destroyed Dave and Karkat’s relationship but ultimately got with Dave, Gamzee was brought back to perform a ‘redemption arc’ and was generally awful but ultimately ended up getting sexually assaulted and then murdered by Vriska, let’s not forget that the cast had three entire fucking babies and one of them ran into her own namesake... and Obama was there. And that’s not even covering all of it...

But that was all in a universe that was ‘inconsequential’; it was in a bubble disconnected from ‘canon’, spread out on the event horizon.

Now we wind the clock back, and consider what happens if John chooses on that day to go forth, recruit a group of other selves from elsewhere in Paradox Space, and fight Lord English, as ‘canon’ dictates he eventually must...

Chapter 1

This one is in second person, and features narrative prompts, which was also true of the first chapter of Candy.

This time, John eats the meat in a really gross way, manages to not puke everywhere, says awkward goodbyes, writes a bunch of letters, and fucks off back into Canon(TM).

Not a lot to say about that! P much what we expected. Wonder where he’s gonna end up?

Chapter 2

I pretty much expected them to dive straight into Canon, but no, in fact similar plots as the first one seem to be abrew. We meet Dave and Karkat - no Jade here, this time - as Dave breaks the news of Jane’s presidential bid.

So, Dave proposes, Karkat should run against her. Which was a possibility floated in the other story... it does feel rather like, at this point, whatever V said, I might have read them in the wrong order.

Dave brings up Obama as a reason he’d want to see a good president - Obama who, in Dave’s timeline, got killed by meteors before he could ‘fix the economy’. Which I guess makes his appearance in the other branch a little less of a non-sequitur, though still fucking weird don’t get me wrong!

DAVE: or maybe not... maybe there was like an escape hatch in the white house that led to his own secret presidential session of sburb

DAVE: what if hes just chillin there now

KARKAT: DAVE, I THINK WE’VE COVERED YOUR “OBAMA’S SECRET SESSION OF SBURB” THEORY WELL ENOUGH ALREADY.

So the Obama chapter was all payoff for a very long term brick joke? This is not the revelation I expected to be having in Meat.

Anyway, Dave basically explains how scary it is to have the human government in charge of troll reproduction, echoing Karkat’s words back at him. Apparently the way the whole weird eugenic system got put in place was that, before Kanaya arrived with the Mother Grub, the government reproduced trolls exclusively ectobiologically.

The other issue is... The Economy. We get a little note that, indeed, this is an alchemy-based post-scarcity economy:

DAVE: ok if shit goes sideways i guess we arent gonna see like raggedy turtles and pauper chess men standing in bread lines or anything

DAVE: thats just the nature of alchemy-based post-scarcity economies the depressions tend to be pretty mild

DAVE: but it will still be bad

DAVE: a healthy economy is fuckin IMPORTANT

DAVE: if for no other reason than it protects the societal context for what it means to be fucking rich, like us

So uh what do they spend money on... I guess there’s services, those can’t be alchemised (except for the fact that ludicrously advanced robotics exists?). someone actually has to work the alchemizer...

Anyway most of this chapter is... electoral strategy.

DAVE: consorts overwhelm the other kingdoms in sheer numbers but due to unscrupulous gerrymandering, all kinds of fucked up voter suppression policies and some electoral “counterbalancing” measures to account for their ridiculous population growth rate their voting power per capita is kind of pathetic

DAVE: also its hard to drive turnout

DAVE: this may come as a shock but legions of easily distracted low information amphibians primarily concerned with eating bugs and farming god damned mushrooms arent the most politically motivated demographic

The chapter ends with Dirk calling Dave... to... cut off his head. Yeah. That joke again.

OK, this sure is a direction. Welcome to Homestuck Electoralism Edition I guess. They probably won’t have quite as many kids?

Chapter 3

John apparently has a specific list of retcon interventions, apopros of Rose. The first is to appear on the battleship during the three year journey in the non-canon, pre-retcon timeline, open a fridge containing Aradia and Gamzee (god I’ve forgotten so much), and take the ring that Aradia is holding (which ring is that again?). Then, John decides to shove Gamzee back in the fridge.

> Do everyone a favor and put an end to his preposterous narrative relevance.

You wisely decide that this clown will lend nothing valuable to the narrative whatsoever if he is allowed to remain outside of your childhood refrigerator. You put both hands on his chest and shove him into the fridge where he belongs. He goes easily, issuing only a pair of weak honks in protest. You slam the fridge shut and resolve to never think about Gamzee Makara again.

So... we’re going with that, huh.

I’ve said enough about the Gamzee Issue already perhaps. But I guess I thought they were going to do more than to bring Gamzee back mostly to mock the idea of ‘redemption arcs’, and ‘punish’ him some more for being a bad character.

Chapter 4

John interrupts two other retcon-Johns, one trying to cancel out the other, a Dave, and a grimbark Jade during some of the shit that happened when Jade got mind controlled or whatever... it’s been a long time...

Dave’s the first recruit, along with Jade. John gives him a rather half-assed explanation about why, after several years of ‘boring adult lives’, they need to go and fight Lord English now.

Chapter 5

Back to the real story: Dave and Karkat’s electoral bid.

Dirk has apparently been... playing the heel in televised rap battles to Jake’s face so that Jake’s endorsement of Jane’s political candidacy would be more effective. Yeah.

Also he disagrees with Dave on fiscal policy. The cad.

He has a rather weird conversation of alternately discouraging and encouraging Dave and Karkat’s opposition. Then, to round out the chapter, V and Cephied deliver... an entire stanza of Jake’s rap. Oh boy.

At the end, Dirk... tranquilizes Jake (????????) to take another call from Rose.

This is the ‘real’, ‘canon’ storyline now? Oh Homestuck.

Chapter 6

John’s assembled a group of god tier kids in his back garden. The alpha and beta kids are present, but there are no trolls.

There’s a rather uncomfortable moment (for the reader, as well as John) when young Roxy hits on adult John.

You weren’t prepared to get passively hit on by the Definitely Not Legal version of a girl you used to have a crush on at the age she was when you first met her, only a few hours after you watched the Actually Legal version of her engage in passionate hand-holding with her possibly aromantic skeleton alien monster girlfriend.

‘Legal’, really!

Anyway, John feels rather strained watching this rather rushed rehash of the reunion scenes from the original comic. He wonders about the ethics of all this...

You wonder. Do you see these teen versions of your friends as “real”? Are you treating them, at Rose’s behest, as simple puppets? Doing your part to insist they fill friend-shaped recesses in an essential plan to stabilize all else that can be considered important, a distinction no longer applying to them? Do you care at all about whatever fate it may be that you are sentencing these children to? Are you becoming as complicit in the fatalistic evils of Paradox Space as Lord English himself? Are you becoming a monster, John Egbert?

foooof i mean he’s not wrong! let’s call them the ‘child soldiers’ from here on out...

Chapter 7

Time to catch up with Rose. We finally learn what’s wrong with her: she’s ‘ascending’, taking on the full burden of the ‘ultimate self’.

The same is also happening to Dirk, but he is somehow more resilient to it. So that’s what Obama did to Dave, huh.

Also this puts the prompt ‘Dirk: Ascend’ before his suicide in a rather different light.

The pieces are thus falling into place: this is why Dirk was building a Rosebot. Quite possibly the Dirk and Rose who were flying away from Earth C in the Candy timeline actually entered it out of this timeline, which would explain how Dirk was alive.

Chapter 8

Time to see the full events of Caliborn’s ‘Masterpiece’.

This is all Caliborn dropping an extremely corny buildup:

CALIBORN: BUT NOW. THE TIME HAS COME.

CALIBORN: FOR EVERYONE TO SHUT UP ABOUT HOW GREAT MY MASTERPIECE WAS.

CALIBORN: AND THE TIME IS NOW AT HAND...

His laughter turns into a low, cracked gurgle. It spikes towards you in waves, distorts and pitches low. He is beyond pleased with himself, and with the line he is about to deliver.

CALIBORN: FOR YOU ALL TO *BECOME* MY MASTERPIECE!

We need more organs to give that the proper level of scare chord...

End of Epilogue 1

Well that explained at least some of the wild horseshit we experienced in Candy, I guess.

So somehow this is all according to keikaku, which is to say Dirk’s design - he fancies himself as an engineer, putting each piece in its proper place. Rose isn’t entirely in on it, but she will be. We still don’t know why Dirk’s doing this, why he needs Jane to be president, why he’s ultimately going to need a new SBurb session...

As for themes and stuff... this just felt like ‘setting the board’. Rather hastily, even though it’s a full eight chapters. Compared to the emotional heft of some of the stuff that happened in Candy, anyway... this is all plot.

#momestuck

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metawitches · 4 years

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In episode 6 of season 7, Agents of SHIELD continues to celebrate July 4, 1976 in the Lighthouse. Coulson and May are interrogated by Rick Stoner while the Chronicoms quietly steal the faces and personalities of SHIELD agents. Mack and Elena break his parents out of the cell Hydra and the Chronicoms have locked them in. Deke discovers that Nana Jemma has become a cyborg. Enoch helps Nana Jemma with her malfunctioning cybernetic implant, Diana, which helps her stop thinking about her missing husband, Bobo Fitz.

I need one of those implants. This is a fun season, but I miss Fitz. What if they can’t get back to him at the end of this adventure? Will he be lost in time and space FOREVER? Isn’t the real world bad enough without making us worry that FitzSimmons won’t find their way back together??? #BringFitzHome

Recap

We begin inside the synapses that make up the strands Sibyl manipulates between her hands when she acts as an oracle, which is just super cool. She speaks of the patterns followed by all of life, from oceans to leaves, then asks Luke if he can sense the living energy of the new world he now stands on.

I admire her optimism that’s he’s more than a soulless machine.

He’s soulless, but has the overdramatic streak typical of Chronicoms. He tells her all he feels is the death of their hopes and dreams because she failed them miserably with her bad predictions and now she’s allowed SHIELD to bring down Project Insight.

Truly, there is nothing better than a poetic but restrained soulless monster. Luke is beginning to come into his own. The Chronicoms have developed into a delightful race of Data-Spock style extremely understated over emoters, lost children forever searching the universe for the place where they truly belong. I still think the war would end immediately if each Chronicom were assigned a human best friend.

Luke is sad about Freddy’s death, too, which is sweet. Sibyl is patient with him, trying to reassure him that she sees 10 steps ahead, plus all that other stuff from Freddy’s villain monologue last episode. Luke has read the Predictor pamphlet and thinks he knows the truth.

Sibyl helps him see more clearly, reminding him that Daisy and Sousa have been captured by Nathaniel Malick, Shield was forced to reveal their location and Mack will come to the Lighthouse to retrieve his parents.

The Shield team is under pressure and separated. They will make fatal mistakes soon.Sibyl instructs Luke to begin the next phase of their plan. They must continue to adapt.

He leaves his virtual reality session with her. We see him remove his hands from 2 ports in the Chronicom time ship, then activate the wake cycle for several hunters. There are dozens of Chronicoms in storage in this room of the ship.

In the Lighthouse Command Center, Stoner’s agents discover that Insight is down. Stoner orders them to find the ship that took it out. May and Coulson are brought to him as prisoners. Coulson tries again to convince Stoner that alien robots are responsible for Insight, so it needed to be stopped.

Stoner still can’t see himself as the villain in a space age Bond conspiracy. He blames Chastity for the loss of the steak he’s using to stop the swelling in the eye she punched in episode 5.

May is forced to admit that Chastity McBride isn’t her real name, which is just a sad, sad time for all of us.

I wanted Patrick Warburton to say her full alias, with relish, everytime he spoke to her, all episode. Or all season. May could reveal her true name at the end of the episode (or season), when she tells him her rank.

Then my fan fiction begins and it’s a private session, so none of you are invited. Sorry.

In the meantime, we discover the Chronicoms gave SHIELD some futuristic space tracking tech which allows them to track the Zephyr now that it’s revealed its location once. SHIELD’s goose is cooked! So far, no one has made a move against them, even though they haven’t recloaked because the quinjet was docking, but it’s only a matter of time.

Jemma orders Enoch, who’s in the pilot’s seat, to recloak, then turns to Deke and Elena. She’s surprised they didn’t bring Malick back with them. Elena tries to cover for Deke, but he admits straight out that he shot Malick dead. Mack is on his way to rescue his parents and not okay with the idea of murder. He won’t even pause for a quick debriefing of the mission, which is part of his role as director.

Elena would have brought nuance to the story, had she told it to Mack.

He decides that there’s no possibility of extenuating circumstances and grounds Deke in the Zephyr. Mack ignores the fact that Deke knows the Lighthouse best, which makes him a good choice for this mission. In Mack’s mind, Freddy had 2 sons who just lost their father, thanks to Deke’s impulsiveness. He’s worried the Chronicoms may become impulsive with his parents, too.

Mack is also probably flashing back to everything he never liked about Fitz’s moral judgements. Fitz always threw tough moral decisions into stark relief for Mack and highlighted the complexities, which Mack wanted to ignore in favor of harsh black and white lines. Fitz would come down on the side of the greater good for a very inclusive all, no matter the personal cost to a few individuals, while Mack would come down on the side of humans and the least violence toward them first, no matter the outside cost.

With Jemma being the one exception. Fitz would let the world end rather than let her be hurt.

Deke is a pragmatist who chooses the method that will work best in a particular situation, but his talents are in analysis and adaptation, so his mind is open and scanning for the best solution among the available options. Like his grandparents, he’s not judgemental about who he saves or cares about. He judges “people” as individuals.

Now Mack is going into a base filled with SHIELD agents and Chronicoms who will both see him as the enemy and who he might not be able to tell apart. Mack is fine with killing robots and non humans (according to his own fluctuating definition of who is human and who isn’t), but doesn’t like to kill humans ever and hates collateral damage.

This mission is a nightmare for him, one which he’s taking out on Deke.

Elena brings up that the Chronicoms are using Mack’s parents as bait to lure him to the Lighthouse. She’s not going to let him go in alone.

Before he leaves, Mack asks about Daisy and Sousa, but Jemma hasn’t heard from them. He tells her to scan for them and for the enemy ship. He wants to bring the pain to the Chronicoms for once.

On the way to the Lighthouse, Mack worries about the rescue op and recounts memories of spending the Bicentennial with his family as a kid. He didn’t think this is how he’d introduce Elena to his parents. She says that she’ll make a heroic first impression with them. But she also says that the Chronicoms are purposely messing with his head and he needs to stop letting them.

Back in the Lighthouse, a Chronicom with a sense of humor has initiated the lockdown protocol. The Rick Stoner projection is giving safety tips all over the facility. The real life Stoner is annoyed by himself, but the Chronicoms have seized control of several systems so the projection can’t be turned off.

This is a nod back to our first encounters in the Lighthouse, when Enoch and Noah had been using it as their home base and storage facility. Though SHIELD built the Lighthouse, the Chronicoms have always known more about it than anyone, other than maybe Robin and Deke.

I’d love a visit from teenage Robin before the end of the series. She could be their oracular secret weapon.

The weapons systems have also been hijacked, while the radar has picked up the Zephyr. Coulson tells Stoner it’s the Chronicoms, but Stoner is NOT IN THE MOOD FOR SASS from prisoners ON AMERICA’S BIRTHDAY. He forbids weapons fire, but they do anyway. The Zephyr is hit.

Daisy, who was hit by an icer fired by Nathaniel Malick in episode 5, is just now waking up. She and Sousa are drugged, shackled and on the floor in a barn. When she discovers she can’t quake, thanks to the drug in her system, she calls Nathaniel Malick’s Little Psycho. He walks in at just that moment.

He reintroduces himself and makes it clear that he’s only tangentially Hydra. Nathaniel doesn’t care about the crime syndicate or squid worship sides of the evil organization. We saw this the first time through the timeline in S3, when Gideon offed his brother by rigging the Heads of Hydra pebble system that determined who was sent to Maveth to be sacrificed to Hive.

This time around, Freddy kept Nathaniel alive long enough for him to discover an interest in the inhumans’ superpowers. He wants to transfer Daisy’s powers to himself. Which actually makes Nathaniel’s first fate a good fit, too, when you think about it. As part of Hive, he also became an inhuman, in a sense.

When Sousa speaks up, Nathaniel tells him that he’s the most well-preserved 60-something Nathaniel has ever seen. He assumes Sousa is also an inhuman, since he appears to be aging so slowly, and says it won’t go well for Daniel if he doesn’t have super powers.

Nathaniel explains to them that he’s not holding them for a ransom. He plans to experiment on them, with Daniel Whitehall’s help. He loves Daisy’s whole vibe and nothing she or Daniel say threatens him. He’d love to see a demonstration of her powers, but the drugs are still in her system. He orders his goons to take her to his lab.

Stoner takes Coulson and May to an interrogation room, where their handcuffs are locked to a table. Stoner pretends to listen to Coulson when he describes the face-stealing Chronicoms for the 3rd time, but when May joins the discussion, he makes it clear he still isn’t taking them seriously.

He does say “Chastity McBride” again, though.

A junior agent brings Stoner a message. She walks over behind Coulson and May, giving a threatening speech, then tells Stoner he’s needed in the basement. She puts her hand on May’s shoulder. Stoner tells them that Malick is dead, then leaves with the junior agent.

Once he’s gone, May tells Coulson that the junior agent was emotionally dead. She was a Chronicom.

Jemma, Deke and Enoch put out the fire on the Zephyr, but then Enoch notices that the exterior cables which control the time shielding and allow the ship to jump through time safely have been damaged. If the ship jumps through time without the shielding, parts of the ship will be left behind and crushed. Since they could jump at any time, they need to fix it immediately.

Except Jemma stumbles when it comes to giving exact instructions for how to fix the shielding. She sends Deke off to look at the power regulator, while she and Enoch look at the control panel. But she can’t remember what to do once they’ve opened the panel. Enoch tells her it’ll be okay, but he needs to help her now.

Mack and Elena cut a hole in the cell wall to get to his parents. He rushes over and hugs his surprised mom, Lilla, who of course doesn’t recognize him. Elena tries to cover for him, saying he’s just happy that Lilla and his dad, John, are safe now. They introduce themselves, then get moving. Mack’s parents don’t understand why they were chosen as hostages and he doesn’t want to influence the future by telling them. He tells them to take cover if fighting breaks out.

The junior agent tells Stoner that his help is needed on a problem with the mainframe in the basement. As they walk to the elevator, he remarks on how annoying it is that his face is still playing on a loop. She tells him they’ll remove his face in a minute.

Coulson argues that the junior agent, Agent King, can’t be a Chronicom because they saw her display personality. They realize that he can show personality and the Chronicoms are mimicking him. They figured out that they can copy what he does, except he’s not stealing something from a living person.

He goes on to tell May that he doesn’t appreciate her lack of attitude. He would normally turn to her after dying and coming back, but she won’t give him anything, not even her thoughts.

May: “You want to know what I think? You never die. You always come back. You know how many times I’ve mourned you? I’m not doing it again. And I’m certainly not doing it for a decoy with a simulated personality!”

Coulson: “Thank you! There she is. Don’t look now, but your emotions are coming back. Unless you just picked that up from watching me… They’re mimicking me. Adapting.”

May: “Are we done sharing now?”

Coulson breaks free from his shackles with ease, then breaks May’s. He was only staying locked up to be polite.

His says that Luke told him the Chronicoms had ways of adapting. He guesses that they’ve developed a method of stealing memories and personalities, then uploading them into Chronicom bodies, allowing them to infiltrate and take over in much the same way Hydra did.

May realizes Stoner must be next. Downstairs, he’s taken into the room where the Chronicoms keep their face and personality copy machines. They’re making copies as fast as they can.

Mack and Elena lead his parents through the corridors to the quinjet. His dad gets tense and snaps at Mack. Mack has a hard time holding his own temper in check. Mack’s mom explains that they’re worried about what will happen to their sons if they don’t make it home. That brings Mack’s focus back.

They need to get through a heavy, motorized blast door to get to the quinjet, so Mack has his dad, who’s also a mechanic, help him figure out how to get it open without the passcode. They share a family saying, “If you can’t fix one thing, you fix another.”

Stoner is in the personality copier when May and Coulson come to the rescue. One of the Chronicoms gives an order to “Bring another Hunter up for the next conversion.” May and Coulson bring him a fight instead. When they get Stoner out of the machine, he says he now believes them about the alien robots.

They explain the face and personality stealing process to Stoner. He figures out that the faceless bodies on the floor are dead friends and colleagues and that he needs to get the rest of his people out of the Lighthouse.

Coulson tells May to rendezvous with Mack and Elena. He’s going to figure out where the Chronicoms are bringing the Hunters up from. He discovers a hatch in the floor with a ladder inside.

Sousa watches Nathaniel’s experiments through a hole in the wall. When Daisy’s brought back to the barn, Nathaniel says he took as much blood and spinal fluid as Daisy could handle without dying, plus a couple of glands. He’s going to synthesize it all and inject it into himself. If this doesn’t work, he’ll “switch from needles to knives.”

Daisy tries to tell Sousa that the same thing has happened before, with her mother, Jiaying, but he doesn’t understand. He pulls her head onto his lap and tells her the story of his war injury to keep her awake.

He was hit in the fog and knocked out. When he came to, he was alone and his leg was a pulpy mess. Then Mike Stephens, a guy he didn’t like, showed up. Mike stayed with him and kept talking. He carried Sousa back from the front line. As the Germans advanced, Mike kept telling Sousa they were going home. Eventually, Sousa was in a stretcher and Mike wasn’t, implying Mike died to save him.

So Sousa is going to keep Daisy alive as a way of repaying Mike Stephens. He tells her insistently that they’re going home. She struggles to open her hand and show him that she palmed a sharp metal shard. He admires her fighting spirit.

Jiaying is, or was, basically immortal. Daisy is hard to kill, largely because she refuses to give up. But also now she has gravitron in her.

Deke finds Enoch working on Jemma’s head. The scan that he’s using shows something implanted into her spine and brain. Deke thinks quick and uses defibrillator paddles to shock Enoch into unconsciousness. Then he uses smelling salts to wake Jemma up.

She’s not okay with what he did to Enoch.

Coulson climbs down the ladder and into the ship full of hibernating Chronicoms. He sticks his hands into Sibyl’s ports and asks if he’s come at a bad time.

It’s never a good time to stick your hands into a woman’s ports uninvited.

Mack and John have to force the door open anyway. John’s arm gets cut while they’re pushing. Mack leaves them to keep working while he fights some Chronicoms.

Coulson chats with Sibyl, who’s surprisingly open. She says she sees no reason not to answer the questions he’s asking. She tells him that his body is in their time ship, which appears underground. That’s why SHIELD hasn’t been able to find it.

His mind is in her virtual space. She says they call her the predictor, but she simply reads the time streams. Coulson asks if she sees the future.

Sibyl: “I see the past. As written by a single future. A tree grown, but also the many trees it could have grown to be.”

They have the usual semantic discussion about whether Coulson is actually a Chronicom or not. How do the Chronicoms define themselves? What is the essential part? Sibyl refers to herself as having a digital mind. Is that what makes her a Chronicom?

We were told in the beginning of the season that Coulson is an LMD enhanced with Chronicom technology. Was that description meant to make Mack (and us) okay with this new version of Coulson, even though it’s a robot? Even though the LMDs were murderous, too?

Jemma rushes to fix the ship while she and Deke argue about whether or not he was justified in saving her from what looked like a creepy robot attack. Jemma tries to get away with saying IT’S FINE AND DEKE OVERREACTED TO THAT THING IN HER BRAIN, which by the way looked like it had a couple of tiny tentacles. But Deke is from the future and even then an implant like that wasn’t okay, especially when it’s being “adjusted” by a robot who’s switched sides multiple times, if we’re being honest. Deke doesn’t buy her excuses and insists on real answers.

It’s about time.

She finally tells him, “He was fixing my memory so we can fix the ship.”

That definitely explains everything.

Deke realizes that she just said she doesn’t know how to fix the time machine that she’s currently working on.

I’ve been wondering when someone would remember that Fitz is the engineer, not her. Though I’m sure she’s picked up a fair amount of engineering, the same way she picked up several alien languages in S6, it doesn’t change the fact that engineering is Fitz’s gift and they kept their science disciplines separate for a reason. He’s the one who invented the time machine in S5. I doubt that changed in this timeline.

Jemma: “You cannot imagine how impossible it was to track the Chronicoms through time. But Fitz and I found a place where all their moves could be observed. And to guide us, Fitz stayed there. He is completely exposed and they will kill him if they find him, so no one can know his location.”

But Jemma knows, so she designed a biological implant to suppress her memories, named Diana. They’re inseparable. But the implant is malfunctioning and she’s forgetting and remembering the wrong things, so Enoch was helping her with it.

Nathaniel’s goons come into the barn and uncuff Sousa’s ankles. Sousa attacks, using the metal shard as a weapon. He knocks the guard out, then unlocks his own and Daisy’s cuffs. She’s still unconscious, so he picks her up to carry her out. As they’re leaving, Nathaniel enters the room. He has Daisy’s powers and is causing an earthquake, but his bones are also fracturing. The barn collapses on top of Nathaniel as they run out.

Sibyl tells Coulson where Daisy is. She says Nathaniel’s chances of successfully stealing her powers are 22%. Daisy has an 86% chance of survival. She says they’re using Mack’s parents to get to Mack and they want Earth to ensure the survival of “my species.”

She tells him that Chronicoms are more valuable than humans because they live so much longer. Human lives are fleeting and they make stupid decisions because of it. Within a stable environment, Chronicoms can live forever. If necessary, they’ll wait the humans out.

Coulson tells Sibyl she’s wrong about 3 things. The first two are the human capacity for sacrifice and tenacity. The third is him. Dying is his superpower.

He pulls his hands out of the ports, then sends a brief goodbye to May. He blows up the time ship with bag of explosives that was originally meant to flood the Lighthouse, blowing up himself along with it.

Mack has been fighting Chronicoms all this time. The explosion lifts the lockdown, so the door to the quinjet opens. Luke is about to shoot Mack when May and Stoner show up and shoot Luke instead. Stoner walks them all to their ride.

He and May say goodbye. He offers to buy her a drink, now that he’s pretty sure she doesn’t work at the Lighthouse and isn’t under his direct command. She tells him she’s Level 7, which means she’s his superior officer, and gives him orders to clean up and cover up the operation.

Once everyone is in the quinjet, May tells the others that Coulson is gone, but he’ll come back, just like always.

Once Enoch has been revived, he finishes his work on Jemma. While he helps her, Deke give him a Jemma-approved apology.

Deke: “Enoch, I’m sorry about before. I didn’t realize that things were so dire… And you are a valued member of our family.”

Enoch: “That is the greatest compliment one could be paid. Apology accepted.”

When Enoch is done, Jemma’s memories and forgetfulness are back in place. She asks Deke to keep her secret.

Mack brings his father to the quinjet cockpit to tell him about the tech, while Elena and Lilla bond in the back. John touches May’s shoulder to thank her for her part in saving him and his wife.

Oops, rookie Chronicom mistake. May felt no emotion, so she sets the quinjet to circle and tells Mack to check the cut on John’s arm. At first, he refuses to show them.

When he does, it proves he’s a robot. Mack fights John while May fights Lilla. Fake John says that they killed Mack’s parents a while ago. Eventually, Mack has to kill both of his “parents” and push them out of the back of the quinjet. He has to listen to his mother beg him as he pushes her to her “death”.

Geez, this show loves to torture him. That was horrible. I was already still haunted by Hope disappearing in the Framework.

Not gonna lie, I’m still tempted to lobby for them to print out some of those Framework residents. They could be LMDs, like Coulson. Hope could get a new, slightly bigger, LMD body on her birthday every year.

My kid is a cyborg who gets a new insulin pump every few years. It’s not too many steps removed.

Sousa and Daisy make it back to the Zephyr. Jemma puts Daisy in the healing chamber. Sousa stays on the ship.

They jump without incident.

Mack gets on a motorcycle and takes off.

In the tag, Mack is sitting in a field of flowers a little ways from the Zephyr, facing away from the ship. Deke walks toward him to check on him. Jemma frantically calls Deke back to the ship- they’re about to jump. Mack doesn’t respond when Deke yells to him.

The Zephyr leaves without them.

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Commentary

In hindsight, blowing up the ship that had the Chronicoms’ time drive in it might not have been the best idea, since the Zephyr is tied to it. Who knows what this will do to their jump cycles?

OMG, I thought Henry Simmons (Mack) was about 35 and way too young to remember the Bicentennial. He’s 50 years old! Good on him. This cast never ages.

Rick Stoner really, really deserved to be rescued from the 70s and brought onto the modern SHIELD team. I will believe this until my dying day. He has essential qualities as an agent that would have saved the world many times faster than it will ever be saved without him, like having the foresight to build the Lighthouse and having a voice that makes every order sound crucial. The future Kree wouldn’t stand a chance against his manly tones when they tried to get all sinister.

Since human Coulson is gone, I’m going to assume that eventually May will find a way to get back to Stoner and live out her life with him, using the alias Chastity McBride. No matter how the series ends, this will come true in some happy timeline, somewhere. Time God Fitz will make it so.

Human Coulson will spend eternity in heaven with his violinist. Cellist?

LMD Coulson should get Sibyl to change sides to be with him, because she definitely has a thing for him. She has Luke ask him if he likes her-likes her and wants to be her boyfriend in, like, every time period.

This episode, she let him get to second base with her and her blew up her ship, so it might get ugly between them for a couple of episodes. I know true love when I see it though and it would be a shame to let this relationship die.

Timestreams and Predictions and Fitz and Mack

Sibyl: “I see the past. As written by a single future. A tree grown, but also the many trees it could have grown to be.”

There is a reason we were shown these two speeches one after the other.

This sounds to me like Fitz could be in the place Sibyl uses to read a single mind. Like maybe it was a honeypot trap and FitzSimmons fell into it. Why else would there be a place where Fitz can magically see everything the Chronicoms do, if it’s not also the place that the Chronicoms use for their predictions?

I just hope Fitz isn’t a disembodied brain now.

I think Deke is right to be suspicious of Jemma’s implant. I can’t guess which side Enoch is on, since he switched a few times in S6, but I wonder if Fitz is dead or trapped or a hostage and she won’t let herself remember it. Sibyl could be using the exceptionally detailed scan of Fitz’s brain that was taken when they scanned him and Jenna in S6. Or they could have scanned him a second time after the season ended.

Enoch did show up out of the blue at the end of S6 with a risky proposal for Fitz and Jemma. That could mean he’s really working for the other side. It wouldn’t make much sense, but maybe this is the only way the Chronicoms win without heavy casualties.

Nathaniel made that speech to Daniel and Daisy, telling them that they weren’t technically hostages, because he didn’t want to exchange them for anything. Could that be Fitz’s situation- he’s not a hostage because they have no intention of ever letting him go?

Coulson made a lot of mistakes when he interrogated Sibyl. He finished her sentences for her, rather than letting her talk. He made too many assumptions. It was really her interrogating him. LMD Coulson has the original’s memories, but not the instincts the man gained from experience. This Coulson still has to accrue his own experiences.

But anyway, I noticed that Sibyl told Coulson that she wants Mack. I wonder if that’s the truth.

The simplest answer to what she meant is that they were hoping that Mack’s Chronicom parents could turn him into a Chronicom. Since he’s the director of SHIELD, the rest of SHIELD would fall soon after. They could have turned May and Elena when they turned Mack.

But it seems like Enoch would be trying to lure them all into personality copiers if it’s all they wanted.

Mack is the team member who’s held onto his humanity the hardest and is often the moral compass of the group. But he’s not always honest and he’s been a traitor, though the show would often like us to forget that.

Then again, they specifically included Robert Gonzales’ name on the Project Insight list last week. Gonzales was the man Mack and Bobbi followed when SHIELD split into 2 warring factions (besides Hydra) in season 2. Gonzales knew that Fury had chosen Coulson as his successor and disagreed with the choice because he felt it was wrong for SHIELD to be led by a man with alien DNA. (After being resurrected using the TAHITI protocol, Coulson had Kree DNA in his system, just like the inhumans.)

For a long time, Coulson didn’t even know the 2nd SHIELD faction existed. Mack and Bobbi joined Coulson’s SHIELD as spies. It took Mack a long time to trust anyone who had anything to do with either alien DNA or robots.

It could be the Chronicoms want to continue to exploit that old weakness of Mack’s. It could also be that they know about the death of his daughter, Hope, and the way it affected him both in reality and in the Framework. They might want to use it to push him past the breaking point.

If the Chronicoms have access to Fitz’s mind and the different potentials for it, they could see the way the other Fitz cracked under too much pressure, after too much dehumanization. Might they be trying to push Mack into that same type of breakdown? Making him murder his mother the way that they did felt like turning him into everything he hates, while also twisting his mind, since his fake mother was also a robot. It seemed like it was meant to start confusing him about who was real and who was fake.

Each episode this season has been patterned after a particular movie genre. Since Mack is the movie buff on the team and is the director of SHIELD, I’ve wondered if it’s a way to say that we’re seeing the show through his eyes.

But now I wonder if the Chronicoms also know that he’s a movie lover and are specifically playing to film tropes. Maybe they want him to feel the gangster films turning into 50s B movies, which become slightly more suspenseful 70s Bond and political thriller films. As Deke pointed out, horror movie tropes are sneaking in, such as the spoofed line from Terminator 2 and the body snatching.

But there’s another aspect to what we’ve seen all season. If the Chronicoms are watching the team through Fitz’s eyes and using what they see to devise a strategy to take the team down, it could be that Fitz is purposely directing what they see in order to mislead them.

Movie themes play to Mack’s strengths because they follow tropes and scenarios he’s worked with before. They have clear good guys and bad guys. By literally dressing the Chronicoms up as stock characters from the entertainment of the team’s past, they’ve been cut down to size and made a manageable enemy with clear goals and motives.

I don’t think we’ve been given all of the information yet, so we can’t fully understand what’s happening. But it feels like the Chronicom’s strategy is aimed at bringing down Mack, with a side of hoping to turn Coulson, one of the most loyal people around.

The Chronicoms may be using a divide and conquer strategy based on the way the team fell apart at the end of S5. It was Mack who stepped in as Director when Coulson’s health failed and SHIELD was a shambles. The Chronicoms must figure they can divide and conquer the team for good this time.

But this isn’t the same team. Coulson is a younger, more optimistic LMD. Fitz isn’t there to butt heads with Mack. Mack and Elena are on the same page. May and Daisy aren’t desperate to save Coulson. Or maybe that was why Sibyl set him up for the suicide mission in the time ship.

But it won’t work this time. May doesn’t have the same feelings toward the LMD that she had toward the man and and Daisy is distracted by Sousa.

Most importantly, Deke has stepped up as a member of the team. They may not fully accept him, but he’s chosen them. He’s lived through much worse than any of this and he’s not going back. He believes in the power of positive thinking and is loyal to a fault. He’s filling in some of the gaps in the team dynamic left by OG Coulson and Fitz, including quietly watching out for everyone’s safety and mental health.

As a character, he frequently suffers from the Cassandra Complex issue of seeing the problem before anyone else will believe it exists, but he doesn’t let it stop him. Geniuses are used to being ahead of their time.

Images courtesy of ABC.

#AgentsofSHIELD S7Ep6: Adapt or Die Recap-Stoner questions Coulson & May while Chronicoms snatch bodies in the basement. Mack & Elena break his parents out of the Lighthouse. Deke finds that Nana Jemma has a suspicious brain implant. In episode 6 of season 7, Agents of SHIELD continues to celebrate July 4, 1976 in the Lighthouse.

#Adapt or Die #Agents of SHIELD #clark gregg #Elizabeth Henstridge #Henry Simmons #marvel cinematic universe #Marvel Comics #metacrone #ming-na wen #Natalia Cordova-Buckley #science fiction #Time Travel

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majingojira · 7 years

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Super Robot Wars US: A Broad Outline of Included Series

So, I had an idea. a “What if” if you will. “What if a Super Robot Wars series was made for international (American) Markets and actually sprung for the license of U.S. Series and recognizable works?”

Here is what I came up with, in a basic outline.

Phase 1: The Monsters

Before the story begins, the world has been under attack by monsters. For generations, monsters called Kaiju have periodically appeared and threatened the world. Many were killed or driven off, but some remain hidden across the world. Their existence spurred many military advancements including the creation of many mobile weapons. They could appear anywhere, and wreak all sorts of havoc, but some it seems could be reasoned with or were here for a reason. Sometimes the result of man’s hubris, other times because of natural processes. (Series: Godzilla, mix, but mainly from Godzilla X Mecahgodzilla /Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.)

But then something happened. 11 years ago, a new type of Kaiju appeared. these were more aggressive, more toxic, and glowed oddly. These were dubbed “Blue Kaiju” and the old style of monsters called “Red Kaiju”. Both were dangerous, but one odd thing seemed to hold true: Blue and Red Kaiju hated each other.

Still, the new Blue Kaiju posed an unparalleled threat, as they attacked more regularly and more devastatingly. Thus was born the Jaeger program. The Jaegers dwarfed normal mobile weapons, and could more readily take down Kaiju, at first. But they began coming faster than the Jaegers could be built and piloted. (Series: Pacific Rim)

Part 2: The Aliens

9 years ago, a mysterious alien vessel crashed to earth, landing on Macross Island. The three power blocks (The AEU, the Human Reform League, and the Union of Solar Energy) eventually decided to work together to restore the vessel and reap the benefits of its technology, in part for the Jaeger program, and in part as a backup. As things with the Kaiju got worse, the idea of escaping into space seemed a more promising option. So, to prepare for the eventual exploration of interstellar space, the Galaxy Garrison was founded. (Series: Super-Dimensional Fortress: Macross/Robotech series 1, Gundam OO, Voltron: The Legendary Defender)

But this was just the first incident. 2 years ago, another alien machine crashed on earth. Dubbed EL-01, the being hid and prepared for its eventual conquest of the earth, but its arrival had been preceded. First by a machine known as GaLeon from a distant world 5 years prior, warning some humans of his arrival and leaving a weapon to help fight it. (Series: King of Braves: GaoGaiGar)

Part 3: The Ancient Beings Revive

These disturbances have rippling effects across the solar system. On earth, Cybertronians stranded here thousands of years ago, stir once more and begin their war in secret among the humans. But with so many robots around, they do not remain so for long. (Series: Transformers)

But worse still, lunar construction workers find a large canister in a crater. Opening it, they unseal an ancient evil from prehistoric times who decides to celebrate her freedom by conquering the planet earth! In a world of science, her sorcery stands almost completely unopposed! Almost. (Series: Koyru Sentai Zyuranger/Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)

Part 4: The World Refused To Change

Despite these threats, the world power blocks still vie with each other for power and armed military companies like the Organization of the Zodiac or OZ ruthlessly fulfill their contracts, many of which include suppressing the fermenting revolutions on the space colonies. Behind the curtain, OZ and their allies in a sinister group dubbed AMALGAM work to take over the world for their own ends. (Series: New Mobile Report: Gundam Wing, Full Metal Panic!)

They find themselves opposed by a group with two names: one for planetary operations called Mithril, and one for space-born operations known as Celestial Being. Aside from countering the actions of OZ and AMALGAM, their overall goal is to bring about peace on earth. But they too are mere pawns of the Innovades, who seek to prepare the world for proper first contact with alien life.

Part 5: The Beginning

Despite their plans and schemes, they all fall short of the insights of the nefarious Doctor Hell. He knows at least one of the species coming to earth, the Myceneans, and he plans to unite the world under his iron-fisted rule to prepare them for the monsters from space. But he needs the secret of Photonic Power to truly have the edge. (Series: Shin Mazinger)

And at the same time, a guy from New Jersey managed to find a giant mech from the future in a junk pile. He gave it a hotrod makeover and is looking for things to do with it. (Series: MEGAS: XLR)

Series Notes: Godzilla is one of the last recruitable units in the game, but the player has access to Kiryu and later Mothra to help balance that. Godzilla’s ultimate move is “King of the Monsters” where he roars and calls forth every native-born earth monster to tear up his foes along with him. Yes, Godzilla can be used in Space, but his movement is severely curtailed. His final boss? King Ghidorah.

Pacific Rim allows players to save the older Jaeger pilots and may sneak into Pacific Rim II territory if the game can fit it in time-skip wise. Final Boss: Slattern (or the amalgam Kaiju from the PR II Trailer).

The Macross is the main ‘base’ for at least half the game and allows for a route split between earth and space several times due to Macross’ plot. Final Boss: Zentradi Home Base

Voltron recasts a lot of events to be in and around Earth as they come back to shore up earth’s defenses for the eventual Galra invasion. Second most durable unit in the game. Final Boss: Galra Mothership/Fleet, + Lotor’s Personal Robot. Thank goodness the Zendtadi and the Galra hate each other, and the other aliens are little better.

Gundam OO sets a lot of the human political movement along with Gundam Wing. The Gundams will show up to fight Kaiju, or defend the Macross from attack, but it’s not until later that they truly join with the other heroes. Amalgam and the Innovades HATE each other, as their purposes are diametrically opposed. It’s a silver lining in a bleak situation. Final Boss: Ribbons Almark, Tres Khushrenada (with Maybe Marimeia side story before later villains are taken down).

GaoGaiGar has the single most powerful attack in the game: The Goldion Crusher. Transformers initially don’t like the G-Stone based A.I.’s of the Green Planet, but most learn to accept them because they’re our heroes. THey’re less accepting of the Macros since it was one of their ship’s that was shot down and ... it and the other Macross ships are sometimes viewed like hollowed out corpses. It’s very dark. Final Boss are the 11 Sol Masters.

Transformers is based in part on G-1 continuity with bits from Animated and Armada thrown in -- because Optimus needs some upgrades if he’s gonna be of use in the long term. The main transformers I would tap for this would be Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Ratchet, Arcee, Windblade, Grimlock, and maybe Omega Supreme and/or Metroplex. Final Boss: Unicron. Optimus gets the final attack of “The Light of the Matrix” because of course he does.

Full Metal Panic is there to justify all sorts of high school shenanigans. Every teenager in the group now goes to the same school and thus silliness ensues. These are the nimblest units aside from the Transformers, and the Lambda Driver is a great asset. Final Boss: Leonard Testarossa.

Power Rangers taps into the nostalgia but takes a more IDW Comic take on things, with the original’s light heart. The Player has the option of launching the rangers themselves as super speedy low damage units who can summon their individual zords, launch as their zords, or just go as the Megazord from the start and save space on the team. Final Boss: Lord Zedd

MEGAS XLR is totally a great choice for ‘viewpoint’ series if there is no OC. One neat thing is, after the last MEGAS level, the leader of the Glorft becomes an ally unit. Because between the grudging respect earned there, Lin Minmay’s voice, AND Innovation, the Glorft end their war on Humanity. Final Boss is Mirror Coop.

Shin Mazinger has been adapted multiple times by the games, so it’s an easy fit. I’d go a bit more into the ending so we can have Shin Great Mazinger, and have the final battle be against the Great General of Darkness.

But that’s my take on it.

#Super Robot wars #godzilla #Super Robot Wars US #super dimensional fortress Macross #Macross #king of braves gaogaigar #GaoGaiGar #Voltron #voltron: the legendary defender #Voltron the legendary defender #Gundam Wing #new mobile report gundam wing #full metal Panic #Shin Mazinger #MEGAS: XLR #Transformers #koryu Sentai Zyuranger #Mighty Morphin Power rangers

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