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myysaints · 1 year

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°˖ ⊹ ꒰ YT22 ꒱ HAPPY ACCIDENTS ─ YUKI TSUNODA

YUKI TSUNODA x f!gf!reader

⌗︙・ summary — yuki tries to soft-launch your relationship at the miami GP, but things don't exactly go according to plan...

genre — social media au

notes — apologies for the delayed upload, school has been a bitch to deal with 😭 i basically only had time to work on this in between exams and projects, hence why it's set around the miami gp (because that's when i started working on it fghafhsd). also i'm STILL MAD that yuki was out of points solely because of that (imo) undeserved penalty in barcelona... but... sigh. anyways here's the awaited yuki fic, hope u enjoy!

www.youtube.com/Formula1

PRE-RACE INTERVIEW WITH: YUKI TSUNODA | MIAMI GRAND PRIX 2023

alphataurif1

Liked by yukitsunoda0511, yourusername, pierregasly, and 2,213,914 others

🏷 yukitsunoda0511

alphataurif1 Miami dump with Yuki and a certain someone special 😉🤫

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yourusername the third pic my gosh 😭 your hair!!!

yukitsunoda0511 😅❤️ alphataurif1 Windswept Yuki is the best Yuki!

tripodgasly when we said feed us crumbs we didn’t mean literally 😭😭😭 GIVE US MOREEEEE!!!!!

chuckeleclerc that height difference omlllllll cant believe yuki actually found someone shorter than him LOL

alexalbono HELP THAT WAS SO UNCALLED FOR 💀💀 chuckeleclerc NO IT WAS A COMPLIMENT 😭 theyre super cute 🫶🫶

yourusername wow this guy’s gorgeous, is he single by any chance?

yukitsunoda0511 Nope 😂😂 I love my girlfriend ☺️ yourusername blushing screaming throwing up rn yukiiifan22 omg??

yourusername

Liked by yukitsunoda0511, danielricciardo, pierregasly, and 832 others

yourusername in miamiiiiii with my boyyyyyy 🫶 honestly it was a miracle that i got yuki in the water after daniel’s little stunt…

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yourbestfriend looking HAWTTT 🔥 my favourite f1 wag confirmed #teamyukiy/n

yourusername thank god my account is still private because you’re embarrassing asf 🙄 yourbestfriend you know you love me

danielricciardo Should’ve been there to see his face when I pushed him in!

yourusername he was grumbling the whole way home, trust me, i know yukitsunoda0511 I was not grumbling… danielricciardo All in good fun mate 😂 Get revenge on the track next year, how’s that sound? yukitsunoda0511 Looking forward 👍

pierregasly stay away from my boyfriend >:(

yourusername homie hopper… go chat up estie bestie u traitor estebanocon Hey, I don’t want him either! 😂😂 pierregasly Rude 😒

f1wagupdates

Liked by pierregasly and 218,334 others

f1wagupdates Submitted by anon ❤️ It appears that Yuki Tsunoda has been having a fruitful break in between the Miami and Imola Grand Prix! The Japanese driver was spotted walking hand in hand with what appears to be his girlfriend, two days after his 23rd birthday and five days after revealing his relationship on the official Formula 1 YouTube channel. Little is known about the Alpha Tauri driver’s lover, but we do know that their height difference is adorable 🥰

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tifosi5516 liked by pierre gasly LOL

pierregasly 💔

carlo55ainzfan LMFAOOOO ariana what are you doing here???

estiebestieee STOPPPP their height difference is actually everything… short and shorter my HEARTTTT

mickyschumacher yuki actually looks tall for once HAHAHA

formulaonefanatic and NO ONE has her @ ??? seriously????

landonando yuki talking about going public then literally no one knows who she is FGHFDSHGF sirhamilgoat leave them alone smh, yuki has talked about how he likes to keep his personal life private formulafire if he talked about going public in his post race interview… what else do they expect ??? sirhamilgoat yall could just treat them like human beings?? we aren’t entitled to anything from them...

pierregasly uploaded to their story. 12s

[caption: Double dinner date 🍝🥂 with francisca.cgomes yukitsunoda0511 yourusername]

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article-220511

NO SOFT LAUNCH: FORMULA ONE DRIVER YUKI TSUNODA GETS SUDDEN SHOCK AS GIRLFRIEND’S INSTAGRAM HACKED – WHO IS Y/N L/N?

Twitter was sent into a frenzy on Sunday, as AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda sneakily revealed during his post-race interview that his previously-unknown beau was in attendance at the Miami GP!

Tsunoda has been notoriously quiet about his private life, leaving fans stunned at the seemingly out-of-nowhere revelation. The Internet quickly began to scour for the unknown woman online, however with what little information they had, quickly turned up empty. Though, the commotion evidently attracted the attention of the team at AlphaTauri themselves. On Monday, their official Instagram account uploaded a post commemorating the weekend, in which Tsunoda’s girlfriend was also featured.

(Credits: yourusername on Instagram)

Eagle-eyed fans may have noted that both Yuki Tsunoda and the AlphaTauri Instagram account were both cheekily interacting with a private account. Soon, rumours were flying that this account was indeed run by Tsunoda’s girlfriend. As seen above, a quick look reveals that numerous Formula 1 drivers including Pierre Gasly, Lando Norris, Daniel Ricciardo, and Tsunoda himself, are following the account.

Some were not so convinced, however. Fans were also quick to question the account’s authenticity, with some expressing doubts on whether the account owner was even the alleged girlfriend herself. However, these rumours were soon revealed to be true. On Tuesday, the account – which had previously been private with little over 300 followers – mysteriously became public. Fans immediately flocked to the account, taking to Twitter and Instagram to report their findings. With her most recent post being a dedication to her boyfriend and her time “in miamiiiiii with my boyyyyyy”, there is little doubt that the account’s owner – whom we can now confirm is Y/N L/N – is in fact the Japanese driver’s girlfriend!

(Credits: yourusername on Instagram)

The reason for the account’s sudden change in privacy is unknown, though some theorise that the account was hacked, perhaps by an extremely dedicated fan. Daily Mail has reached out to Tsunoda, AlphaTauri, and Y/N L/N herself for comment.

yourusername

Liked by yukitsunoda0511, pierregasly, alphataurif1, and 1,202,901 others

yourusername all the rumours are true 🤫

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lolasformula THE HEIGHT DIFFERENCEEEEEE

muppetlando mother and father. PARENTS!

francisca.cgomes can’t wait for another double date with you two!

yourusername same!!! but we’ll have to confiscate pierre’s phone first 🤭🤭 pierregasly 😳😂

yukitsunoda0511 My girl 🫶

yukitsunoda0511 The prettiest always 😊

yukitsunoda0511 素敵 (Lovely)

yukitsunoda0511 Can’t take my eyes off you

pierregasly I think we get the point mate lewishamilton Lay off the guy, he’s in love! Liked by yukitsunoda0511, yourusername

yukitsunda0511 愛してる ❤️ (I love you)

yourusername forever & always ❤️

#yuki tsunoda x reader #f1 x reader #f1 social media au #yuki tsunoda #f1 instagram au #formula 1 #formula 1 x reader #yuki tsunoda insta au #yuki tsunoda imagine #˖⁺‧₊˚ 📂 ── my writing #꒰ ⁺‧₊˚ [🏁] formula 1

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transdimensional-void · 10 months

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why sansa will be queen in the north

the main thing that convinces me sansa will end the story ruling from winterfell (other than her show ending) is the way that possession of her has become equated with possession of winterfell. hence, the reason for the tyrells to attempt to marry her to their heir, the lannisters to force her into marriage with one of their own, and littlefinger to steal her for his own purposes.

it doesn't make sense for anyone other than a stark to control winterfell at the end of the story, and as demonstrated by tywin's plotting, sansa's children can be used by her husband's family to attempt to take control of winterfell. so, ending the story with sansa married into another family just sets up the threat of that family trying to use her or her children to steal winterfell in the future. there would be no resolution of an issue which has been a huge part of her storyline so far.

but, more than the "controlling sansa means controlling winterfell" angle, there is the "controlling winterfell means controlling sansa" angle. sansa's entire story begins with her father, lord of winterfell, essentially trading her to robert in exchange for the king's trust. because of the patriarchal nature of this society, the horrible truth is that whoever is head of the stark family essentially owns the rights to sansa's body and its reproductive abilities.

ned transferred those rights to robert, and upon his and ned's death, the lannisters seized control of them. the tyrells attempted to steal control of sansa, and littlefinger successfully did. once sansa is back in the north and her family in control of winterfell again, the right to determine sansa's future will also return to the head of the stark family.

that means that if anyone other than sansa--jon, bran, rickon, even her sister--ends up ruling winterfell, sansa will never gain control over her own body and future. she will have spent the entire story as someone else's pawn, a vessel for others' goals, only to end the same way. of course we would trust her family members to have her best interest at heart...just like her father did at the beginning of the story, right?

even if they promised to allow her to remain single if she wished, there's no guarantee they wouldn't change their mind and ask her to marry for the good of the family at some point. the head of the family would retain that right, no matter what they promised, meaning sansa is not the one in control of her future. similarly, even if they promised her to right to choose her own husband, it would simply be a transfer of ownership, exactly as we saw occur between ned and robert at the beginning of the story. if her husband pre-deceased her, control of her future would either pass to her son (as we saw with catelyn and robb) or back to the head of the family.

no, sansa simply will not end the story as a political pawn of a family member, nor will she end the story as someone's consort. the only possible way that sansa will be free to control her own marriage and reproductive choices is to become the head of the stark family. furthermore, if she is only lady of winterfell, a vassal to the king in the south, she still does not retain that control. her liege could still force her into a marriage she does not want, not unlike how robert used his power as king to pressure ned into accepting the betrothal between sansa and joffrey.

in other words, the only ending where sansa is freed from the possibility of being used as a pawn for political marriage yet again is the ending where she is queen in her own right.

(nb - for those about to question why i don't make the same argument about äryä needing to become a ruler to gain control over her body and future is that political marriage has played a negligible role in her storyline. the two times someone has tried to marry her off, it has had exactly zero effect on her personally. the frey betrothal ends without her ever even knowing it existed, and the fake marriage to ramsey will also likely end with ramsey's death before she even shows back up in the north. besides, she's got nymeria foreshadowing, aka, foreshadowing of leading a group of people off to new lands. she is also foreshadowed to end as a ruler of sorts. it's no more likely that she will end up under a family member's control than that sansa will.)

#have i said anything here that others haven't already said before?#probably not #but i couldn't stop thinking about it so i had to post anyway #patriarchal bullshit

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linkspooky · 2 months

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Bohman is a good character you guys are just mean

Yu-Gi-Oh Vrains is one of the better received spinoff series. Though, like any of the Yu-Gi-Oh spinoffs it's not without its faults. Usually I'm the first to admit the flaws in my favorite silly card game shows, even while I myself take them way too seriously. However, there's one common criticism I can't bring myself to agree with.

That is calling the main antagonist of the second season Bohman "boring" or "badly written." I've noticed fans unfairly blame Bohman for season 2's writing flaws.

Forget for a moment about whether or not you find Bohman's stoic attitude interesting or likable. If you look at characters not as people, but as narrative tools the author uses to say something about the story's themes then Bohman has a lot to say about VRAINS cyberpunk themes.

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that tends to focus on "low-life and high-tech." As I like to put it, in Cyberpunk settings technology has greatly advanced while society itself lags behind unable to keep pace with the rate at which technology changes. Yu Gi Oh 5Ds is an example of a cyberpunk dystopia because despite having what is essentially access to free energy, and living in a society with highly advanced technology resources are hoarded by the wealthy and an unnecessary social class divide still exists.

In other words technology changes quickly while humans tend to remain the same.

The central conflict for all three seasons of Vrains are actually based on this very cyberpunk notion. That technology changes, updates, and becomes obsolete at a rate too fast for humans to ever adapt to. For Vrains, the conflict is whether humans can ever coexist with an artificial intelligence they created that can grow and change faster than they can keep up with.

This is well-tread ground in science fiction. The idea itself most likely emerged from I,robot. A science fiction book that is a collection of dirty stories that details a fictional history showing robots growing slowly advanced over time. The framing device is that a journalist is interviewing a "robopsychologist" an expert in the field of analyzing how robots think in their positronic brains.

One of the major themes of the book is despite the fact that robots are 1 - intelligent and 2 - designed by humans, they don't think the same way humans do. Hence why a robopsychologist is needed in the first place. One of the short stories is the first appearance of Asimov's three laws of robotics.

The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

This is just one example. A robot no matter how intelligent it is will be required to think in terms of these three laws, because robots aren't biological, they're programmed to think in pre-determined patterns.

Of course clever enough artificial intelligences are capable of finding loopholes that get around the three laws, but even then they're still forced to think of every action in terms of the three laws.

Robots and humans are both intelligent, but if AI ever becomes self aware it will 1) be able to process information better than any other human can and 2) think differently from humans on a fundamental.

Vrains is themed more than anything else around "robo psychology" or trying to understand the ways in how the Ignis think and how that's different from it's human characters.

Robo-Psychology is actually a common reocurring theme. "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?" fearless artificial humans known as Replicants who need an empathy test known as the voight kampff test to distinguish them from human beings.

There are other Cyberpunk elements in Vrains. There's a big virtual world where everyone can appear as custom designed avatars, that's taken from Snow Crash or of the most famous and genre defining cyberpunk novels. There's a big rich mega conglomerate that's being opposed by a group of hackers.

However, the central question is whether humans and AI can coexist in spite of the fact that AI are much smarter and evolve faster than us.

Revolver's father believes the Ignis must be destroyed in order to avoid a possible technological singularity in the future.

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity[1]—is a future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis an upgradable artificial intelligence will eventually enter a positive feedback loop of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase ("explosion") in intelligence that surpasses anything humans can make.

Basically your computer is smarter than you, but your computer isn't self aware. It needs you to tell it what to do. Artificial intelligence already exists but it's programmed by humans, it doesn't program itself. The technological singularity proposes that eventually a self aware ai, will be able to program itself and improve upon it's own programming- therefore ridding itself of the need of it's human programmers.

This is what leads us to Bohman, an AI designed by another AI.

THE THIRD LAW

Before digging into Bohman let's take a minute to discuss his creator. Lightning was one of the six Ignis, created by Dr. Kogami through the Hanoi Project.

The Hanoi project involved forcing six children to duel in a virtual arena repeatedly, and using the data collected from that experiment to improve the AI they were working on, creating what became known as the Ignis. However, after Dr. Kogami ran several simulations and found that the Ignis would one day be a threat to the humans that created them Hakase decided instead to try destroying the Ignis before that future ever came to pass.

We later learn that this isn't the complete story.

Kogami and Lightning both ran simulations of the future when the Ignis were in their infancy. Kogami's simulations showed him the Ignis would inevitably go to war with humans. Lighting however, ran more in-depth simulations and found that he was the one that was corrupting the data set. If you ran simulations of the five ignis without him, then the projected futures were all in the green, but any simulation with Lightning counted as a part of the group projected a negative future for both humans and AI.

Which means that if Kogami knew that the bug in the program was Lightning, he'd likely respond by just getting rid of Lighting and letting the rest of the Ignis live on as originally intended.

This is where the third law comes into play - a robot must protect its own existence as long as it does not interfere with the first and second law.

Now, I don't think Kogami used the three laws exactly, but artificial intelligences are programmed in certain ways, and Lightning was likely programmed to preserve itself.

Even a human in Lighting's situation would be driven to act as they did. Imagine you're in a group of six people, and you fid out that YOU'RE THE PROBLEM. That if they removed you, everything else would be fine. Wouldn't you be afraid of your creator turning against you? Of your friends turning against you and nobody taking your side?

Lightning is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ai asks him at one point why he went so far as to destroy their safe-haven, lie and said the humans did it and pick a fight with the humans himself, something that might have been avoided if they'd just stayed in hiding. It seems that Lightning is just defective as his creator declared him, but you have to remember he's an AI programmed to think in absolutes. AI, the most humanlike and spontaneous of the AIs ends up making nearly the exact same choices as Lightning when looking at his simulations later on - because they're character foils. As different as they may seem they still think differently from humans.

When Ai explains why he made his decisions based around lighting's simulation, he tells Playmaker that he can't dismiss or ignore the simulation or hope for the best the way Playmaker can because he is data, he thinks in simulations and processes.

AI even admits to feeling the same feelings of self-preservation that Lightning did.

While Lightning may seem selfish, he's selfish in the fact that he's thinking of his own survival above all else. He's afraid of 1) his creators turning against him, and 2) his fellow Ignis turning against him.

To solve the first he decides to make a plan to wipe out his creators. To solve the second, he needs every ignis on his side when he goes to war. The first thing he does is destroy their safe haven and frame the humans for it so the Ignis are more inclined to take his side. He's so afraid of his fellow ignis turning against him he even completely reprograms one of them - a step he doesn't take with the others, he just imprisons Aqua. He probably thought having one more ally would make it more likely for the others to pick his side.

Every step he takes is a roundabout way of ensuring his survival and the other ignis- eve when he actually goes to war with the other ignis he intended on letting them survive. Though his definition of survival (fusing with Bohman) was different than theirs.

So Lightning seems to be working out of an inferiority complex, but what he's really afraid of is that his inferiority makes him expendable.

At that point you have to wonder, what does death mean exactly to a being who is otherwise immortal? Ignis won't die of age, they'll only die if they're captured and have their data stripped apart or corrupted. Kogami made an immortal being afraid to die.

Some part of me thinks though that even after taking all these steps to preserve themselves, the simulations were so convincing that Lighting accepted their death as inevitable. Which is why they made Bohman, to find some way for them to keep on living afterwards.

After all AI are data, ad having their data saved in Bohman is still a form of living by Lightning's definition.

Ghost in The Shell

Bohman is the singularity. He's an AI designed by another AI to improve upon itself. Unlike the rest of the Ignis who were copied off of traumatized chidlren, Lightning basically made him from scratch.

Ghost in the Sell is a famous anime cyberpunk movie directed by Mamoru Oshii. The title comes from "Ghost in the Machine" a term originally used to describe and critique the mind existing alongside and separate from the body. Whereas in the movie the "Ghost" is the huma consciousness, while the "shell" is a cybernetic body.

The protagonist of Ghost in the Shell is Major Motoko Kusanagi, a human that is 99% cyborg at this point, a human brain residing in a completely mechanical body. The movie opens up with a hacker namd PUppet Master who is capable of "ghost-hacking" which is a form of hacking that completely modifies the victim's memories utterly convincing them of their false memories.

There's a famous scene in the movie where a man tells the police about his wife and daughter, only to be told that he's a bachelor who lives alone and he's never had a wife and daughter. Even after the truth is revealed to him, the fake memories are still there in his brain along with the correct ones. Technology is so advanced at this point that digital memories (hacked memories) are able to be manipulated, and seem more real than an analog reality.

Anyway, guess what happens to Bohman twice?

Bohman gets his memories completely rewritten twice. The first time he believes he's a person looking for his lost memories, the second time he thinks he's the real playmaker ripped out of his body, and playmaker is the copy. He's utterly convinced of these realities both time, because Bohman is entirely digital - and simulations are reality, and so simulated memories are just the same as real memories.

I think part of the reason that people find Bohman boring is because he's a little strange conceptually to wrap your head around, as an AI produced AI he's the farthest from behind human. If you use the ghost in the shell example I just gave you though - imagine being utterly convinced that you had a loving wife and daughter only to find out in a police interrogation room you're a single man living in a shitty apartment. imagine after the fact you still remember that they are real, even though you know they're not.

That's the weird space Bohman exists in for most of Season 2 when he's searching for himself. He's an AI designed by an AI so he can be rewritten at any time according to Lightning's whim until Lighting decides he's done cooking.

The Ignis at least interacted with the real world because they were copy pasted from traumatized children, but all Bohman is is data. So, why would he see absorbing human memories into himself and converting them into data as killing them? He is data after all, and he is alive. He has gone through the process of having his own memories rewritten multiple times, and he's fine with it b/c he's data.

Nothing for Bohman is real, everything is programmed so of course he thinks saving other people as data is just fine. He even offers to do the same thing to Playmaker that was done to him.

If Lightning is following the path of self-preservation however, Bohman is following his program to preserve everything in the world by merging with it.

His ideas also follow the idea of transhumanism: the theory that science and technology can help human beings develop beyod what is physically and mentally possible. That technology exists to blur the boundaries of humanity, and what humans are capable of.

Ghost in the Shell isn't just a work of cyberpunk, it's a transhumanist piece. Motoko Kusanagi is a character who has had so many of her human parts replaced with mechanical ones she even posits at one point it's possible for her to simply have been an android that was tricked into thinking it was human with false memories just like Bohman, and she has no real way of knowing for sure. The only biological part of her his her brain after all in a cold mechanical shell.

Bato, who represents the humanist perspective in this movie basically tells Motoko in that scenario it wouldn't matter if she was a machine. If everyone still treats her as human then what's the difference? His views are probably the closest to the humanist views that Playmaker represents in VRAINS.

Motoko Kusanagi meets her complete and total opposite, a ghost in the machine so to speak. The Puppet Master turns out to be an artificial intelligence that has become completely self-aware and is currently living in the network.

The Puppet Master much like Lightning, and later Bohman is gripping with the philosophical conundrum of mortality. In the final scene of the movie, The Puppet Master who wants to be more like all other biological matter on earth asks Motoko to fuse with him, so the two of them can reproduce and create something entirely new. The Puppet Master likens this to the way that biological beings reproduce.

Bohman like The Puppetmaster thinks that merging will fix something that's incomplete inside of him because he's so disconnected from all the biological processes of life. Bohman doesn't have anything except for which Lightning already prepared for him or programmed into him. I mean imagine being a being that can have his memories reprogrammed on the net, that in itself is existentially horrifying. It's only natural he wouldn't feel connected to anything.

Motoko accepts the Puppetmaster's proposal. Playmaker rejects Bohman's proposal. I don't think there's a right answer here, because it's speculative fiction, it's a "What if?" for two different paths people can take in the future.

However, in Bohman's case I don't think he was truly doing what he wanted. Puppet Master became self aware and sought his own answers by breaking free from his programming. Bohman thought he was superior to the Ignis, but in the end he was just following what Lightning programmed him to do. He'd had his identity programmed and reprogrammed so many times, he didn't think of what he wanted until he was on the brink of defeat by playmaker and then it was too late.

When Playmaker defeats him all he thinks about is time spent together with Haru, with the two of them as individuals. Something he can no longer do anymore now that he's absorbed Haru as data, and something that he misses.

He's not even all that sad or horrified at the prospect of death as Lightning was, and he even finds solace in the thought of going to oblivion with Haru, because if he were to keep living it'd be without Haru. In other words the one genuine bond he made with someone else by spending time with them as an individual was more important than his objective of fusing with all of humanity - which he believed was also bonding with them.

This is really important too, because it sets up the Yusaku's rejection of fusing with Ai. Yusaku's reasoning has already been demonstrated to be the case with Bohman and Haru. Bohman was perfectly happy being two individuals, as long as he had a bond with his brother. When he ascended into a higher being he lost that. Ai and Yusaku might solve loneliness in a way by merging together into a higher being, they might even last forever that way, but they'd lose something too.

Once again the problem with AIs is that they think in absolutes. That's important to understanding Lightning, Bohman and even Ai's later actions. Lightning can't stand any percentage chance that he might die, so he kills the professor, destroys the ignis homeworld, pulls the trigger to start humanity himself, he even reprograms his own allies all to give himself some sense of control.

Bohman's entire existence is outside of his control. He's rewritten twice onscreen, probably more than that, and he thinks merging with humanity is the thing that will give him that control - by ascending into a higher being than humanity. However, the temporary bond Bohman had with his brother Haru, was actually what he valued the most all along. Moreso than the idea of fusing with humanity forever.

Even Motoko making the choice to go with the transhumanist option is something that's not portrayed as 100% the right choice. Ghost in the Shell has a sequel that portrays the depression and isolation of Bato, the Major's closest friend and attachment to her humanity after she made the decision to fuse together with Puppet Master. In that case, just like Playmaker said to Ai, even if she ascended to a higher form, and even if she might last forever now on the network, something precious was lost. Motoko may exist somewhere on the netowrk but for Batoto his friend is gone.

Ai exhibits the same flaw as the previous two, he ca only think in absolutes, he can't stand even a 1% chance that Playmaker might choose to sacrifice himself for Ai and die, so he decides to take the choice entirely out of Playmaker's hands. However, no matter what Ai would have lost Playmaker one day, because all bonds are temporary. It's just Ai wanted to have that sense of control, so he chose to self-destruct and take that agency and free choice away from Playmaker.

It's a tragedy that repeats three times. Ai too just like Bohman, spends his last moments thinking about what was most precious to him was the bond he formed with playmaker, as temporary as it was. A tragedy that arises from the inability of the Ais to break away from the way they're programmed to think in simulations and data, even when they're shown to be capable of forming bonds based on empathy with others.

All three of them add something to the themes of artificial intelligence, and transhumanism that are in play at Vrains and none of them are boring because they all contribute to the whole.

Which is why everyone needs to stop being mean to Bohman right now, or else I'm going to make an even longer essay post defending him.

#yu gi oh vrains #yu gi oh #playmaker #ai #yusaku fujiki #bohman #lightning #ignis #ygo meta

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jackoshadows · 9 months

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@blankwhiteshield I thought I would respond in a separate post since I don't want to derail from @fromtheseventhhell's OG post about something else. You responded to my comment here by saying that I was 'entirely wrong' and linking to an essay on Jaime Lannister and I did try to read through all that to get a gist of your explanation.

First I want to mention that Rhaegar being a pre-asoiaf/background/tertiary character means we don't know a lot about him. I can only speculate as to his thoughts and motives and why he did what he did.

I wrote that comment because the absolute hypocrisy of Jaime Lannister apologists/Braime shippers critiquing Rhaegar grinds my gears something fierce. And I am not even a Rhaegar fan - he's a character that there's to set other characters on their journey and to set the story.

The consequences of Jaime's incestual adultery was the spark that lead to the WOT5K that two years on is still ongoing with no stability in war torn Westeros. Jaime Lannister attempts to murder a little child because he can't keep it in his pants for the short duration they are visiting the Starks. Jaime was hunting down a 9 year old to cut off her hand. That poll about Rhaegar being a bad father when Jaime refers to Joffrey as semen in Cersei's cunt is a farce.

Hence my comment.

Now, let's start with Jaime being Aerys' hostage. Yes, Aerys used Jaime against Tywin. However, why was Jaime in the Kingsguard (KG) in the first place? He was Tywin's golden child and heir to Casterly Rock, unlike Cersei and Tyrion having no value for Tywin because she is a girl and he is disabled.

Aerys had no power over Jaime until he chose to join the KG to serve the Mad King. Jaime had more choice than the 14 year old bastard Jon Snow who had to leave Winterfell and the NW is pretty much the only option available to him. He had more choice than his sister Cersei. He had more choice than disabled Tyrion getting physically/sexually abused by his own family.

So why did Jaime decide to join the KG? So that he could be close to Cersei and sleep with her. Jaime joins the KG knowing that he was going to break the KG oaths of celibacy. He didn't care about oaths when joining the KG , right?

This is why Jaime's entire spiel about oaths never had any emotional weight for me, coming from a character who had no value for oaths in the first place and who had no intention of upholding his sworn oaths when he joined the KG.

I can understand a character like Jon Snow's angst and conflict when he is forced to sleep with Ygritte or when he has to choose between the NW and saving his sister, because oaths are important to Jon Snow. Oaths and honor is important to someone like Ned Stark. Jaime? Considering his total disrespect for the KG oaths when he joins them to simply be close to Cersei, I don't get it.

Next, Rhaegar's conversation with Jaime.

Why do you assume here that Jaime was scared of Aerys and asking Rhaegar to save/rescue him from Aerys? I mean, Jaime was KG. At 13 he won his first melee. At 15 he was defeating other skilled swordsmen.

It could just as well be Jaime eager to fight with Rhaegar in battle and asking that Rhaegar leave behind the older KG like Darry to instead guard the king because the battle is where the fight is. Jaime thinks that guarding someone is not as exciting as fighting in battle. It's even right there in the next sentence when Jaime gets angry about being referred to as a crutch and he's like ' I AM A KINGSGUARD'.

We see something similar when Jon begs his uncle to take him for ranging.

Three days after their arrival, Jon had heard that Benjen Stark was to lead a half-dozen men on a ranging into the haunted forest. That night he sought out his uncle in the great timbered common hall and pleaded to go with him. Benjen refused him curtly. - Jon, AGoT

There's also not much Rhaegar can probably do at that point (speculating here) - facing war/battle - about his volatile, angry father, the King. There are all these essays about the effect that Tywin had on Jaime... imagine the burden of being the Mad King's son. What power does Rhaegar have to take away the King's choice of KG? Rhaegar didn't even have the power to send his own wife and children elsewhere. Him actively interfering was only going to further anger a king who was already paranoid about the crown prince. Hence the 'I dare not take away that crutch from him at such a hour'.

I think you also mention that Jaime was terrified of being executed as an hostage - is this mentioned anywhere in the books or are you just assuming/speculating on his thought process here?

Jon Snow is elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at 16. In Westeros 16 is considered a man grown and Jaime is an adult by Westerosi standards and Rhaegar certainly didn't see him as some kind of child hostage like that post deliberately twisted it into.

A boy in Westeros is considered to be a "man grown" at sixteen years. The same is true for girls. Sixteen is the age of legal majority, as twenty-one is for us.

At any rate, Rhaegar and Jaime's fellow KG expected the KG left behind in KL - Jaime Lannister - to do his job and protect the crown prince's wife and babies as per sworn oaths.

In which Jaime fails because while his father's men, including the Mountain, were scaling the walls to rape and murder Elia and her babies, Jaime was lounging on the throne waiting for one of the rebels to get there. And hence his guilt when confronted by ghosts of his past in his weirwood dreams.

You have written a lot on how Jaime could not have known about what Tywin's men would do. I mean, why is he waiting around to find out what they would do?! Sorry, these are piss poor excuses and even Jaime Lannister himself doesn't really believe this because he knows that he should have immediately gone to their side after the King was dead as his ghosts tell him.

Jaime knows his father. He knows what Tywin is capable of. He was there for what Tywin did to Tysha. KL was even then being raped and pillaged. And he thought nothing would happen to the Targaryen princess and her children?

The Mad King was dead - literally backstabbed by the hostage. What should this skilled Kingsguard do next? Immediately go to Elia and the babies to protect Rhaegar's family as Rhaegar entrusted him to do or sit on the Throne waiting for someone to come there? We know what Jaime chose to do:

'Then he climbed the Iron Throne and seated himself with his sword across his knees to see who would come to claim the kingdom. As it happened, it had been Eddard Stark'.

This is what is given to us in the books. Nothing more, nothing else. You can add to this of course, but that would be speculative theorizing on what Jaime's thoughts and feelings are about all this, not what is actually given to us in the books.

#Response

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skekdris · 6 months

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The Visitor - Behind the Scenes

"The Visitor" is my first big story of mine that saw the light of day. In this post, I'll be explaining my thought process behind why and how I made it. In a future post, I'll be explaining my Arhulian species, and my character Niadris in more detail. But for now, I'll be on to explaining my creative process. Firstly, a few months ago I got back into tumblr after finding the blogs of @chocodile and @kwillow. Their characters, their art, their stories. They moved me, they inspired me! Drawing was never my strong point, (I had to enlist @aryeonos to graciously sketch my species reference for me <3) but descriptive writing is something I can do! So through that, it was the avenue I expressed my creation. That said; Ary being my editor and proof reader really helped me achieve a level of polish I don't think I could have accomplished on my own. <3 The Amaranthine characters are so rich and vibrant, I just wanted to write for them. Their personalities just seemed really fun to write for, as well as gave me a clear picture of how each character would behave in a story. A solid baseline for my weirdo badger-pede to contrast with. So I poured over Kwillow's and Chocodile's art pages for information about the characters and the setting. I wanted to respect the lore and setting as best I can; as well as the fact, the more information I had, the easier it would be to write.

Feelin' A Bit Drafty In Here

In a very early pre-draft version of the story (where I was still ideating over it), I thought I would try to tell the story from Niadris' perspective, but Aryeonos felt it would ruin a lot of the mystery and suspense surrounding Niadris, as well as deprive me of character interaction moments for the rest of the cast. So I redid the entire tone and course of the story to focus on the Rising dawn quartet, (sans snoozing bunny) with Niadris being the add - an apt decision since the cast literally considers them an intruder! In the new story format, I thought about Theo being so nerve wracked by Niadris that he would try to poison them, only for it not to work, and for Niadris to then reveal their life-sensing ability to Theo and tell him that they are not mad because always knew where he stood as a veiled threat. The story would have had a more adversarial tone; but then after doing some more lore spelunking, I learned that Theo prefers to handle confrontation openly and honestly as opposed to taking the scoundrel's way out.

So after learning that wasn't a very gentlemanly move, I decided to shift gears and redo the story (again) to what you see today. After that, I looked up the other characters for pertinent lore and information about them. I was already pretty familiar with Hyden, and Theo was the first character I discovered since I'm a diehard rat/skaven fan and always combing the internet for rat characters!

Then came to Alex and Ridge. After having my "cast" in hand, I figured out what to do with them. In the current iteration of the story, I wanted Niadris being self-conscious of their frightening appearance (they've certainly been screamed and shot at enough) and opt to meet the cast in a way that does not end in violence. Hence the Arhulian observing the cast for a long time and then making their carefully planned move. Likewise, first impressions are very important, and Niadris trying to approach the situation in a delicate manner (whether or not it worked) was one of my central goals in depicting them, and Arhulians as a whole. They are far from mindless brutes... Switching back to the the Amaran quartet, they are not my characters obviously - I'm just writing for them - so I tried to make educated guesses on how'd they react based on the information I had at hand. So keep in mind these are my personal head cannons of these characters!

Character Dynamics

Hyden - Due to the way the story was structured, he was not utilized very much. Which, is a shame on one hand, but on the other, it leaves my options open for how he would react in a future story. He could be just as lost as the rest of the cast, then shift to be deeply fascinated by the unnatural being that is Niadris. Treating them like magic buddyTM Ambroys 2.0. (Though he may find it much more difficult sink his roots into Niadris, as they are far sharper, and not blinded by idolism like Theo.) Or, alternatively, Hyden being a time displaced scholar could know something about Arhulians the present day cast does not, and is trouser-browningly terrified. But that is as much as I'll reveal for now. We'll see what way the coin falls. :) Theo - Theopolis North was the most fun to write for. Poor little Rat man pinballed through many different emotions across the story. Firstly, fear. Secondly, he's even more unnerved by the fact Niadris can go toe-to-toe in his smartassery which means it's intelligent. And that's extra dangerous in his eyes. I thought about writing Theo being even meaner and more hostile, but I decided Theo has a few reasons to keep himself reeled in. 1) Theo - though a poorly adjusted meanie - has enough sense to know that trying to stress-test this thing's patience would not go in his favor if the matter escalated. Especially with a thing that could throw him across a room or eat him alive. Unmetaphorically. Best to let a sleeping dragon lie so to speak. 2) I've noted that Theo appears to be a dire misanthrope, so a thought occurred to me that Niadris is just so alien they just end up in a loophole of sorts. And I decided that is a funny dynamic, and I'm going to roll with that. :) 2.5) Theo's aggression seems to be heavily rooted in his own insecurities. Niadris is somewhere between socially illiterate to too logically minded to care. So in a way, from theo's perspective; that's big wall that isn't there for him. 3) As much as it agonizes him to admit, the alternative is telling this thing to sod off, resulting in them just roaming about unaccounted for entirely. At least this way, he can keep an eye on them... 4) Granted, he does not want to admit it outright and 'encourage' them, Theo is personally intrigued by Niadris. Although he hasn't quite put it together it yet; Arhulians are intelligent, sentient, beings that definitively exist outside of "ascension". The implications would be defining to say the least. Theo's name would go down in the books for sure... And lastly, this being gives him a sense of deja vu he tries not to think too closely about. Henceforth, I laid down the roots of what may be the beginning of a very odd "friendship" as hinted at in the closing paragraphs of the story.

Alex - From the lore I got on her, she jumped out to me as the most rational and calm-minded of the group. She's a cool, collected soldier. Her perception is sharp (and unlike Theo, it's not calibrated in entirely the wrong direction via paranoia). Her nature as a sniper means it's natural for her to sit back, absorb information, and think about a decision before making it. Because of this, it felt natural that she'd fall into the role of "team mom" because she's the most level-headed and surprisingly enough, the most socially adjusted of the group. Especially since her competition is: 1) Hyden; a washed up noble that doesn't know what century he's living in - whose social resume is bossing around servants and bullshitting noble asses.

2) Theo; a misanthropic, paranoid, bulgy-eyed weirdo that's a reclusive shut in. 3) Ridge; Likely the best of the three. But if I remember the lore right, it's heavily implied that Ridge was in jail for some time, so I'd wager that has not done his social skills any favors. So with that in mind, Alex is the glue desperately trying to keep (the now) quintet from unraveling.

Ridge - Of the four characters here, Ridge has the least information available that I could find, so a lot of his character is implied from his surface level details, like him being big and brawny, that he had spent time in jail, and is at the very least in a non-hostile relationship with Alex. With all that said, I guesstimate he has the least amount of emotional baggage and personality extremes, so I felt that Ridge would be the best fit for a layman character. Niadris - Beyond what I already mention here, I'd rather keep their inner workings hidden, as they are both a mysterious, and a still developing (both in-universe and in a meta sense) character...

What's Next?

Without giving away too much, the logical path forward to the story is that Niadris is playing it safe as they have never been around multiple people for an extended period of time before. So they take on a passive role to learn and observe the... odd group dynamic the rising dawn quartet have. There will be a great deal of funny character moments and learning experiences for all involved! Over time, Niadris will start to make their own waves as they get accustomed to the group, and begin manifesting their own wants once they feel comfortable exerting their own social pressure. Likewise, everyone is wary of the big, scary Arhulian. But on the other hand, their value as an asset is undeniable! And they would be a pretty definitive tie-breaker should a schism arise... Various parties will likely be setting plans into motion to try and vie for Niadris's loyalty now that this wild card has scuttled their way into the group. With the groundwork of Niadris' and the Arhulians' introduction laid, I have to spend some time thinking about the path forward; as this is the point where things can really diverge, so I must decide what direction the story is going to head in. So alas, I don't really have an ETA in mind for the next chapter of this fan-story.

#theo #hyden #alex #ridge #niadris #arhulian #original species #furry #short story #creative writing #thought process #behind the scenes #verse: amaranthine #fan story

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aquadestinyswriting · 3 months

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Ayyyy, Aqua! :D Happy STS! So I'm making my way through Titan Modern AU, and . . . actually, take two questions on it. 8)

I have legitimately looked everywhere, and I am severely curious. :') Have you thought of a title for this one, or is its title literally just Titan Modern AU?

More importantly, tho, how much did you have to change to make the world of Fangthane's Folly fit the modern day? (And what did you end up keeping? I notice there's magic and dwarves, but how different are these bits compared to their DnD roots?)

Hope this ask finds you well! :D o/

Hi Jax, this is technically a day late, but not really because time zones are a thing :P. I am very well, thank you. I am enjoying the fact that the words seem to be flowing quite easily for the time being and taking advantage of that to write a lot for all my ongoing series and creating new ones. Thanks very much for the questions, I have a lot to talk about with this AU :D. Answers are under a cut because the second one is going to get quite long.

Question 1

I don't currently have an actual title for this one yet. I have a tendency to title WIPs towards the end of writing them and this one is no exception. I have some vague ideas, but I'm not too concerned about it just yet. Especially since there's a high possibility that this one is going to throw some major curveballs my way once I get into the thick of the plot that might well change the kind of title I want to give it.

Question 2

Ah, the dwarves are technically not a thing for this one. Everyone is more or less human, unless it's directly stated otherwise. The reason Fangthanian women can have beards at all is down to a slight genetic quirk which means they are pre-disposed to much higher testosterone levels than average. The Throffite community, in particular, is very insular and tend to inter-marry within themselves due to a history of discrimination against them.

As to how I changed the setting to fit with the modern aesthetic:

I've modelled Fangthane city a little bit after towns like Fort William, since the location of Fangthane in Allansia has a relatively similar geography to that of the Scottish Highlands. So Fangthane city is no longer built into the mountain, but is a city that was built very close to the mountain (which is now called Ben Oir). Extrapolating from there, and taking into account the maps that exist of Allansia, it was a a matter of figuring out how and why there would be outposts for the kingdom that are so far away from the capital. In that case, an old empire made a lot of sense, and taking into account the relative time period this AU is set in (roughly the 90s to early 2000s), it also made sense that said empire had been disbanded, but that communities deriving from it still exist (hence why Stonebridge and Firetop are still mainly natively Fangthanian). So, yeah, culturally speaking Fangthane is basically the UK transplanted into Allansia at this point.

I wanted some of the history of Toreguarde to remain intact because there are plot things related to that that will pop up later in the story. The city was almost destroyed, officially, by what is considered to have been a terrorist organisation that was working on behalf of another state and/or one of the ruling council of Toreguarde of the time who went just teeny bit mad with power (Greydown was an absolute ass in canon, and is in this AU too).

As the setting, rather purposefully, appears to be lacking in magic, no mentions are made of demons, portals or the breaking of reality, even by those who were present at the time. The remaining Heroes still exist, but I'm working out what their exact roles in all that were. Egrim is still a priest, so that's him covered. Alexis, upon talking to Dru about it, was probably a sniper that was a part of the military forces of Toreguarde at the time, while Selene was probably some sort of science-y nerd person brought in to help explain some of the weirder stuff that went on that was kind of acknowledged and then later given plausible and sensible scientific explanations. She just happened to be somewhat decent at this diplomacy lark when communication with the reinforcements from Fangthane started going south, hence her current role in the story. She probably worked quite closely with Ivan, who I have yet to figure out the details of, with regards to that. I also need to figure out what Fai did and what happened to him...

I am doing a lot of this worldbuilding and adjusting Fantasy canon on the fly, to be quite honest, so not a lot of it is set in stone just yet. However, I have given some thought to the Throffite community both in Fangthane and in Toreguarde and some of their history and culture, drawing a lot on what I established about Throffism in the fantasy canon and doing some major research into the irl history of such things to make sure that anything I write about it is handled as sensitively as possible. I have also written copious notes on the hows and whys of the fractious relationship between Fangthane and Toreguarde that would fit in with more modern (Western, as that is what I'm familiar with) political norms.

#writeblr asks #storyteller saturday #answered ask #aquadestinyswriting #titan fighting fantasy #titan fighting fantasy modern au

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i-heart-hxh · 7 months

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I and a few others I’ve been talking to abt this have a theory that this ending is one he had planned (and then scrapped) aaaaaages ago, potentially even during or shortly after the Hunter Exam arc, since it doesn’t take into account most major characters or most major concepts & events (like Gon learning his nen and then losing it later or anything to do with the Dark Continent), hence why Togashi’s fine revealing it now. It’s out of date. None of it really tracks as having been come up with later on, especially not post-Chimera Ant & Chairman Election, and Noko hasn’t even been mentioned since the Whale Island chapters pre-Yorknew. I also don’t like that he told us this, since it’s not canon & also bad & I don’t see the point, but he did basically say “this is the ending over my dead body” lmaooooo

I've also considered that it could be a holdover from planning that happened towards the beginning of the series. Obviously we can only speculate because we'll likely never know the full background of this ending D, but to me it feels like something that would have fit in with how the series began (tonally, the setting, etc.), but it doesn't feel as similar in tone or meaning with how the series developed later on. It could have been an idea he had in mind towards the beginning of the series, and as it went on and things continued to shift, he realized it didn't particularly fit any more, so he dropped it. As a writer, this is the kind of thing that happens in stories all the time.

As with anything relating to this, we can only guess and wonder, but I personally think this is an interesting theory, and to me it would make sense, anyway. It's something I had in mind as well prior to you bringing it up.

#hxh #hunter x hunter #asks #ernestinapickman #my posts

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dulcewrites · 11 months

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I know the creators probably did not mean to do it when they made the Velaryons black (more than likely went over their heads tbh), and I do agree with certain criticisms/concerns people had about how black characters are treated in hotd. But I do think in theory, making the Velaryons, specifically Corlys, black was an interesting choice.

I think having a black man, in particular, chasing the Westeros equivalent of ‘the American dream’ and it leading to the eventual hinderess of his house is fascinating. Downfall in the sense that House Velaryon never reaches the heights they had pre dance. Corlys is playing a political game, as someone who is far more suited as a warrior/sailor than anything else, with people that keep him at arm’s length. He can not maneuver the way they do successfully despite the money and connection to dragon riders. But he continues to push for that status symbol…for that recognition and acceptance.

I will be mixing a bit of F&b lore as well as the show so just.. stay with me on this lmao.

When we are first introduced to the corlys/the velaryons, we get this air of ‘new money’ (gag I do hate that term but let’s go with it), though the Velaryons are a house that survived the doom. Corlys has essentially single handedly elevated his house through seafarer. He is described as someone that, despite the wealth and power being Lord of the Tides has brought, is seldom satisfied. Hence why once his own path towards being king consort/having his blood on throne is dashed after the great council of 101, he more than likely gets in his head that he must take steps to right that wrong.

Like many men in this story, if not all, corlys views the people around him - His wife, daughter, son, granddaughters and even Rhaenyra to a certain extent - as extensions of the himself and the pawns in his plan.

Now, this will probably be an unpopular opinion, though I don’t think it should be, but I’m of the belief Corlys cared little about how his family faired because of his ambition. Namely his wife, Rhaenys (who if we go by book canon he married when she was a teen then cheated on her with another teen). I think he sees her as another status symbol. He’s married to a dragon riding princess. I sense a lot of people get blinded by the shiny varnish their relationship has on the show, especially compared to the outwardly hellish relationships in book/show. He constantly undermines her. Though I personally don’t believe Rhaenys when she says she’s over not being queen, I do agree with her when she says corlys is doing all of this more for himself and his house than her. Despite the quippy lines they give Rhaenys, she too is a victim of patriarchy and by extension of that a backseat passenger in her own family. She too follows her husband’s orders even to the detriment of others. She may be able to voice her concerns, but they fall on deaf ears.

Corlys uses his 12 year old daughter as a bargaining chip. And let me tell you, I get so annoyed when people use the argument of ‘well rhaenys and corlys were upfront about pimping out their tween daughter while otto sent Alicent in secret’. They all will be sharing the same room in hell with viserys regardlesss babes. Or the argument that the dance wouldn’t have happened if Viserys married laena. The dance, or some sort of infighting, was set in stone the moment viserys decided to not only remarry but have kids. Weakening Rhaenyra’s already flimsy claim. It was set the moment the Targaryens followed the same male primogeniture many in Westeros do. Corlys would have been right at the ‘patriarchy rocks’ party if laena married viserys and managed to produce a male heir.

Rhaenys expresses wanting the driftmark line to pass through Laena’s daughters. Mind you, Laena is older anyway. If corlys wanted his eldest child to have it.. he could’ve changed that from jumped since he’s so team feminism lmao. Corlys quickly says no because he knows taking that from Lucerys means disenfranchising Rhaenyra’s claim. In turn, laenor will not be king consort and their blood will not be on the throne.

Except… he knows those boys are not of Velaryon blood. The same way he knew laenor, his gay son, would be in harm’s way marrying Rhaenyra. To him, his family name being written in books is more important than empowering his granddaughters, despite tooting the horn he is doing this because his wife was robbed because she is a woman. To him, his family name being written in books is more important than the safety of his kids. He actually mirrors viserys post laenor’s ‘death’ and shuts down. But the point of running away. Leaving his wife to rule without him. All because his own choices and guilt are probably eating him alive.

It’s why I was actually quite taken when in ep 10, it is corlys that finally says enough is enough. But I actually like the choice. By now he has lost his daughter, his brother (I have a lot of feelings/thoughts on how vaemond wants power like corlys but it manifests vastly differently in terms of their house), and he thinks his son as well. Him realizing that his ‘keeping up with the joneses’ phase has done nothing but have the Stranger follow their family is harrowing. He wants to go home; he is ready to be rid of this. And yet it is Rhaenys, his dragon riding princess, telling him they must keep fighting for Rhaenyra. Quickly reminding him that their family is binded to the Targaryens regardless, and because of his choices; through having Lucerys still be heir to driftmark and the farce that jace as a bastard will take the throne with little strife. As well as because of the agreement that their granddaughters, not good enough claimants to driftmark themselves according to corlys, will be married to the strong boys.

His house will not prevail and flourish in the wake of this, which I think is an interesting contrast to say someone like Otto. I don’t think Corlys is a second son in the literal sense but he feels as one because he has had to fight for what he has. In ep 2, he compared himself to daemon, an actual second son, because of this fact. Otto is the same, a second son turned hand of kings. They scheme the same way, and have very similar ambitions. They hurt people in the process, especially those they are meant to protect. Regardless of who sits on the throne or how the war panned out, House Hightower continues to be a relatively wealthy, respected house. Versus what happens to House Velaryon… a now black house in show canon. These men played the same game and only one, in terms of the things he wanted, ‘won’.

That’s such a damning insight on how power corrupts the same way regardless of race, but the repercussions of it are different for everyone. Like I said, I know the writers did not think this far ahead or take this into account. But it’s something I picked up on as black woman myself.

It all comes back to Corlys’ choices. He will soon be adding his wife to the list of people the Stranger takes.

He must take his own advice sail through the storm…

#I hope this makes sense #it’s kind of a ramble #once again don’t know how to tag this lmao #anti corlys velaryon #maybe #anti team black #though this is really my beef with him #but I’ll put #anti rhaenys targaryen #just in case

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lv0-cia · 10 months

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How did you come up The idea of project and how did he come to be like what sparked your mind to create him? I’m very curious.

Project started out as a “what if he was there in the tfa series”

He had his personality, and his design in set but had no actual background, no interest, and no story. Basically made for fun, and for me to keep to myself privately since

1. I was kinda anxious for what might people say about my character

2. I didn’t have a good following as I do now to share

Pre-Project design:

Pre-Project had quite the cartoonish style like design when I first made him

His shape and body design was kinda hard to come up and puzzle piece it together, but nevertheless, this is what I had set down on digital paper

Some of Project’s design was inspired by an old friends art style on megaman

(I’m not into megaman, nor will I get into it, maybe someday :V)

It starts out as a fun little thing for me, myself and I, but then later forgot about him due to my expanding interest in other things

Then somehow, the character came back into my mind as I was scrolling through old art and decided to give this another try

And also ROTB brought back my fixation in transformers :,)

Spoilers for in future comics:

Small Bio of Present Project:

Project, not only is he a seeker, but is a alien robot like Team Optimus and the rest

He is not an Autobot, nor a Decepticon. Heck he’s not even a- shhhhhhh

Nevertheless, PJ is a laidback, extrovert, quick-thinking guy, who knows what to do and how to execute it, hence why he’s named Project by his parents (basically the “three steps ahead” trope personality)

Projects kind of love is to mess/joke around with the ones he cares about, but will always be there for you. He can go on and on about his interest, and that good chisme to which your become so drawn to what he got to say

Though of his chill nature, he tends to become distant when something is bothering him. In his distracted state, or when things go so wrong, he becomes frozen. Does this have to do with the fact that he might hear someone calling his name, yet no one said anything to him.

Or with the fact that he sees things that seem out of place, or those who aren’t there. Maybe even seeing things that caught his eyes that trigger a bad memories.

Why does it seem like he’s trying to block out anything of hurt from his mind. “Out of site, out of mind?”

How about when he interpreted words aim to him that are so negative, he takes it the wrong way, and becomes cautious. Yet no one said anything negative…

Hmm…

When meeting Project:

1. If y’all meet and get to know each other in a good way, he welcomes you with open arms, drops “the proper” act and starts to mess around with you, makes jokes, tells you all the tea/chisme that even your ancestors would be invested to hear

2. If y’all meet in a bad way, he stays as far away from you, just giving you that silent treatment, maybe even hear some snide comments in Spanish from him, or just straight up giving you that stink eye (lol side eye)

So this is the gray area

Although, it doesn’t always have to be that way though. You can earn his trust when doing good deeds, or maybe just saving him from danger, or when he saves you. He will start to warm up around you :)

Heck, who knows, maybe even become friends

3. If y’all meet in the worst way possible, like you hurting him, hurting his friends/family, and/or you become the root of all evil and vile… oh babes, you’re dead to him

Facts about Project (the updated version):

P.S: they are canon

1. He speaks Spanish

2. He can play music in his Speaker

3. The gem placement in his forehead is his heart/soul (tf terms, that’s his spark)

4. Schizophrenic

5. He does have parents :) (I’m not cliché bruv)

6. The blue side of his face is not his natural color (his face was never divided/split to begin with)

7. He likes to sing, and create murals/graffiti art

8. Can play the guitar

9. Loves to build and tinker up some nice gadgets

10. His fighting technique consists of acrobats, dance, jumping and moving so quickly. Planners got to think creatively, you can’t just be plain. Agility through the roof.

11. Loves to fly so much, the wind make him feel so free and relief.

In Conclusion:

Overall, I am so happy to see my character come this far from being kept to myself, to him finally being shared and coming into the limelight.

Although, there are some rough edges that are in need of soothing out, some that I’m aware, and some that I’m not aware, I am proud to see my character being loved by all of you :) ❤️

And thank you so much for being here, loving my work and everything

Spoilers for Prison Break:

#transformers #transformers animated #tfa #transformers oc #tfa oc #q&a

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vendetta-if · 2 years

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Writing Update (16 September 2022)

Hey guys 👋, back again with some progress update here. First of all, I just want to say that I'm really grateful for all the support over on Patreon 🥰💖; we've broken through the first $100 goal and is well on a third of the way towards the second goal ($400), which still floored me to this day! 😭💕 Once the $400 goal is achieved, I'll be making a short interactive side story for Vendetta that will be available for all Patrons across all tiers! ❤️

Moving on to Chapter 3 progress, right now, it stands at around 13.4k words 🎉. I must say that I've been quite satisfied with the rate I've been writing currently. For the past week ever since I started working on Chapter 3, I've consistently been able to write 1k words per day and sometimes even more and in around a week and two days, I had managed to write 13.4k words. Chapter 3 is now nearing its halfway point and there are additional MC customizations as well. This chapter will have a lot of variations that will be a pain to write but hopefully worth it.

Also, before starting on Chapter 3, I've added two suit options for Female and NB MCs to wear for the party and I've also added two extra pre-set names for the dual pistols and there will be now flavour texts when choosing the names of the pistols from the pre-set options. Grandpa will now react accordingly to the names you choose.

Some of you guys might probably also already aware that I'm planning to shift all the characters' ages a bit. When I first planned out the book, I actually envisioned MC to be 20 years old, and I think I'll be going back to this again and revert the time-skip back to 10 years instead of 15 years. I'm actually not really sure myself why I decided to add 5 years to MC's age and the time-skip in the first place 😅

The reason for me going back to tweaking the characters' ages is because I'm currently planning for a sequel spin-off for Vendetta! It's going to be set around two decades in the future, in the same Elysium City, but with a different MC. And since it's set post the events in Vendetta, I'm also planning to bring back some characters from Vendetta and include references about MC and the endings they choose at the end of the first standalone book, hence why I decided to shift back all the characters ages so they can still appear in the spin-off 😆

Right now, I'm not ready to share more details about it yet since the whole concept is still brewing in my mind and nothing is set in stone yet. But, I'll definitely share more as I get more solid grip on it in the future.

#writing updates #if: vendetta #if wip #if game #dashingdon #choicescript #choices of games #hosted games #cyoa #interactive fiction #interactive novel #interactive story #interactive games #chapter 3

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shiraishi--kanade · 3 days

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Also can I ask. About KWKO. How did you first come up with them? Who was the first oc to come to mind and who was the last? Which one would you want to be roommates with?

I've had a few pjsk fan units before KWKO, so I wasn't exactly new to the concept when I first thought of them (Vanguard!! you will always be famous or something). I also used to be an author for pjsk shuffle unit AU that had a classical music unit, so that was my main interest at the time.

Long story short, some things went down, and additionally I've partially lost interest and partially noticed I'm too musically immature in regards to classical in most of my portrayals; that unit shuffle is currently on re-write list, I think. But aside from that, a lot of pre-set character backstories were more stifling to me than I expected, and I don't consider myself a particularly good writer, so... I just kind of wanted to get away with more, and from it. And also do classical music justice, this time. Everything else came pretty naturally.

Karin was the first character I've ever created, her first "solid" draft version was made March 12 this year - and frankly hasn't changed that much on the surface while her backstory and inner workings have definitely been revised since then. My first thought was like, "Hm, I want to create a character that has fox-like hair and has a fox surname, and is also mean, that would be fun" (it doesn't show much because everyone has their personal hcs + picrews are very limited, but Karin's design actually has the tips of her hair fade into brown-ish red and then black - hence the fox. I have a photo reference of what inspired me but no actual drawings!).

She was also originally supposed to be the unit leader, but not for long. I've realised very early on that Karin is unfit for that role both narratively and story-wise.

I can't exactly say who was the last - I think Akari? But honestly I made them all on the same day, so I think more fitting questions would be whose personality was established last and whose design? In that case, Suzuka and Maki, respectively.

Maki was briefly supposed to have blond or brown hair and blue eyes, then she had gray hair but still blue eyes. I don't know why I settled on purple/lavender color later - fits her nicely though!

Along with said fun fact: Kairi was originally supposed to have hazel eyes and either blonde or white hair. Currently he has light cyan eyes and off-white hair. Suzuka was supposed to have twin-tails, similar to Kohane's early main story haircut; it was since changed, but it remained her Junior High haircut.

Also, for the roommates... I feel like Reishi or Maki. Reishi is the sweetest guy and I feel like we'd get along well in how we like to keep our stuff organised and chores distribution; Maki would be a horrible roommate all things considered but she's also the most nun-judgemental person alive, which, considering the absolute state in which my room always is, would be a nice change of pace.

#jay rambles.txt #jay gets asks.txt #ramble mode activated. sorry

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emotionally-charged-arson · 5 months

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@abeterger Because I’m embarrassed to slide into people’s DMs right away even when they explicitly ask me, have a list that’s a fraction of what floats around in my brain:

- The TToE father is an Oxford physics professor and The mother is head of library sciences. She has her own academic prowess that she’s forced to abandon when her husband refuses to be a parent.

- The President is actually high key a good person who saw what the environmental “Salvage Alpha through hard work” people were doing and knew they wouldn’t have time for that. The Framers was their only option and a lot of the hate he gets from other characters is them not understanding that.

- I think @issela-santina said it first but I’m almost positive Daniel is ND but it wouldn’t be acknowledged the way it would be today, hence the general reclusive and antisocial behavior

- @age-of-shadows and I just call the country The Source takes place in “Alphan Germany” because it’s Ayreon tradition to completely avoid proper nouns

- Liquid Eternity’s capabilities are WAY too specific for the Chemist to just have it on hand pre-album story. I think it’s more likely it existed as a prototype just for underwater breathing, then he had to finalize it and add all the other stuff people were demanding ON the way to Y, with limited time and resources. Probably why he sounds so sad and mellow all the time

- Daniel and Henry have the same age gap as Tommy Karevik and Paul Manzi, 19 years, and their dad hates Henry way more than he hates Daniel and a lot of it has to do with them being fully grown adults at the time the mom died.

- Speaking of most of these being Transitus related, I made the excuse that most of the singers were American and the comic architecture looked colonial northeast US-ish and used it to just set everything in the US and I literally never looked back. Now all the HCs are so damn entrenched in 19th century US history, it’s completely unavoidable 😭

- The Counselor was a personal psychologist to whatever president came before Russell, but as tensions rose between said president and other activist opposition characters she was friends with, she stepped down and started a private practice as a way to remain neutral between political parties

-The Opposition Leader was The President’s election opponent. The President was sworn into office just three weeks before Day That The World Breaks Down

-Abby, ironically, is the only person of the main cast that doesn’t have some horrible experience with death pre-1884 (on account of being too young to remember her mother dying), so she has very little of an idea of how to properly process her grief, which obviously does not end well.

- I have to go but last one: Dumb Piece of Rock is actually very necessary plot wise because it shows off Daniel’s introversion AND his internal conflict in Act I, but the execution felt very off in the middle of this extremely sad story plot. I think it should have been Abby herself telling him he deserves better than Henry and his father. If nothing else it gives her a LITTLE more story agency.

#ayreon #have fun lmao #can I interest you in a 150 page google doc with every Transitus headcanon in my possession #transitus #the source #the theory of everything #fanfiction #basically #progressive waves art

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popculturebuffet · 11 months

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More Than Meets the Eye Retrospective: Shadowplay (Issues 9 through 11) (Patreon review for Brotoman.exe)

Hello all you happy autobots and welcome back to my look at more than meets the eye, long delayed due to a lot of scheduling delays, a draining move, and general shenanigans. But it's finally time for us to take a look at Shadowplay.

Shadowplay is easily one of the most important arcs of MTMTE, not only seting up a lot of character backstory, but also fully establishing Roberts vision of Cybertron past that he dabbled with back in Chaos Theory, a place where the senate is corrupt, the Decepticons are slowly planning a coup that will sadly turn from righteous rebellion into nightmarish dictatorship not unlike what they replaced, and functionism lingers in the background. And at the first time I read this arc..

While I liked it well enough, being a tense story that characterized Optimus well and gave him spotlight at a time when he wasn't in any of the comics on a regular basis, it still felt a bit like a neat side tangent.

I've come around since then for a number of reasons: The first is, especially on re-read this arc is REALLY good and in a continuity where Optimus didn't get to shine that often, it's another character piece that makes me sad he never joined the lost light. He got to lead but this really gets to who he is as a character and shows him at his best. It also has plenty of nice depths for the autobots featured, and seeing who they were pre-war really adds some layers and shows just what the war did to each and every one. The other is simple: I was reading the story for the first time. And sometimes something extraneous at the time ends up being important. In this case both how cybertron used to be is vital to the future of those who left it behind. So with that's lets do a little shadowplay and see how the past will ultimately nearly destroy the future...

Content Warning: Self Harm and Suicide Is Discussed

We open in pre war cybertron, some time after the last time we saw it in chaos theory. The Decpticon movement in in full swing, and two bots are discussing the recent clampdown, basically a bunch of curfews and othe rnonsense to try and fight back against them. But one of these bots, Nightbeat isn't remotely convinced this will work while his buddy Quark

Sadly not that one, is paranoid about it and assumes they'll force Alt Mode Changes when they get in power. While they'll do much worse, remember this idea. It'll be important next season. As will Nightbeat.

For now though Quark's casually day drinking is interupted by some blood.. from a corpse hung above

Cut to present day at Swerves where Ratchet joins a group consisting of Rewind, Chromedome, Tailgate, Whirl, Skids, Drift and of course the man himself. Swerve. As for why.... well as put in the page image THEIR GONNA FIX RUNGS BRAIN. After everyone gets a chance to react in shock and disgust and this stupid stupid joke , (Minus swerve who isn't shown reacting and likely helped Rewind set him up), we find out it's not AS obnoxious as it sounds: Swerve is still comotose and Rewind brought them all here to try and fix that on Chromedome's advice. See Domey's figured out why our Psychatrist pal's still in his coma: His body is starting to function but he can't fully heal till his mind does. Hence this exercise: The group gathered here isn't random as it seems: most were involved in a story in cybertron's past, the same one from the cold open, each crossing paths with a certain future robot space jesus. Rewind himself wasn't, but has both archival footage and has talked to some involved, so he can fill in the gaps. As for Tailgate and Swerve.. well Tailgate is just a nice guy and was likely let along so he can learn more autobot history, and Swerve owns the only place they could do this session nice and quiet, only needing a closed sign. (The bar has been reopened it turns out. ). And frankly it's swerve: you think he'd miss anything where he'd have a chance to talk and crack jokes?

So here's where we are: Nominus Prime, one of the senators, was nearly assainated and has vanished since while the corrupt senate we saw last time is only getting more and more strained as the citizens, paticuarlly the aformentioned decipticons, are pushing back more and more.

It's here the first of our familiar faces enters: Chromedome. Dome was working in Mechaforensics, even had a diffrent name but for clarity's sake Rewind is having him use his current one. He's working with Prowl

Who while not as awful as present, still has a rod wedged up someplace uncomfortable, possibly a cybertronian voltzwagon. The plan has all the hallmarks of a decipticon: i'ts pointed straight at the functionist council building, their graffiti is on the back. It's bad. we then get a nice diversion as Skids wants to know Prowl more, as he's going to be a recurring character and all and we get Swerve naturally hurling a ton of insults at the asshole and as for Rewind..

I love how Roberts not only embraced Prowl's tantrum becoming a meme, but decided to just make it a character trait. I also like how both of them can recognize the exact sound he makes It's then time for Drift's story.. which is good because Rodimus is getting antsy. At the time Drift was a drug addict, plugging boosters into his head. Ratchet makes sure to emphasis WINNERS DON'T USE DRUGS.. mostly because Tailgate's present. At any rate he gets hassled by two random dipshits... and stopped by Optimus, aka orion pax at the time, who then procedes to badassily take them both out in seconds. With Drift, known as roller then, comotose Optimus takes him to Ratchet... .. and then procedes to play with him by having the known atheist say adaptus be praised. The two wrestle a bit and Chromedome sidesteps this foreplay by pointing out this dosen't make sense: Apparently Ratchet was already cheif physician> Turns out though Ratchet was also unfufilled, so when Optimus, being optimus, suggested a secret center for addicts since the council , like most goverments, cares not one iota off a shit if people with a serious addiction die horribly, he gladly took it up. It also fits well with his character: Ratchet is older so of course he's already even further into his career, he likes helping and he likes a challenge.

Once he saves the future Drift, he encourages him to make something of his life.. while Drift plans to simply go to a refurbishment clinic and donate his body instead. The present day drift then has to go before Hot Rod tries to rebuke his amnesty.. and that's only half a joke as Drift geninely isn't sure if he can do that and isn't keane to find out. As for what the clinics were, Rewind helpfully explains for Tailgate, who nicely serves as an audience surrogate here. He even has a helpful ad

I also love the repacaging of something most older transformers fans like Roberts would be familiar with and fond of, the g1 manuals, into something fucked up, i.e. an add for cheap and nasty body tourisim. We don't know where it lead but we'll find out later. For now though once Drift leaves... Ratchet finds out there's bigger worries to deal with. Pax gestures to the news, something Ratchet dosen't like already for being state propoganda.. but likes even less finding out Nominus has offically been declared dead. More disturbingly Ratchet realizes their cause of death.. has to be wrong. It's said to be a rusted fuel pump, and the rust spreading to his spark casing.. but his fuel pump was pristine when Ratchet examined him post attack.. and with Optimus already theorizing to ratchet in a past conversation that the attack was a false flag attack from the senate itself Ratchet concludes not only is the senate behind this.. but they now have the matrix of leadership, all thanks to sentinel prime who no matter the reality is apparently just the biggest dick in existance.

Optimus reassures Ratchet he's not crazy or paranoid: they did clearly do this.. and he has a friend he wants him to meet

On that note we're back to Chromedome and Prowl. And we get another lovely toy based sight gag

Before the results tell prowl their going to Transluctna Heights next, the cybertronian beverley hills. Silciate Palm Trees and energon pools.

We then cut to Ratchet and Optimus who are meeting with the Senator, the same one from the end of Chaos Theory. This still works even if you had'nt read that story, as to me reading this comic the first time I assumed he and optimus had met previously and simply had a history.. and they do as seen with Chaos Theory he's the one who was convinced our hero could one day be a prime. Ratchet is mostly here to throw off suspiscion, since the senator already used most of his captial saving optimus from certain death at the end of chaos theory. That added context will be important in a bit but for now the Senator confirms that yup they killed Nominus for having a fake matrix. The only reason the senator isn't doing anything is because he's smarter than that and knows having a seat is way more useful than wringing Sentinels scrawny tickish neck. Speaking of which, The Senator is genuinely scared of what's going on. Also if you were curious where Megatron was during all of this he is alive, they simply have him on an asteroid mining as killing him would make him a martyr. His mining assignment is, once again, naturally important for later.. just not this storyline.

For this one we close the main story with Chromedome and Prowl investigating the swanky, richest of the rich only district of cybertron.. only to get a body thrown at them.

While we close the issue starting our b-plot for this three pater as we find out WHY Rodimus was so antsy for drift to get there NOW.

Yup... and honestly... this is the rare case where I genuinely DON'T know what happened here. We'll get an explination shortly and I THINK that's what indeed happened.. but I can't be sure for a number of reasons I don't want to spoil. The point is Red Alert's dead and Hot Rod thinks Cyclonus did it.

We see a lot of blurbs and what not on the news. The most important two are Senator Sherma, whose trying to pass a decipticon regestration act.. and if you've ever read x-men you'll know that's a pretty terrible idea and prejudice to boot, while we also get a hint against ratioisim, which I THINK is supposed to be some form of functionisim. For those wondering , Functionisim is basically determining your worth based on your alt mode and what purpose it serves. And if that idea sounds shady, racist and classist, you can see why the decipticons exist.

I also really like Roberts adding these shades to the decpticons existnace: Their still bad people mostly, but I love the idea they sprouted from a genuinely good place. From an opressed working class lorded over by a corrupt senate. It's an exploration of the idea a movement can easily be corrputed. YOu only have to look at say communisim: It's not a horrible idea on it's surface and modled right it can be done well.. and when molded wrong under someone like stalin it becomes an opressive facist state, just as democracy can be molded into one just the same when , as seen with the cybertronian senate, a few powerful folks wield said power regardless of the people's actions. As we've seen with Optimus , Nightbeat and Ratchet there are PLENTY of autobots who fully agree with their message.. they just won't agree with what that message becomes. It's one thing when the message is "take down the corrupt police state we all hate", it's another when the message becomes "Peace through tyranny"... a message really not that diffrent from the senate. The only diffrence.. is Megatron just comes out and admits he's going to rule over you as a dictator while the senate lies and says things are fair while constantly stacking the deck however they like. It makes me really wish Roberts had gotten to full on write the reboot when it happened, but alas, it wasn't meant to be.

Back with the cop plot, Chromedome is chasing around one of the perps on a flying bike. I wonder if you can play card games on it? For now the chase dosen't take much effort as the idiot he's chasing goes into a narrow garage.. that turns out ot be a no fly zone, complete with the cybertronian equilveant of saftey glass.. and being cybertronian that means anything speeding blows up real good. Prowl is already doing what he does best: casing the room and being mildly dimissive. Being an authortarian cockballon comes a little later but joining the police is a good start. That said we see how diffrent he was.. as he ACTUALLY APOLOGIZES

Yes when he finds out about the glass he genuinely apologizes and hopes Chromedome is okay. In the apartment they find both red alert and a decepticon manfesto and shrine. The senator was a secret deciptcion.. and given what else we know it's obvious the senate is trying to clean house of anyone that would oppose them.

Back in the present, Rodimus has turned Perciptor's lab into a makeshift inergation room. And it turns out.. he's taken in Cyclonus for no other reason than he's Decipticon adjacent. That's it. This is pure profling.. and it also provides a really intresting role reversal. Usually when these two talk Magnus is a stick in the mud doomsayer who follows regulations as his one true religion, while Rodimus, hot mess he may be, tends to give people chances and think outside the box. It's essentially a wackier version of Kirk and Spock.

Here though that same adherence to order and regulation that often makes Magnus the butt of the joke.. makes him the reasonable one for a change.

He does.. but only because Drift is unlawfly interogating him. Rodimus is just rashly assuming because decipticon, while Magnus rightly sees he's bungled this whole investigation by unlawfully arresting someone who did nothing wrong, they have no reason to bring in. Drift isn't much better as we see a nastier side to him. While he's a former decpitcon himself he treats Cyclonus hostile and subtly threatens him.. and gets driven into the table in response. While Magnus DOES hold Cyclonus back... if you look at the panel bellow he's not hurting him or anything. He's only holding him to prevent a fight that would only make this more of a farce. And Cyclonus speech makes it VERY clear how much of a farce this is and is honestly CHILLING with the recknoning in police we've been going through as what Rodders did.. is really what MOST police did and many still do

It's a damming speech and shows what Roberts has masterfully done so far and will continue to do: Show that the Autobots, while the good guys.. aren't flawless. We've seen it in how human they are and how goofy they can be... but we wee here the less endearing sides of their humanity, the judgmental side and tencndy to fly off the handle. Cyclonus also makes a valid point: they think winning the war makes them absolute victors.. but Cyclonus, while not impartial, is a mostly outside observer: he AGREES with the decipticon cause, but really isn't one. He can see the self righteousness and tendency to see themselves as absolute right the autobots are devleoping, something festering even worse back home, and he sees the same system that required the decipticons in the first place slowly reforming. And we've seen this cycle: the senate replaces a corrupt mad man, they become corrupt authorarians. MEgatron replaces them, he becomes a power mad dictator. While the autobots have a leg up on booth..there's no guarantee they can't fall just as hard or fast , and this book will more than prove that.

At anyr ate Cyclonus is absolved as First Aid thinks he has it.

Back at the crime scene, Chromedome and Prowl are backed against the wall. Prowl hasn't fought yet so he's scared shitless, Chromedome is enjoying that but it's not really helping the situation.. but someone arrives who does

If you ever find yourself wondering why optimus is in charge.. well it's mostly on the heart and sense of conviction, but if your wondering how he stayed in charge and stayed alive.. this is why.

Prowl then.. yells at Optimus, not only assuming he's a citzen but just being a dick. Optimus then flashes his badge and is disapointed what he heard about Prowl was exagerated. Yes even OPTIMUS FRIKKIN PRIME, PRE PRIME CANNOT STAND PROWL SOMETIMES. Optimus casualy says that Prowls report on all this will just get lost, and Prowl hopes "i'll never be as cynical as you orion pax"... bud.. your already.. so much worse.

Prime plans to follow up but he's wanted ON THE MOON... and I love a job where I get to say that. He's wanted at prison, as it's time for whirl to enter the story. Whirl also gets defnsive when ratchet rightly points out why he's arrested when he tries to blame optimus: He tried to murder a prisoner in his cell. The fact Megatron is evil later.. dosen't really justify it at all, as we saw. The senate were using him as a pawn to get away with worse stuff.

But the fact is by this point Whirl has realized the senate used him, and took away his hands, with a really crushing panel of him admitting why he's brought optimus here beyond REVENGE

They took everything he was from him and he can't do anything to them, as i'm sure many like him can't either. But he can tell optimus there's a plan for a large bombing, a false flag attack.. and to catch the Senator in the crossfire. We also see IMpactor getting introduced as Whirl's cellmate. Naturally for the wreckers there first meeting.. is impactor beating his head in.

One of my faviorite lines in the comic.

Anyways we get back to Prowl and Chromedome , and we get a really intresting bit: Chromedome can tell SOMETHING'S going to give and wonders if they'll survivie it, and while prowl denies it at first.. it turns out as much as he likes to bury his head in the sand at this point in his life, he hasn't buried it straight up his ass like his present day self.

Yeah I kick myself in hindsight for not only not noticing Chromedome and Rewind were a thing, but that PROWL and chromedome were in the past. I"m still shocked how oblivious I was, especially since I picked this one specifically because LIndsay Ellis had mentioned the idw transformers comics had gotten queer. I've gotten better at picking up on gay subtext, intentional or otherwise, but it's still hilariously tone deaf. It's also weird to see Prowl.. actually be romantic. Roberts does the legwork the other book simply dosen't seem to care to do in making Prowl a tragic figure: Sure he's absolutely the worst and Roberts makes no real attempts to prove that. If anything he shows the potetial was there.. but this arc really hammers in that Prowl before the war.. was a far better person. He still was entirley by the book, but he opened up to Chromedome, his partner in both senses, didn't want a war, and generally had good in him. I made a cop joke before.. but Dome IS trying to be good police. He belivies way too much in a corrupt system.. but contrast that to the Prowl we saw in issue 1 and will see again when the crossover comes: an authoratian nightmare who sees his boyfriend trying to get a measure of peace.. and sees it as a waste. Who sees the end of a years long war as just a lull in combat. Who in his own book is carrying out black ops bullshit and stoking tensions between autobots and decipticons. Prowl had the potetial to be what he is now always sure, but he wasn't etched in that. Becoming an autobot made somes lives better.. but for Prowl it just caused him to double down on his worse traits and become an outright monster.

The fight is also just.. sad. Instead of talking through their issue.s. rewind just snaps. He just can't face Rewind's history with Prowl or see that there WAS good in the man whose caused his partner such pain.. but also can't healthily cope with it. Then again as we'll learn heathily coping is not something Rewind's really EVER done.

Back with the plot , Prowl finds out to his fury that Flatfoot, his superior officer despite the name, has leaked his report, proving what Optimus said. Things only get more suspcious when they meet Trepan, the head of the clinic.. and after Chromedome sense ssomething shady, the sinister needle hands are a giveaway, Domey incapcitates the guy and our unambgiously gay duo find the insittute: tons of robtos removing brain moduls, rewiring... even before he became a mnemosurgeon, Domey was already intrested in the science and thus can recognize it. Trepan escapes but our heroes take their valuable intel to Optimus, who had Ratchet and some others round up the good senator from his school for gifted autobots.

Optimus puts all the pieces together while Prowl bitches in the background: Domey and PRowl found a list at the clinic, that turns out to be a list of decipticons regestered as a polictical party. Turns out while Senator Sherma wanted it to LOOK like decipticon attack.. but not blame them right away, getting more cons to register.. then inittating ANOTHER false flag to make it look like the deciptcons betrayed them. As for how.. the how is utterly horrifying: they plan to BLOW UP nominus' corpse with a fake rigged matrix. Optimus' only recourse? They ahve to steal it We're onto the final issue and naturally Prowl thinks this is madness, wants nothing to do with it and is a right asshole as he flees, telling him not to let DOme go on the mission

Dome went to gather some of the senators pupils. I.. .wasn't remotely joking about the x-men comparison: Since the functionists obviously are baffled and apalled by beings who have extra talents beyond their alt modes, the Senator has been shielding them in his building for gifted autobots and brought a few to help: Skids himself is a super learner, able to learn anything in record time, which seems useless until you realize this means he can pick up any skill as fast as the flash and retain it unlike said flash. The others are windcharger, who has telekensis Kyle and Gltich, whose design I like a lot and who can mess up machinery. So in otherwords, Progidy, Hellion and Shadowcat. Got it.

We then break for a second as Ratchet examines rung and Swerve brings some old fashioned nightmare fuel to the party, which this being the comic that it is, is entirely real and requires gloves. When Chromedome worries about this eating up their insides, Swerve reveals this isn't rewind's FIRST session. It's not even his second. It makes sense though: this is a complex prospect and it's not unlikely every autobot here met Optimus at some point.. nor that unlikely that it'd fall apart, hence attempt 3 here. We also get an intresting fact about Rung that will be VITALLY important way down the line

We return to the story to find out this is what likely broke the two up for good, as Prowl, being prowl, just left with no explanation. They still need a full plan but skids having a mini matrix on his face, a religious thing back then the comic dosen't go into gives Optimus an idea: He spends Domey to talk to our good buddy ironfist, pre horrible tragic death. Being a massive fanboy even back then, he's more than willing ot help in exchange for getting his life sized model of Delta Magnus

So now our hero have a fake to swap for the fake. Before they leave on the heist though Ratchet and Optimus' Friend Roller Roller Da

An old friend of Optimus' on the force we just meet here but , say it with me "WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER". This arc could've easily been called "TRUST ME ALL OF THIS HAS A PAYOFF. ALL. OF. THISSSSSSSS. " And it does. One benefit of having to go over these issues with a finer tooth comb than my usual lagomorph lenth attention span allows is I catch just HOW well crafted this story is.

Anyways Roller hacked the system and finds out there's some weird stuff about the guy, a few charges, as you'd expect.. but also the fact Optimus isn't the ONLY person he's been grooming for this roll. Optimus.. dosen't care. He's not naive, he gets the senator likely has backups, and is with the guy not because he's truly buying what the man's selling on "being the next prime" and all that.. but becauase he's a good man in a broken system whose trying his damndest to fix it. A bit creepy sure, but someone he trusts enough to do this. if he didn't they woudln't of gone this far.

We get back to the present.. and it's one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the comic so far. And you KNOW that's already saying something. We find out what happened to Red Alert.. and it was suicide. Granted i'm still not sure it was entirely suicide or if the very least he wasn't pushed further by the knowledge of what was going on and the pressure of his already bad paranoia being kicked into overdrive. I won't know till he comes back. It's handled incredibly well.. including the fact that even now Rodimus makes it about him.. but in a way that just.. punches you in the heart. Rodimus takes it personally, feeling that if one of his crew is suicidal.. he shoudl've noticed. But the sad truth with mental illness is sometimes.. someone is just suffering so bad till they break. As someone who has had suicidal throughts... sometimes you just keep those to yourself till your already on the edge of it. What's worse is while they DID save him... Magnus suggests not putting him back on line just yet. He's understandibly worried given all the trauma it'll just happen again and plans to revivie him whent he misions over or at the very least when they have the time to help him. The results.. are just.. pure pain

Normally when rodimus asks this, it's clear he just wants a second opinon that will likely agree with him.. but here it's very clear from what happens next.. he just DESPERATLEY wants any othe roption, anything but this... and ultimately it's best for red to take a nap till they can help him... rodimus left utterly destroyed. Just the pannleing here is perfect.. it's clear Rodimus feels he failed... and the failures will only add up as the journey goes on. For now though we're back to the finale of our main story: So naturally for a heist the place their breaking into, the Primal Basicla, is super well guarded: any plane that tries to fly by deactivates, pressure plates along the floor to alert the guards, and said guards are trigger happy monsters with the orders to "take alive """IF POSSIBLE""""" which is code for

Thankfully thanks to said no flyzone the top is unguarded so they simply get to work: Windcharger lowers them down, Glitch shuts off the force beams, at great personal pain, and Swerve uh... uses his grappling hook to lower optimus mission impossible style. Hey at least it's a vital job. Problem is the things rigged. WOrse problems are back at base. For reasons unknown, Optimus decided to honor Prowl's wishes and Chromedome was left on sercurity with Roller Roller Da. The Senator assumes Optimus was being paranoid.. when who would it be at the door but hired goons

Who just burned down The Senator's institute for gifted autobots. Back at the heist, Optimus calls on Ratchet, whose roll now becomes clear beyond "Map guy": He was Optimus' backup plan: since he can't disarm the locks he uses reverse psychology on ratchet telling him he coudln't POSSIBLY unlock it in time. Ratchet knows he' splaying him.. but he's wrong and Ratchet does. He almost drops the matrix.. but thankfully Windcharger got bored and uses his telekensisis kyle to lift ratchet back up.

With the heist a success Windcharger starts slowly taking them back.. but Optimus, being twitchy that Roller hasn't contacted him JUMPS OFF THE FREAKING SKY THING AND INTO THE STREETS FAR BELLOW to go after him. Good thing too as he gets there before they can murder the senator. Sadly.. there's no happy ending here. Prequel and all that. The hired goons hold Roller Hostage.. and the Senator being who he is, agrees to go peacefully. The goons TRY to leave a guy for optimus to fight.. but optimus still has the bomb of leadership, hurls it and the senate covers it up the same way they covered up the academy. Gas leak. the silent killer. What's worse is while Optimus and Domey head for the instutitute.. it's already cleaned out.. and Domey also has a horrifying realization about the name: it's called that.. so people THINK there's only one. As he explains in narration, there turned out ot be one under EVERY refurbishment clinic.

So with that... it's all over. For now. There's no real happy ending... in the past. in the present though as the defcon klaxons ring... RUNG SPEAKS. This whole plan worked. Back in the past though we get one final coda as some creepy assholes plan to do the oepration on the senator, a complete personality swap.. a turn to logic.. and iwth that we find out just who this guy is.. and it's one of the most chilling, brilliant and tearjerking moments in the entire comic

Yup one of the nicest bots in transformers.. becomes a cold murder machine who will soon, or likely sometime next year for our purposes, nearly destroy all of cybertron. Someone who might of created a better future as Cybertron's greatest hero.. has become it's greatest monster. My jaw dropped when I read this and now having read dark cybertorn and knowing how the other side of this story plays out for him overal.. it's just an utter gutpunch. Even when I wasn't a fan of this story, I LOVED this ending.

As for shadowplay itself.. it's excellent. It's still not relaly one of my faviorite arcs, as it's one of the heavier ones, but the heist in the third act is great, there's some nice backstory shading and like I said that final twist is fucking phenominal. I'ts a story that only gets better as you see every piece it sets up for the rest of the comic fall into place, and on reread the red alert subplot fucking broke me. It's a great story Next Time: .. is in september, as I was SUPPOSED to take the summer off to do Beetlemania, which is now too far ahead to not do, but mtmte returns in september for an annual as Magnus takes the spotlight and a lot of stuff sure does happen. Thanks for reading.

#transformers #transformers more than meets the eye #optimus prime #ratchet #orion pax #prowl #chromedome #rewind #swerve #whirl #red alert #drift

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random-thought-depository · 1 year

Text

A very preliminary, low-detail, and tentative outline of important events in the expansion of hominids through near-Sol space in my main science fiction setting (will likely be subject to some change before the "final draft" that will inform my actual stories):

2-.5 million years ago: Aliens transplant some early hominids to some Earth-like worlds in other solar systems. I have a few different models of how this might have happened:

It was a Star Trek Preservers sort of deal: the aliens did it as part of a much bigger project of encouraging the diversification and spread of intelligent life in our galaxy.

Aliens came to Earth and established a colony here. These aliens were giant beings, at least comparable to elephants or T-Rex, maybe even as big as the biggest sauropod dinosaurs. They domesticated early hominids, finding it useful to have servants who were much smaller than them, had hands, and were smart enough to follow simple commands (so a little like @o-craven-canto's Gods of Salt scenario). They found their new domesticate useful enough to transplant some to some of their other colonies.

Similar to 2), but instead of being domesticated, a population of early hominids infiltrated the alien colony on their own initiative and became something roughly equivalent to urban racoons. Some of them eventually followed the aliens to the stars in approximately the same way mice, rats, and cockroaches will likely follow humans to the stars.

2) and 3) are compatible and might both have happened: domestic animals often go feral and survive as ferals in urban environments (see: pigeons, stray dogs, stray cats, etc.), and domestic dogs and cats probably started out as wild hangers-on attracted to the resources of human communities.

In the case of 1) the aliens would have had only scientific interest in Earth, the entire point of the relocation effort would have been to establish viable "wild" hominid populations on multiple worlds, and the relocation program probably looked kind of like our wolf re-introduction programs and the like. Once the aliens made a thorough study of Earth and were confident that the transplanted hominid populations were doing OK, they stepped back and let nature take its course.

In the case of 2) or 3), the aliens eventually disappeared for some reason (I have one idea that we'll get to later), leaving behind populations of hominids who survived by returning to something much more similar to the lifestyle of their "wild" ancestors. The alien colony on Earth might have existed during an era when sea levels were lower than they are now and been on what's now the Sunda Shelf or something like that, hence why its remains weren't found before the twenty-first century.

Significantly, all this happened long before our ancestors got as smart as we are. The hominids I'm talking about here might have been early Homo erectus who peaked at intelligence roughly equivalent to a human toddler. Or maybe this was even farther back and I'm talking about Homo habilis or something like that. Modern humans tend to pre-empt biological evolution with cultural innovation, e.g. faced with a cold climate, we invent warm clothing long before we might evolve fur, and therefore humans living in cold climates have no evolutionary impetus to evolve fur. Less intelligent early hominids probably did that to some degree too (control over fire is pretty old), but, being less smart than us, they'd have been less insulated from environmental selection pressures. So when these hominids were exposed to alien environments, they tended to start to evolve in different directions from their ancestor species on Earth. There was usually a tendency toward increased intelligence and self-domestication over time, eventually resulting in species about as smart and social as Earth humans, but a lot of these transplanted hominids got kind of weird before that happened or during that process (example: these people). So my setting is a bit All Tomorrows-ish.

15-13,000 years ago: One of the species descended from the transplanted hominids developed a high-tech civilization of their own.

Significant and relevant digression: in my setting, I think I'll go with a multiple filters explanation for the Fermi Paradox - with one of the filters being the Berserker option. I think the history I'm about to outline makes more sense if these not very successful interstellar colonization efforts I'm about to describe were more-or-less waves of refugees. I don't have a clear idea of what The Threat is at this point, except that it's something that's destroys emerging starflight-capable civilizations. I'm tentatively thinking it'll be something similar to the Omega Clouds from The Engines of God, but I don't have anything firm yet.

If I go with options 2) or 3) for how early hominids got transplanted to worlds in other star systems, The Threat is probably what destroyed the civilization of the big aliens. In that case, my guess is the hominids survived but the big aliens didn't because, with their high-tech civilization gone, the large size and hence large caloric requirements of the big aliens made them much more vulnerable to, well, a lot of things that kill off long-lived slow-breeding species.

The Threat destroyed this first hominid civilization to develop, probably within a few centuries of them developing interstellar travel capability, but before that happened this first hominid civilization managed to send out at least one slower than light colonial expedition, aimed at Sol.

Travelling at maybe .1-.2 c, the colonists endured a voyage of maybe 2-400 years by spending that time in a form of suspended animation. They arrived at Sol maybe 14,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene great warming. They found a cool and wild but warming and relatively inviting planet, mostly thinly populated by hunter-gatherers, though a very early agricultural society existed in the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent. The colony ships were parked in orbit and the settlers descended to the new world and established a colony; tentatively, the primary colony site was near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, in a lowland that's now part of the Persian Gulf (I'll have to look up exactly how the coast in that region changed over time - I'm aware that technically the Shatt al-Arab is less than 10,000 years old, but I think there'd have been a similar river running through the lowland that's now the Persian Gulf in the ice age?).

The colony did OK at first, including establishing good relations with the native humans. With their advanced technology, it was easy for the colonists to gain favor with the native humans by giving them things from plastic bottles to vaccinations against common local diseases. The various major and minor colony sites soon developed satellite settlements of native humans attracted by the benefits that could be obtained from association with the colonists. There weren't all that many colonists, so the colonial society had a need for labor, so this arrangement was beneficial to the colonists too. Though technologically primitive, the native humans were as clever as the colonists and could be trained to operate and repair high-tech machinery, and their children could be educated to do the same. The colonial society and their native human associates soon began to merge into a mixed society. Though separated by something like a million years of evolution and biologically distinct, the colonists and the native humans were still similar enough to interbreed, so the two populations soon began to merge biologically as well, forming a hybrid species (a bit like the hominid equivalent of coydogs). Even including assimilated native humans and their descendants, the colonial society was never very big (maybe a few hundred thousand people at its peak), so there was plenty of room and resources, especially since the colony continued to maintain some space capacity and supplement their resources with asteroid mining.

Things might have gone OK for as long as a few centuries, until The Threat followed the colonists to their new home. Anticipating this possibility was a big part of the reason the colonists had chosen to maintain their space program, and many of them chose to respond to this development by fleeing again, seeking another, new world where they hoped they would finally be truly safe. The old colony ships, which had been maintained and used as orbital platforms, were refurbished and refueled for another centuries-long journey. It would be a riskier journey than the first one; the ships had deteriorated, and they would need to be modified to carry more passengers; the cryo-tube bays were dutifully expanded to accommodate the results of generations or centuries of population growth, including cultural assimilation of native humans; this meant the fuel tanks would need to be expanded too, or some mass of supplies and equipment would have to be sacrificed, or a lower delta V and hence extra decades of travel time and a proportionately increased risk of equipment failures on the journey would have to be accepted; every extra pound of passenger or cargo meant fifteen extra pounds of fuel; in the end, a mix of all these sacrifices was made.

A minority stayed behind, taking their chances on Earth, not trusting their survival to overloaded decayed rockets that would be called on to operate centuries past their best-by date, not trusting their survival to the hope that The Threat would not follow that exodus to its destination in turn. They watched the brilliant comets of the departing fusion rockets slowly dwindle in the night skies.

It would take centuries for the departing rockets to reach their destination system (tentatively, the star 82 Eridani). When they arrived, they might not have dared send a transmission to notify the ones left on Earth that they'd made it; they were running from an enemy that had found the refuge on Earth, after all. Even if they had dared send such a message, by the time it arrived there might not have been a working radio receiver on Earth capable of receiving it. The exodus had taken much of the colony's population and equipment with it. There was The Threat. And then any remnant of the colonial society that survived that was finished off by the Younger Dryas cold snap and the end-Pleistocene sea level rise. The rising oceans closed over the primary colony site near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab and the secondary sites in Sundaland and Doggerland. The orbits of any remaining satellites decayed until they fell into Earth's atmosphere and were destroyed. The last descendants of the colonists mixed with the native humans and interbred with them and disappeared into history. On a few near-Earth asteroids some traces left by colonial mining operations remained; they would sit undisturbed for the next 13,000 years.

The exodus from Earth was successful, if one sets the bar for success at survival. The decaying colony ships held together all the way to 82 Eridani. When the time came for braking, the magsails unfurled and charged and caught the interstellar medium, making rockets with exhaust velocity equal to the flotilla's forward velocity, slowly bringing the flotilla to a velocity that would allow it to be captured by 82 Eridani's gravity. The colony ships came to rest in orbit of the Earth-like world in 82 Eridani's habitable zone, and the refugees from Earth went down to their new world in shuttles.

But the effort exhausted the colonial society, which's resources were never very large. The new society on the new world in the 82 Eridani system was unable to maintain a viable high-tech civilization; they had the tools, but they didn't have all the tools they needed to make the tools anymore. So they slowly regressed to a society of low-tech subsistence agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, not much more advanced than the society that now existed on Earth. In the process, the descendants of the colonists and the descendants of the Earth humans they'd mixed with fully merged into a single hybrid species, though a regionally heterogenous one with different traits in different regions resulting from demographic differences between the initial settler populations of various initial colony sites.

The remaining societies on Earth and the 82 Eridani planet may have survived because The Threat is programmed to destroy starflight-capable societies (and societies with technology advanced enough that they could easily become starflight-capable) and they were now too primitive to trigger its target-recognition systems.

4-3,000 years ago: the Eridani civilization: The humans on 82 Eridani's Earth-like planet eventually developed a high-tech civilization of their own, though it took them about 10,000 years.

The Eridani high-tech civilization followed the same general trajectory as the hominid civilization that came before them: lasted some centuries and then was destroyed by The Threat, managed to send out some slower-than-light colonial expeditions before being destroyed, but these expeditions were launched in desperation and weren't well-equipped to form a viable self-sustaining high-tech society in their destination system, so most Eridani colonies regressed to relatively low-tech agricultural societies within a few centuries of their founding.

The Eridani and/or the Pleistocene hominid civilization may have invented hyperdrive shortly before the end of their civilization, but if so the invention came too late to do them much good, basically just allowing them to send out a secondary wave of refugees.

The Eridani weren't able to give their colonies the best start, but they were fairly prolific at sending out colonial expeditions. Most present-day human populations are descended from Eridani colonial expeditions.

3-4,000 years is long enough for a lot of cultural change, but not long enough for much biological evolution. However, the Eridani were the product of a regionally heterogenous hybridization between Homo sapiens and another hominid species, and the genetic bottlenecking of interstellar colonization sometimes interacted with this in ways that gave the populations of certain colonies a distinct "look." Also, early in their development Eridani colonies sometimes anticipated the loss of high technology (they had the tools, but they didn't have all the tools they needed to replace the tools) and decided to use the window in which they still had functional space age legacy technology to genetically engineer their descendants to better tolerate the conditions of their new world (e.g. colonists on a high gravity world might genetically engineer their descendants for better tolerance of high gravity); this meant Eridani expansion caused a considerable increase in human physical diversity.

The Eridani were recent enough that present society has relatively good records of them and most of humanity has a relatively strong cultural memory of their society (present day Earth humans are one of the major exceptions regarding the second thing). The civilization that sent the colonial expedition to Earth in the late Pleistocene might be about as mysterious as the Minoans, the Eridani are going to be about as mysterious as the classical Romans or ancient Egyptians (that is to say, there's probably going to be some significant gaps in our knowledge about them, but their society will be basically pretty well understood by present humans, we'll know the names of a lot of their leaders and so on, we'll be able to read their literature, and a lot of people and institutions will have used continuity with them as a prestige claim over the centuries).

The Eridani probably sent a colonial expedition to Sol, but the Eridani colony on Earth did not thrive, eventually went the way of the Greenland Norse, and had minimal effect on Earth's history and cultural development. There might be a record of contact with them in some ancient Egyptian tomb inscription, if you know what to look for.

#my main SF setting

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