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sol-consort · 3 months

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Soooo which ending did you choose for ME3? :)

Call me a clothing hanger the way I'm about to abort this child A.I for ruining my dreams of having a family with Kaidan where he cooks dinner and be the malewife to my femdom Shepard who's the breedwinner.

I went with green :( I couldn't do it, I love EDI too much.

The thing is, I did reload after it and do red, just so Shepard may live.

But I think the A.I is wrong, I don't think our children will make the same mistakes with the synthetics.

What's stopping us from making A.I again? much like they repaired the mass relays, they can just rebuild EDI or the geth again and with enough time they'll gain their sentient back.

Idk man. The green ending felt...dirty? Wrong? Altering everyone's DNA just like that is ugh. It's like the only way for us to get along is literally to make everyone perfect without flaws and that's just bullshit man.

Our flaws make us alive. Of course there won't be any fighting or bigotry if everyone was just the same and experienced the world the same, like yeah no shit.

But it wasn't earned, was it? It's a magical fix it all button by completely erasing both organics and synthetics, just to create a mix of the two and force everyone to kiss and make up.

The idea was for us to get along despite our differences, despite our shortcomings and our limited understanding of each other. Duh you can love a machine if you saw the world the same as it does, but can you love a machine who doesn't even bother to add windows to gaze upon the stars outside?

And having Shepard give even more after they've just given so much? No I actually cried like I'm being so fr. Shepard went through a lot, especially in ME3 and they barely got to sit down.

Haven't they suffered enough? My poor heart. Too much angst. What did I do to you devs??? Even Dark souls had happier endings, fucking dark souls.

So have them just...give everything they have constantly to everyone and that's it? They threw themselves away? Their life? For what? They deserved a happy ending even if it meant an end to the legend. They deserved to sit under a tree and retire.

I had my theory on the reapers origin actually.

Okay so, yk the Kardashev scale right? This one here.

It was made to categories a civilization's level of tech growth and development. Mostly based on where they get their power from. If aliens ever exist, they'd be somewhere on this scale or at least remains of their technology would.

But there is this thing called the great filter. Each species during it's evolution is met with some big wall that they need to overcome in order to reach the next step.

Like how we evolved from basically bacteria in the ocean into the mammals we are today. We were animals, we share ancestors with the current apes on our planet.

So how come we evolved but they didn't? That's where the great filter comes in. Somehow we jumped over that wall and reached the next step on the staircase and became self-aware.

And we weren't the only ones, other homo species came before us and lived alongside us. Neanderthals for example! They were smart and buried their dead just like us, hell they were stronger than us.

But we are the only humans left, the homo-sapiens. Because apparently there was another wall that we crossed and began building a community, towns, money, laws and housing. Invented philosophy and discovered math.

We have zero idea on how we crossed that wall. It could've been the universe throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, we could be a miracle, an simple lucky streak of randomness that allowed us to get this far.

Now our current space travel future depends on that theory. Basically we could be the first ever species to look this far beyond the deep, or we could be very late to the party, both options are bad for us tbh. But I'm not gonna go into it.

There is this video that has information more about the great filter theory.

So I imagined the reapers to be like that, another great filer or a big wall. A test for space advanced civilizations to have to overcome in order to continue progressing and make a huge jump in their evaluation and technology.

Much like inventing fire was a huge test we passed, the reapers were simply another cold cave we had to get creative to warm up.

And each civilization that came before us has failed the test. They couldn't win the war and all their progress went down the drain. Much like many animals starve to death because they never learned to plant food like we do, it required gaining self-awareness.

For mass effect, maybe it requires the cooperation of the galaxy. Basically this meme.

So speed running accepting others and different life forms, power of friendship and all yk the drill.

Because the reapers, they do not feel, they are different from the synthetics like EDI and the geth. And because that's exactly where the protheons fell through despite their technology being ahead of every race in mass effect.

And I thought my theory was right when I met the star child and Levitation. That the reapers were a test made by a godlike civilization beyond our comprehension to make sure the only civilizations that ascend are the worthy ones who aren't corrupted by greed or selfishness.

But no :( it was just classic "BOO evil AI turns evil because we asked it to solve a problem and it concluded to do it by killing us BOOOOO"

Like oh my god, bruh, why cheese it? There is a time and place for corny stuff and that is not it.

That's why I didn't talk much about the levitation dlc. It had such a big build up only to never deliver.

I hate the double fake up twist they did with cerberus and other plots too. The whole

"Oh no these guys are bad"

"Oh wait nevermind they're kinda less bad actually, they only wanna help."

"HA we tricked you! YOU DUMB BITCH. You really thought they were good there for a sec? LOL. They are pure evil JK."

Like why even?? What was the point? Just an element of shock? You scrabbed a whole good story with potential for cheap shock???

Anyway. At least I can engage with the fandom now. Good think I have all these valentines chocolates leftovers to drown my sarrows with while I cope.

I am looking through the posts and damn...people are obsessed with Garrus. Did I miss something? He is nice and all but never stood out to me. No one talks about Ashley tho :(((

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liturgusakrattorum · 2 years

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runes story infodumping while i eat lunch :3 this ended up being a bit long so i’ll put this under a read more LOL

AtroCorp Biotechnologies is part medical company, part wildlife research startup. founded by Dr. Cassius Castellanos, the company's spent over 50 years finding ways to help humans by learning how animals have evolved to survive and incorporating it into their medical technology. Dr. Castellanos unfortunately passed away about a year ago, leaving his son, Corvus, to take up the reins.

during this year's international villains' convention, AtroCorp announced a partnership with Pave Nature, Inc. to build several new branches of its company. alongside that, both companies revealed a fantastic new technology AtroCorp had unearthed: Creature Power Runes. AtroCorp itself had been researching them for years beforehand, but they'd recently discovered the existence of several more beyond the few they already had.

Paisley, being this year's convention spokeswoman, introduced the Hunt — an international race among the villains to locate the remaining Runes. Whoever got their hands on one was free to use them however they wanted (they sell for incredibly high prices!). This obviously got the attention of Donita, Gourmand, and Zach, each for their own reasons.

Donita found that the Runes could be used for her new jewelry line, and the animalistic features that contact with one of them tended to create was the perfect way to accessorize her work. Gourmand believed the Runes could be refined into exquisite spices that he could sell at the next location he opens.

And Zach -- ever the robotic genius -- knew he could use the Runes to power his animal-based technology, should he find a way to tap into their full power. Plus, they were a hell of a lot easier to wrangle than live creatures.

Meanwhile, the Tortuga Crew (none the wiser to the Hunt that had been announced just a month or so before) have been doing their own research into the three Runes Aviva had found prior to putting the team together. At the time things kick off, the crew is in possession of the Arctic Wolf, Peregrine Falcon, and Cheetah Runes.

The crew gets roped into everything when Zach attempts to steal the Runes from them; Martin and Chris learn about the Hunt after stumbling upon Zach’s plans on his ship. The crew realizes. Hm! This could get ugly if the Runes end up in the wrong hands. And so they make it their goal to get their hands on whatever Runes they can before the villains do.

A majority of the story follows the crew as they travel around the world and do their thing (kinda similar to what we see in the canon show, except there’s that overarching plot of piecing together what’s happening in the background). Alongside doing their field work, Chris and Koki are working together to discover the origin of the Runes, although much of their research has turned up very little. The two of them have at least narrowed down their search to somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, but the exact location is still unknown.

Coincidentally, much of their progress comes from their run-ins with Pave Nature and AtroCorp. After discovering multiple excavation sites around the world, the crew learned that the two companies are looking for the same thing they are. (Also coincidentally, Aviva seems particularly uncomfortable every time the crew encounters AtroCorp...)

So far, Martin and Chris are the only ones who can use a Creature Power Suit. Aviva’s inventions are mostly compatible with the Runes, although there’s still a lot of malfunctions she needs to fix. The more the bros test em out, the better of an understanding she has of how Rune technology works. This actually ends up becoming the basis of the Creature Power Disks later :]

#wild kratts #wk runes au #this ended up being so long winded but this is basically outlining how everything kicks off LOL #would yall believe me if i said there's more. cause there's a lot more SDKJGHSDKJGH #skip speaks

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youngmasterwisdomperson · 2 years

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Okay, I know I’ve come up with time travel story prompts already on this blog but I just thought of another one so here you go. One of the biggest problem with traveling back in time is that going to the same position in space a certain amount of time ago isn’t going to land you on earth, because earth and, indeed, the entire solar system is hurling through space at ridiculous speeds, and has been since the beginning. So if you really wanted to travel to the past and end up on earth, you’d need to move a fair distance through space as well, which would require a lot of complex calculations and an entire space mission probably requiring a rocket that’s moving fast enough to escape the the sun’s gravitational pull.

So imagine if in some sci-fi future, time travel has been invented, and you can travel back in time to the exact spatial position you’re currently in with your current velocity conserved, but there are two major problems: 1) two objects cannot occupy the same space, so if you go back to a time when your space was occupied by something else, big explosion. 2) The Earth’s position is vastly different now than it was yesterday, and it only gets further away from your current position the further back you wanna go. As such, the people who go back in time must also be astronauts, and only the latest and greatest of rocket technology can get you far enough into space to go back in time at all. Not to mention the fact that the launch position has to be constantly recalculated by a supercomputer big as a room, so the dates, times, expected mission lengths, supplies and fuel costs have to be planned for literal years in advance, accounting for every possibility, such as for some reason not being able to launch on one of the possible dates and therefore needing to pack more supplies and prepare more fuel.

In other words, time travel is extremely difficult to pull off and ridiculously expensive. And that doesn’t even account for the possibility of making it back to the present, which most contemporary scientists conclude would probably be impossible except by the old fashioned way of letting time pass normally. So, who are our protagonists, and what event is so universally desired to be altered in the past that the people of earth are willing to pour so many resources into it? What sort of time travel is this? What measures are taken to prevent the grandfather paradox, if any? And what sort of obstacles will need to be overcome if this mission is to ever succeed? I can think of a few issues. For one thing, traveling far enough back in time could introduce future viruses to the people in the past, killing thousands and altering history to a catastrophic degree, so we’ll probably want some sort of sci-fi explanation for how they managed to invent a way to remove every single piece of potentially harmful pathogen from the bodies and ship of the chrono-astronauts.

I think that’d be a sick sci-fi book to read. Especially considering what the possibilities are in terms of what events people want to change so badly and why, or for what purpose they want to go back in time. Like, maybe evidence of long-dead alien life was discovered on a mining colony on Mars and people want to go back in time to study it. Maybe they want to travel back to study and rescue as many texts as possible from the Library of Alexandria prior to when it was burned, then stow them somewhere in a time capsule to be rediscovered in the present. Maybe they want to prevent the holocaust. Maybe long ago the world was set back to the Stone Age by nuclear war, and it’s decided that they ought to go back in time and ensure that the nuclear bomb was never invented. Maybe they want to go back and study dinosaurs up close and then stow their findings in a time capsule that can be found again in the future. Actually, if you go back in time far enough, the composition of earth’s atmosphere would be a lot less livable to a modern human, so it’d be like they were investigating an alien planet if they went back to when all the bugs were huge and there was a whole lot more oxygen in the air.

Wait! What if the method of returning to the present is like, some sort of cryo-sleep sci-fi thing, and maybe we could have one astronaut get woken up centuries early by some past individual, and the plot is this astronaut needs to gather the resources necessary to fix their cryo-pod without fucking up the past too badly. Ooh! This setup is a gold mine for story prompts. You can do a whole lot with this.

Anyway that’s my thoughts on that.

#my writing #writing prompts #sci fi #time travel #hard sci fi

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ezrasfics · 2 years

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Chapter 1.2 of my fic. Part one here.

This kinda turned into a hob-venting-to-dream thing but I hope it's okay! I really like it, and a lot of people look over the fact that Hob thought dream had abandoned him, and I wanted to explore that? So here u go. (There's so little of Ezra's original idea in here help, I hope it's implied enough)

Hob had never minded the state of his house, living for 8 centuries meant he collected a lot of things, and never had anywhere to put them, but suddenly he had this sudden urge to clean up. For fuck's sake, the anthropomorphic personification of dreams was coming to his house, he didn't want to be seen as messy in front of Dream.

Hob fidgeted with his keys, "I hope you don't mind, could you just wait here for a moment? It's… pretty messy in there," a nervous laugh followed as he waited for confirmation.

Dream furrowed his brow, "I do not mind the state of your home, but you may clean up if you so wish, I will wait here," he said.

"I'll just be a minute, honest," Hob promised, and quickly slid inside. He rushed to his living room, trying to gather the items on the floor and put them on his shelves in some sort of orderly fashion. Running to the door, he made one last check, and something caught his eye. The mirror. Judging from how Dream has reacted to his reflection in a glass, maybe a mirror wasn't so good to have around. Deciding it was too much effort to move, he found a towel, and quickly draped it over the glass. He put away his dirty glasses too, just to be safe. Realising his friend was still waiting, he rushed back to the door, "Sorry I took so long, I hope it's presentable in here," why was he so nervous? It's just a friend coming to his house, nothing he'd never experienced before, "We can sit on the sofa if you'd like. Hey, have you ever watched TV? Incredible invention, I must say. Oh Dream, you have no idea what humanity has done in the past century!"

Dream sat, eyeing the black screen in front of him, "No, I have not, I have not been around for the last century, unfortunately," he said.

Hob realised his mistake, "Oh, shit yeah, sorry Dream, here I'll put the TV on, and then I can tell you all about it, yeah?" He felt guilty now, he could never keep his mouth shut, could he? Turning the TV on, he flicked to some mindless show. He doubted he or Dream were actually going to be watching anything.

The two spoke for hours - well, Hob spoke for hours. Dream merely listened, nodding and asking questions when appropriate - about all the things humanity had done the past century, good and bad: The wars, the weapons they created, so far different from what he knew back in his time. He spoke about electricity, the television, cars, technology; they spent a whole hour going through Hob’s phone, Hob showing Dream what every individual app does, even how to use google.

“Oh, and I'm a teacher now. History, would you believe? I love it to bits, I really do, but do you know how frustrating it is when you know an account is wrong, but you can't explain it to the kids? It's infuriating! Did you know they still study Shakespeare too? Came into my class one day after their English class, still talking about him. I swear to god, what bargain did you make with that man?” Hob stopped for breath. He forgot how much he loved telling Dream about his life. It was always one thing he knew he could look forward to.

Dream smiled (again!), “No deal as cruel as you are thinking, my friend. He believed he could make other men dream, and I simply wanted to make that into a reality.”

Hob shook his head, “Of course, he always spoke about dreams didn't he? Is that what caught your attention?” Dream nodded. “You know, when you left me that night, in 1589, I was so jealous. Seems petty when I look back on it now.

Dream seemed surprised, “You… were jealous that I spoke to another man?” He inquired, head tilting to one side. For an entity out of human comprehension, he definitely acted human enough.

Hob realised his mistake, and felt his face get hot, “Well, when you put it that way, it seems really silly now. You- you were always just interested in me, and you were the only constant I had so… I thought you had… lost interest in me.” Hob didn't expect that answer to come out of his mouth, but it felt right. That is how he felt about it. He couldn’t shut up after that, “And then, in 1889, after our argument, I really thought you had enough of me. I thought I had worn my welcome. I was so sure that I would be dead soon after that, you know? I thought that was it, that's what I get to see, 500 years down the drain, just because I dared to imply you needed a friend. It got worse the next century. I thought maybe you had stood me up on purpose, that you were going to leave me immortal, but never speak to me again, leave me guilty and regretful of that night for eternity, and never relieve me of this… gift, no matter if and how much I begged.” He sighed out a breath of relief. “Wow, didn't expect to say that much.” Glancing over, he noticed his friend. Dream had sat there patiently through the entire thing, listening. He looked… upset? Guilty? Hob couldn't place the emotion he saw on Dream’s face, but it was definitely an emotion. So that's what it took? Hob ranting for a solid 5 minutes about where he went wrong? Wonderful.

Dream spoke slowly, as if he were afraid of his own words, “I am sorry, Hob Gadling. I did not mean to come off that way. I was… arrogant, and selfish back then. You were right. I have changed, and I hope you can forgive me for that. I also hope that my explanation for my… absence clears some of that confusion, for I did not miss our past appointment on purpose, as you know.” He looked up, and met Hob’s eyes, “I thank you for being my friend, Hob Gadling. And for everything you have… done for me.” he finished, eyes darting over to the covered mirror. He was thankful he didn’t have to look at his reflection, although they both knew he was too proud to admit that.

Hob slapped his knees, afraid of the awkwardness that was starting to appear in the air, “Well then, I’m sorry Dream, but it’s 6pm on a school night, and I still have to finish my marking, eat and get to bed at a reasonable time. Perhaps I can see you again, in less than a century?” he asked, hopeful. He was aiming for 50 years, maybe even 10.

Dream nodded, “I shall visit again soon, my friend. Perhaps much sooner than you think. May you have pleasant dreams, Hob Gadling.” And with that, he was gone, leaving Hob wondering how soon Sooner than you think really is.

#netflix the sandman #the sandman netflix #the sandman #dream of the endless #dreamling #dream x hob #hob x dream #every hundred years

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brianinjapan721 · 11 months

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June 5 - Musashi University

Today’s activities took place at Musashi University. Our first order of business was to attend a lecture by one of their own professors. He teaches second-language development/acquisition, but our lecture today was focused on identity. I discovered that there is actually a cross between these two topics because the languages we learn and speak affect the way we view ourselves as well as the way others view us. The lecture was interesting to me, but my favorite part of the day was getting to interact with Japanese university students from Musashi University. I tend to get a bit anxious in new social situations, so this was intimidating to me, but I am very glad I got the opportunity to do this. We talked about our interests, hobbies, and what makes us “us.” After this, we broke for lunch. After a great Malaysian curry meal, I was walking around the campus courtyard a bit and struck up conversation with another local student that was not part of the class today. We spoke a little bit about our majors and why I am currently in Japan. She asked for my instagram handle, which I happily obliged. I’m happy to make a new friend, especially someone that lives so far away from where I do. We then got a tour of the Musashi U campus. My favorite part about this was seeing all of the goats that they had on campus!

My group’s discussion questions focused on the growing popularity of AI technology. We talked about a few different aspects of this issue. For one, we talked about how AI is beginning to be used for people who struggle to find platonic and even romantic interaction. We all agreed that this is kind of a scary prospect. AI is not capable of replacing humans , especially for our social needs. After this, I brought up the topic of AI-generated art and how this is quite damaging to the community of artists that currently create for their work. This is damaging for many reasons; one reason that my group discussed was that AI uses the work of human artists to create these generated works. Usually, these human artists are not compensated or given credit for the AI work that is inspired by their creations. Another reason is that it takes away the humanity of art. Art is something that only humans can really understand, but the invention of AI art implies something different. I’m not sure what the future of AI is and what role it will take in our world, but I am afraid that it could do more harm than good. We also discussed fax machines. Interestingly, Japanese people still use fax machines regularly, which I thought was very odd (only because I have quite literally never used a fax machine before in my entire life and do not even know how to operate one to be frank). Overall, I really enjoyed the discussion with my group and getting to meet some Japanese university students from Musashi University.

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drawingconclusions · 11 months

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MORE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to surface in the news cycle on a weekly basis, and I continue to express concerns about this technology & how it's being addressed (or not addressed, to be more specific).

One of the arguments you'd hear from some of the proponents of AI a few months ago was a weak comparison to the introduction of the automobile. These proponents would claim (paraphrased) that as a society we didn't retire all the horses when the automobile was invented, so people shouldn't fear losing their jobs with the advent of artificial intelligence. Allow me to poke several holes in that argument. First of all, most horses here are domesticated and depend on humans for their shelter and food. Even if they lose their "jobs", so to speak, there's usually someone to look after them. And if worse comes to worse, they can always live off the land and eat grass, a thought that doesn't appeal to humans. (At least not to most of us.) I find many of the statements from some of these AI company CEOs to be just a little bit deceptive. While they claim that AI won't take away jobs from people, it's already happening here and abroad. Levi's infamously used virtual models for a recent photo shoot in the name of inclusiveness & diversity (instead of hiring human models of various races), the fast food companies are already introducing AI into their drive-thru processes, and I heard an overseas factory just laid off most, if not all, of its workers in favor of mechanized technology.

I wonder how many students will be bereft of much-needed income as a result of jobs lost to AI. I wonder how many single moms or elderly individuals on the brink of retirement have already been fired and replaced by this technology. Which is why I have almost no respect at all for the CEOs of these AI companies, and all their advanced degrees mean nothing to me: for all their technological prowess, they seem to have very little good sense. I repeat, can they not see the impending economic chaos that would result on account of mass layoffs & unemployment? Or do they actually want our society to be beholden to the government for our paycheck, in some kind of broad universal income ploy where we receive a stipend from the state (…with strings attached of course)?

You might think I'm fuming because I've lost a lot of work as an artist because of AI. Not quite. I've only lost one gig (at least, that I know of) due to this, and the project hadn't even been solidified yet. But I've heard of other artists whose cover work has almost completely dried up, for example. And that's a pattern that will likely be replicated across various creative spectrums in this new world of ai.

My concern is Congress is only just now beginning to hold hearings on this. And so far this administration has only provided a few nebulous guidelines on the AI and allotted, what hundreds of millions of dollars to a few new government research centers on artificial intelligence? Not sure why that's needed, but you can be sure there are people in government who would like to use AI for nefarious purposes, to either control, surveil, or collect data on its citizens. It's quite telling how many of the tech CEOs were tight-lipped about the details of their recent meeting with VP Kamala Harris. And it's enlightening how many of these tech executives are heading off to Europe for another highly secretive annual meeting. Sorry, but discussion on topics such as this should be completely open and transparent.

Sure, the CEO of OpenAI recently welcomed regulation for his industry in the hearing before Congress, but I'm not too impressed with that. If you recall, Facebook made a similar statement, and yet Congress hasn't done much to regulate the failings of the company in the years since. I don't have much time today, so instead I'll post a second article on my personal website to share a few ideas for addressing AI.

In closing, I realize that sometimes the church is often a late-comer to new technology, and other times, believers use tech in exactly the same way people outside the church do. Part of my frustration with many of these AI CEOs is the fact that they don't create software or release it based on a biblical perspective of doing good towards others. But as believers, we're supposed to be different, and in many instances, we're called to set a higher standard for others to follow. So if you use artificial intelligence in your church or business, take time to implement the proper privacy and security protocols. But also be sure you don't use it in the same cold, heartless manner in which many are employing it today.

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lightholme · 1 year

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It is myopic to say that those 1 in 10,000 innovate in a total vacuum.

The reality is that those 1 in 10,000 are merely the final junction of innovation. The point at which many ideas synthesize into the output of some invention.

The fallacy is thinking that you can extract the 1 from the 10,000 as though the 1 has value and the 10,000 do not.

Einstein, for example, described fiction stories as being a fuel for many of his more profound ideas. And those fiction stories were doubtless built atop the experiences of an individual in a society.

Einstein was also famous for talking long walks daily, and these walks were often cited as prime thinking time for him. Even a walk requires those people who maintain the grounds. The knowledge of how to pour concrete and maintain it, and the labor to actually do it.

How can you take Einstein away from the world he lived in and think you'll still get the theory of relativity from him and him alone? Even he would have told you that's not how all of this works.

To look at the theory of relativity and think it came from one person is a baffling failure to understand the complexity of human endeavor. To ignore all the mathematicians and physicists and scientists great and small, laboring across millennia, who made it possible. All the people who helped nurture Einsteins developing young mind, who helped him survive to adulthood and thrive. The fiction writers who provided the fuel for his imagination, and provided the words that let his brain soar through the stars and imagine our universe from the perspective of a beam of light. There are 10,000 people and more who are inextricably linked to the theory of relativity, even if we only remember the name of the person who actually wrote it down

The fallacy is us continually stack-ranking humans. Looking at their output and thinking that they, and only they, are responsible for that output. And this simply is not the way we work.

The technology behind AI may be incredible, but what is the code behind a LLM without the billions of humans fueling the data behind it? People writing across forums, exchanging information with one another just as we are now, with no expectation or thought for the profit behind it.

Only an imbecile believes a person is reducible to an economic unit. Our power is as a people. A network. Is the internet just one computer? No. It isn't even many computers. It is a protocol, a system of communication and creation that is not reducible to it's component parts.

Humankind is a network, and it is our responsibility to nurture all the nodes in our network. Not to put a fucking dollar value on each of us, not to rank and rate us according to a scale of how much profit they can provide a nest of parasites. It is impossible to calculate the real value of a life. Impossible to comprehend how many other people an individual may inspire, how far along the wake of the arrow of time their work and words may travel before becoming exactly the thing required for us to expand our comprehension of our own universe.

Van Gogh, now regarded as one of the most imaginative, innovative, and transcendent artists of all time, was hardly appreciated for most of his life. There are very few people today who don't know his name, who have not been awed and inspired by his many works, but he had just barely started to get traction amongst his peers by the time he died.

Imagine if some corporate shitheel of the day had sneered down at Van Gogh and said he was a waste, a layabout, not one of those 1 in 10,000. Imagine if his works, some of which are considered so historic and important they are quite literally priceless, were chucked into a bin because they couldn't make a proper buck for a suit.

It is not possible to properly estimate the value of an individual. Which is why every individual must be afforded the opportunity to express themselves, in whatever form that expression takes. Because it is there, in the confluence of all of us reading, writing, painting, and theorizing, that true progress is made.

You can say that's a sentimental notion, but it isn't. The corporate conception of human worth isn't realistic or pragmatic, it's childish, simplistic, reductive and stupid. It is a view which appeals to the stupid and which makes the individual all the stupider for embracing.

The realistic perspective on the reality of humanity is that every human mind is unique, and that the value of its expression can not be properly understood or evaluated by anyone. If Van Gogh's value could not have been properly understood by his contemporaries, how can anyone out there dare say they have the capacity to judge the true value of anyone?

Humanity is billions of unique nodes interlinked, communicating, building. No single person is smart enough to truly understand the emergent properties of that network. Just as the creators of an artificial intelligence don't fully understand what their creation does, or why. No single person has the capacity to properly attribute all the essential influences and inputs that lead to a tangible output. The capitalist needs to pretend they can, because profit is dependent on ownership, and ownership is based on the delusion that you can justly compensate someone for their output.

Everything around us is only possible because of the size of the network of our species. We have gotten where we are despite the divsionary forces like capitalism that exploit and detract from our ultimate potential. Long, long before we printed paper money, we built tools, we conquered the animal kingdom, we created languages out of nothingness and abstracted and codified the concrete properties of our material reality on stone tablets and paper, because it is who we are and what we do.

The delusion that profit is behind innovation is one that humanity is far the worse off for sustaining. It isn't within an individual that the spark of innovation resides, but in the connections between us. And the more each mind and voice among us is given the opportunity to contribute to that web of connection, the richer we all become, even when we have not the capacity to understand the true value of someone's contribution to us until many years or decades after their time has come and gone.

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tokiro07 · 1 year

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I forgot to post about why I didn’t like Singular Point

To put it simply, it’s just that the human cast didn’t have a single actual character in it

No one had an arc or a personal conflict or even really any semblance of a relationship with anyone else

They had the appearance of that, like with Kamino apparently being old friends with Haberu, but that didn’t really come up past their initial scene together and I honetsly forgot about that detail pretty much immediately

All anyone ever did was talk about philosophy or science, like they were just trying to teach me about 4th dimensional physics while using kaiju as a pneumonic device

Hell, they had half of Kamino and Yun’s conversations on fast forward, so I barely even had a chance to absorb what they were saying and I felt like I missed a lot of relevant details

I couldn’t even glean what message they were trying to convey; the original Godzilla was a critique of the invention of WMDs and the resulting cultural impact they had on Japan, Shin Godzilla was a critique of the Japanese government’s response to the Fukushima disaster and their political subservience to foreign nations, but Singular Point is about...technology...? I guess...?

Not that technology is bad per se, because Jet Jaguar saves the day in the end, but it didn’t give the impression that it was either taking a stance or even analyzing the pros and cons, it just...had technology as a theme

Godzilla was barely present and only became a threat in the latter third, but even then he didn’t feel like he was all that important. Godzilla was just a manifestation of the Singular Point, and even while they were trying to figure out how to defeat it, they were dealing with a flock of Rodan or Solunga instead. It didn’t seem like Godzilla mattered all that much and was only there to put his name on the show

Hell, Rodan and Anguirus were the only other actual Godzilla kaiju, the rest were all originals or unrecognizable, and between the two of them, Rodan didn’t even look like Rodan. Anguirus was far and away the best part of the show with a cool update to his design and an interesting new power by giving him precognition and allowing him to deflect attacks by oscillating his spikes. Sure, he got killed, but so did the rest of the kaiju, and Anguirus had a really impressive glow-up in the meantime, so I appreciate his contribution for what it is

Any kind of character development or an understanding of the personal motivations and anxieties outside of “stop the apocalypse” would have been really appreciated, but instead everyone was just a mouthpiece for technobabble that just barely managed to convincingly explain what was happening and why characters were doing what they were doing at that particular moment. If I knew what was at stake aside from generically “the world” then I might have been more invested; if Yun had some greater purpose for Yung aside from just having it around to eventually become Jet Jaguar, if Kamino was like...I don’t know, up for tenure or something...just some kind of personal stake for the cast to care about and for me to relate to

If any given episode had a self contained narrative that made them stand out as “the episode where X happens and Y character learns Z lesson” instead of allowing them to bleed together as vaguely broken down scenes from a particularly long movie, I might have been able to remember or take something away from each episode

They had a sequel hook for another season, and I don’t particularly care one way or the other if they make it, but if they do, I really hope they give whoever the characters are some real dialogue that demonstrates who they are and not just how smart they are

#toki watches godzilla

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jhlnm · 1 year

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Vannevar Bush, technological advance, and the "memex"

So as to not leave this blog completely barren of content until next week when I actually have lecture content to speak about, I thought I'd muse about an article from the recommended reading for the module - "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush.

This is a piece from 1945 which speculates about the technological advances that Bush expected to be made by humanity, and his predicted inventions of the future are fascinating in how conceptually familiar and yet completely foreign they are. Take, for example, this excerpt:

"The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut ... The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken."

Though he may have been a little off on some of the finer details like the cord, what Bush has essentially predicted, almost 70 years ahead of time, is the GoPro. I think that the fact that it was possible to conceptualise such a thing when the technology to realise its creation had so far to go before it was feasible demonstrates a certain predictability of human behaviour - our demand for greater convenience and ease of use in our technology that makes it obvious we might seek to create a gadget like this.

Bush's most interesting "invention", in my opinion, is what he dubs the "memex": a sort of desk which contains within it thousands of books, scholarly articles and literary works for convenient perusal:

"A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

The memex's resemblance in terms of purpose and function to technologies that exist in our time are striking, and yet its physical description is completely alien - a desk full of tiny pages of documents to be microscopically enhanced and displayed on its surface, with buttons and a large lever for navigating and turning the pages. Safe to say that with the mobile phone we were able to drastically improved upon the concept here, but that in itself is fascinating, in that our phones, computers and other devices that we use to fulfil the same function as the memex rely on a technology that Bush likely could never have imagined, in the internet.

Our documents aren't stored in tiny print inside our desks, but rather in cyberspace, hosted on servers miles away. Quite frankly I'm not well versed enough on the working of the technology to describe it any more accurately. But I find it striking that our modern world is so dependent on a technology that even the foremost scientists of the past could have never predicted.

"As We May Think" was an incredibly thought provoking piece. For me it provoked two specific thoughts - first, that the human behaviour can often be very predictable. These predictable behaviours shape the world, and the technology we create for ourselves. Secondly, though, the solutions we find using technology, and those technologies' converse impact on us and the way we think and behave is far less predictable. The advent of the information era has undoubtedly changed us as people; how might we change, or be changed, by inventions yet to even be conceptualised?

If nothing else, I think the memex is a very cool gadget-that-might-have-been.

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hexdsl · 2 years

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Writing tools - in reply

In reply to a recent question I was asked, in real life, by a human I realised that there is a perception that I change writing tools a lot. The common video of me is that I move between tools enough that every time I am asked, it appears I have more to add.

In truth, this simply isn’t true.

This is the workflow of my main writing tool:

Vim → Scrivener → Word

Vim was what I started in, because I used Vim a lot already and knew how to move around quickly. I didn’t yet realise the reasons that people work with very large documents used word processors. As soon as I did, I wanted something technical because I was already using Vim. I landed on Scrivener (which is excellent btw! Zero hate! great tool!) Ultimately, my tinkerer mindset lead me to mess with the software more than actually write. In the end, a good quality hole to put words into was all I really wanted; I ended up following the common wisdom of just using Word.

Then there is the path of my ‘support tooling’ - spellcheckers, grammar tools, thesaurus, and others

Grammarly → Pro Writing Aid

Along the way, I came to reply on WordHippo.com extensively.

I simply found PWA to be a better tool than Grammarly, not because Grammarly is bad, but because PWA is better. No bad choice there, not really. I did mess with LanguageTool for a bit. I found inconsistent, overall.

The one tool that I have moved around a lot with is my notes.

A text file (Markdown) → One Note → Evernote → Notion

The traditional ‘nerd’ logic of just using a text file formatted in markdown only took me so far before I lost track of it. Now, when you realise that I keep a ‘dossier’ on each character I create, every piece of technology I invent (from a writing point of view) every location, lore, tool and idea. The Denouement notes file alone is about 300 pages. On top of that I have Hunter’s Garden notes. And then there are the three planned novels I have started writing up.

That’s without the many notes relating to my actual life. There are hundreds of those too.

Over all, I use notes a lot. The text file soon became a little unmanageable. My requirements were simple. I wanted something hosted, not self hosted. I am an idiot and will lose anything I am left in charge of without fail.

I was already paying for Office, so One Note seemed obvious. It lost a bunch of things… which made me mad. I lost faith in it and went to Evernote.

Evernote was great, loved it but it was a little visually unsatisfying and put some odd limits of how deep I could go with sub-notes. I had already bounced on Notion more than once.

Eventually, after being told for the ten millionth time how great Notion was, I gave it another try. This time, I landed on it so hard that it power’s HexDSL.com and Trendy.HexDSL.com.

I am very happy with notion. It’s missing a few features, like, I can’t send emails to it and its tag system is a little wonky (imo) but it offers reliable syncing and it’s so easy to use that I feel like it’s magic.

In the end, my writing tools are this:

Word

ProWitingAid (I use the plug-in)

Word Hippo

Notion

I came to these pieces of software via testing and trialling. Nothing I use is a default simply because it’s well known or because it’s obvious. I’m a technical person and after much testing, I have fallen down on software that’s incredibly mainstream.

The perception that I obsess over the tool’s rather than actually writing isn’t true. Heck, I have my second book this year coming out in December. I do the writing but I make YouTube videos about the tools because I love testing them. It’s been a long time now since I have been tempted away from Word.

I wish someone would bake Word Hippo into Word with an addon or something because the built-in tool is shocking. 😞

Also, its worth mentioning, and not for the first time that being committed to a tool is dumb! If something come’s along thats better than Word, ill Crtl+a and then Ctrl+v into the new thing because there is no lock-in with text, other than that which you inflict on yourself.

Word is fucking great though!

#blog #writing #tools #novel

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thewildwaffle · 3 years

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Humans are Weird - Helium

It's been a while since I got a new story up. I'd been working on some other projects, then had some pretty unhappy life events happen. I am doing fine, so don't worry. Hopefully, now my muse is back and will stick around a while :)

This story is from a prompt ao3

*** *** ***

When you bring together a wide variety of races from different planets and environments, you tend to have an equally wide variety of needs that need to be met from species to species. Ships were typically staffed by a food and nutrients safety team. Custodial teams were careful about residual chemical and oil cross-contamination between particular races. Sections of hab suites had controlled ventilation systems that could be set to various atmospheric needs. Outside the hab suites, at work stations or in communal areas, some species have to be fitted with atmospheric filters. Over the years, these devices have gotten less uncomfortable, thankfully. They weren’t the best, they were a bit bulky, noisy, and in some cases obstructive to the wearer, but hey, being able to properly breathe on a ship with beings who had different atmospheric needs than you was more important than comfort. When the humans joined the galactic community, the newer filters started becoming noticeably smaller and less obtrusive. Many were concerned that the changes would make them less effective, but leave it to the humans to tinker around and invent the impossible when they really wanted to. The latest models were supposed to be so small and comfortable, you could sleep with them on. Heck for some races, you could barely tell they were wearing an atmospheric filter at all. Not only that, they were up to 40% more effective at filtration and gas delivery for many species. This opened up crew rosters for ships. Species who couldn't reasonably be stationed in the same ship due to the gases they breathe being dangerous to others, or vice versa could now be on the same crew.

That included duibs like Marvi who breathe large amounts of helium. She’d been serving aboard Galactic Coalition ships for more standard solar rotations than many of her fellow crewmates had been alive. It helped that duibs were long-lived, of course, and in her time, she’d seen many new technologies come and go. If you pressed her hard enough, she’d likely say that the atmospheric filters the humans developed were by far her favorite. Being able to safely and comfortably pass through different atmospheric biomes was an important ability when you had a long list of custodial and maintenance duties each rotation. Marvi huffed a deep sigh as she rounded another corner. Lighting beam replacements weren’t heavy, but maneuvering them around corners like this was a bit of a pain. “Need a helping paw Marvi?” Marvi turned to see a dark gray priso steadying the end lighting beam she was carrying. The furry face was relatively expressionless, but a clear look at his flicking whiskers and triangular, alert ears and bright eyes told her that he was holding back laughter. He must have just come up from around the other corner and seen the small duib struggling. “Oh, hello Aurrin. I definitely would appreciate some aid, though I would understand if you are busy right now,” Marvi replied politely. Honestly, the help would be very nice and she hoped the offer was serious. “I’m waiting for Human Karl, I can help until he gets here,” Aurrin rose to his back paws awkwardly and grabbed the ends of the light beams in his dexterous front paws. Priso were normally quadrupedal on flat ground, but the forested terrains of their homeworld meant they were at least somewhat adept at grabbing and climbing. He followed along, holding on to the light beams and kept them away from the walls and corners as the pair walked. “I was actually just installing something by the hab suites over there,” he tilted his head back to gesture behind them, “I’ve got something I wanted to test before I go off duty. After that, I’m looking forward to two whole cycles of rest and whatever I want to do.” The corridor here was darker and Marvi stopped walking. This was where she needed to replace the light beam. “Two whole cycles, huh?” She set down the light beam carefully, Aurrin following suit. She pulled out a tool from her hip pack and started working on opening the control panel. In order to open the panels to install the new light beams, she had to make sure power was redirected for safety. “What are you going to do with your time off? Any fun plans?” “A few plans. They might change depending on how my experiment goes.” Marvi worked quietly, waiting on the priso to expound, but other than chuckling to himself, he didn’t say anything more on the topic. Well, Marvi supposed it was not really her business, so she changed the subject and chatted cordially until the new light beam was installed and she rerouted power back to the panel. The darkened hall was filled with bright, cheerful light and Marvi let out a satisfied sigh. “Well, that’s that. Another task down.” The old light beam would need to be taken back to her shop for a repair and gas exchange, or refill, or whatever it ended up needing to get it up and running again. “Thank you again for your help. I should be able to get these back alright myself, I don’t want to take up too much of your time if you’ve still got your experiment to run.” From around the corner of the corridor, the distinct sound of a hab suite door opening was followed by approaching footsteps. A light on Aurrin’s comm device flashed and the priso’s long tail flicked excitedly back and forth. “No worries, it looks like my experiment is already underway.” Marvi felt the frills all along her body perk in curiosity, but before she could ask anything else, Human Karl rounded the corner. He grinned without showing his teeth, as it would have been a sign of aggression to many species on the ship, and gave a small wave as he approached. “Hey Karl,” Aurrin started. Marvi only partially listened as he started in on a spiel about his upcoming off-duty

plans. Instead, she was more interested in a quiet hissing noise and was trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. It sounded like… well it sounded almost like an atmospheric filter, one beside her own. Hers was in light operation since she was in a sector of the ship that was tuned to a generalized setting, but this noise sounded like a filter at full power output. Did Human Karl hear it? Could he hear it? Surely Aurrin could? She studied them, they didn’t seem to notice. The noise had started when Karl arrived, did that mean…? Her suspicions were confirmed the moment Karl opened his mouth to reply to Aurrin. “I’m actually on my way to…” What. The. Frewan? Human Karl’s voice, which was usually a calming deep tone, was disturbingly high and unnatural. The surprised expression on his face made Marvi’s core freeze. That meant this vocal change wasn’t some weird human thing? What was going on?! “I, woah,” the squeaky voice stuttered, “is this… helium? What is this? What’s going on?” He looked at the comm device strapped to his wrist and pulled up the readout. Sure enough, it was an increase of helium output from his atmospheric filter. The skin on his forehead wrinkled as he looked from the readout to Marvi and Aurrin, his eyes finally locking on the latter who was fiddling with something on his own comm device readout. “You punk! How did you do this? Change it back!” Karl started laughing a bit, Marvi wasn’t sure if it was directed at the ridiculousness of his voice or if it was because the helium was affecting his cognitive functions. She worried it was the latter. Panicking, Marvi approached to see if there was some sort of override. She had to act fast! Humans didn’t breathe helium, he could die! Before she could do anything though, Aurrin spoke up while trying to muffle his laughter. “Okay, okay, hoooo… I’ve deactivated it, you’re good. Keep talking though while your voice turns back to normal, you’re hilarious.” Karl gave him a look that Marvi couldn’t interpret. “What was that? How did you do that?” His voice was already back to normal and it sounded like a mix between annoyed, intrigued and amused. “When you came out of your hab suite, you passed a sensor I set up that overrode your atmospheric filter controls. My latest invention. Imagine this: a ship gets attacked and boarded. Normal defenses prove insufficient and the crew is in grave danger. As the hostiles pass hidden sensors, their atmospheric filters are overridden and they fall asleep, get loopy and confused, or simply pass out before they can get to and harm any crew.” Marvi and Karl blinked in unison while Aurrin’s tail swept side to side proudly. Marvi was the first to find words. “Your… your experiment?” Marvi glanced between Aurrin and Karl worriedly, “Is this what you were experimenting with? You ran it on a crewmate?!” “Well,” Aurrin’s ears pulled back slightly, but his whiskers still kept their amused look, “I say experiment pretty loosely. This was more of a field test. I ran all the actual experiments long ago. I knew exactly what would happen. And I did research on humans and I found out what effects helium has on them and I had to see it for myself. That’s why I was waiting for Karl.” The human in question was still laughing a bit - of course, a human would be able to laugh after nearly being asphyxiated, they’re crazy - before he ran his hand over his head to compose himself. “So this was a prank?” “For science.” “Of course. For science.” Karl’s smile suddenly morphed into a thoughtful frown. “Wait. Is this payback for the soap thing I pulled on you last week?” Aurrin’s face was statuesque and solemn as he stared silently at the human for a moment. “Yes.” “You’re the worst.” “Thank you.” “Want to go do this again in front of Aylin? She and Maruti-kar would think it’s hilarious.” “I had been planning on it. But only if we can get video evidence of it.” “For science?” “Naturally.” Marvi watched, hearts still beating rapidly from her panic, as Aurrin and Karl deactivated and retrieved the sensor to reenact the stunt she had just been a witness

to. Almost reflexively, she started tracing the side of her atmospheric filter. The quiet hum and hiss were calming. Helium to her was life. She’d thought it was toxic to others. And yet Aurrin thought it fine to use it on a human, and Karl was not only unworried about it but found it funny. Was it not dangerous?! And his voice? Why did it do that? She pulled up a search screen on her comm device and searched in the human database. Helium. Breathing. Voices. Apparently, helium took up space in their lungs that normally would be filled by oxygen, so yes, it was dangerous because they could asphyxiate. It also amplified higher-pitched tones of their vocal tract while simultaneously dampening lower tones because of the gas’s low density. That explained the voice change. And for some reason, the funny noise was enough of a reason to play around with deadly materials. Well, if anything, she supposed humans did keep to their MO pretty well. She picked the spent light beams back up and headed back to her shop, careful to not hit the ends on any walls or corners.

#humans are weird #space orcs #humans #aliens #helium #science #writeblr #original writing #space #spaceships

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cordria · 3 years

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Twin Cores - DP

Saw this headcanon on Tumblr… awhile ago? It stuck with me, and I ended up writing this, and now I can’t find it to give the person proper credit. Lemme know if anyone recognizes this idea and knows who came up with it. (heart)

Was gonna do this idea for the Big Bang thing, but I forgot all about signing up. ;) Wonders. So I’ll just post it and come up with new ideas.

~2,700 words.

Danny floated high above the clouds, up where the air was thin and cold and the stars sparkled brightly overhead. It was terribly late, and Danny knew he’d be paying for this at school tomorrow, but this was always the best part of his week. He couldn’t come up here all the time, but when he cound, he always found himself relaxing. Hands behind his head, he floated on his back, studying the stars.

He let out a breath through his lips and brought a hand forwards to massage his chest, closing his eyes. Yesterday had not been good day. An accident with some of his parents’ technology had completely ruined his day. For reasons Danny didn’t understand, his chest had felt overly full since. Almost like he needed to cough up something - which couldn’t be, because his ghost form didn’t have any real lungs to cough with.

With a groan, Danny stretched and rolled his body through a bunch of sharp loop-the-loops and twists, hoping maybe he could work out the kink. Nothing. Hopefully it wouldn’t prevent him from getting a good night’s rest. He was exhausted.

He floated for a few minutes longer, watching the sky and hoping for a meteor or two, slowly turning the overfull feeling over in his mind. He pushed and prodded at the odd sensation, trying to come up with what in the world it could be.

It had to relate to his parents’ invention. Unfortunately, the day was a fuzzy blur in Danny’s memory and if something in particular had happened to him, he wouldn’t be able to remember it on his own. All he could do on his own was a vague understanding of what had happened.

Getting zapped with one of the newer devices yesterday had resulted in Danny getting split - again. His ghost half had fallen captive to the hero-like obsession of his core, and had gone on a hero-spree. A memory of rescuing a cat from a tree in a very overblown, comic-like way surfaced and Danny buried his face in his hands, embarrassed for himself. “Ugh, I hope nobody videoed that. Or anything else,” he muttered.

His human half had wandered aimlessly through the day, not knowing what to do with no driving force behind everything he did. Vague memories of eating pizza and not noticing the ghost haunting the place next door until Sam pointed it out filtered through the shadows.

From what he remembered, it hadn’t been a horrible sort of day for either half of him. His ghost half had been allowed to play with his obsession all day and his human half had gotten to just be… human. But he’d been split for much longer than ever before; Tucker and Sam were unable to work through how the strange invention worked.

Danny didn’t remember being much help with the endeavour. In fact, he sort of remembered his human half stealing the device, passing it to his ghost half, and the thing getting placed on top of the school for the afternoon. Jazz finally got it using some of the newer modifications to the Fenton’s vehicle that allowed it to fly.

By the time the three of them figured out how to reverse the effects, it was late in the evening on the second day - more than 36 hours since being split. Phantom had started to turn more and more ghost, losing more of his humanity each hour, delving deeper and deeper into this hero obsession. His eyes had turned more ghostly, teeth sharpening, fingers turning into claws. Even a cape had started to mist into view.

Danny slowly ran his tongue over his teeth - they were still a bit too sharp - and pulled his hands far enough away from his face to glance at his fingers. They weren’t claws, not like many ghosts had, but… his fingers no longer really looked human. The changes that had happened to his ghost form the last two days appeared to be permanent, even now that they were rejoined back together.

Danny… didn’t want to think about that. Not yet.

And his human half had started to go through changes as well. Danny vaguely remembered - towards the end of the escapade, when he’d convinced himself that he didn’t want to be rejoined with Phantom - trying to avoid everyone and ending up in a tree, floating in a very inhuman way. His totally human form regaining some of its ghost powers.

Danny mentally poked at the odd, full sensation in his chest again. Perhaps it was that his ghost powers had grown while he was separated. Phantom hadn’t been exactly a half-a-ghost when they’d been slammed back together. And Danny had been just a bit of ghost too. Perhaps now he was somehow 60% ghost and 50% human… and his body was trying to adjust to being too much ghost.

His mind poked at the sensation in his chest just a bit too hard. Danny slammed his eyes shut tight as he felt the sensation of transformation travel through him - lightning sharp and aching into his phantom bones. Panic set in a second later. He couldn’t transform up here - there wasn’t enough oxygen for his human form to breathe. He’d pass out and fall to his death.

He gasped and threw his arms out, instinctively trying to grab something even though he was on the edge of the atmosphere, as the transformation arced through his arms and legs. He kept his eyes closed as he fumbled for his ghost side. He needed to transform back fast. His human side would already be aching to breathe, desperate for oxygen after the last hour of being in ghost form.

But his ghost side… was…

Danny opened his eyes as he realized he wasn’t falling. As he realized his ghost form wasn’t something to grab for, because he was still a ghost.

“But…” he whispered, startled and confused. He’d felt himself transform. There was no mistaking the sensation that had swept through him. He looked around, almost as if the answer would be written in the air next to him.

Then the stars caught his gaze. He froze, mouth falling open, as he stared up at the sky. There were more stars than before, the whole sky alight with points of light. And he knew them - with each star he focused his eyes on, he knew what that star was. How far away it was, what it’s name was, what kind of star it was…

Delight sparkled inside him as he let his gaze drift across the heavens. Stars he didn’t even know existed seemed to soak into his skin, whispering all their secrets in his ears. “How…?” he breathed, twisting around and around and looking everywhere he could. “Why?”

His gaze snagged on the moon, crescent-shaped and gleaming. He almost felt like he was drowning in it’s glow, feeling everything about it. The ice hiding in its craters. The human-built machinery peppering its surface. The soft warmth still coiling in its dying core. He could just… go there. He could be there in about three seconds. He could just…

He threw up a hand, blocking the moon’s glow, blinking hard and pushing the thoughts out of his mind. “Holy shit,” he whispered, breathing hard, focusing on Earth, on human thoughts, on normalcy. “What is this?”

Then he saw his hand, thin fingers topped with sharp claws, glove missing. His forehead furrowed as he realized both his gloves were gone, as was the logo on his chest, and the white belt around his waist. A black shirt and black pants. His boots looked like his normal shoes, just moon-lit white. Actually, minus the claws and some color changes, he looked… like he had yesterday. “Uh… What is going on with me?”

He could feel the pull of the stars overhead. He knew he could just lean back, put his arms behind his head, and float there, watching the sky forever. Just revel in space for all time. Instead, he kept his gaze down towards the tops of the clouds.

At least the first step of what he should do now was clear. Whenever he was dealing with anything out of the ordinary, Sam and Tucker knew what to say. They’d help. He’d go home, grab his phone, and call them.

Danny flew towards Amity Park-

-and suddenly drew to a stop. He twisted around, eyes wide, realizing that he’d somehow overshot his home by a dozen miles or more. “What the fuck?” he said. He’d only been flying for a moment - how was he all the way over here? “I…”

He licked his lips and tried again. He set his gaze on Amity Park and flew-

-right past Amity Park again. It was an eyeblink of time between one side of the city and the other. Danny hung in the air, confused and slightly annoyed. “What is going on?” he said. A new power, obviously - but one that had unfortunate timing. His fingers curled, the claws digging uncomfortably into his palms. “This is what I get for leaving my phone behind,” he groused. The phone wouldn’t have done well in the thin, cold atmosphere. Even if he’d have brought it with, there was no guarantee it would have still been working.

“Are all my powers wonky?” Danny asked, raising his hand and pushing energy into his hand. Instead of a steady, gas-like glow, the energy sparkled and hissed, like he was holding onto an exploding firework. “Odd.”

His powers were working differently, so it was time to try using them differently. Time to change tactics. Instead of focusing on a direction, Danny focused his mind on a destination. He closed his eyes, picturing where exactly he wanted to end up. Opening his eyes and taking a deep breath, he tried to fly as slowly as possible.

The world seemed to blur and twist, glowing uncomfortably bright for the fraction of a second Danny allowed himself to be in motion. When the world settled back into place, Danny found himself hovering about ten feet off the ground, within the city of Amiry Park, only about a half-mile from his house. “That worked a lot better,” he said, rather pleased with himself.

Instead of chancing another attempt at flying, Danny figured he’d turn himself human. A ten foot drop wouldn’t be too bad, and he could walk home. It would be the least-tricky way to get home. He took a moment to worry that this new power would prevent him from turning human as easily as normal, but then slammed that idea shut and closed his eyes.

Danny pushed his ghost form away, pulling at that warm and heavy feeling in his mind. There was a sparkling sensation in his mind, then the sharp pain that came with turning himself human again. He dropped, landing lightly on his toes, breathing a heavy sigh of relief that at least this was still normal. He bounced a few times, testing out a few basic powers - invisibility seemed to work like normal, as did phasing through things. He didn’t try floating, for fear of accidentally ending up two towns over and two hundred feet above the ground in human form.

He walked home, rubbing his chest at that strange, too-full sensation, and snuck in the back door. Despite the fact that all the lights were out, he kept himself invisible to avoid his parents. It was so far past curfew that Danny didn’t even want to think about the trouble he’d be in if they realized he was still out.

His bedroom door was still locked. Danny phased through it, flipped on the lights, and dumped himself into his bed. “Ugh,” he groaned, feeling the drain of the last two days on his body. He glanced over at the clock. Just before two in the morning. Part of him wanted to just curl up in his bed and fall asleep, try to get a few hours of sleep before tackling school tomorrow. But too much of him had a tight ball of anxious curiosity.

He groaned as he rolled out of bed and stepped in front of his mirror. He looked awful. Dark rings under his eyes and a horrible, pale tone to his skin. He looked half dead. “On the positive side, nobody will question it if I want to stay home sick tomorrow,” he muttered. He shuddered and shifted his weight, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then triggered the transformation.

His ghost form spread like lightning across his skin, slammed through his head, and settled into his chest like a cold ball of fire. He squeaked one eye open just a touch, not sure of what he was going to see.

Phantom was peering back at him. Danny relaxed, letting his eyes open, and studied himself. From more than a few feet away, he looked absolutely normal. But up close, there were minor changes from the last few days. Teeth that were too pointy. Fingers that were a little more claw-like than normal. Hair that was more… smokey. Just a little. His mouth twisted, unsure of how he felt about the changes. “At least there’s no cape,” he murmured. “I’d look too much like Vlad with a cape.”

He squared his shoulders, set his teeth, and tried flying. He floated up and moved around his bedroom like normal. “So normal.” He caught sight of his claws and shivered. “Mostly.”

“Now…” He took a deep breath and jabbed hard at the over-full feeling in his chest. He was half-hoping nothing would happen. But light sparkled along his body, that tingling almost-painful sensation changing him in very subtle ways. His clothes changed from a jumpsuit to shirt and pants, his shoes looked like they would squeak on the floor as he walked. He was still glowing and transparent. “I’m… a different ghost?” He spread out his arms, feet firmly on the floor afraid to hover. “And I have like… superspeed.”

He took a very careful step forwards, peering closely at himself in the mirror. His eyes looked the same, with the normal green glow. His teeth were sharper, canines almost like little fangs. And… he leaned in, studying his freckles. They glowed, star-like, forming constellations across his skin.

His mind veered off tangent, remembering the stars overhead, the glittering facts that swirled through his mind, the odd bubbling joy that came with even thinking about space. The freckles on his cheeks rearranged themselves into the constellation Draco, and sparks and speckles swirled into life across his clothes. A supernova that resolved itself into the stars overhead. Danny could trace the stars in his clothes, knew everything about each star. He was caught by the strongest urge to fly there. To zip through space to Alrakis, a binary star system eighty-eight light years away. It would only take him 221 years, 5 months, and 3 days…

Danny jerked himself out of his thoughts. He couldn’t fly for over two hundred years. He shuddered and blinked, settling back on his heels. The glowing freckles on his face settled down, his clothes faded back to black. The familiar sort of pitch-black of space. The sort of black Danny imagined the universe looked like before stars existed. “I have space powers now,” Danny realized, his voice slow and excited. “I have space powers! I’m a space ghost!”

Curious, Danny poked at that over-full feeling in his chest again. The world tingled and flashed, and he was back to his old self. Phantom, with the logo and the better posture and the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. “I’m two ghosts, somehow? Two ghosts… and a human...” Danny stared at himself in the mirror. “Or...” he rested his hand on his chest, feeling that strange overly-full feeling. “Or something…?”

Danny shook his head, not sure where to even begin processing that one. Then he turned himself human again, watching the world get dark as the ghost energy faded away. He scratched at his scalp, trundled over to his bed, and dropped into its softness.

There wasn’t much he knew right then. The first was that space powers were the coolest power he could have gotten. And the second was that all this would be easier to process after a few hours of sleep and a large cup of caffeine.

#danny phantom #twin cores #space core AU #this was fun to write #thanks for the idea :)

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fernpost · 3 years

Text

Cycle 0 - Interviews

[read on ao3]

[next]

Taako Taaco. 114. Elf. Wizard; Specialization in transmutation and inventive magical applications.

Previous experience: Top of class at Tredore, Academy of Magics and Technology; recently graduated.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of petty theft.

Davenport likes to think of himself as calm and composed. It’s hard to throw him off. He has to be in order to have gotten this far in his mission as fast as he has.

But when he turns around from shutting the door to see his interviewee with his feet kicked up on the table, twirling a wand through his fingers, he’s a little shocked. He’s been doing these interviews for two days now, and even the more relaxed and confident people have held a bit more sense for decorum.

It’s a bit rude.

It’s also a little interesting.

He sits at his desk, pulling the elf’s papers away from his boots (shiny, and though they look expensive he can see they’re worn down and well taken care of) and glances down. “Tell me, Taako Taaco, what makes you want to explore the planerverse?”

“Bored.”

If the feet on the desk threw him off for a second, that floors him entirely. “Bored?”

“I’ve got nothing else to do on this plane, why not, you know?”

“No burning desire to go further than any being has gone before?” That’s one of the normal responses, the well-planned out speeches he keeps getting in response to his opening question.

The elf crosses his feet, leaning back somehow further into the provided chair. Davenport worries for a second that he may fall as he continues on, “that’s cool too, I guess. But I figure, why wouldn’t you want the great Taaco name aboard your ship.”

Davenport picks up a pen from his table and makes a small note on the paperwork, “no offense, Mr. Taaco, but you’re rather cavalier about this interview that determines whether or not you’re accepted into a program that may redefine our understanding of the world.”

The elf shrugs and takes his feet off of Davenport’s desk, flashing him a smirk, “you’ve seen my sister’s paperwork, yeah? No way you’re not going to accept her, and we’re a package deal. Says it right there in bold at the top of my application, my man.” It does, in fact, say that at the top. Cursive words noting how he refuses to accept any position on the ship if his sister isn't there too. When reviewing who he was interviewing today, he saw similar words on Lup Taaco’s paperwork.

“You’re very confident in your sister’s abilities.” Davenport begins, pausing for a second as he notes the way the elf begins to tense up before continuing, “however, I wouldn’t sell yourself so short. You also graduated top of your class, and excelled in the art of transmutation multiple times. One of your letters of recommendation even noted how you made many spells easier to cast, somatically speaking.”

“What can I say, I’ll find any short cut I can.”

Davenport makes another note on his paper. “Now, I do need to ask about your record of petty theft.”

“Oh, natch.”

Lup Taaco. 114. Elf. Wizard; Specialization in evocation and applied magic regarding planar research.

Previous experience: Top of class at Tredore, Academy of Magics and Technology; recently graduated.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of petty theft.

“Lup Taaco, it is nice to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Captain.” The woman in front of him smiles. The resemblance to her brother couldn’t be more clear, and though her demeanor is quite similar, she at least doesn’t have her feet on his desk.

Not that his desk is anything fancy, but the point stands. “I’m not technically the captain yet, you know.”

“Potato, potato.”

Davenport is fairly certain that’s not how that phrase is used. “You did research into the planes at Tredore, correct?”

“Quite a bit, yeah. I’m sure my brother told you?”

The slight tilt of her head and lit of her voice tells Davenport this is some sort of test, which is confusing and a bit disconcerting, considering he is the one conducting the interview. He checks a quick box on his papers. “He talked you up a bit, yes. But this is your own interview, and I wanted to discuss your own knowledge with you, personally.”

She smiles, a touch more warmth to it than her previous attitude. “Oh, of course. Did quite a bit of studying at Tredore. First real school we attended. Kinda boring at times, you know?”

“If you’re accepted into this program, it’s going to be four intense months of studying and teaching you the more complex workings of the ship. Plus the two months of actually being on the ship.”

“That’s the fun stuff. Not a third semester in a row of another language I already figured out most of years ago.”

“How many languages do you speak, Ms. Taaco?”

“Including common, five languages.”

“Impressive.” Davenport himself only speaks three. “Now, I would like to ask you about your criminal record, if you don��t mind?”

Her smile grew sharp as she laughs.

Honestly, he isn’t surprised. Her explanation is the same as her brothers. Grew up on the road, needed food and other items on occasion. Didn’t always run fast enough. Davenport can’t fault them, and certainly won’t hold it against them.

He glances down at her paperwork, about to ask another question about her education, when she speaks up. “I’ve got a question for you, Captain.”

“Oh?”

“The ship- we’re really going with the name ‘The Starblaster’?”

Davenport sighs. He knew this question was coming, but he was expecting it to come during a press conference from a reporter, not a potential shipmate. “Yes. To be fair, it was a communal name we put to a vote from everyone who worked on building the engine.”

Ms. Taaco smiles. “Dope.”

Barry J. Bluejeans. 37 years old. Human. Wizard; specialization in applied magic regarding bonds and planar research.

Previous experience: Current assistant professor at Duffman University of the Arcane, part-time employee at the Institute of Planer Research and Exploration.

Criminal Record: Previous altercations regarding necromancy; no crimes against the nature of life and death ever committed.

Mr. Bluejeans is an interesting man. By the look of him, you’d expect to see him fumbling his way through a PTA meeting for his two kids. Instead, Davenport is staring down the word ‘necromancy’ on his paperwork on an application regarding literal planar travel on a ship called 'the Starblaster.'

So far, the interview has been going well. He’d listened to the man explain his research into the arcane, and he’d understood planar travel as well as any of the current scientists and engineers at the Institute. He was called in often for conferences and meetings about the bond engine. He’d seen the man walking around on occasion. They’d never been in a meeting together before, but he’d seemed nice.

But he also had a history of necromancy.

Now, Davenport doesn’t like to judge people. However, being in an enclosed space with someone who needed to specify he had never technically committed “crimes against the nature of humanity” isn’t the most comforting.

But, he was a smart man. Easy to get along with, too. So far. Necromancy notwithstanding.

Best to get it over with, “so, Mr. Bluejeans. I do need to ask about your criminal record-”

“Oh! Yeah, I never killed anyone. Or un- killed anyone. Uh, resurrected, I mean. Just did lots of studying into the application of necromancy and necromantic spells. Got in trouble because I toed the line of ‘research’ and ‘bringing my cat back to life,’ but got a stern talking to. Didn’t try it again, and don’t plan on needing to deal with those types of authorities again.”

Okay, normal enough answer, far as the situation applies-

“My current research into it has stayed purely theoretical, and it won’t interfere with the mission at all.”

So the man is still into necromancy.

Davenport glances down at the man’s file, thick with it’s attached papers Bluejeans has done on planar research. He’s not even stuck up about his level of education, and that’s extremely rare for the field.

Holding back a sigh, Davenport asks, “Can you explain the paper you wrote on the outer planes interactions with the inner planes for me?”

It was a really good paper.

But the man is still into necromancy.

Lucretia. 20. Human. Chronicler; Specialization in journalism.

Previous experience: Due to multiple NDA, she is unable to give us the exact number and titles of books she has written, but she sent letters of recommendation from Duke Rensburg, Lady Norabelle, and Warren of the Seatree Clan.

Criminal Record: Acquisition and attempted use of a false ID.

“So, Ms. Lucretia, I understand you cannot provide us with most examples of your works, but from what you have provided, you seem to be very, very good.”

“I like to think so, yes.” The young woman in front of him seems polite. She’s quiet; he saw her waiting outside with a few others before her interview, and while most of them were engaged in some awkward small talk, she sat away from them. Likely partially due to her age- she is much younger than the people outside- but she also simply seems quiet.

Which wouldn’t be the worst quality in someone you would be sharing a small, enclosed space with for an extended period of time. But, if she couldn’t bond with the others sufficiently, the bond engine won’t work.

(Hell, the bond engine was already finicky, they figured out the tech only a month ago, and they only have four months to bond an entire crew to pilot it and-)

“Can you explain to me why you acquired a fake ID and tried to use it at a, uh,” Davenport glances down at the records in front of him, holding back a chuckle, “at the forbidden section of the Library of Runar?”

Lucretia looks uncomfortable for a second, and he’s sure if the lighting in the room were better he would be able to see her flush with embarrassment. She gives him a hesitant smile, “I can’t get into the explicit details, but I was working on a book for an older client whose memory was becoming patchy, and I wanted to confirm some details before I put their name to it. They wouldn’t allow me into the section without the proper documents, but my client refused to agree that I should double check his work, even though I was almost certain he was wrong, so I simply… found a way to get past their guard. I wasn’t going to steal anything and I was going to use the proper equipment to read through the documents.”

Davenport smiles, “pursuit of knowledge and truth is important to you, then?”

“I don’t think spreading lies, especially in that context, is very honorable, no.” Her hands are folded in her lap now, and she seems a bit more relaxed.

Considering the others he is planning on accepting, he may be wrong about her getting along with them. Anyone willing to break the law just to prove an old man wrong would at least get along with him. Davenport refuses to have any pushovers aboard his ship.

Magnus Burnsides. 19. Fighter; Specialization in protection fighting and mechanical engineering.

Previous experience: Current bouncer at Apex Club. Currently enrolled in Gallier’s Fighter Academy and College.

Criminal Record: One count of assault and battery, appealed for defense of another person present. One count of indecent exposure and public intoxication.

Davenport will be the first to admit it can be tricky to follow human aging patterns, but he knows he’s not mistaken in thinking the man in front of him is barely out of “child” territory. Nineteen is a very, very small amount of time to be alive. Also, a very, very small amount of time to learn important things, like how to run what is basically a ship right out of a science fiction novel- complete with breakthrough technology.

Despite this, it’s hard to not find the young man in front of him to be endearing, and mostly knowledgeable in the things they need him to be.

“Magnus. You’re very young, one of the youngest applicants we have. What makes you think you’re qualified as the head of security of the ship?”

The young man in front of him- Gods, he really is young- grins and lifts his arms to flex, a show of pride and ego almost unbefitting of an interview setting, “Have you seen my muscles? I’m very strong, and a very good fighter.”

Many of today’s interviews have been quite different than he was expecting.

“I was referring more to job experience.”

“Oh!” Magnus shifts in his seat, fingers drumming against the table as he thinks. “I worked as a bouncer for a club while I was in college and did, if I must toot my own horn, a very good job. You should have a letter of recommendation from the owner-” He leans forwards, reaching a hand out as if to look through his own files to show him the letter.

“Yes, I did read through it. She was very thorough in stating how eager you were to help.” Davenport glances down at the papers in front of him, holding back a sigh. It truly was a glowing review of this young man. While his grades from the aforementioned college weren’t the highest, especially in classes one might consider important for an institute of planar research, the two letter of recommendations he submitted from teachers of his explained how Burnsides was very persistent when he wanted to learn something he didn’t know. He also had taken quite a few classes regarding vehicles- not enough to claim the young man was an expert but enough to provide a solid basis to show him how things worked and could be repaired on the ship.

The kid’s attitude was something of a breath of fresh air in this place. However, there was one glaring concern.

“I was also a bit concerned about the criminal record we have on file for you. Assault and battery as well as the indecent exposure and public-”

“In my defense for the second one, I was drunk with some friends and maybe thought it’d be funny to streak in the lake. Who hasn’t been to a party that gets a little out of hand.” He holds his hands out as if to say “am I right?”

Off the record, Davenport is inclined to agree that he was right. On the record, he is choosing to ignore it. “And the assault and battery? The file says it was in defense of a young person.”

Burnsides grins, “that’s how I got hired as the bouncer!”

He waits a moment, expecting Magnus to continue. When it seems the young man is assuming that is enough explanation, he prompts, “by beating up a man outside the club?”

“Yeah! He was harassing someone outside, and I was walking home and passed by. I told him to step off, and he didn’t. So I decked him, and he was out right away.”

It lined up with the records he had, and honestly, seeing someone so ready to step up to the defense of a stranger was a good quality. Better than some of the older applicants who were much more… formal in their training. He wonders briefly how Burnsides would react to an altercation against someone with magic.

Glancing down at his records, he guesses he would run headfirst without thinking.

Stifling a small grin, Davenport continues, “Now, tell me. Assume we’re up in space, and something goes wrong with the bond engine. What would your course of action be, Mr. Burnsides?”

Merle Hitower Highchurch. 214. Cleric; Specialization in botany, religion, and medical treatment.

Previous experience: Current botanist at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration. Professor of botany at Narvick’s University for four years.

Criminal Record: Multiple counts of loitering.

The door is pushed all the way open before Davenport can even call out the next person.

A short dwarf slides into the room with a wide grin, “hey Dav!” A mug of tea is pressed into his hands.

“Hello, Merle. You do know this needs to be at least a little formal, yes?”

“Formal schmormal. Ask me your silly questions already, bud.” Merle Highchurch, resident botanist at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration, plops right down in the seat he’d taken to commandeering once a week, for the past three weeks.

Davenport had seen him around before, but a botanist in an institute designed for exploring other planes that had little capabilities to actually go to those places yet was rarely busy, and even more rarely called upon. He still barely knew the guy, but after the day they’d gotten stuck in the elevator for ten minutes when it broke down, the dwarf had come to his office for tea each Wednesday.

It was a bit strange, but the tea was good.

“Tell me about your work experience.”

Merle laughs heartily, “they barely have me do anything around here, ‘cept tend to the couple of plants they’ve grabbed from the ground plane.”

“It’s the Elemental Plane of Earth, and don’t sell yourself short, Merle. This is basically a job interview, you know.”

Merle slurps loudly at his own mug, “aren’t you planning on nepotism hiring me, because we’re buds?”

“That isn’t even what that word means, Merle.”

“Isn’t it?”

Davenport stares into the tea, “is this made from the Earth plant?”

“Maybe?”

Davenport. 276. Captain and navigator; Specialization in mechanical engineering and arcane components combined with contemporary technology.

Previous Experience: Crewmate on the Lady Blue for twenty years. Graduated from Grensville University. Current staff at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration.

Criminal Record: Unlawful resistance of orders from captain, raising of commotion on board ship while employed.

Davenport handed the six files over to Selune, “These are them.”

The halfling woman flips through them, eyebrows raising higher with each one she sees. “You’re sure you grabbed the right ones? A few of these I understand, but you do know we had the Issaiah Broler apply.”

He folds his hand in front of him, nodding. “I also know that during the interview he made me want to pour my tea on his lap. There’s no chance of getting the bond engine going with him. These are the six I picked. They’re all qualified- and the ones that are less educated in the specifics in the field I’m sure will pick up on the important information quickly. The Taaco twins already will give the bond engine a huge boost. Ms. Lucretia will ensure we have everything chronicled, something I’m sure you can appreciate, Selune. Mr. Bluejeans previous work shows he will thrive given the opportunities awaiting us. Mr. Highchurch is an educated man, and I trust him to keep the crew healthy and provide ample information on anything botany related we encounter, and I’m certain Mr. Burnsides will provide ample help in any task we show him how to do.” He sighs, glancing out the window of her office. There were a few people lingering outside in the courtyard of the Institute. “We have been given a tremendous opportunity to explore beyond what we can imagine, Selune. The last thing I want is to be bogged down by people stuck in their ways, who have been working in this field long enough to have their preconceived notions about what to expect and who will react badly when they’re proven wrong. I trust my own judgement in picking a crew, and I hope you trust my abilities to get these people ready to set sail in four months.”

What he doesn’t say is that he doesn’t want a bunch of stuffy jackasses on his ship. He’s not even sure picking all the over-qualified people would pass through the higher-ups' inspection of the crew. The people he picked were qualified enough to get a quick sign-off, but not too much. Anyone “overqualified” would probably get rejected. The ship had been built in basically six months. It’d get them off the ground, sure. It wasn’t going to explode on them once they got up there, but it wasn’t safe. There was a reason Davenport was the captain at all.

The six candidates in those files didn’t have a name for themselves as “important” to any stuffy scientific group or noble family. These people he picked were just that- people. A group of people who he believed deserved this opportunity. If anyone was getting the chance to make a name for themselves- to have the chance to redefine everything they know about the planar systems, he wanted to make sure they deserved the chance. A dangerous chance, sure. But what was science if not a little risky.

She sighs, opening the file on top. Her hand reaches for her pen, “Davenport, I got the final say on the name of the ship, I suppose the least I can do is give you final say on the crew.” She begins to write ‘approved’ at the top of the file, flipping through each one before giving him a pointed look. “But when I get angry calls about how you approved a bunch of nobodies and two people not even old enough to drink, I’m transferring them straight to your crystal.”

“And I will not be answering a single one.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Captain.”

#davenport #taako #lup #magnus burnsides #lucretia #barry bluejeans #merle highchurch #taz balance #the stolen century #my works

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permafusion-stevonnie · 3 years

Photo

So this idea isn’t leaving my head. While I’m not going to get it started for now, since I want to concentrate on my current Stevonnie comic, ideas are still ticking away and I just really wanted to draw this cover for the idea.

Maybe I’ll get its own page started in time. I’ll let you know if I do. But even if I did, I wouldn’t expect regular updates to it, not while I’m working on Together Forever.

I want to quickly say something that I think some people may have gotten confused about when I was talking about the Fallout Universe before:

Crystal Gems are still called Crystal Gems, but their role is similar, but not the same as the Brotherhood of Steel. In that they are isolationists, who will try to protect humanity from dangerous gem technology, and corrupted gems. they aren’t bothered with human mutants, human problems, or human technology. But I feel that, ove time, Steven will help their character growth away from this and help them, at least, start opening up to the local comminuty and helping where they can.

Homeworld Authority is still called Homeworld, or The Authority, but take on a similar role to the Enclave. They view themselves as the rightful masters of earth and they’re automatically more superior to any other lifeform by birthright.

I have been thinking over what could have occurred to create this world, how’s this for a (work in progress) backstory: (ended up a lot longer than I thought it would, so I’m space saving by putting in this break)

The Gem colonisation of earth happened later than it did in canon. A couple of thousand years, maybe. Unlike the 6000 years ago in canon, it was perhaps 5000, or maybe 4000 years ago. Enough for a bigger human civilisation to take part in the gem war for earth.

Pink still gets her colony started, still changes her mind about it, and finally chooses to become Rose Quartz to lead the rebellion. I think the human zoo will still be made, because I like the idea of that being around to give a mash-up of the human zoo and the mother ship zeta dlc from Fallout 3.

What really diverges from the timeline is when the rebellion starts fighting back with larger groups of human allies. 4000 (or 5000) years ago we are talking some good military strategies, chariots, bows and arrows, cavalries and tactics, etc. Some research will be needed to really flesh out the lore.

Homeworld, facing a bigger threat than a hundred or so rebels, puts a little more effort into research and development of newer technologies to counteract the human strategies. Nothing develops technologies quite like war.

Rose and the others start capturing some technologies from Homeworld and start studying them to not only understand them, but even attempting to reverse engineer them. They obviously won’t be able to replicate the weapons in form, but hope to do so in function.

This is where Scribes would come in for the Crystal Gems are the replacement for the Brotherhood of Steel that I’ve talked about before. Some Gems and some clever humans, would dedicate themselves to trying to understand the newer Gem technology they’re starting to see.

With inventive people like Bismuth to build their own version of it.

The actual Gem Technology will be locked away in the temple- or whatever name I may give it- but the remake versions that the Crystal Gems turn out will be spread far and wide.

I’m just thinking off the top of my head, but it’d be like- if they tried to make their own version of the gem destabiliser, it would be like a giant tuning fork hooked up to something similar to a large Baghdad Battery (google it, it’s kinda cool) that they would carry in a backpack.

The war would carry on like that, with Homeworld making new tech to combat the threat, sooner or later the rebellion captures some, they make their own version of it, and Homeworld makes new tech to combat the threat.

This drain on resources does take its toll on Homeworld though, and their war against earth is perhaps much shorter, between 300 and 800 years, I haven’t decided yet.

Things do play out similar to canon though. Homeworld decides to abandon earth as a lost cause, implant the Cluster so they’ll get something out of the deal and the three Diamonds blast the earth with their powers as a final middle finger to the rebels.

Gems are destroyed, except for the original Crystal Gems, and Bismuth! Canon Bismuth made a lot of regular weapons and armour and the rebellion was still losing. She was driven to making the Breaking Point because she didn’t think they had a chance of winning any other way. In this new canon, however, because Bismuth was working on newer and newer weapons all the time, each one she was confident would help turn the tide of the war, she never had chance to work on the ultimate weapon of the Breaking Point. She may have designed it, or may have the idea kicking around the back of her mind, but never got around to building it.

Rose does her thing of finding somewhere isolated to live in both peace and regret for the war. This is where the Crystal Gems become isolationists

With the Gems gone, humans are left to their own devices with all this more advanced technology than they should have in this point in history. Tech continues to develop with this head start.

Fast forward to the year 1929 and people are living lives as you’d see in the Fallout universe in the 2070′s. Nuclear fulled cars, robot assistants, laser rifles and power armour and all that other stuff.

The reason I chose 1929 is two-fold. The first Fallout game was set 84 years after the nuclear war, and 84 years after 1929 is the year 2013; the year Steven Universe first aired.

The failing of the world is the same reason the Fallout universe failed. Resources started to become scarce, wars started over what remained and the whole thing was escalated by a race that may have been too young to fully understand the forces they were really dealing with, having come a long way, but still too fast, thanks to the ancient interference.

Nuclear hellfire rained down and some people took their shelter in the vaults, while everyone else had to find ways to survive outside.

Rose and the Gems stick to their isolation as humanity all but wipes itself out. Rose is heartbroken to see the beautiful world that she fought so hard for, so easily destroyed. There can be a lot to explore there. Maybe Rose will leave the group, maybe she’ll just wander off and be alone a lot but still return to the temple eventually. I haven’t decided yet.

Perhaps all the gems will have some additional guilt, knowing that their old tech is what pushed humanity so far so fast.

Fast forward 70 years and Rose meets a travelling wastelander named Greg. They fall in love. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here mostly because I haven’t really thought too much about it, but partly because I know I want it to be explored within the story itself to show how different from canon it would be. Not just the flashback elements from “Story for Steven,” and "We Need to Talk," with a Fallout flair. I want to work out some other nice adventures to bring them together.

Rose and Greg come back to Beach City with Rose expecting their baby.

Steven is born and the Gems immediately take custody, with the logic that their secure base is a better place for Steven to grow up than the harsh wasteland. Greg is allowed to visit as often as he likes, but not stay there. Nor is Steven allowed off the base. They want to protect the legacy of their leader, Rose.

I’m going to say that Steven starts showing hints of Gem powers around 10 years old. Nothing he can control. Perhaps his Gem glows when he’s really happy, if he falls down some steps his bubble forms but immediately pops so it’s just enough to save him from injury. Little things like that.

But this serves as a point where The Gems start “encouraging” Greg to visit less and leave the raising of Steven to them, as his upbringing has now become “Gem Business”

Steven may have snuck off the base once or twice to see the world beyond the base, but after this he’ll do it a lot more often to see his dad and the Beach City settlement.

I think Bismuth suspects he sneaks off but both can’t prove it, and doesn’t want to try and prove it, Garnet knows but says nothing, both of them are letting Steven have his fun, and Pearl has no idea he does it.

Amethyst is not part of the group in the beginning, she’s out as part of a raider gang somewhere. Thank you to theyarheeguy for giving me that idea, and many others, to work with.

A total of 84 years after the bombs dropped, Steven is now 12 years old, sneaking off the base for another visit to town, when he spots a pretty young girl dressed in a strange blue jumpsuit, emerging from a hidden trapdoor that was underneath the old Beach City water-tower.

Steven is 12 because I believe that’s how old he was when the show started. Based on the timeline, the passing of the seasons and so on, he has to have a 13th birthday that we don’t see on screen, before we do see his 14th birthday.

#art #my art #cover #fallout #Fallout AU #Steven Universe AU #long post #lore dump #work in progress #wip

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