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some of my fav 'inconsistencies' between the prequel trilogy & the OT and by fav i mean i genuinely think these were good calls:

it is NOT normal for Jedi to become force ghosts when they die. that's like a brand new skill Yoda just unlocked. if Luke tried to tell ppl about Obi-wan's force ghost literally no-one, even ppl who were familiar w the Jedi when they were around, would know wtf he was talking about

R2-D2 knew everything that went down during the prequels and just opted not to tell anyone ever which is fully in-character for him

becoming a Jedi was a whole process involving 15+ years of training and formal trials to determine if you were ready for knighthood and then with Luke Yoda was just like 'yeah fuck it you're a jedi knight now. burn the jedi temple did. made up all the rules are. gives a shit who does.'

everyone just kind of forgot who the Jedi were within the span of a generation. love that.

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Behind the scenes for this movie are hilarious he’s just a happy guy😭

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They were my first ship before I even knew what a ship was-

The alien/predator franchise needs to give us a human and Yautja duo again. Trust.

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Jotun, Oni, Baron & Warlord Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

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Motivational quotes

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Turns out my worldbuilding friend is a long-time classic doom fan and already has many thoughts regarding the modern canon... Well, this is about to get delicious 😈

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Another small point where the concept art seemed far more intriguing than what we got is Urdak.

In these works, Emerson Tung depicted Doom's "Heaven" as clean, bare, mechanized structures floating in a dark void on volcanic rock. There are some wisps of teal light floating around the black sky, but it's a very subtle contrast and could've even been interpreted as the Argent energy being funneled into this realm.

The stark contrasts and white, artificial lights illuminating these far too pristine and almost barren structures gives it all a very oppressive and exposed feeling. Even if you're wandering alone in these halls, it feels like you are being watched, judged, from every angle.

Coupled with the golden lightning, the black sky gives this impression of sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm, while the flat rock makes me think of the bottom of the ocean. For the latter, it also aligns perfectly with the maykr's squid-like features.

With the way everything has this clinical muscle and bone look to it, it very much feels like a different kind of hell. There's faces and skeletal imagery built into every wall—even the sparse trees are blood red and veiny. It's hauntingly beautiful and very, very wrong.

To me, much of this contrast was lost in the actual game simply due to a change in lighting and a mild overabundance of foliage...

Compared to the concept art, it ended up feeling too busy, too alive. There's far too much going on and the oppressive atmosphere is lost. Instead of feeling creeped out and exposed, it feels like a literal walk through a park, where barely anyone would even notice you if you passed them.

Hell's sky is constantly burning and broiling, while the land itself is packed with messy, cramped ruins full of dark corners and lava pits and the screams of the damned. Having Urdak feel too clean, too empty, too quiet—dead—would've been a great way to portray this artificial "Paradise" as the polar opposite of hell, but just as much of an extreme.

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If there's one thing Doom: The Dark Ages did right, it's giving him those big beautiful brown eyes.

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Watched my friend play Doom: The Dark Ages, which in turn made me want to replay all of 2016 (always a treat) but as soon as I touched Eternal, I immediately remembered why I never think about the modern Doom canon beyond 2016...

Maybe it's just personal taste, but even with all the wild new worldbuilding and general air of "What the hell happened?" (intrigued) Doom 2016 still felt like it had a consistent, relatively grounded direction and prominently anti-capitalist theme connecting it to the original era without getting too crazy in the power fantasy.

This might just largely be due to the way they cannibalized Doom 3's convoluted story into an action-packed abridged version, but still...

I don't hate the concept (and they did give it a vaguely "poetic" although shallow end in the TAG DLCs) but I can't say I was ever a fan of the whole "divine origin" direction Eternal took for the characters. To me, 2016 presented this idea of becoming something greater in spite of the circumstances, instead of being born special.

Samuel Hayden in his initial appearance was obsessed with being better, being more—his Codex entry quotes him explaining his new giant body with "You never know when we may need a hero." which actually perfectly explains his apparent obsession with the mythical "Slayer" and his betrayal at the end of the game. To me, it gave the impression that he was a classic rich man with a literal god complex, who wanted to make himself into the hero the Slayer was forced to become. Back before Eternal, it actually left me excited for a sequel where we essentially tear this False Savior Hayden would presumably present himself as from his self-made throne.

VEGA started off as inhuman and extraordinary as an AI, but was ultimately a tool made to serve, no matter his apparent potential. So when they added that brief little choice of Doomguy backing him up on a chip before his destruction, I was looking forward to what they might do with him in the future... and the conclusion that this AI was actually God who betrayed True God and became even more of a perfect and detached entity than before was, uh, not exactly what I had hoped for. One would think with the overall themes presented in 2016, the goal would have been for something so detached yet shackled, to become grounded and free. But Oh Well.

And then there's the Doom Slayer. Last time you checked, this was just some unfortunate space marine who would defy all odds and become the physical embodiment of the indomitable human spirit. He would go on to fight demons in hell forever, so others wouldn't have to and because he had nothing left to lose. Suddenly waking up chained to a rock with bizarre new implications that somewhere along the way he became a sort of legendary warrior beast thanks to interdimensional space templars sure was wild, but it worked because he couldn't care less. The UAC was up to some demon summoning bullshit again and there was some self-important CEO harping on about how the death and suffering of millions was "necessary" and so Doomguy was pissed.

The bits and pieces of this "lost past" as a legend among the Night Sentinels wasn't as important at the time, but it did leave me curious and open-minded to what exactly it would entail and how exactly that random marine ended up as the Great Slayer, sealed in a sarcophagus. However, a point of contrast I had hoped to see emphasized between him and Hayden would've been that he didn't care about any of that and even if he was hailed as some kind of demigod, he was still just an absurdly determined and justifiably angry human guy. He was fighting demons and walked through hell not because he wanted to be a hero or for some huge legacy, but because someone had to.

While Eternal (and eventually The Dark Ages) would go on to expand on some of that mysterious "legacy," it really wasn't the direction I had hoped for and just left me with more questions and somewhat disappointing answers...

That said, it's doing things to my brain and... No... Don't go there... I shan't write a Doom 2016+ Canon Divergence AU Fic...! Not now!! ...aaaaAAAAAARRFGHHG!!!!!!!!! (opens document)

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Genuine question: How does the Stargate actually work, logistically.

Forget the wormhole-science for a moment—how do you know if an already active wormhole is incoming or outgoing? What happens if you try to step through an incoming wormhole? What if you try to enter the "back" side of it? Is it really one-way only and if so... why? How can you tell without potentially killing yourself?

I think I remember instances where, apparently, you would only rematerialize on the other side once "all" of you passed the event horizon... so what happens if you're attached to a rope? Would you only show up once the first gate is shut off? Would you be lost?

I know there's some inconsistencies throughout the series, so I'm curious how it's generally rationalized (in the overall canon or just among fans).

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When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

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how is he not everyone's favorite character

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A collection of Daniel Jackson temper tantrums.

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Okay, so it's a massive pet peeve of mine when sci-fi stories feature humans gallivanting around unfamiliar alien worlds without any general protection or care. No suits or other gear, no reservations about food (or physical contact...), etc etc. You know it.

Since I'm slowly working out which aspects to keep or not in the rewrite of my old Atlantis AU, I was just reminded of some major changes... about how they deal with other planets.

I'll go more into it under the cut, but for the poll:

Beyond tests and other precautions, they eventually get some high-tech environmental suits to use when going places. I know it takes away some of that casual-tactical charm and affability, making them stand out even more than they already do... So I'm wondering.

The idea is that in this universe they try to be more conscious of these things—being mindful of infections, their own microbial footprint on other worlds, refusing un-tested food and so on. All of that comes with its own challenges and consequences, particularly when social norms are involved.

They do have some relatively standard protective gear and measures typical of the early 2000s, but also make use of the Ancient tech available to them, like the scanners. While they don't have them from the get-go, I liked the idea of them stumbling into some advanced environmental suits they'd scavenge and retrofit for general use.

However, that's something I wrote back in 2015 and since then, a friend has also suggested it would just as much make sense for Stargate Command to come up with their own solution—perhaps even use Atlantis as a debut. They have more of an eye for design than me, so a way they envisioned one could keep the overall feel of their uniforms is via two "contemporary" versions.

The "light" version would be more akin to a flight suit with gloves and boots, but leave most of the head exposed. An easily removable full face mask could then serve as an air filter and protect the eyes. It wouldn't change their silhouette and even leave the faces visible enough.

For more extreme environments requiring something fully airtight, that "heavy" version would come into play. This one's rather like the practical space suit common in modern sci-fi (see: Space Odyssey or No Man's Sky) with a little more built-in armor. They would still be fairly limited in an actual vacuum, though.

With 7-8 years of experience, you'd think the SGC would've learned a thing or two. Hell, even a quick glance over our own history should've been enough of an incentive to be a little more careful 😭

Now, I know that's not the point of these shows and as with the Universal English issue, it's mostly out of convenience and easy writing. Suppose what bothers me about it is that other settings at least have some ways to explain it, but here it's just kind of glossed over, while the rest is fairly close to life...

Anyway. As for my alternate SGA vision: I've mentioned before that I originally wrote it as a way to add more detail and "realism" if you will, by focusing on the team's survival in an alien galaxy that hasn't been visited in 10,000 years.

The concept itself is so promising, even if you say that most of the worlds were terraformed or seeded to fit human life (based on a prehistoric Earth, mind you). Several millennia leaves so much room for biospheres to change entirely in that isolation, maybe even become unrecognizable. This could've been Space Aotearoa, at the very least!

Combined with the fact it was supposed to be a scientific, civilian-led expedition, I always loved the idea of a what-if scenario, where this spin-off would've gone much more into the exploration of very alien worlds. Just putting more focus on completely different forms and ways of life, and where they fit into that picture—how they affect it.

SG-1 had plenty of their own fun with various tropes, but the overall show had a more anthropological & political angle, with heavy emphasis on imperialism, religion, and war. That's why I think it would've been fitting to make Atlantis all about research and survival...

Exploring a whole other galaxy, trying to better understand their universe, trying to make a connection...