#Changeling Space Program

[mediumsizetexart]

Unconcerned, But Not Actively Gloating

The shaking and rattling of her capsule had already diminished quite a bit, and the plasma flames on the other side of the hatch window didn’t seem quite so bright. “Copy, Horseton,” Cherry said. “But I do expect a full explanation once I’m out of the soup.”

“Roger, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis replied. “In the meantime, for today’s book reading, how do you feel about The Hamster and the Helicopter?”

Cherry blinked. That was her very favorite book by Cleverly Clearly, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from saying so on a live mike. Instead she said, “Run out of sock-and-saddle stories down there?”

“Eh,” Chrysalis drawled, putting on her most unconcerned voice, “you read one bodice-ripper, you’ve read them all. They’re all basically the same book anyway.”

Which unsettled Cherry a little more, because she knew after a year and a half that if Chrysalis sounded unconcerned but wasn’t actively gloating, the changeling queen was seriously worried.

Yes, that’s a historically accurate Apollo Era CAPCOM console, including the misspelling, from the fanfic Changeling Space Program.

Deviantart version here.

[cubbihue]

So, a changeling is sort of like a p-zombie?

(For the unaware, “p-zombie” stands for “philosophical zombie”. It’s a thought experiment in philosophy that describes a being that’s outwardly identical to a human, but does not have a consciousness; that is, a p-zombie does not think whatsoever, although it looks like it thinks to an outsider observer. There’s a whole wikipedia article on it that explains the concept better than I can!)

They don't exactly think, as in "I dont want this" "I like that". But, Changelings do have a form of "Consciousness". It's just that their consciousness is more like a series of commands or tasks than actual formulated thoughts.

Timmy's Changeling has a very advanced "consciousness". It can predict future actions and reroute its tasks to pick only the best options for its situation.

We fill their heads with static to ensure that the Changeling does not form thoughts about anything. Thoughts leads to opinions, and opinions leads to incorrect actions. A proper Changeling should have more static in their mind than a TV screen on a defunct channel!

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[alainnely]

I'll place the galaxy in your eyes.

time taken: 2-3 days program: clip studio paint character: comet [OC]

i've finally drawn some art of my baby, comet!! he's a changeling combatant for this space campaign i'm in. :")) can't leak many spoilers on main due to party mutuals. wompwaaah

[hiddentreehouse]

The majority of vampire fiction I've interacted with calls for Intent to make a new vampire.

On the other hand, werewolves don't, and there is an entire (NSFW!) webcomic about Peter, a 'runt' who discovers this because his parents are idiots who didn't warn him.

(Edit, because it's been a while and I just remembered! TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL MISCONDUCT OF SEVERAL VARIETIES.)

so....vampirism. by medical definition, an STD. we are agreed, yes?

[ar0matique]

Changeling.... Oh my dear sweet Changeling... The character who was made even before Anna. A lot of her snark ended up being transferred to Anna instead but I do still love her regardless. Now for the sake of contrast, despite her more devilish appearance and grotesque shape shifting abilities, I decided to actually make her the more innocent character in this story. Being a mindless monster slowly learning what it's like to be human. Like an eldritch horror bit by bit as time goes by learn to love the taste of pierogis or borscht, learning a function beyond insatiable incomprehensible hunger. And yes the jacket's logo is from the Soviet Union's Interkosmos, their space program. I like to think she just thought the jacket was pretty and snatched it away. Another inspiration was Prototype, if any of ya'll have played that game. I don't remember the story anymore but it was really viscerally fun. I've always been entranced by the way the powers work. How it warps human flesh and bones into a terrifyingly beautiful set of destructive abilities. I wish to incorporate that into more of my works and especially to dear Changeling.

[mudaship39]

Enemies:

European demigod Lucas Bartholomew Chamberlain 

Lucas Bartholomew Chamberlain. He is a cishet male. He is white and non-native. He is European. Lucas was an attempt to Americanize and Earth centric himself as a politician of the Terran political system. He is able bodied, allistic, & neurotypical. He is 5′11”. He has blonde hair and blue eyes. He has a crew cut hair style. He has a lean and athletic body type. He is 160 pounds. He is Roman Catholic. 

He speaks Swedish, English, German, Arabic, Spanish, & French. He is conservative and alt right. He is upper class rich. He is an intergalactic scientist, inventor, & engineer. He has a masters in biomedical engineering and PHD in xeno biology. He went to college off planet to Ivy League University on the planet Titan. He played high school varsity baseball and men’s collegiate football. He comes from a super wealthy family that owns various iron and diamond mines and refineries across the galaxy. They mine asteroids and comets in space for space ore as well. The parents are still alive but both were only children. He is also an only child. He has holographic military tattoos of the Earth and Terran Dominion military as a Earth Space Marine Corps veteran. He has holographic military tattoos on his forearms. 

He is a former super soldier. He was an officer in the Earth and Terran Dominion military. He was a colonel. He is a scientist, inventor, & engineer. He built weapons and tech for the Earth and Terran Confederation. A lot of the superweapons the Earth and Terran Dominion used for their war crimes were built by him. Like the Star Crusher a weapon that doomed the entire Regulus System to be vaporized by a supernova. To show the universe the might of the Earth and Terran Dominion military. It is why the Sol Vega and Polaris System all surrendered overnight. After seeing only a tear in the fabric of space was left. The screams of billions wiped out in an act of intergalactic genocide can still be heard across space and time. He is an intergalactic politician. He is a politician who is a remnant of the Earth government and Terran Confederation government as a former senator of the Earth High Command representing the United States. 

He views humans as weak. He hates that he is half human. He joins the super soldier program for this reason. To get rid of what he deems as human weakness. It is why he marries Daphne, a superhuman with bionic enhancements and cybernetic implants. He is a former superhero. He has delusions of grandeur. He is a megalomaniac. He is a supervillain, antihero, & anti-villain whichever serves him best. He has no allegiance to anyone or anything but himself. This personality was made worse when he found out that he is a demigod. He is a metahuman with superhuman: strength, speed, durability, & intelligence. The queer and trans Asian Pasifika and Latine Native superhero Kana’i Makoa Latu/Ataahua Kamalani Latu is his archenemy and rival. He/she/they is his arch enemy as he/she/they and Joanna Jacobson exposed him for who he truly was. Lucas Bartholomew Chamberlain is a former disgraced member of the superhero conglomerate Sentinels. He uses his background as a scientist, inventor, & engineer. He/she/they are a metamorph, changeling, & shapeshifter as an alien hybrid and a water elemental as a demigod. He is a demigod child of a European goddess of death. He has power over fire and decaying things. Powers he used to his advantage when conquering planets for the settler colonizer regime. He also uses forbidden dark magic against him/her/them in their battles. When he uses the power of death his eyes blaze jade. When he uses the power of fire his hand burn crimson. He wears divine armor as a demigod. The divine armor has a long red gaudy and pretentious cape. His armor is red, black, & gold. He wears a black domino mask and green face mask. In his demigod form his short hair turns into a short dutch braid. 

Lucas as a former politician was the mastermind behind many of the actions of the Earth and the Terran Confederation. He used his power, influence, control, & power to hurt people. So many of the cruel actions that Earth and the Terran Confederation did with their colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, & occupation was passed by him as a politician behind the scenes. Lucas as an inventor, scientist, & engineer in the shadows built many of the weapons that Earth and the Terran Confederation used to maintain their hegemony and dominion. He was one of the leaders of the Forces of Evil. He left them when they no longer served his goals.

American Caucasian alien hybrid Charlotte Anderson

Charlotte Anderson one of the rivals enemies and foils of the Asian Pasifika and Afro Latine Native demigod and alien hybrid main character Kanai Makoa Latu/Attahua Kamalani Latu. Charlotte Anderson is a cishet female. She is an allistic neurotypical and able bodied. She is white non native and American Caucasian. She is a metahuman and superhuman. She is an alien hybrid. She is 6’3”. She has long and medium hairstyles of Dutch and French braids. She has hairstyles of medium and long ponytails. She has green eyes and a redhead. She is an atheist.  She has older and younger siblings.  

She is a democrat and white liberal. She speaks English, Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, & Arabic. She is old money. Her family comes from American, Earth, & Terran dominion and hegemony. She’s a former super soldier. She is a metahuman. She loves being an alien hybrid. She hates humans. She is distrusting of demigods. She went to the Ivy League in Mercury. She is a doctor and surgeon. She has bionic enhancements and cybernetic implants. She was the one who experimented on them as a metahuman and superhuman. She was the one who turned them into a super soldier. She was the one who ordered the metahuman and superhuman traffickers to take them as a demigod and alien hybrid child. She was the one who originally implanted the bionic and cybernetic implants into them.

[talenlee]

How To Be: Mystque (in 4e D&D)

In How To Be we’re going to look at a variety of characters from Not D&D and conceptualise how you might go about making a version of that character in the form of D&D that matters on this blog, D&D 4th Edition. Our guidelines are as follows:

This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise

While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible

The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic

When building characters in 4th Edition it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different ways to do the same basic thing. This isn’t going to be comprehensive, or even particularly fleshed out, and instead give you some places to start when you want to make something.

Another thing to remember is that 4e characters tend to be more about collected interactions of groups of things – it’s not that you get a build with specific rules about what you have to take, and when, and why, like you’re lockpicking your way through a design in the hopes of getting an overlap eventually. Character building is about packages, not programs, and we’ll talk about some packages and reference them going forwards.

Let’s look at the first* transgender* X-Men*!

Unravelling The Mystique

Mystique is a character who first appeared in comic books back in the ye olden times of the nineteen hundred and seventies and if you’re familiar with how characters in comics morph over time (hah) you may be surprised to learn that broadly speaking she’s been pretty consistent throughout that entire period. In simplest terms, Mystique is ‘a person’ who can shapeshift to change her appearance. In some stretches of comics, she has the capacity to use this to create what you might consider ‘gross physical qualities’ like sprouting wings to fly with or growing claws to fight with, armoured skin, or in some really batty-seeming ideas, making herself completely flat so she can float on air currents. When you ask anyone about that, the usual response to that list goes something like ‘oh okay, okay, okay, what, no, that last one is dumb,’ and I’m inclined to agree.

What this means is that Mystique is defined first and foremost by being a kind of human with the ability to change shape, and not in too wild a way. Maybe you can integrate the monstery traits (and I love me some monstery traits!) but this is a character who is meant to operate within normal parameters like gunfights and assassinations and using her shapeshifting to get to places where that dangerous element of who she is best applied.

I would imagine then, that Mystique is probably some variety of Martial character class, almost always not a character who wants to be the center of attention, and maybe some monsterism gets involved. She can disguise herself freely, so what armour or gear she’s wearing is probably something you can integrate into all kinds of looks.

Oh, and most obviously she is a constantly self-disguising character who can always take on new forms every few moments.

What hits all these notes?

Glossary Note: Conventionally, the term used in D&D for this mechanical package is race. This is the typical term, and in most conversations about this game system, the term you’re going to wind up using is race. For backwards compatibility and searchability, I am including this passage here. The term I use for this player option is heritage.

A Face For All Builds

Make a changeling.

That’s it. Literally, that’s it.

The nature of what Mystique is is one where she taps into a vein of narrative space that I think was so well-worn, so clearly understood, it, and things like the D&D doppleganger and their babby player-accessible form the changeling are all operating in that same space.

Of course, you might not be able to play a changeling. You might have a DM who has firm views on things like dopplegangers and disguise magic, and the way they can erode the basic level of player trust with the game they’re interacting with. They may not allow the changeling, for reasons of it being dangerous or overpowered or specifically tied to the lore of Eberron. These are all things a DM may choose to do and reasons they may choose to do them, though I can’t imagine bothering in this case.

In that case, your Mystique-a-like needs to pick up the feat Ritual Caster and the ritual Change Self. You’ll also want training in the Arcana skill (to be convincing in your disguise) or take the feat Deception Mastery, to translate that Change Self skill over to Bluff. If this is the route you want to pursue you can take the Cult Escapee background, and add both Bluff and Arcana to your class skill lists, and get a +1 to both, which means you’ll have every reason to be good at them. This also means that your Mystique-a-like will have a lot of obscure knowledge and be able to fake having obscure knowledge she doesn’t have right now. With this mash up together, you’ll have a heroic tier character, of any heritage, who can lie and cheat and change shape every minute multiple times a day, depending on their healing surge availability.

You do need another Deception ritual to take Deception Mastery though, and of that list you need to pick something that doesn’t violate the idea of Mystique’s powers being about altering herself and her body, and not about like, imposing things in the mind of strangers. The best Deception ritual for this, then, as something that can feel like it’s just an application of a skill on a magical level is Calm Emotions. This puts the budget for these two effects at 535 gold pieces, and two feats. If you go this route, you need a character who doesn’t have any high demand first or second level feats.

This compares to getting a Hat Of Disguise. If your game starts at level 10, you can have the Hat of Disguise just automatically, which does violate this article series’ general attitude towards making a character function in Heroic. For 5,000 gp, you can use Change Self. At Will. Without costing any healing surges, as a standard action.

And all of this is to get access to an effect that has zero combat impact. None of the effects described are good in combat, and Calm Emotions is specifically not useful in combat. The effect is available by level 2 for a character who is making low-impact choices and spending modest currency, or available at level 10 with a minor up-front investment that lets you do it forever, freely and easily thereafter. What I’m getting at with all these examples is that if for some reason your DM is against the Changelings in their game for balance reasons or wordbuilding reasons or free access to this effect reasons, you need to talk to them about these ways that this effect is already available in a variety of different ways and make sure they understand, with comparison, how getting a hat of disguise earlier and worse isn’t that big a deal. If they don’t want this effect at all in their game world, that’s valid and good but also you should know that ahead of time if you were interested in making a Mystique and then don’t try and make a Mystique in the context of a game that doesn’t want her, because trying to get rid of this effect by cutting off a mid-level heritage option just pushes the player to modestly more inconvenient but not difficult options.

But really, just build a Changeling.

The Most Obvious Option

You need a character that’s feat-light in its demands, avoids the centre of attention, and can strike very hard from advantageous position? Well, that sounds like a Rogue. Yes, the Rogue, the all purpose martial striker, the sadly second best starter kit character, Rogues have all the skills required to pull of the Mystique-like skillset and they get trained in so much. Changeling Rogue is so simple a solution to this question it was honestly why I didn’t start on this article for so long. Like this is obvious, right?

But Now With More Monster

Hang on though, you might say, what if I want to play a Mystique with those claws and wings and natural armour? What if I want to play a Bond Girl whose backup plan is turning into The Hulk? Well, for that end, I recommend we look to the ranger as a class option, and the Pack Outcast as a theme option. Hang on, Pack Outcast? Why not a werebeast? Wellll you may have heard me comment on this recently, but Werebear and Werewolf only really work with very specific power combinations and crucially, all the martial strikers that care about basic attacks care about weapon basic attacks, which the werewolf and werebear don’t make.

But if you want to shapeshift into a form that’s identifiably not human as you fight, the Pack Outcast gives you that; you can claim it’s any old horrible looking form (or I dunno, disturbingly sexy wolf furry if you want?) while the theme still provides you with a solid combat addition that doesn’t work against something like the Ranger.

Rangers go where they want, they fight in melee and at range, you could wield hand crossbows if that’s your jam. The basic skeleton of the Ranger is very good at ‘hit things’ and ‘go places’ so you should be right here.

Off The Wall

Trying as hard as I can to concoct something that works with Mystique’s whole vibe and doesn’t involve adding really fruity powers to her I find myself arriving at a build as basic as a Fighter. There’s definitely a way, in my mind, for Mystique to use her shapeshifting and combat ability to become the centre of attention and force people to engage with her, and that could be combined with things like grabs (with extra sticky hands!). Plus, Fighters have a lot of healing surges, which can be good for Change Self.

Junk Drawer

I dunno, the druid? It’s rare I finish one of these without any alternative ideas, but I think it’s because the people making the game already made something perfect for this character to work with.

This was an interesting and challenging article to make mostly because the actual build is really easy and obvious. Once you settle on the Changeling (or its jailbroken version), you have to just dig through the things that definitely don’t work. You might decide you want a Mystique who is a wizard or a psion or something else and that opens up options.

Think of it like a platform to build off. Mystique’s abilities are things that can be done easily and readily in the game, and all you need to do is introduce them. Check with your DM about it, and crucially, make sure they know the kinds of things you want to do with her. You want to infiltrate and sneak around, and you don’t want that to be useless and you don’t want it to be something other factions can do so easily it becomes boring.

So talk to your DM.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[aquilinestudios]

After four years, it’s finally finished.

Kris Overstreet, thank you for an amazing ride.

  Between CSP wrapping, A Bug on a Stick wrapping, and everything hitting an apparent climax or close to it in The Changeling of the Guard, this has been a pretty darn good year for the long-running MLP fanfics I have been following.

[mediumsizetexart]

Cardboard Box

Changelings are pony size or slightly larger, with sharp fins and ridges only vaguely resembling pony features, glowing pupilless eyes, and two enormous pointed fangs. In their natural form they tend to speak with a raspy voice when they don’t simply make animalistic hisses to intimidate their victims. They can secrete a range of useful but disgusting forms of goo. They can fly, hover, and use their horns for a range of offensive magic in addition to their shapeshifting talent. To a normal pony they are, at least on first sight, terrifying.

When Chrysalis found a half dozen changelings, including two of her greatest warriors, cowered into a corner against the mesa wall, being shouted down by a pink, delicate-looking earth pony, she was bemused at the total reversal of the natural order of things. You know, she thought, I actually hate to put things right. I think I’d kill for some popcorn right this second.

And the best part is, I don’t think she’s using the same curse word twice. Chrysalis’s eyebrow rose at one particularly vile one. I didn’t even think anypony in central Equestria knew that one. I only know it because of that time I infiltrated a zebra tribe…

Cherry Berry is somewhat less than impressed with the Changelings’ prototype space capsule. From the fanfic Changeling Space Program.

Deviantart version here.

[c-rowlesdraws]

thinking about how drawing Garak stockier/more heavyset than he is in canon makes for a greater contrast between him and his boyfriend, Dr. Julian “bisexual shoestring french fry” Bashir, and is therefore an excellent character design choice: :)

realizing that a heavier Garak would look in the mirror and see an even stronger resemblance to his evil, abusive dad that not even the sluttiest of tunic necklines could offset completely: :(

[mllemaenad]

In Fallout 4, synths are people. This is really apropos of nothing, except that I am tired. When I am tired, I play Bethesda games. I find the games themselves relaxing: I can roam the wilderness, doing quests at my leisure, and collect as many sidekicks as an aggressively modded system will allow. Yes, they crash and they have weird bugs. I am not here for quality. I am here for ‘I’ll get to the main quest when I damn well feel like it’.

But the aggressive modding means that I encounter people and read their opinions, and I sometimes wonder if they played the same game I did. People grimly try to mod Preston Garvey into being a villain for some reason. People spit vitriol at Marcy Long (Her child died and her city was sacked. And she snarks a bit. While also auto-assigning herself to farming duty the moment you arrive in Sanctuary, because she is stressed as hell, but also the opposite of useless. Meanwhile in the real world people throw temper tantrums and assault people when they’re asked to wear a mask in a shop. Perspective.).

But today it was synths, and the ‘stupidity’ of the Railroad for wasting resources on helping ‘machines’. And I am just ... baffled. And yes: this is my own fault. Read a forum thread, be grumpy on the internet. But I do at least have the sense to not actually argue with these people. Just - ew.

Gen 3s, at least, are human in the most literal sense of the word. They are flesh and blood and bone. You cannot take a blood sample to determine that a synth is ‘not human’ like you could a Changeling in Deep Space Nine. You can’t even really cut a person open and determine that they are a synth: all you’ll find is human organs on the inside. You can stand in the Institute and watch them 3D print a human being, in case you have any doubts about what they’re made of. They are human beings with some weird ... component in their heads that allows the Institute to interfere with their minds, and that cannot be removed, or even identified, without killing them. That’s no weirder than stuff done to actual humans in The X-Files.

Sturges is a synth, but you won’t know that from inside the game, because he either doesn’t know himself or elects not to tell you. And it doesn’t matter, because he’s a character who operates exactly the same as the others do. Danse is a synth, but you won’t know that unless you make it a long way through the Brotherhood of Steel questline (a thing I admittedly struggle to do, because ugh). It will matter, because the Brotherhood’s attitude to synths can destroy someone you have come to know as a person.

And of course, there is debate even among the Railroad about Gen 1s and 2s. Deacon will describe the problem of needing to fight Institute synths when some of your number – largely the synths themselves – regard this as murder.

But nevermind the Institute synths, for the moment. Just consider robots. The moment you do that, you can immediately see there is a spectrum of consciousness. There are absolutely Mr Handy and My Gutsy models out there that are doing nothing more than repeating instructions that were programmed into them two centuries earlier. If they’re even aware of the war, they don’t care about it or see why it should change anything. And then there is Codsworth. While his opening post-war dialogue makes him seem oblivious, it only takes a very small speech check to push him to admit his despair: the local inhabitants are dead or turned into feral ghouls, and are thus beyond his help; attempts to seek out other survivors in Concord ended in being violently driven away; he is completely aware of the futility of being a robot butler in the apocalypse. He can join you, and will have opinions on your actions. He can come to despise you, and abandon you, or come to define you as a family member. So Codsworth is a person. Likewise, Curie is a person – one who eventually goes “I’m gonna need opposable thumbs from now on”.

Nick Valentine has a whole questline about the problems of being a mechanical person with the memories of a pre-war man – an idea that ties in nicely with the problem of the Railroad loading up escaped synths with false memories. DiMA comes at this from the other direction, with the ability to selectively erase his own memories, if they disquiet him.

So any ‘robot’ may be a person. Obviously you don’t get enough interaction with most of the Gen 1 and 2 synths to assess where they’re at. But even if they are not conscious now, all the evidence tells you that they could be, so why not give them the chance? They’re never going to get one unless you take down the Institute, which will just use them to murder people, but with that done – why not?

The game’s whole story swings on the idea of “Who gets to be a person?” Ghouls do not get to be people: they were born human, some of them are even contemporaries of the Sole Survivor, but they are despised and driven out of Diamond City on the basis of ugly prejudice. Super Mutants – at least in Fallout 4 – are operating on the assumption that they are people and no one else is: you largely can’t deal with them because they think you are inferior. These groups are visually distinct from ordinary humans. The problem of Gen 3 synths is that they are indistinguishable. They are literally just human beings. Hatred cannot be easily directed towards them as a group, so anyone who is deemed ‘weird’ cops it. An idea that obviously could have no real world application at all.

The Institute feeds all of these prejudices to prevent the various peoples of the Commonwealth from uniting against them. They do it repeatedly, and most people in the game can cite instances of them doing exactly that (The CPG massacre being a common one). But only a small number of people – most notably Hancock –  actually spot the pattern and so anything about it. It’s usually a ghoul with a lost toe or a runaway synth who suffers instead of the actual people with the power.

And yet we’re sticking with “The Railroad are idiots for helping machines”.

[agentgrange]

Field Notes 10/26-- The Shan, PISCES, and the Changelings

This isn't a full Field Notes, just me putting the idea out there and thinking out loud so I can organize my thoughts better or maybe get some insight into people's opinions on the matter. Making content during the 80s cowboy era is a great opportunity to flesh out PISCES more and have them directly involved with the major struggle at the core of the Conspiracy. They haven't quite been fully subsumed by the Shan at that point, leaving room for a secret war between the members of PISCES not yet infected, those under its will, and Delta Green itself.

But the 90s and certainly into the modern era PISCES is written as entirely a lost cause and purely an opposition figure with Delta Green just picking up the slack recruiting British agents directly into the ostensibly American-based conspiracy or later as a sort of international task force under the Program. There's an unsaid rule leaving the United Kingdom and interaction with PISCES as more or less off limits to interfere in with the line members of Delta Green being none the wiser as to why. This... Really feels like a fun twist that was incorporated into one of the devs original campaigns applied to the 90s setting fully in Countdown but was never really meant to have the long term consequences fleshed out. If I'm being open I've never been a fan of it due to the massive suspension of disbelief, walling off a huge amount of possibilities for interaction, and feel like it just kind of falls flat put against modern tastes in horror when this massive question mark is revealed to the players as "its all parasitic space flies from this obscure Ramsey Campbell story that few, if any of you, have read. Y-- Yeah, no you wouldn't know it. Yeah no, it was written a few decades after Lovecraft's death so it was nev-- Yeah. Also they have pet trees."

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact they incorporated it into the setting as a twist and was an interesting idea when it was originally implemented. But having read Countdown a few times it all reads like classic comic book weird fiction, and not in a good way. Its fun, and creative, but wasn't written in a way that lends itself to these sort of history and universe spanning deep state conspiracies that we have to work around decades later so much as seeming like a minor X-Files arc that should have just resolved itself as a one off in three episodes.

Now, for decades now Delta Green has always actively encouraged Handlers to pick and choose parts of the lore as they see fit and adapt it to fit whatever their personal horror tastes are, I've always appreciated that. So I've been thinking of ways to rewrite and adjust the Shan and how that fits into this secret war in the 1980s, the secret truth before it was buried and rewritten by those that survived, and how it can be useful writing stories and PISCES characters in modern settings. Particularly if it makes PISCES less a fully captured comic-book-villain organization and more of a genuinely competent organization just as fleshed out as Delta Green but absolutely crippled by an institutional paranoia over a war that never really ended.

Particularly, I've been playing around with the idea of adapting the Shen to fit more into stories of Changelings, faeries, and other Celtic and Brittonic legends. I've watched The Hallow recently and the way that these creatures are traditionally remembered before being romanticized by Shakespeare, and can see that as a very very good model for the Shen as these alien entities with a very old, very complicated relationship with the people of the British isles. Funny enough I also really like the idea of looking back to the way faeries were portrayed in older childrens books I used to enjoy, the Spiderwick Chronicles. Smashing these three unlikely sources together seem like a perfect template to turn the spooky MI-6-controled-by-space-flies into an equally horrifying story of changelings worming their way into positions of influence, but for ends less clear and recognizable to a race as young as ourselves. Perhaps even, less outright malicious and more understandable than our agents might feel comfortable with.

Tl;dr-- The Shan should be retconned to be stranded on earth much longer as, like, insectoid brittonic faeries. The process of PISCES agents getting taken over by Shan parasites should be less Invasion of the Body Snatchers and more The Hallow where the process of becoming a Changeling host for a Shan is... A bit more of a cooperative (if unwilling) sum-of-its-parts deal than just being a full on meat puppet. Curious on other thoughts or ideas to flesh this concept out more.

[xeansicemane]

I've been doing a big think about ST: Picard.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Firstly, I want to say the series had a lot of cool ideas. Seven temporary making herself queen in S1 was very cool visually, I loved the concept of the La Sirena; it was interesting to see the logical fallout of the EMH program and what that could allow. I didn't entirely mind the way Q stepped out at the end of S2, and learning more about Guinan and her people was super cool. Heck, it was nice to see that Wesley's Space Jesus gig was going well.

But despite having a lot of cool ideas it never felt fully coherent. S1 was fun and interesting but the reveal felt a little stale in a post Mass Effect world. S2 ended up feeling like a way-too-stretched-out time travel episode that DS9 did a lot more elegantly with the Bell Riots. I enjoyed it, Trek is at its' strongest when it's making strong political statements, but again the ending didn't entirely make sense. S3 was the shortest on cool moments and ideas. I love a good battle at the center of the mind, and 7 of 9's whole kinda-deadname plot was sort of nice to see.

I get that S1 is about the consciousness of death making us human but they never really do the groundwork to justify that a human lifespan of 100 or so years is the most just and ethical lifespan. Picard is saved from one terminal illness only for organ failure to get him one day. The show never sits down and explains why the Federation isn't struggling against death in all its' incarnations - they have the tech for radical life extension but they just never do it, and the show never touches on that rather glaring oversight. People don't need to be immortal but what ethical imperative is there to only get a century in a galaxy full of wonders?

S2 is largely fine, it's a bit thin in places but it comes out to a pretty okay un-fucking the past and Q plotline. Can't complain about most of it. I even sort of liked the idea of the Jurati collective! The trouble is it was never explored in depth or even given screen time. I would have loved to see a radical reimagining of the Borg and what they could be and mean. My only two nitpicks are where the hell was she in S3 and how did an entire parallel collective go undetected? Like, they've been around for centuries and the normal Borg never got a stick up their ass about those 'defects'? Even a sentence or two would have assuaged my curiosity.

S3 is inarguably the weakest of the series. It's a lot of set pieces and a lot of hammy moments that ultimately don't cohere beyond a vague sense of nostalgia. Dr. Crusher's loss of Westley was sad, and I did think that was a good angle to develop the character along. However as we saw in S2, Westley is still out there and fine; he's not lost he's just refusing to take a minute to visit his mother ever. Dick move, Westley. The whole thing with the new breed of changelings barely made sense, and while I did love the big creepy flesh monster Borg queen I can't for a moment understand why her anger was directed solely at Picard. Picard isn't the one who took the collective down, Picard isn't the one who consistently outfoxed her and did real damage at the heart of Borg territory. That was Janeway. Like, okay if she wanted both of them dead that would make sense, but Janeway's name is mentioned only three or four times in the whole series and it's only to say she's busy.

Honestly I think it's because Janeway would've stopped the series two episodes short by just showing up with a gun and shooting the queen. And I do mean a good old fashioned slug thrower like an M1911 or something.

So, in the end seasons 1 and 2 are thoroughly okay Stars Trek, Season 3 is in my lower quartile. It still beats Enterprise but I'm not willing to say it beats the Animated Series.

[cadenceconfessions]

Best Chrysalis related fic on fimfiction.net?

Fuck I know this one. Uh. Was it Changeling Space Program…?

(According to the expert anyway. I do not read fanfic)

[sharonaparadox]

warning for some violence! also, obviously, iswm spoilers

hd + subtitles available!

fandom: In Space with Markiplier focus: Allu Minium (“Lady”) audio: “Anthropology (Lyra’s Song)” by Awkward Marina (Yoka the Changeling remix) program: Sony Vegas Pro 13

i also used the video “Lady Makeup Tutorial | In Space With Markiplier” by Anna the Artiste, the makeup artist who designed allu’s look! you can find a link in the youtube description or just search up the title, bc i’m worried tumblr’s thing abt off-site links will eat this post if i post it here

i watched the cloakbrand instagram livestream by anna and lio on sunday after getting all of my work finished (bc it was, thankfully, saved as a regular post afterward), and all i’ve been thinking abt since then has been allu minium (LOVE that name, btw)

while i was looking up content, i found this post by @notpixeluwu saying that “anthropology” is the perfect song for them! and i hadn’t heard the song b4 bc i never rlly interacted with mlp fandom outside of mostly rbing art here (which is on me, btw, bc i didn’t watch the show regularly enough to keep up with the fandom), but i’d just posted an edit a few days ago and still had that itch to create. i used a remix bc i liked it, and it gave me a decent enough excuse to use the noir scenes, which i kinda had to bc allu spends most of their scenes in an antagonistic role that doesn’t rlly work with the tone of the song. that’s also why this is cut so short, btw

this is the kind of song that would work better as an animatic, but i can’t draw and my brain rlly latched onto what i could do with that “comic-con” line anyway lol. thought abt using mythicaliity’s vids on tiktok since lio retweeted their cosplay, but i’m not putting that much effort into making vertical vids look good in an edit with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio. when i saw that scene in anna’s vid anyway, i immediately knew i had to use it

[shiftermod]

Metamorphosis’ voice

So. 

A long time ago in the early 2000s, I had cable. Far more importantly, I had friends who had cable. 

So, we got into this TV show called Stargate SG-1, and we’d watch it when I was over. And it was fun. Budget? Questionable. Effects? Okayish. But it was fun. 

Later, at the end of a season they introduced a new character named Elizabeth who would run the base after the previous guy left for some reason. 

Episode 1 of the next season they had completely replaced the actor who played Elizabeth and we suddenly had a completely different person running things. 

Anyway, a few years later the previous guy from the pre-Elizabeth years came back or something—and Elizabeth goes off as leader of a new base in another galaxy in a spinoff TV show called Stargate: Atlantis, which: 

a) ran immediately after Stargate: SG-1 in a sort of two-hour Stargate Programming Block, 

b) very briefly had Robert Patrick in it for one, maybe two episodes tops before his character bought the farm as part of a main character’s tragic backstory, 

c) was the first time I saw actor Jason Momoa in anything ever. (This is the same Jason Momoa who now plays Duncan Idaho and Aquaman.) 

My viewership of this second show was sporadic, and mostly if I was over at my friends’ house. And we gradually noticed that the show had... problems. 

Episode: our heroes fight a battle and lose personnel to get a new power source at great cost but now we can finally do something. 

Next episode: new power source explodes, back to square one. 

Most of the series continued like that! A new piece of tech that will progress the story is acquired, then it is destroyed in the next episode and we are back to status quo. It after the third or fourth time it happened it became maddening, and it eventually was the reason I finally gave up and stopped watching. 

SG-1 would acquire a new spaceship and it would prove instrumental later on in a big space battle or a science fiction scenario involving time dilation or something; Atlantis would acquire a new ship and the ship would be destroyed next episode, and this continued for years until I’m told that finally some stuff actually happened—after I’d stopped watching. 

In the end, it felt like there were two dynamics: 

1) Showrunner was allowing drastically inconsistent characterization of characters and entire civilizations from both the writers-who-were-clearly-at-war-with-each-other and the various directors of various episodes, the best example being a villain from a talkative but villainous civilization who doesn’t speak a single word in the episode, just growling and making angry noises. 

2) Showrunner was allowing for plot stagnation due to writers-who-were-clearly-at-war-with-each-other, and every new item, technology, or whatever that could have progressed the plot was immediately destroyed next episode, every single time. 

So, in our mounting frustration with the writers’ refusal to allow the plot to move in any meaningful way, my friend group gave up on the show and moved on to something else. 

That said, there was one episode that stuck with me where the good-guy human lead protagonist guy, and a member of the bad-guy alien civilization, are both in a prison run by a third faction comprised of different-but-also-bad-guys who are, ethically speaking, worse than either of them. 

Eventually the two prisoners team up and do a jailbreak and in the end they part ways without killing one another, and both sides learn that the other are at least theoretically capable of showing mercy. 

The good guy’s name is John. The bad guy is an alien who has no name that I remember, at least in the show (which feels like a weakness in the writing), but John names him “Todd” because humans like calling people stuff. 

So. Why is all this information necessary if we’re supposed to be talking about my changeling? 

Well, it turns out that sometime after I stopped watching, Todd actually returned several times as a guest star—not always portrayed by the same actor in makeup, but apparently always voiced by the original actor when lines were rerecorded in post, as one does. 

This brings us back to that inconsistency I mentioned: Todd’s character, behavior, personality, vocal delivery, and even the post-production vocal effects are inconsistent depending on who directed, who supervised the vocal recordings in post, and who did post-production effects, not merely for a given season but from episode to episode, even if Todd’s appearances were sparse. 

But a couple of years ago I accidentally discovered that Todd had acquired an online fanclub of sorts, and in addition to fanfiction shipping Todd with, well, everybody, clips featuring Todd were being posted to YouTube by various people, which allowed me to see various performances of the only character in the show who actually had any impact on me: the escaped prisoner from that one episode. 

Now, as I said, Todd’s vocal performances, intonation, post-production etc. varied drastically from episode to episode. 

But there’s this one specific clip I found from an episode that featured an alternate timeline where everybody dies and time travel to restore the original timeline saves the day at the end: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBXROSxnt9w&t=72s

This. Guy named Rodney is narrating, then we got Jason Momoa as Ronon, and Christopher Heyerdahl as Todd, but Heyerdahl’s performance in this clip (and seemingly no other!)... that’s my bug’s voice. The tone, the effect, the snark, the 100% doneness, even the choice of strategy—all of it.