#alien covenant origins

[willowser]

I think I got what you meant but I'm really curious on your thoughts- May you please elaborate? If you'd like :>

OKAY I'M THINKING ABOUT ANDROID TOUYA. OKAY.

who — for his entire existence — has been told by his creator that he's defective 🥺 that he's unsettling, too human 🥺 he's not meant to think for himself or have autonomy, bc he's just a machine !! made to serve !!! he shouldn't have free will bc he should not have any desires !!! and he spends so much of his time struggling 🥺 bc he wants to be this perfect being that his creator made him to be 🥺 BUT HE THINKS !! HE FEELS !!! HE WANTS !!!!!!

and so he runs away !!! 🥺 which is unheard of for an android like him, so well-built 🥺 to disobey direct orders 🥺 he's faulty !!! has too many screws loose !!! lives a chaotic life bc he doesn't understand what it is he wants, he just knows he DOES !!! 🥺🥺🥺

— and then he meets you 🥺 a little scavenger that ventures out to collapsed buildings, rifling for material to sell; old technology, components, any copper you can get your hands on 🥺 a sweet thing !!! just trying to make a living !!! and there is something about you, who is so bright and motivated in such a dark world, that has these strange, awful feelings making sense for once 🥺🥺🥺🥺

[figures4fun]

In space, no one can hear Boba scream…

[mrsdesade]

meet my fandoms OCs!

This is gonna be a list always in update to show you my OCs included into famous fandoms; I'd like to have them separated by my 100% original stories; enjoy their playlists, infodumps and moodboards 🤍

For now I can offer to you them:

Mira (Marvel MCU)

Lara (The Sandman)

Nova (Alien Prometheus/Covenant)

Ophera (The Boys)

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Mira (of Blood and Mischief)

Fandom: Marvel (MCU) & X-Men Name: Mira (Miroslayra) Frost - Vein (X-Men name) Age: 37 Pronouns/Sexuality: she/her - pansexual Hair colour: white with red regrowth Eyes colour: red Height: 1.83cm Languages: Russian - English - Asgardian Job/Occupation: so many, she worked for the X-Men and Shield for a short time, she deserted due to an accident into her teaching role at the X-Academy, after she had a collaboration with the Avengers and worked for a short time to the TVA. She always lived being a defensor. Powers: blood manipulation - dimensional travel (after corruption arc) Pairing: Loki (previously Erik Lehnsherr) Parents: Emma Frost & Emplate Like: hot tea - discovering new music types - late night bath - sea and lakes - fireworks - meditation - learning unusual facts - bad jokes - simple designed clothes - her vintage iPod - travelling - sharing with others her knowledge - poetry - the space - training and fighting Dislike: extremely crowded places - cold weather - syringes and needles - everything that is medical related - lighthouses - noisy and loud people - stay alone at home for long times - Sentinels - sometimes Avengers

Mira Playlist 🎶

Mira Pinterest Board 🎨

Mira and Loki fanart 🖌️

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Lara (for your Eyes)

Fandom: Sandman Name: Lara Campbell-Fobso Age: 25 Pronouns/Sexuality: she/her - bisexual Hair colour: dyed dark red (originally brown) Eyes colour: hazel Height: 1.79cm Languages: English - French (not so much) Job/Occupation: no one, she was dreaming to became a writer or a journalist Powers: no one, she's human Pairing: The Corinthian Parents: unknown Like: hanging out - shooting polaroids - organize photos on her personal devices - writing - long car riding - dancing into the club - drinking alcohol - smoking - shopping on vintage store - luxury places that she cannot afford - physical contact - lazy days at home - sleeping for long times and dreaming Dislike: sand - following the rules - paying her rent and bills - working for the human system - the law - hot weather - people who makes fun of suicidal topics or psychiatric disorders

Lara Playlist 🎶

Lara Pinterest Board 🎨

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Nova (Heart-shaped Box)

Fandom: Alien Saga (Prometheus/Covenant) Name: Nova (synthetic model N.O.V.A 0) Age: 35 Pronouns/Sexuality: she/they - demisexual Hair colour: pearl white Eyes colour: transparent crystal white Height: 1.77cm Languages: she's programmed to speak all human languages and being able to communicate with numbers and morse code Job/Occupation: Commander for space missions for the Vasser-Armiger Corporation Powers: she's a sophysticated model of synthetic android, she has many abilities more than the humans, like speed, strenght, rapidity of thought, high IQ, she feel less pain, she's artificially made on the inside Pairing: David 8 Parents: created by the Vasser-Armiger Corporation Like: floating in zero gravity condition - staring at the deep space - listening philosophy about Gods and creations explained - instrumental synth music - admiring new life forms (at some points she find fascinating even Xenormorphs) - flying with a spaceship - accomplish her missions - still lakes views Dislike: lazyness - rude manners - disrespect towards androids - AI without intellectual freedom - humans corporations

Nova Playlist 🎶

Nova Pinterest Board 🎨

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Ophera (American Horror Show)

Fandom: The Boys Name: Ophera (Miranda Reinslayer) Age: 33 Pronouns/Sexuality: she/her - bisexual Hair colour: obsidian black Eyes colour: deep red Height: 1,75cm Languages: American English Job/Occupation: working superhero for the Vought; third member of the Seven Powers: metals manipulation, super strenght and she can feel less pain than normal, her vocal cords are made of thin metal and she can sing wonderfully Pairing: no one (abusive relationship with Homelander, faking to be a couple for the media) Parents: unknown

Like: rock live music - smoking - ride her motorcycle - doing missions outside the country - Queen Maeve and Starlight Dislike: theatre - musical - radical religion -electric shocks jokes - flying high - skyscrapers (she suffer from vertigo) - sometimes Homelander

Ophera Playlist 🎶

Ophera Pinterest Board 🎨

[wickdsk8r]

“And if you could pretend…to be kind to me.”

Edits I made for headers + I found the script for the epilogue. I can’t help myself.

[katsotherworld]

I've read 3 books so far in 2023. Alien Covenant, Covenant Origins, and I'm Glad My Mom Died. I'm feeling pretty good so far about it, all good so far.

[particle-beam-phalanx]

I have never been more shockingly apprehensive about an Alien movie

[victoriadallonfan]

Having re-watched Alien (1979) and Aliens (1985), I think I've realized what went wrong with the further expanded film universe on a thematic level (this is not accounting for AVP films, which seem to exist within their own continuity atm).

The main issue is that these films made 2 intertwining mistakes:

Making the Xenomorph too animalistic

Removing the mystery of space

For the first part, Alien and Aliens are quite vague about the Xenomorph mind. Alien treats it almost like a serial killer at times, including a particularly interesting moment where it disregards Jones the Cat entirely, despite making a very easy target, and how it will sometimes meander up to the crew as if it knows it's inflicting terror upon them. This Xenomorph even seems to only flee when Parker goes to kill it with a knife and hides within the evac shuttle when it realizes that Ripley was going there as well.

Aliens forgoes this in favor of showing how terrifying their numbers are even in the face of superior (if greatly mislead) fire power, but then pulls the rug under our protagonists by (seemingly) cutting the power and testing the endurance of the auto-turrets. While the drones are not individually as intelligent as the original xenomorph from the first film, this is instead given to the Queen, who understands not only the danger Ripley poses to her Hive but hostage negotiations of the most blunt variety. And, of course, incredible spite and vengeance when Ripley burns her eggs.

Basically, the two films do a good job of making you wonder... how sapient and sentient are the Xenomorphs? Do we take Ash's word and think of them as simply Hostile Weapons or do we see them for the adaptable and complex - if instinct guided - parasites just trying to protect their hive? This is further food for thought when we learn that one of the cut endings would have had the Xenomorph kill Ripley, tentatively use the shuttles control panel, and speak into the intercom with Dallas voice (ala Predator).

Imo, that goes too far into making them human, but we'll circle back to that later. The point is that the Xenomorph is never clearly one thing or another, but rather, something that constantly foils our attempts to understand them completely.

Aliens 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant fail in that regard, because they take the firm stance that the Xenomorph is... an animal. A very, very, dangerous and hostile animal but an animal nonetheless. It's not some vague horror that we struggle to comprehend and reason with, because all the facts (as they are for now) are laid out: the Xenomorphs are weaponized animals that just kill, reproduce, and kill etc etc.

Nothing is entirely new about the Xenomorphs in these movies (beyond the forms and one part of Covenant, but we'll circle back to that as well), but rather trying to recapture the formula of Alien and Aliens. And even when the film isn't necessarily about the Xenomorphs like Prometheus, it still goes out of its way to copy the play by play of Alien to an almost hilarious degree (except, somehow, having a cast entirely of stupid scientists).

The Xenomorph is used as a toll for the films to talk more about the human threats who would use them, which is fine, except the same message of "Weyland-Yutani wants Xenomorphs, They Failed" over and over again (except I guess for Alien: Resurrection, but that had Walmart as a plot point so...) gets tedious. It's not longer about the folley of mankind, but rather this one company led by a man (or Android?) who keeps fucking up.

Ditto goes for the second part: removing the mystery from space. Alien and Aliens treat the Space Jockey and other (non-Xenomorph) alien life at an arms distance. They are large, grand, ominous, and vaguely defined. We don't know much about WY in either movie, nor how much is them knowing versus independent people within the company (Burke mentions cutting out his own bosses for profit for example, and Bishop the company Android is heroic and horrified at the situation they are all in, a big difference to Ash). The Xenomorphs having a Queen was a huge reveal, because we literally had no idea until then if those were actual eggs or simply pods artificially created.

Aliens 3 tries to add some mystery with the prison colony, but it's also hamfisted and given a lot of exposition to explain the situation they are in, but I will give it kudos for making Weyland (???) look like Bishop as a twist. Aliens: Resurrection... yeah, no.

Prometheus and Alien Covenant gave us a plethora of seeming mysteries, but also gives us really super simple answers. Basically, Space Jockeys are just super humans seeding life across the planets and they wanted to bomb Earth into oblivion because we killed Jesus Christ (who was a Space Jockey). And one of our androids then - possibly - goes to their home planet and bombs them to oblivion thus wiping out the human race. And they made Xenomorphs yadda yadda.

Prometheus in particular seems to despise the idea of space being a mystery, with the conversation David has with a scientist being plainly spelled out as the theme of the film: "Sometimes, humans/space jockeys just build shit, and it goes wrong I guess. No gods or mysteries here, just hubris."

Which, if handled well, is still a fascinating idea (I think it's a pretty interesting 'take-that' against the stupidity of Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists)... but it's not handled well. At all. And certainly doesn't work well when trying to write Xeno-Horror.

So, what COULD work?

Well, I think we need to look at how Alien and Aliens made the Xenomorphs, Space Jockey's, and Space itself all work.

For the xenomorphs, I think back to one scene I actually thought was interesting in Alien: Covenant; as a chestburster is born from a hapless scientist, it lays its eyes (???) on David and replicates his movements, mimicking the first living thing it witnesses. Nothing is ever done with this (of course), but think about the potential that could be used! Plenty of animals like crows, ravens, dolphins, octopi, killer whales etc etc can use mimicry in voices and actions, and that includes things like tool-use! And of course, the fact that they take on new forms from hosts helps with that.

For the Space Jockey's: scrap them. They had their time, the mystery is basically solved. Show us new and different alien civilizations long past. Were they also victims of the Xenomorphs? From some other threat entirely? Surely, there are extraterrestrial predators out there that don't follow the Xenomorph formula. Why not have them share the splotlight, with just as little explanation?

For space itself: stop with trying to recapture Alien and Aliens. Alien: Isolation is the only successor specifically because of the format of the medium. Alien and Aliens rely heavily on the shock factor of sudden reveals. Remove that, and you are given "bug hunt" games and movies ala discount Starship Trooper. Focus more on making human space feel almost alien and beyond our understanding as well, but just enough that we can recognize the purpose that we would have them for our society.

How I would write an Alien Story:

(This would all be backstory and setup for the actual story)

I would set it within a colony satellite with an explicit task: a skyscraper ecological time-capsule for deep space experimentation of wildlife.

It would have levels, with humans situated at the second uppermost and an AI as the manager at the top level of the satellite, with all the other animals in different levels fit for their habitats (including some non-earth, non-xenomorph aliens). It's a religious sponsored and run organization, offshoots of [Insert Church Here] that is trying to get good press with cutting edge AI and biological research.

The prize is an alien lifeform that looks like a cross between a crocodile and a panther. Usually docile when fed, it has been growing more and more agitated, harming several workers on the job. Most assume it may be some late-stage degenerative disease within it's brain.

Not all things are as it seems, as at the bottom of the station, a location no one but a select few faithful engineers are sent to maintain, a pod is damaged. A young attendant watches in shock and horror as a bloody and maimed chest burster crawls out of the pod, possibly having injured itself to burn through the lock. The creature is mewling in pain, but the young attendant makes a choice: leaving food, water, and blanket for the creature. Watching as the creature watches them, before going to feast. All under the gaze of a camera.

The xenomorph grows and grows, eating more, getting bolder and allowing its "caretaker" to feel more comfortable. Soon it begins to recognize certain sounds as they pray when he feasts, and association occurs. One day, its hiss sounds suspiciously like "Lord".

This is when the young attendant reaches out to higher, but trusted, priests to share this miraculous revelation. The first one is shocked, terrified, but intrigued as the creature mimics words like "Lord" and "Mighty". Barely audible, some would say hallucinatory, but they believe they can here this humanoid creature speak their language.

The second is equally shocked, terrified, but listens and becomes a believer.

The third one does not believe. Rightfully horrified and full of questions. Their arguments in front of the beast escalate into violence and when the young attendant shoves the priest to the ground, it is the Xenomorph that pounces. Blood is shed. the creature rises in front of it's faithful, and the Xenomorph uses the same sounds it heard over the fight. Lord. Mighty. Here-tik.

They can't be delusional or driven by guilt! This is a sign... right? This creature is speaking to them!

The faith grows. Never large. Can't risk word getting out or people noticing too many missing priests. The satellite is just barely large enough that people can excuse going missing for a few days between objectives.

But key individuals are brought in. The creature is worshiped. Animal offerings are delivered. It's changing, slowly. Growing larger (not a Xenomorph Queen, it's too maimed, but adapting to a steady diet).

Things might have escalated, had one of the priests killed not had an estranged sibling/spouse/loved one who had the pull to make a formal investigatory complaint.

The investigator arrives with his repertoire, this supposed garden of eden in deep space, none the wiser to what he would uncover. (Again, this would be the backstory, not revealed except through character investigations and evidence found during that. Defeats the purpose if it's spelled out like this).

It would play with the idea of how sapient/sentient the Xenomorphs are (do they care? do they understand? if not, why act like this? if yes, what does this mean for their continued slaughter), how much one puts into faith versus delusions, and leaves lingering questions: who put the xenomorph on the ship, why is the AI so complicit with the deaths and disappearances, and why is the one non-xenomorph alien acting so dangerously agitated despite being far away from the xenomorph's quarters?

[cemeterything]

PLEASE elaborate on “davidelizabeth in alien covenant if i wrote it” they squandered her potential so bad !

okay so first all i have already talked about how i feel that covenant should have built on the sticky psychosexual gothic horror tension between david and shaw and developed it into a toxic codependent dynamic (that predictably ends poorly due to their fundamentally opposing ideological stances as well as one-sided obsession on david's side), so i'm going to attach that rather than rehash it.

but honestly if i'd written covenant i would have had elizabeth survive david long enough to establish herself on the engineer planet in hiding from him (following a "breakup" caused by his act of genocide), and have the arrival of the colonists in covenant be the catalyst that forces them to confront each other again and finish what they started. i'm not entirely certain of the specifics, but i think there's a lot you could do with the central themes of alien as a cosmic/existential horror (a story about horrifying revelations, terrible change and progress/evolution that is unrecognisable as anything but nightmarish to the human minds bearing witness), a body horror narrative focused on sexual assault, pregnancy and childbirth/parenthood, and an examination of extraterrestrial horror as this colonial mindset - the fear of being violently replaced by something that deems itself better than you and works ruthlessly to eradicate you from your places of safety which it has taken for its own - as well as the more prometheus-specific themes of parental trauma and religion (mostly christianity) by making the core conflict between david and his xenomorphs and elizabeth and humanity, like a sort of fucked up retelling of adam and eve in the garden of eden.

to tie up loose ends, since prometheus and covenant are meant to be prequels to the original alien films, i'd probably have elizabeth succeed in being the final girl (a parallel to ripley in the original franchise) but tragically go into self-imposed exile/die alone in an attempt to prevent the xenomorphs from being stumbled across by future explorers and becoming a threat again, as well as possibly out of some warped sense of guilt, both for having allowed herself to ever love david and believe him capable of change, and for failing to save him ("save" very much in the biblical sense, as in persuade him to share her point of view and abandon his descent down a dark path). needless to say, she doesn't succeed, making her "victory" all the more phyrric.

[cellarspider]

30/30 One last thing.

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We have come to the end of Prometheus. But depending on how you’re feeling about death of the author right now, it’s not. Not quite yet.

Because Ridley Scott had some things to say after Prometheus came out.

Two months after the movie's release, Ridley Scott gave an interview. Its original home has succumbed to link rot, but it’s still available in a couple places, in the Internet Archive and within the corporate acquisition mass that is Fandango, featuring a weird note of brand revisionism in the relabeling of the interviewer’s affiliation.

Now. Let’s begin by saying this: A movie is a movie. The things around a movie are not the movie. This seems obvious, but it’s to say that a single creative work can be viewed entirely free of outside context, and in most cases it’s best to assume that it will. If a director comes out later and tells people what their intent was, then that’s not part of the movie.

…But it can still sit in your brain for years, leaping out to ambush unsuspecting passers-by.

So! This interview. Ohhh, this interview. I’d forgotten most of it, because the final lines of it just knocked the top of my head clean off, so we’ll be discovering bits of this together.

We start from the end of the movie, with the interviewer asking about the openness of the ending to a sequel. Scott, among other things, said:

“I’d love to explore where the hell [Dr. Shaw] goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise can not be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous.”

This came across well in the movie, though it was festooned with the random bit of organic bigotry from Shaw toward David. A short answer won’t capture everything, so I still have no idea if Scott intended for that to be so brayingly insensitive, this is the guy who was fine with Joel Edgerton as Ramses II. In any case, Paradise might be ominous, but Shaw’s not bringing along ideas that will improve it by any means.

This isn’t really the film we eventually got from Alien: Covenant. Is that bad? Honestly, I don’t know that either. Shaw as a character did not have a lot of depth in this movie. Noomi Rapace ended up playing her hurt very well by the end of it, but if that’s your standard of quality in horror acting, then Josh Stewart’s leading role in the grungy Saw-adjacent movie The Collector (2009) will serve you well.

I think they could have built something out of her character, but they didn’t. David is definitely the stand-out character from Prometheus, and they do at least focus on him quite a lot. But I’ve yet to watch Covenant, partly because the structure of it does not interest me. Also, because I’ve heard about what David does when he shows up on the new planet, and bad things happening to crowds are one thing that can make my brain wig out something awful.

Speaking of the Engineers, Scott speaks about their character:

“they’re such aggressive f**kers … and who wouldn’t describe them that way, considering their brilliance in making dreadful devices and weapons that would make our chemical warfare look ridiculous? So I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see actually is not so nice, and is certainly not God.” 

Again, we find ourselves at the casual gnosticism of the movie, in which the Engineers are kind of the demiurge in this context. Some christian-influenced people assume that if there is a true god, it must be omnibenevolent, and find the violent and threatening behavior depicted in the Old Testament to be at odds with their understanding of divinity. A lack of benevolence is seen as a sign that the figure depicted must be something else, something that may think that it is a god, but it is not truly, regardless of its role as a creator. Hence, the gnostic idea of the demiurge.

But Scott also seems to confirm my suspicion that he’s not aware he’s recreating gnostic cosmogony through Prometheus, because he doesn’t reach for any of the older sources or the language around him. He instead invokes a rather surface reading of Paradise Lost:

“ In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at [John Milton’s] Paradise Lost, the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God. He goes to all the best nightclubs, he’s better looking, and he gets all of the birds. [Laughs]”

Setting aside the fact that Paradise Lost ends with all the fallen angels having a bad time because God’s turned them into snakes, I will give Scott the tiniest bit of credit, there’s a bit of my brain that saw this and thought “this is a strong start”:

Scott eventually continues on the Engineers, and the sacrifice scene at the start:

“That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself.  If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.”

Scott is misremembering some things here, which is understandable given the off-the-cuff nature of the remark, but it’s still worth correcting. This is a misattribution of Aztec rituals that would involve the sacrifice of a “teixiptla” representative of a god (such as Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, etc). The Inca didn’t carry out this ritual–they did engage in a human sacrifice ritual called qhapaq hucha, but its form and function was not the same. The Classical Maya also engaged in different human sacrifice rituals, but there was also an emphasis on non-fatal self-administered bloodletting–Maya nobility in particular were often depicted shedding their own blood for this purpose.

This also, to my memory, conflates stories of european human sacrifice rituals, where crop failures are sometimes linked to the sacrifice of kings, such as Dómaldr in the Ynglinga saga, and noted in the placement and treatment of certain bog bodies. The Aztecs did sacrifice to the god Tláloc for crop for good harvests, but the rituals involved were quite different.

It should be noted, of course, that Tláloc was later syncretized with the Christian god during the Spanish conquest, likely as a result of conceptually linking Tláloc’s sacrifices to the demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. And, y’know, that conquest was concurrent with the Spanish Inquisition, and the wider religious belief that a heretical witch army was being organized by Satan to stand against God to forestall the Second Coming of Christ, with crop failures being the most feared result of their rituals.

I’ve added all these details not because I want to say Scott is bad for misattributing this stuff, people make mistakes. I have several hours’ access to the internet, Scott did not. However, it is worth noting: How we frame an idea can say a lot about how we conceive of it. Variations on these behaviors are found throughout history, and across cultures. Sacrifices and martyrs are powerful symbols still invoked in western culture today. There’s a potential wandering back and forth between appreciation and exoticization that Scott’s engaging in.

Then Scott says something that made me get up from my chair to find a book to shake at my computer.

“I always think about how often we attribute what has happened to either our invention or memory. A lot of ideas evolve from past histories, but when you look so far back, you wonder, Really? Is there really a connection there?”

Yes.

Yes there is. Ancient peoples weren’t stupid. Ancient peoples didn’t even necessarily have less information to work with than any one modern human, they just had different information that kept them alive and finding solutions to their problems, be it “I need to find food” or “how do I meaningfully participate in my culture’s artistic and governmental traditions, and should they even be followed at all?”

If you want a great and thorough examination of that, check out the book I gesticulated with.

Highly recommended. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist, and the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. There are definitely subjects covered in this book that I’ve seen from different angles before, and I feel like their interpretation pulls in more context than I’d gotten previously. Especially pertinent to this, the first part of The Dawn of Everything is spent examining the origins of modern western thought on “primitive” cultures and their character and capacity, and then digging into what evidence we actually have on the subject.

But the movie does not, fundamentally, engage with cultures outside of westernized, christian thinking. Not to any serious extent, anyway. It has a certain worldview, and that’s fine. That can be explored intelligently, although we’ve seen that I think it squanders that chance. It’s fundamentally a christian-centric movie.

And despite Scott’s protestations in the interview that they toned it down, quite a few readers have already guessed how far Scott originally intended to go on that.

“But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, “Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.” Guess what? They crucified him.”

Yes. Jesus of Nazareth was actually Jesus of Space.

This is why the movie says the Engineer corpse died about 2000 years ago. This is why they decided to destroy humanity. 

Presumably the original quote on the cross was “Father, forgive them, for they know not that we’ve got deadly black goo.” Engineer 23:34, I guess.

Now that the screams in the audience have hopefully settled down, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

Alright. So, this is bad. Let’s break down why, beyond the obvious questions about “why does nobody ever draw Jesus as bald, huge, and ripped.”

There’s a fake script circulating that actually has a decent interpretation of this: a human kid got zwooped up to be taught the ways of the Engineers, and sent back as an emissary. Why? Dunno. Also apparently the gospels that mention Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt with the baby Jesus were off the mark by a few lightyears.

This is laughable to christians, because “what if Jesus was an alien” is the sort of thing that twelve year olds come up with. It’s offensive if it’s taken seriously, because it says their literal god was actually a mortal critter from outer space. Ha! Your god is not all-powerful, or all-good. He’s not even All-Might.

But you know what’s almost worse? It implies that, sure, Christianity isn’t the inspired word of a deity. It also implies some level of exclusive factual accuracy to Jesus’ teachings, not shared with other religions. Jesus was a celestial emissary, endowed with the teachings that could save humanity, and his death doomed the Earth to the Last Judgment.

The Torah is insufficient, and all Rabbinic literature was produced following the rejection of the true way to salvation. The enlightenment of the Buddha counted for nothing, the Dao is not the way, Vishnu cannot defend or restore dharma, the Prophet Muhammad is only so valid as his acknowledgment of the Prophet Īsā ibn Maryam. 

All other faiths are superfluous under this premise. If people had just listened to Jesus and accepted him as their savior, everything would’ve been fine!

This is the one point of alien contact with western canon in the entire setting, after the deep prehistory of Skye. Every other literate culture that was contacted got the Engineers’ message wrong. Or they didn’t listen. Only christians got it right.

That’s incalculably bad. That’s not even counting the fact that the wall o’ artifacts that Shaw and Holloway presented included a notable oversight: the only two artifacts further from Europe than the Middle East are chronologically impossible, based on the movie’s own timeline. It implies the rest of the world was thrown in as an afterthought.

This whole Jesus thing is a piece, a big, jagged piece of why this movie drives me so far up the wall that I’m now residing on the ceiling. It’s not, as far as I can tell, actively malicious. It’s just dumb. It wasn’t thought through the way it should’ve been. If they wanted to do a movie like this, they should’ve gone all-in. Really dig into the implications of what they’ve done. 

And the movie seems wholly ignorant of it. There are basic questions presented to the audience, but there’s no deeper consideration that could make this respectful to anybody.

So, what are we left with?

A mess. A beautiful, stunted, confused mess that was poorly served by its script and lack of conviction.

The movie turned away from asking big questions, and focused instead on traditional horror. A genre that works best with good characterization to drive audience investment, but then it cut out most of the characterization, and what it left was scattershot. It gave us a flashback of Shaw’s childhood before we’d even really met her to understand why it was meaningful for her. The movie then failed to add any emotional weight to her.

The movie failed to give us characters with emotional weight or intelligence. It gave us a single, compelling character in David, driven largely by Michael Fassbender’s delivery and physical performance. It gave us a tactile, carefully constructed setting that was beautiful and often an accomplishment in filmmaking craft, but these spaces remained emotionally empty without a story that gave them meaning. It gave us the potential of something new, and then retreated to imitate the old.

I went into the theater in 2012 looking forward to a good film. I suppose this one has stuck with me more than a good film would have, but its primary value is as a flawed thing to critique, to learn from, and to put tooth marks on when the frustration gets to be too much.

Prometheus got one sort-of sequel in Alien: Covenant (2017), and it seems to have been abandoned. The first trailer for Alien: Romulus just came out the day I’m writing this, and it looks like it’s going to be just a monster movie.

If you want a good, modern Alien, play or watch Alien: Isolation (2014). Apparently its content was recut into a web series in 2019, though I can’t speak to the quality of that. For now, I’m done with the series. I’m not going to be rushing out to see anything new, because I don’t think it’s doing anything new. Prometheus could’ve been a chance to do that, but it failed.

Still. Writing this was fun, I will admit. My weird little obsession with this movie turned into a month and a half of writing and prepping this thing, totaling–Jesus E. Christ, over 82,000 words. I wish it could’ve been about something that hid more intellectual heft or careful thought than Prometheus did, but hey! There’s always next time.

And there will in all likelihood be a next time, as I’ve already started on another document. It won’t be for quite a while, though. This was a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. I’ll be taking a break, and only releasing more stuff once I have it fully written ahead of time, as opposed to how I handled this one.

Thank you, brave readers, for making it this far. 

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_Sundhn%C3%BAkur_eruptions#Eruptions

https://tubitv.com/movies/314320/the-collector 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettifoss 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Magliabechiano 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund_Man 

https://youtu.be/nT2ueyFrVgk 

https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407316113 

https://nebula.tv/videos/hellofutureme-is-netflixs-avatar-any-good 

Overflow Ramble 1

Hey, does anyone else remember Stephen Speilberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)? I saw that in the theater, and I cannot watch that thing again. Yes, I was younger, but the overall content of that movie absolutely shredded my nerves to pieces. Even though I’d grown up knowing the full H G Wells story and reading things like The Tripods book series as a kid, Spielberg managed to make a movie that felt so viscerally unpleasant to me that it gave me nightmares for years.

My main theory is this: You know in movies that the protagonist is almost certainly going to survive what happens, doubly so in War of the Worlds because it was goddamn Tom Cruise. But my brain did not treat Tom Cruise as my viewpoint character. Something in me says “well, I’m not Tom Cruise, I’m one of those other people around him, and they’re all gonna die horribly.” 

This tends to happen with me in disaster films and similar stuff like that. I have to be real certain I want to be there if I watch a kaiju movie, for example. I can do Godzilla (2014), but I’m not so sure about Godzilla Minus One (2023). Shin Godzilla (2016) is off the table.

Horror movies have to hit a balance of giving people a rickety feeling of potential safety they want to preserve, rather than letting them feel too safe or too screwed. Too far either way and you lose people, either to apathy or just pure bad vibes. The paradox of enjoyable horror is that it can’t scare you too much.

Overflow Ramble 2

I personally don’t think the tone of Fede Álvarez’s horror fits with what I’m looking for in an Alien movie. The xenomorph life cycle worked best and most subversively when it was deliberately targeted, to take the sexual/reproductive menace usually placed on female characters in horror and forced it onto a male character instead. Álvarez has historically played that trope straight instead. From a horror perspective, that’s boring to me. The xenomorphs also appear to be aggressive monsters here rather than animals, more like Aliens than Alien. Not my favorite interpretation.

And to be honest, when I saw the trailer, my first thought was “Oh, it’s Sevastopol Station.” The setting looks exactly like Alien: Isolation, and there’s not a chance the movie’s going to outshine Isolation. That game’s only narrative sin was a bit of slow pacing toward the ending. Romulus’ trailer makes me think it’s going to go too far in the other direction.

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[morganas-pendragons]

dear, sweet elijah | e.m.

You are a witch who was adopted by the Mikaelsons when your parents died in the village. Barely a child yourself, Esther Mikaelson fulfilled your mother’s dying wish and took you in as her own. 

That’s why, besides Freya, the two of you are the most powerful and the oldest witches alive. 

When Elijah flees the country to head to Paris - thus separating himself from his siblings and the Hollow - he eventually returns and regains his memories. 

This is what happens for both of you during that time. 

Set during the originals season 5 

***

Their curse is always and forever. A pact made in the aftermath of blood and pain and anguish over their new reality, confined to an immortal life and watching the ones they love die. 

But not them. Not the Mikaelsons. They’ve seen empires rise and fall, they’ve seen their siblings kill the ones who dare to love them, they’ve fled for their lives in fear of their mother, their father, their aunt. 

You parted from them in 1919 when Rebekah called Mikael to New Orleans. With a final kiss to Klaus’ forehead - as he was the closest to your heart, though Elijah had always had it - and a longing look to the man you’ve always loved, you fled back in the direction of the burning opera house. 

The Mikaelsons never saw you again. They believed you to be dead. 

Rebekah would never forget the way Niklaus screamed. 

One hundred years later, the trio reunited with you when they returned to New Orleans and Klaus was told that a werewolf named Hayley Marshall was carrying his child. Rebekah hadn’t known it was you until she saw your eyes. Everything about you was different. 

Your hair, your clothes, even your name. 

But someone who had spent a thousand years with you would never forget those eyes. So old... and just so sad. 

Rebekah and Klaus would come to learn that you had alienated yourself from everyone during the hundred years of being in New Orleans alone. You’d fallen in love with a vampire named Jean, one of the eldest ones in the city, and Marcel had killed him for associating with a witch. 

A witch who had no coven. An independent witch who everyone else feared. 

When Marcel had killed your significant other, you’d burned over two dozen vampires in retaliation. He’d never tried to cross you again. The vampires knew better. The witches knew better. The wolves... they had no say. They’d never been able to have a say in the matters of the Quarter. 

You remember the first time you saw Niklaus strolling down the streets of the quarters towards the most well known bakery in town. You knew exactly why he was going there. 

Beignets. 

  “Good morning! What can I help you with today?” 

Klaus smiled at the young cashier and lifted his eyes to the menu, preparing to remove a wad of bills and slide them across the counter. “I will take-” 

  “Mr. Mikaelson will take as many beignets as you are willing to give him, Anna,” Klaus froze as a familiar voice drifted through the sun-lit open front doors to the cafe. He hadn’t heard that voice in a hundred years. “And he’ll take them to go.” 

  “Right away!” 

Niklaus Mikaelson wasn’t one privy to the feelings that come with shock, or being caught off guard. He was the strongest and the most feared monster to live on this earth. He was hated. He was okay with being hated. 

But the one person who had loved him in spite of all of that was you, and you were standing in front of him for the first time in a hundred years. 

  “Y/N?” 

  “My dear, sweet Niklaus... did you miss me?” 

So much had happened since then. Dahlia, Marcel, the war between the witches and the vampires, nearly losing four of the Mikaelson siblings in one swift go... That nearly ended you. You might despise Elijah for the things he makes you feel - and the things he has chosen to so blatantly ignore when Hayley is within his grasps - but you still love him. You don’t think you can stop loving him. 

And that’s why you hate that you still choose to stay with Hayley to find the cure. You tell her, once they’re all coffined and safe in the back of the truck, that you’re staying to help her find the cure and protect Hope. 

You’re really staying because of the promise you made to Klaus. The promise you made to Elijah when you held him, trembling and weak, in your arms as the venom from Marcel’s bite worked its way through his blood. 

  “Y/N, I know you owe me nothing, but I have one last thing to ask-” 

Hayley is in the other room tending to the other three Mikaelsons while you tend to Elijah. Freya had been the one who suggested it. Said that he would be better off to have the comforting hands of someone he knew taking care of him in his most vulnerable state. 

You argued Hayley could do it. Freya denied you. Said it had to be you. 

So here you are. 

  “Sh... sweet Elijah,” You murmur, raking your fingers through sweat slick hair as he scrambles for purchase in the worn fabric of your jacket. Hayley may be new, she may have his heart and he may have fallen in love with her, but you are familiar and safe. You remind him of a time where he considered himself to be good. “You’re not making any dying promises to me.” 

He’d only asked you one simple thing, which you ended up doing anyway. Protect Hayley and Hope. Nothing about yourself. Nothing about how you felt. 

When everyone had been cursed and their ailments lifted, you quietly disclosed to Niklaus you were intending on leaving and finally told him why: You were tired of being hurt by the fact that you’d given so much of yourself to the family, to Elijah, only for those efforts to not be recognized or reciprocated. 

  “You act as if we have not all recognized your affections for my brother, Y/N,” Niklaus remarked from your hidden spot in the barn where no one would come to bother you. You had wanted to tell him first of your intentions to leave and make your own way. To find love. To find peace. To find the things that, being the anchor of the Mikaelsons, you had never been able to find. “And as for Elijah, I believe it simply comes down to one thing. You were, even after we were turned, always so good. And goodness is always tainted in our presence. He doesn’t believe himself worthy of someone good. Goodness is taken away and replaced by something-” 

  “Evil?” When Klaus didn’t reply, you nodded your assent and continued braiding the wildflowers you had picked from the field outside while looking for him. “I’ve never seen you as you all see yourselves. Especially you, Niklaus. You should know that given how many times I saved you from Mikael.” 

And he’d never forget one moment of them. Not one from childhood, and not one now. 

  “I grant you a mercy that you deserve,” He’d cradled your face then, ever the gentle, and kissed your forehead as he whispered, “You are free from us.” 

But you weren’t. Hope got sick, the Hollow emerged, and everything went to Hell again. 

You disappeared to Mystic Falls during the core years of Hope Mikaelson’s life where she needed a teacher to learn how to control her abilities. You had bid your goodbyes before they were taken from you. Had told them you’d always be a call away.

All of them except Elijah. After his blatant denial of your affections, you decided he did not deserve it. Nothing else from you. 

So for several years, you lived in Mystic Falls. You made a life for yourself as a witch in the community who often convened with Bonnie Bennett, a younger witch from the Bennet line who was remarkably powerful and looking for community with other powerful witches she could learn from. 

The Salvatore brothers respected you. Elena tolerated you. That was okay. 

You had peace. 

Until you didn’t. 

Until Elijah gained his memories back, and Klaus called you frantic and desperate for someone to be there for him that he knew. Someone who understood his vulnerabilities and what it was like to lose the love of your life. When he’d told you Hayley had died saving Hope, you had released such a powerful magical response that Bonnie had felt it clear across town and had come to make sure you were okay. 

She said you were crying when she found you. You didn’t realize it until you lifted your fingertips to your cheeks, and they came back wet. 

Because of course your heart would do this to you. Of course you would come running back to New Orleans to aid the Mikaelson’s during their most painful days.

Always and forever was your curse.

And loving Elijah Mikaelson, you believed, would be your downfall. You believed that until he turned around from where he was bent over the church pew, his siblings presences scattered about the room, and gazed upon you like you were the clearest and brightest thing he’d seen in centuries. 

Like you were the light able to pull him out of the proverbial darkness. 

  “Y/N?” 

part two has been posted!

[yanderes-galore]

Surprised to see no N'tho 'Sraom concept yet! Might as well go ahead and request it myself right now~

I actually didn't know him so I had to once again utilize the wiki to help me out ^^ Hope you enjoy this regardless! Not fully proofread, may have mistakes!

Yandere! N'tho 'Sraom Concept

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Possessive behavior, Yandere alien, Manipulation, Invasion of privacy, Violence (Mentions of war), Forced/Dubious relationship/companionship.

According to what I read, N'tho was originally the youngest Sangheili in a Covenant Special Operations branch.

He outperformed many of his fellow Sangheili in the group.

Later, during The Great Schism, he joined forces with Thel and Rtas against The Prophet of Truth.

He developed a high respect for humanity and was a human sympathizer.

He then became part of The Swords of Sangheilios after the Human-Covenant War with Thel.

He is very dedicated to old Sangheili ways.

He understands and respects human's audacity and resolve.

He actively participated in missions under Thel's command.

N'tho may be close to either a human or Sangheili who fought beside him during the end of the Human-Covenant war.

This way, regardless on which species you choose, you have time to prove yourself to N'tho.

Most Sangheili gain respect for others based on their combat prowess.

I'll try to keep this general but I am biased to human darlings....

N'tho's obsession starts with a mutual respect between you.

He is a young member of his kind but can see a good fighter when he sees one.

Regardless on your species... he respects you and considers you an ally and companion.

Even after the war he still remembers you fondly.

Perhaps if you're a Sangheili you are also a part of The Swords of Sangheilios.

Or, if you were a human, you're one of those new marine turned spartan types.

N'tho hopes you are respected for your skills in combat situations and wishes you the best.

His obsession slowly develops as he's away from you.

You two are stationed away from one another and N'tho finds himself thinking back on how well you fought.

N'tho canonically has not married or taken any sort of partner

So his obsession could just be a close bond or something more romantic.

He certainly is fond of you for your abilities.

Both in strategy, leadership, and overall combat knowledge.

He finds these traits desirable in both an ally and partner.

As a result N'tho may try to sneakily find information on you to meet you.

Surely he can get permission from Thel to meet with you, perhaps even for a future mission due to how well you are in combat.

He may even get away with it as you are a good asset.

Having an extra Sangheili/Human warrior can aid in missions.

It's even better if just by chance N'tho works with Thel and a human group, just to find you.

As with most Sangheili yanderes I write, N'tho grows possessive of you when he sees you again.

When he first met you he was a Sangheili Minor, a young Sangheili with barely any rank.

But now he's something much more, isn't he?

Surely you find this... appealing?

In a way you can tell he's trying to impress you.

He's a higher rank now, he even is able to command a ship as Shipmaster.

Due to his higher rank, N'tho may even recruit you on his ship.

Naturally he wants to keep you close, what better way to do that than by recruiting you?

Eventually N'tho's obsession makes you his second in command.

He keeps all other troops under his command away from you.

His possessive behavior leaks out at times, resulting in subtle threats towards some forces.

He holds back on outright violence... but he has his limits.

If he just sees you as an ally or friend... his obsession stops at that.

If not... then he tries to court you.

After all... he's improved so much from when you first met.

Aren't you impressed?

Maybe you should give him a chance...

As two warriors, you'll be perfect together!

If not... well... N'tho is persistent and loyal.

One way or another you two share a warrior's bond with one another...

He plans to preserve that connection and keep it all to himself....

[jodjuya]

I'm officially a hater. Every Halo game since the very first one is full of bullshit.

My many problems with Halo 4, as I experience them:

FOUR VIDEO GAMES IN A SERIES! FOUR DIFFERENT CONTROLLER MAPPINGS!!! MICROSOFT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU???

What is the compass needle even pointing to on 117's assault rifle? we're adrift in open space...

WHY ARE THERE MOTHERFUCKING QUICK TIME EVENTS IN THIS GAME? FUCK YOU!

"these Covenant seem more fanatical than the ones we've fought before" - how the fuck can you tell??

Why did they give Cortana baby-face and big tits?? Pick a direction, Microsoft!! She can be prepubescent or postpubescent but not both of them simultaneously!

Why am I supposed to feel any sort of emotional attachment to Cortana anyway? She's just a Microsoft Clippy with blue boobs stuck on 🙄

"I'm the only AI generated from a clone" I'm vibrating with rage at how goddamn stupid that is.

I THINK YOU LITERALLY HAVE MORE PRESSING PROBLEMS THAN RETURNING TO HALSEY TO FACTORY-RESET YOUR AI WAIFU, MASTER CHIEF! YOU ARE EVADING HOSTILE ALIEN FORCES ON A RANDOM PLANET GOD KNOWS WHERE! JUST GET A NEW AI WAIFU WHEN YOU GET HOME! FUCK

"[Unknown alien transmission]'s behaviour is odd!" - how the fuck do you know that Cortana??? This is your first time encountering this transmission, how do you know it's not supposed to be like that?

Maybe the reason all these aliens are so hostile to you, Master Chief, is because the very first guy you saw you punched in the jaw and threw down an elevator shaft! Would it kill you to just try saying "hello" first?

Lmfao @ Cortana calling out the Chief for the exact same thing literally seconds later

"Requiem! At least we know where we are now!" - my guy you have no fucking idea where you are

WHY THE FUCK DOES HALO HAVE CINEMATIC 3RD-PERSON MELEE ATTACKS NOW?! JUST CLOBBER THE FUCKING GUY AND MOVE ON!

This is something I really disliked in Halo 3 too, but those invisible barriers that hard block you from taking vehicles indoors, even if you do manage to scrape them past the non-invisible barriers. Let me drive a Ghost indoors!

Why can't they maintain my weapon loadout on either side of a cutscene? Halo 3 handled this really well.

But here in Halo 4 I take my lovely SAW and my lovely Fuel-Rod Cannon into a cutscene and come back out of it with an assault rifle and pistol. 😒😒😒

• Seriously, why does Cortana have the face of a nine year old child and the body of a twenty-nine year old woman?! Am I taking fucking crazy pills here??

I can forgive video game developers being horny, but not when it's this gratuitously bullshit

(and the voice of a 59 year old woman, going by the game's opening cutscene of Dr Eugenics' interrogation lmao)

The new forerunner enemies are cool enough, but it really feels like they copied Borderlands' homework with their design.

Why is Cortana so blithely confident with all her info-dumping about these random alien creatures she's never seen before in her damn life? And why is master chief taking anything she says seriously when he knows she's going through AI-Alzheimer's???

The Didact is bullshit. Who the fuck is this guy? why does he call himself a "Forerunner" when that's 'our' word for them? and how does he indentify us as "human"? Also why's he so mad at us for freeing him? This is all so very stupid.

Wow. ANOTHER escape sequence involving driving fast through some exploding superstructure? Come on, Microsoft, it's all very well and good to rest on your laurels but this is just masturbating with them... I swear to you on my mother's life that having an original idea isn't nearly as painful as you seem to think it might be...

Even more being stripped of my good weapons and reset back to basic bitch assault rifle + handgun

"the greatest enemy ever faced by the forerunners: you" - bitch you've been extinct for like 100,000 years what the fuck are you even talking about???

"the Prometheans, they're human" what the fuck are you even talking about?? Who the fuck are the Prometheans??

Genesong, evolutionary acceleration, thousands of lifetimes' worth of planning? What in the flying fuck is all this nonsense? When and why did Halo become "What If Star Trek Was About Using The Power Of Friendship To Kill God"?!

Look, Microsoft, this shit isn't fucking rocket science. I shouldn't have to take an undergraduate degree in Halology to understand the fucking story of a video game. I shouldn't have to go read god knows how fucking many spin-off novels there are just to know basic facts about your game like who in the flying fuck are all these goddamn Elder God alien species you're name-dropping. I should just play the game and have knowledge of the game from playing the fucking game. Jesus fucking christ pull your head out of your arse and stop jerking yourself off and start making some goddamn sense!!

Why can this Space Orc Big Bad use The Force like Darth Vader anyhow??

Why is defeating Space Orc Big Bad a fucking quicktime event???

Lol get vaporised, idiot

Why was nuking his spaceship another quicktime event? Just make the whole thing a cutscene, christ 🙄

Master Chief finally makes it to The Waifu Dimension (via nuclear bomb?????) and his first thought is "how do I escape from here?" instead of "oh cool I can finally kiss my holographic waifu"

And now he's just, like, chilling out in orbit around earth, perfectly fine and unharmed?? after setting off a nuclear bomb in his lap with his own two hands?????

Hey, so why was I fighting digi-struct robots for the entire back-half of this game anyway? Isn't Halo supposed to be about fighting The Covenant and The Flood?? 😒

Also, didn't the Covenant have an internal schism/civil war last game?? Like, that was the whole plot of the whole game. Why are the Elites back in the Covenant again; are we just not going to bother with explaining that?

Holy fuck I hate this fucking game. Really glad I only paid seven bucks for it.

Things I liked about Halo 4:

It looks pretty

No more dual-wielding. Fun concept, sure, but it made the games' control scheme fucked to shit. Really felt like Bungie made all of the enemies into utterly gratuitous damage-sponges to compensate for MC's higher DPS too, and that sucked.

The weapon rebalancing, in general. The new Needler kicks ass.

No more dragging around a giant posse of allies with me everywhere. I feel like that was another big contributor to the enemies needing to be so heavily-buffed with sponginess.

Really glad the Brutes aren't in this game. Those guys were the fucking worst.

The items from Halo 3 were mostly useless and just served to clutter up the game. Forgot they were there most of the time, and kept activating them by accident when trying to reload. Glad to see they've been fucked off/heavily retooled. The new active-camo gadget is useful and fun without being overpowered; I really like how well they've balanced it. All of the other gadgets are fairly middling though.

The new machine gun is great! (SURE WOULD BE NICE IF I WAS ABLE TO KEEP IT FOR MORE THAN HALF OF ONE LEVEL THOUGH)

I laughed when I saw a grunt sprinting at my Ghost with a lit grenade in each hand. Some real Serious-Sam-type nonsense right there 😂

Stomping around in the Mantis mech was extremely fun

The sticky-bomb handgun was pretty fun.

Final verdict: Microwaved Slop.

I'll eat it if I'm hungry enough, but I won't enjoy it.

[interstellar-elf]

The 13 Primes aren't Cybertronian as We Know Them

So I have a theory about the 13 Primes in Earthspark and why they looks so weird in their designs. It came when I was reading some of the criticisms of Quintus' design in "Prime Time" being that he looks a little more human than robot. And I think that's deliberate in a way.

In Earthspark, we are shown the 13 Primes, though not exactly in detail or anything.

In fact some of the designs of the Primes look far more drastic, especially to those familiar with their designs in the Covenant of Primus. Some of them even look downright more humanoid or more human looking than their original incarnates, even less Cybertronian at first glance. However, as I must reiterate, this feels like it was deliberate. And not just for the audience to emphasize with, but rather to detail something that's probably going to be a major plot point in a future season of Earthspark.

And what is that? Well, I think the 13 Primes are the alien precursors to the Transformers, from Cybertron to elsewhere.

To clarify, I understand that in previous fiction, the 13 Primes were presented as the first creations of Primus or the guiding forefathers of early Cybertron, rather than outright precursors. However, I think Earthspark is setting up the 13 as a group of precursors, especially in consideration of how they're designed and the nature of their relics. In fact, unlike other previous stories, the Primes are presented as having a relic apiece, rather than owning several (like just how many swords does Nexus own in the Aligned universe anyways?). I think that's also a deliberate choice as well, as to better emphasize the Primes in their roles and as characters rather than have a ton of relics assigned to one, but I'm getting away from what I'm trying to theorize.

The 13 Primes will be revealed as the Precursors of an ancient civilization or perhaps as a part of a previous species that lived on Cybertron and created the 13 as the last light of their culture a la the trope, "A torch thrown into the future." Perhaps, given how the relics of the Primes seem to be very important to fighting Unicron in most incarnations, perhaps this is the reason why they exist in this continuity (especially since Primus and Unicron seemingly exist in this continuity as well). The reason for them looking so human like is probably because the precursors were fairly more humanlike aliens, and the 13 Primes are either their creation or the last of their kind who now live in the Astral/Primal Plane and occassionally go planetside to gift those they deem worthy of their relics or help out their chosen ones.

So what I'm saying is that the 13 Primes are aliens to the already alien Cybertronians.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Thirty One Days of Horror Movies! Day Twenty Seven :D

Alien!

When a member of the crew of the Nostromo is attacked by a strange extraterrestrial creature that is discovered aboard a wrecked space craft the rest of the crew find themselves plunged into a horrifying fight for survival as they find themselves up against a killing machine determined to slaughter everyone aboard

While later films in the franchise would move more towards action or science fiction, the original film is 100% a horror movie set in space

The wonderfully creepy design of the Xenomorph is as terrifying as it is memorable and its easy to see how it became one of THE most iconic movie monsters of all time...the wise decision to initially keep the full creature in shadow only helps build the dread as it picks off the crew and the fact that it's up against a crew of what are basically space truckers makes the situation even more tense as they are terrifyingly outmatched against the remorseless and murderous entity they've brought aboard

The film of course also introduced us to iconic franchise heroine Ellen Ripley and Sigourney Weaver's performance here is good stuff. And before anyone asks, yes I would absolutely have gone back to save the cat as well <3

The movie has plenty of wonderfully scary and vicious scenes and even if the scene where the creature emerges from its luckless host no longer has the shock factor it had when the film first came out its still a fabulously gory and horrifying moment

While the sequels are a mixed bag (I personally really enjoy Aliens and I think Alien: Covenant is...OKAY and I am in the minority in that I really like the Alien vs Predator movies...) this first film is a fabulous sci fi horror that's well worth checking out this Halloween :D

[january-summers]

I know it's probably just there to show that Wash had some whimsy, or it's a reference I'm not getting, but while I was delving in Big Sad headcanons re: wash's court martial backstory, I got attached to the idea the rubber duck in his locker wasn't actually (originally) his.

But that kind of grew, just simmering away in the background radiation of my brain. It belonged to a rookie from Wash's team back when he was David [last name redacted] working for the UNSC, maybe not long before his court martial.

The rookie was bright, in the too intelligent for their own good kind of way, a nervous stimmer who belonged in the highest of higher educations but had to drop out because that's too expensive or too glassed by the covenant to go back to. Too smart for being on the ground, but not officially educated enough to get one of the safer jobs.

And so painfully young.

David thought it was a joke the first time he heard the duck's name, and his laugh was responded to with a stern warning.

"Waddles Von Quackington (the third) is the most educated duck in the universe, and it is smarter than you."

They've had the duck since they were in primary education, having found out about the rubber duck debugging method and finding it worked well for them in many areas of education.

The rookie talks to the damn thing as they work their way through alien tech, fixing it or figuring out how to work it in the field so David and the others can turn the covie weapons back on their owners when their own bullets run low.

The rookie dies, because it's war, and of course people die, and David's worked miracles keeping as many of his people alive as he has, but he's just a corporal, even in line for a promotion, he's far from the top of the food chain, and there's only so much he can do about stupid orders.

They can't take the rookie's body, he barely has time to grab the dog-tags and the duck.

Washington has only ever truly scared South Dakota once during their time working together. Even in the moments before he put a bullet in her head, she wasn't as scared of him as the time she'd tried to take her bad mood out on him and threatened to destroy the rubber duck he kept in his locker.

Wash doesn't know what happened to it after the Mother of Invention crashed, but he has an idea given the state his skateboard was found in. Well, half of it anyway.

-

Although I do also like the idea it was a present from one of his sisters, stealthily slipped into his bag before he went of to sign up to the army. he only found it once he'd arrive at training camp and he's kept it with him ever since, as a reminder of his family and what he's fighting for.

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Opening Suite • Truth and Reconciliation Suite • Brothers In Arms • Enough Dead Heroes • Perilous Journey • A Walk In the Woods • Ambient Wonder • The Gun Pointed At the Head of the Universe • Trace Amounts • Under Cover of Night • What Once Was Lost • Lament For Pvt. Jenkins • Devils... Monsters... • Covenant Dance • Alien Corridors • Rock Anthem for Saving the World • The Maw • Drumrun • On a Pale Horse • Perchance to Dream • Library Suite • The Long Run • Suite Autumn • Shadows • Dust and Echoes • Halo

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