#alpha-nine

[halopedia]

Did You Know that in Halo 3: ODST, the IWHBYD skull enables some mission-specific dialogue between the player character and their ODST squadmate? Their lines are chosen randomly from a list of four to five possible options.

Which combo of Alpha-Nine has your favorite dynamic?

Meet the squad: Halppedia - Alpha-Nine

[eschatonjudge]

Veronica: Why are you burning our marriage certificate?!

Buck: Good luck trying to return me without a receipt.

[isagrimorie]

Voyager is our Home.

[coco0milkshake]

guys guys I just had the best idea ever-

[superintendent-b]

Excuse me sir I would like to request some more Sleeveless ODSTs please

I love your responses and artworks, they bring me so much joy when I see them

One order of sleeveless ODSTs coming up o7

And thank YOU ×1000!! I like making silly art pieces about the characters I love and when other people get to enjoy them with me, it makes it worth the effort

[fuwag]

Hello ODST fans!

Kyoufuu All Back by yukopi (Wonderlands x Showtime cover)

[000marie198]

Notice how the Grim bots look and fight very very similar to the OG characters.

Notice how The Grim is empty and lifeless

Notice how it seems almost as if it hasn't started forming yet

Remember The Grim being dubbed as a clean slate by Nine

Remember how he chose this place to be his world, his paradise, his home.

Notice that it belongs to him now to create it as he wants.

Remember that Grim has no one and has no counterparts or landmarks of the OG world

Remember how Ghost Hill blew up, destroyed from existence when Nine began to use the unstable prism to recreate The Grim.

Remember how the ghosts of Sonic's and Shadow's friends were also wiped from existence and floated away, the essence gone into the energy sucked away by the prism

Remember how much the Grim bots look and act like the OGs

Since the world of the Grim was claimed by Nine to create as he wants before it fully formed, and he created those bots to be his friends, the Grim Bots are the variants of this Shatterspace.

...

That wasn't the point of the post. This is the true point of the post:

There's no Tails amongst the Grim Bots.

By Nine's choice, Tails' variant doesn't exist in his world

[dan2078]

I'm sooo original, deeeefinitely hadn't done this rope-jumping format with a different set of characters from a different fandom... It's bad, but only because I don't feel like making it good, it was supposed to be an animation but for the life of me I CAN'T DRAW TAILS IN ANY FORM. So I just wanted to- get it out of my head before it ate my skull noodle. Thank you.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Headcanon that Seven of Nine and Naomi actually find Neelix’s cooking to be fine because it’s the only food they’ve ever eaten/their first introduction to food and when they get to Earth everyone’s so excited to show them Alpha quadrant foods but neither of them likes anything they’re offered very much. Seven doesn’t really care either way except that she has to get used to a whole new palette and Naomi likes the obvious (Ex: candy, cake) but frequently complains that nothing tastes ‘right’. Naomi: -pushing away a slice of pizza- I don’t like it... Tom: You’re kidding me. You don’t like pizza? Naomi: It doesn’t taste right! Make it how Neelix used to. Tom: You want me to put gerhalorian beets and yuk mushrooms in the sauce so it congeals into a lumpy, slightly sour mess? Is that what you want, Naomi? Naomi: Yeah :(  I want Naomi and Icheb to work tirelessly together on a side project for years until finally doing it - being able to communicate clearly with those in the Delta quadrant! Icheb uses it to speak to the other borg children (now adults) and Naomi immediately uses it to call Neelix and ask him to find the nearest time portal and toss a big box of leola root into it. She’s been craving it for years! No one told her the Alpha quadrant didn’t have leola root, she wouldn’t have gone otherwise!

[howcouldtheyletmebeanadult]

And today on "how edgy can a 9 year old make a robot" we present a new discovery...

So basically, i've been working on a drawing of beepo and shadic, which means that i looked up images of them as references, it's then that i realize something different between the two...

now, look at this guys hands, notice how the fingers are kind of boxy(? but still clearly try to look like normal hands. And now, let's look at shadic's...

...yeah, that's right, not only did Nine change his scheme color to black and red, of all things, not only did he change his design in a way that make him look like Shadow, change his personality completely to be a silent and serious fighting machine and then named him fucking Alpha Grim Sonic, he also just had to give him claws, they're not even like, huge claws that give him a lot of reach or something, im convinced they're just there for the aesthetic

[kiranerysismyhero]

what if how we could have both ezri and jadzia in s7 went like this:

jadzia is mortally injured, and the destiny is trying to get her/dax back to trill while she's still on life support. ben comes along bc jadzia is not actually dead yet and he has good reason to distrust the symbiosis commission.

things take a turn and it's looking even more urgent for the symbiont. ben doesn't want to let anyone remove dax from jadzia (again) while she's still alive but is overruled by starfleet brass at the behest of the commission. the ship's surgeon joins dax to ezri, who in this version is still just as reluctant but now at least the 15 minutes of improvised lecture substituting for years of preparation comes from ben. like how would he approach that conversation?

ezri wakes up and meets ben this time as dax... but in the next bed over jadzia is still hanging on. an hour, then two pass and the symbiont's vitals are a lot more stable now in ezri while jadzia is not doing well but is still fighting for her life. the destiny's doctor is kind of lost because they tried to contact trill about how they should care for jadzia but all the symbiosis commission wanted to talk about was dax and how soon could they get their hands on ezri

and ben is like 'okay i know you just met me but also you've known me for lifetimes now... hear me out...' and ezri's like 'yup solid plan let's do it but also what if we took even more risk bc dax's got a bit of starfleet medical now too' and ben's gotta be 'oh i had more appeals ready that you didn't even wait to hear, okay'

basically action sequence now– the destiny had slowed down to respond to an emergency signal and pick up some escape pods bc y'know dominion war, and ben and ezri work together to sneak jadzia into a biobed and off the ship in a runabout. and we see some of ezri accessing previous hosts as they hide the runabout in the debris field and get some distance before the destiny realizes they're missing

and just when it seems like the destiny is going to find them as ezri's breaking down a little bit about 'i'm a counselor and i'm still in training and out of all these lifetimes i'm still the one with the most medical knowledge in here??' as she tries to keep this woman that she remembers being stable-ish in stasis... the defiant decloaks! grabs them! re-cloaks! outta there!

julian checks that ezri is really really sure and then does what the symbiosis commission was never going to consider as an option: rejoining dax to jadzia now that the symbiont has been rehabbed/bolstered by ezri

jadzia is able to recover, if slowly. ezri is physically relatively unharmed by the ordeal, but a whole lot of psychological upheaval just happened and this woman is sat here making jokes about remembering being ezri for a hot minute and while ezri no longer remembers being jadzia, she does remember remembering being jadzia... it makes her head hurt. and jadzia's just like 'nah it was still less traumatic than last time when i had to be awake for more of it' and ezri just desperately wishes she could remember what the hell she means by last time

the symbiosis commission is piiiissed. they reallly want to excommunicate dax, jadzia, and/or ezri for all this but ben's like 'i'm adding the viability of respite care for symbionts to the list of info that you don't want me to share with your whole society' aand the symbiosis commission concedes under the condition that ezri is now GOING to be the next dax, WHENEVER that may be, there has been eNOUGH hot potato with this worm already, you two are going to STAY CLOSE so you don't end up pulling anyone else into dax's chaos being another intermediary when the time comes

so now jadzia and ezri are bureaucratically handcuffed to each other and both alive and have fascinating things to talk about :)

[eschatonjudge]

Dutch: Are we really going to let Buck keep Veronica?

Romeo: We kept Mickey.

[spockvarietyhour]

A Good chunk of the Matte Painting in Random Thoughts are assets from other episodes including "Homefront", "Let He Who is Without Sin", and "Future's End Pt 1 & 2"

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Made from 3 blocks and a groan of frustration, is the him!!!

[superintendent-b]

We made it! 🥂🎉

(For the light mode users and the desktopers among you)

[writergeekrhw]

HOW TO KILL A CHARACTER

(A Writing Spew)

I'm trying to archive some of my old Twitter writing spews on Tumblr. You know, because of things. So here's a rather big one. HOW TO KILL A CHARACTER.

/BeginSpew

Okay, you’re a writer. You’ve got a mess of characters. You want to move your audience. So, it’s time to take out the old writer’s ax and chop chop chop! But how do you do it with maximum impact without your audience turning against you forever?

Pull up a chair and Uncle Robert will explain it to you!

(Warning, there may be spoilers ahead for stuff that if you haven't seen it by now it's your own damn fault.)

Luckily, there are a lot of reliable tricks to kill that character. Any of them can work for both #TVWriting and #Novels. Some of them can backfire. Here are some proven approaches…

Death #1: The Intro Death!

Want to set the stakes for your world? Introduce a character or characters and fool the audience into thinking they will be a big part of the story. Then… CHOP! OMG THEY’RE DEAD! SHIT JUST GOT REAL! AKA the Hello-Die.

The Hello-Die pretty much always works because the audience hasn’t had time to really get invested, but they’re invested enough to feel the sudden shock.

Examples: Psycho. Buffy (S1E1). GOT Teaser. #DS9 pilot. Hill Street Blues (averted).

The Hello-Die is often used by shows to shake up your expectations in what has usually been a fairly safe genre. And yes, I did this in #Andromeda. You think this is a nice safe Fantasy/SpaceOpera/CopShow/FamilyDrama? NOPE! Hello-Die! Watch out for exploding Helmsbugs.

Death #2: The Mentor Death

Your character learns cool stuff from the smart old person. Then the smart old person dies! OMG! “But I had so much more to learn!” “True, but don’t you see? This was the real lesson.” AKA The Obi-wan.

The Mentor Death is pretty safe too. We all know the old people we learn from are going to kick it soon, right? But that’s okay, because WE GOT THIS! Circle of Life, ya’ll!

Examples: Star Wars. Star Wars again. Star Wars that other time too. Harry Potter.

Death #3: The Hero’s First Kill.

Your hero lives in a violent world, but they’re a good person. They don’t want to be a killer. Alas, the world needs them to kill. And you want to portray how that impacts your hero. And so that minor villain must die!

The HFK can be tricky. For best results, the victim should need killin’. Because you want the audience to still like your hero. Plus it’s your hero’s first kill, so you need to overcome their reluctance. Or maybe it’s an accident? (OR IS IT?)

Either way, now your hero is transformed and all it took was offing a minor character. WARNING: Often involves hero puke!

An excellent example of the HFK is the Stable Boy in GoT. Arya asked him to let her go. He wouldn’t. She insisted. He said the Queen would pay her handsomely for her. She lashes out with Needle and… OOOPS! Or was it an oops? Well now he’s dead & Arya’s on her way.

Death #4: The Villain’s First Kill

The opposite of the HFK. The villain is bad, but he hasn’t killed… yet. Then he takes his first victim (usually someone either plucky or gross) and he just can’t help himself! Afterward, unlike the hero, the villain feels good.

He’s got a taste for this now. It’s going to happen again. Cue dramatic (or ironic) music!

The VFK can also sometimes be the Intro Death. Maybe it’s not the villain’s 1st kill, but it’s the first we see. Either way, the VFK is relatively safe, though there's a risk that if the victim is too likable, the audience won’t just hate the villain, they’ll hate the author.

Which is why the VFK is often someone gross or “disposable” or even theoretically somewhat deserving. In American Psycho, the first kill is a homeless man, the second is a Wall Street asshole.

Another VFK example: In the Bone Collector, the first death is a man no one cares about, and he dies off-screen, but the next is a plucky woman who dies horribly onscreen. The story eases you into it.

Still, the VFK is fairly safe. It needs to be just bad enough to shock, but no so awful that you completely lose the audience. You can get awful later once you've built up good will.

Now come some of the tougher deaths to pull off, starting with...

Death #5: The Season One/Book One Death

An important character dies relatively early in your tale. This is usually done because you want to drive home the stakes even more. Also the death launches/twists the story. AKA The Boromir AKA The Ned AKA The Sean Bean.

The Sean Bean is tricky because you’ve spent a fair amount of time getting the audience invested. You may have even tricked them into thinking the Sean Bean is a major hero. The more invested they are in TSB, the higher the risk you might lose your audience.

To minimize audience hate, make sure they understand it’s kind of Sean Bean’s fault. Or a noble sacrifice. Or if the character is minor enough (Hi Tasha Yar) it's a way to show the random awfulness of the universe. The important part is your real heroes will learn from this.

There will be crying and anger and thirst for revenge (or Data will struggle to understand death and we’ll all love him for it.)

The Purpose of the Ceremony - YouTube

Now part of why the Sean Bean works is its earliness. The later in a story a character is killed, the more their death needs to have meaning. You can kill Tasha randomly in Season One but you would never do that in Season Six.

In Season Six, if a regular dies, it better not be random or the audience will feel angry and… Oh. Yeah. Her. I wasn’t on staff then. IT’S NOT MY FAULT!

Anyway, the later you get, the more meaning a death needs to have, ideally.

Now we’re getting into the Big Earned Deaths. So let’s talk about them.

Death #6: The Big Bad Death

This is pretty easy, honestly. The easiest. The audience has been waiting for this bastard to die for years! They will cheer. Even if you’ve run this asshole through the Face/Heel Revolving Door a few times (Hi Gul Dukat), by now, they’re past redemption.

The Big Bad needs killing. KILLING THEM IS KINDA THE POINT. Go for it. Make it as horrific and painful as you’d like. Make them fall a LOOOOOOONG way before they hit something. Make them bounce a bit. The audience will love you for it.

Death #7: The Sacrificial Hero Death

Solid option. You might want to foreshadow the heck out of this. Maybe even near-death your hero a few times. But still, the audience usually gets this one. After all, messiahs die. It is known.

There will be tears, but we all know sometimes the only way to save the world is to die. If the good done by the hero’s death outweighs the sadness the audience feels, this can even be uplifting. Bittersweet chocolate is the best, right?

The SHD is a perfect way to kill a beloved character late in a novel or show. They died for our sins! If not for them, we’d be toast. Very satisfying when done correctly. I mean, there are entire religions based on this. Do it right and it packs an immortal punch.

Death #8: The Shakespearean Tragedy

Your hero isn’t really a hero. They might’ve started that way and/or had good intentions, but they’ve slippery-sloped themselves into full blown villainy… and they know it.

They’ve had their moment of tragic awareness. They realize theirs is a tale told by an idiot. Time to go out in the blaze of glory/late heel-face-turn sacrifice/by their own hand. My kingdom for a horse! Lay on Macduff! Good night sweet prince!

The classic ST is incredibly satisfying for the audience. They’ve enjoyed watching a good person descend into villainy, living vicariously through his/her badassery. They felt bad when the badassery turned to madness. SO MUCH METH!

Now the villain realizes how wrong it all was, and how flawed they are, they deliver a final moral lesson, then CHOP! And... cue Baby Blue, maybe some passing prince gives speech... then... curtain.

Death #9: The Final Wrong

Remember how bad that bad guy is? Gee, when’s the last time they were really, really bad? Time for them to shockingly kill a beloved character right before the final confrontation with the hero! I know you traveled a long way to help, but die Scatman Crothers!

Now there’s no going back. Now the villain can’t be redeemed. They must die. Cue the final chapter/episode/season/third act.

This one is risky as hell and maybe don't kill one of your few/only female POC protagonists this way but hey, you be you.

Death #10: The Sidekick Sacrifice.

Your hero can’t just win clean, right? That’s boring. There has to be a cost. And sometimes that cost is Robin’s life. Often this is a minor heroic sacrifice in its own right, but by someone other than the hero.

The sidekick takes the bullet, goes into the warp core, etc. Can be combined with the Final Wrong. Either way, "I have been... and always shall be... your friend." Cue tears.

Death #11: The War is Hell

A variation on the Sidekick Sacrifice. Beloved character dies randomly in a final great battle because War is Hell.

Sometimes the WiH is just A Bad Break. The bullet came from nowhere. WTF?!? Sometimes this happens in the Fog of War. No one saw it. The hero finds the body afterwards and feels the cost of victory. It’s high, man. So very high.

And yes, I used this one in #TheGoblinCrown. War is Hell even in YA fantasy novels.

Death #13: I Couldn’t Save Her

The riskiest variation on the late character death. The kid your hero has been protecting all along dies. The hero tries to save her/him but fails. Generally, only done in the Darkest Timelines. Or at the start of Alien 3. Fuck Alien 3.

The ICSH tells your audience this is not a hero’s story. This is a brutal examination of the inherent unfairness of life. Surprise!

WORDS OF CAUTION!

WARNING: Beloved Characrer Deaths often do not go over well. Use with caution.

The Final Wrong, the Sidekick Sacrifice, the War is Hell, and the I Couldn’t Save Her/Him are all somewhat risky. Sometimes you kill the very character that the audience most cares about. You know, like Glen. Or Lexa. OMG Lexa!? You can lose big chunks of your audience this way.

Still all four can be effective ways of turning on the feels late in a story. If you use them, make sure they either feel super well-earned or that they fit your theme so well that the audience will accept it.

But be careful. The biggest danger here is when the audience doesn’t realize you’re going to go this bleak and then you do and they feel betrayed. Can be a deal-breaker.

The more innocent the victim, the more horribly they die, and the more pointless the death, the bigger the risk you run of turning off your audience completely. And if it's an underrepresented character that a percentage of your audience deeply identifies with? Oh boy. Run.

Death #14: The Glorious Last Stand

This character was a prick all along, really. No one liked them. But when the chips were down, when our backs were against the wall, the they pulled the pin in their grenade and blew up a crapton of Aliens. Hurray!

The GLS can be supercool. The GLSer wasn’t the hero or the villain. Somewhere in the middle really. But we admire the way they went out. Their death redeemed them. If done right, audience will cheer for their bravery, finally loving them just as they die.

Death #15: The Everybody Dies

Rare. Tricky. Deeply powerful when done right. The time for characters like these is done. Their world is over. Their final great sacrifice, or noble last stand, or tragic Bolivian gunfight was inevitable. But oh how brightly they burned in the end.

Look at how badass they were. Look how bravely they faced death. And remember what it meant! Perhaps we would not be alive today if not for their transformative deaths. We will never forget them. Also their death may spur us all on to victory/change/redemption.

Or maybe the Western is just over. We're gonna miss you, Butch and Sundance! Cue montage!

Death #16 (but not really): Apotheosis

Your character dies technically, but really they become one with the Prophets, God of Light, Force. AKA The Sisko. You can only really pull this off in genre or stuff that pretends not to be genre but really is. Modern variation: Uploaded into the A.I.

Apotheosis can work extremely well if done right. Star Wars does it a lot and it works pretty much every time. You get the OOMF of killing a major character, but you reassure the audience that "They will always be with us."

If handled poorly, it can feel like a huge cheat, but when done well, can be a very satisfying way to kill off your awesome main character at the end of a long series without totally pissing off your audience. Like I said... The Sisko.

FINAL WORDS!

There are lots more ways to kill characters, of course. Including the bad ways to kill.

The It Was Supposed to be a Cliffhanger &Then We Got Cancelled and Now They’re All Dead I Guess.

The That Actor Was a Prick So We Offed His Character and Didn’t Care How We Did It.

The Oh, I Realized I Didn’t Need That Character So Gave Them a Perfunctory Death.

But I think I’ve covered the major and better ways to handle offing a character.

So yeah. Sometimes characters need killing. Just remember, you need to make their deaths satisfying in terms of plot, character, and/or theme or you risk losing your audience.

There are no small deaths. Every character is some off-screen mother’s child. Make it count. Make it matter. Make it worth the pages/screen time.

But think about your favorite movies/books/tv show. I bet they all had memorable deaths. I bet you cried. ADMIT IT, YOU CRIED! Look, I cried when Mike died in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I CRY EVERY TIME I READ IT.

(Mike = War is Hell/Sidekick Sacrifice/Fog of War)

Character Death is one of the most powerful tools in a writer's arsenal. Like all powerful tools, it should be used sparingly, thoughtfully, and for maximum impact. Give them the deaths they deserve!

And with that, I officially pronounce this spew dead. But don't feel bad. This spew will always be with us.

/endspew.