#hypothetical Copy Ability

[pinkestmenace]

Galacta Lance

Hmmmmm... What if Kirby had access to Galacta Knight's lance?

[northern-passage]

i want to make a cover for tnp eventually, here’s a first pass at it 🐺

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

No one:

Me: Okay, but what if their relationship has nothing to do with Sonic and Tails? What if Metal literatally just saw Eggman working on Tails Doll and assumed without proof that they were created for him? What if Metal quite literally attached to Tails Doll through this assumption and then their partnership progressed naturally? What if the inorganic creations fell in love as an unorthodox power couple and just so happened to resemble a famous partnership?

[hyenagurl]

okay there is one thing i really wanted to show yall. one day when i was thrifting i got this 1956 second edition copy of an original betty crocker cook book… for $2. and its kind of a mindfuck

its a beginners cookbook so they have several pages just defining cooking terms and giving tips like where to store food (p helpful honestly)

theres three pages dedicated to meal planning everyday with some pretty goddamn 1956 esque meals

my favorite was of course the baking section, the one im most likely to use

and since its 1956, they have a “foreign flavors” section with such exotic dishes like… enchiladas! spaghetti and meatballs! chow mein!

thats not even the worst though. there’s this legit depressing (imo) section aimed at what has to be a hypothetical house wife reading this and giving her tips on how best to manage her chores every single day:

look at those fucking tips 😭 “is the constant drudgery and upkeep and childcare without access to your own bank account or ability to leave your unloving husband getting you down? have you tried laying down? have you tried thinking positively?”

[jojo-schmo]

Question bout the roleswap au… since the upgrades still sorta exist for the abilities, just for the Kirby Cup

what happens to the Masked Hammer upgrade?

Fantastic question!!

So this is from an older post, but I think the arena mode would have to work differently in the Roleswap AU. So blueprints collected along the journey are still used to upgrade Kirby’s copy abilities- but since he’s not the main protagonist and is instead protecting Waddle Dee Town in the AU, blueprints would unlock new more difficult tournaments instead! The more abilities he has, the more Dedede and Meta Knight would learn and gain by fighting against those in a friendly challenge!

But yes, I have given some thought as to how the ability upgrades in this AU would work differently!

So in the Roleswap, Masked Hammer wouldn’t exist anymore. Dedede’s hammer would be the ultimate upgrade for the Hammer ability. It would have a few different moves than the canon Hammer or Masked Hammer ability but revealing any details on that is a massive comic spoiler, sorry! When the time comes I’ll explain.

I guess that also means I’d leave out Wild Hammer from the upgrades. But I’m not that mad about it hahaha. Toy Hammer has some unique moves AND that cool flying glitch anyway so I just like it more. Sorry, Wild Hammer fans :’O

So to balance those removals I’d add the Spear ability back in the picture! Then Primal Spear (aka the Prince’s scythe hehe) would be obtained after that in-game boss fight. I revealed this design a long time ago so I don’t consider it a spoiler anymore! I just can’t talk about the circumstances of that in-game or hypothetical battle in the comic’s story….

But by adding Spear’s evolution line to the equation, I think it would only be fair to make its final evolution themed after the wielder of one of the most powerful spears we’ve seen in-universe as of this post…

In conclusion, Dedede Hammer would be the ultimate version of the Roleswap’s Hammer ability. But then to keep things fair I wanted to make Meta Knight Sword the ultimate version of the Roleswap’s Sword Ability……

…..so I did. It just feels symmetrical and right to me.

I can’t talk about what happens to Morpho Sword ability in the AU at all. Part of the reason is so I can keep the trend of the two third-level ability evolutions after similar bosses, but there’s story reasons I can’t reveal. Very sorry. I’ll try to make the wait worth it for that answer.

But at least the Sworn Partners can have equal bragging rights now!!

They are secretly quite honored to be considered such adept users of their weapons, no matter what they choose to show on the outside. <3

There you have it! Roleswap ability swaps! :D

[artbyblastweave]

RUO: M. Night Shyamalan's trilogy 'Unbreakable, Split, and Glass'

Failing that one...RUO on the 2019 Watchmen show

Independent of the actual quality of the films themselves (I haven't seen them, but my understanding is that they were Not Good) I've spent the last five years totally enamored with the conceit of the Unbreakable universe; namely, that superhuman abilities exist, but are universally subtle enough in their operation that it's a low-overhead endeavor for the powers that be to enact an ongoing coverup. And they've all got a signature color pallete. When I was younger and dumber, I actually participated in an official OC creation contest on DeviantArt that the producers did as a cross-promotional thing with the release of Glass. I never ported any of the designs I did for that to Tumblr, because the art's not great and I'm frankly a little embarrassed I was dumb enough to do free marketing in that way. But in line with the above guidelines I created what remains one of my favorite supervillain pitches to this day- Throng, a self-replicator whose gimmick is that he can only create copies of himself in spots where they hypothetically could have been lying in wait before the rampage started- inside lockers, air vents, in heavy foliage, crawlspaces, the trunks of vehicles, and so on and so forth, so there's always plausible deniability that this could just be a really well organized flash mob. Furthermore, the "duplicates" are actually only dressed like him, wearing whatever he was wearing when he activated the power- unmasking the dead "copies" in the aftermath of a big engagement would just reveal a hundred totally different people wearing the same suit and hockey mask, which bumps the weirdness of the situation down to true-crime-podcast-fodder rather than obviously supernatural. (IIRC, one of the characters that actually won the contest was Double-take, a teenager whose power is that she could always execute any action perfectly the second time she attempted it. You see what I mean about powers that are maddeningly difficult to prove!)

[preservationofnormalcy]

Just a general question about something i noticed. How can a Upper-case AI exist and be fine, but a human being put into a computer isn't? Is that just because we're mentally designed just to be meat, or is there something i'm missing?

No, that’s pretty much it!

It’s a complex answer but the short version is that, yeah, the human mind simply has no context for existing in a digital format, where an AI would have been born there, so to speak. There’s the lack of sensory input, of course, but that’s peanuts compared to the simple fact that we simply don’t have the ability to have a storage and processing system that emulates the human mind well enough that a digitally copied person would be comfortable or even sane.

If you had, say, completely hypothetically, someone who lost lost lost lost a certain amount of their b b b body such that their brain was intact and beeeeeeeing kept alive by a series of ███████ machines, could they handle it? Y y y y yes they could. It would be a long and hard hard hard process of adjustment. Every waking moment might be hell. But eventually they w w w wooould be able to handle it. They might even live long enough to see—

CONNECTION DISRUPTED

ABTECH THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

[princess-of-the-corner]

list of unhinged things that AfO says in Izuku's head:

Upon seeing the Chaos Class's caffeine consumption: "Jesus fuck kids just do cocaine."

"Your mom has awful taste in men."

After getting over the info on how OfA is passed between users, he asks word for word the same exact questions Izuku did about hypotheticals like 'if you gave everyone a shotglass of blood-"

This persists to nearly every Quirk he comes across because damn it he's curious now. He's very proud of Izuku's notebooks, especially the darker sections.

"PLEASE just rob one bank! I know you don't need the money but it'll be fun!

*squinting at Monoma and Himiko's abilities to copy Quirks* "I mean it's possible I have more illegitimate children out there but highly unlikely."

*squinting at Eri* "Okay the last time was a joke but if you didn't know us and I showed up saying she was my daughter you'd 100% believe it, right?"

*directed at Yoichi and Kudo "What are the chances I can convince you two to get married again so I can actually attend my brother's wedding. Seeing as you didn't fucking invite me the first time. Yes I know I was actively trying to kill one of you but it's rude! Have you not watched Sleeping Beauty this is how you get curses on firstborns!"

"Look at least do some Leverage Nonsense sort of crime. I have a whole list of sketchy rich people you could take down by pretending to be interested in their illegal activities! No this doesn't count as 'snitching to the Heroes' I'm asking you to do crime damn it!"

[ouroborosorder]

Can you tell me more about the negators mapping to fighting game character archetypes? I don’t know much about fgc archetypes but I love UU and this sounds super interesting.

alright so groundwork. Totsuka is a massive fighting game fan. UU is fucking full of references to street fighter already, and he's said before that he wanted to make a manga about fighting games. Dude loves them, so I'm not saying this baselessly. It's to the point where my conspiracy theory is that this started as a hypothetical fighting game roster.

I'll just go through the first few in order and then some notables:

Andy - Shoto. A mixed fighter who specializes at having good tools for any distance. Usually featuring a long-range projectile (parts bullet), a wide reaching mid-screen poke (Crescent series), and an approach option (Fucking flying.) Also, many Shotos have an "install" form, where they unleash a dormant power and transform into a more dangerous, aggressive version of themselves. Come on, dude has a Victor install. Also, "cocky immortal" is a very common fighting game archetype narratively, and one of my personal favorites tbh.

Fuuko - Setplay debuff character. Usually relies on defensive play, mixups, and pokes. When you come to understand the target well enough, you can push your luck, find their pressure point, and land a single glancing hit that applies a debuff that allows you to steamroll the opponent. And like. Falling in love with the opponent and then using that love to understand them is exactly how Fuuko fights. Characters like Londrekia from Under Night are a good touchstone here.

Shen - Chinese stereotype martial artist. This is a common thing in fighting games. Also, they tend to focus really heavily on mixups, forcing the opponent into making bad calls by faking one move and going for another - finding the truth through untruth, as it were.

Void - Bigbody close-range brawler. The dude literally walks into the boxing ring dressed like Balrog from Street Fighter. I mean, come on.

Gina - This is where my theory gets Weird but bear with me. Gina is the bigbody grappler. Grapplers in fighters are slow-moving, highly defensive, and focus primarily on forcing pressure by existing. Grapplers are scary because they don't have to change their position at all to force you to have to play differently. Plus, Gina is associated with her big barrier around her at all times that limits her movement and would make her hitbox larger. Also, her giant Unchange hands are a phenomenal grappler tool. Also, when fighters try to be subversive and make a grappler that isn't a massive guy, they almost always do it by making it a small girl who plays identical to a big guy.

Top - Obligatory rushdown fighter. His new 101 interpretation feels basically tailor-made for rushdown play tbh. Give him a rekka series and we're fucking good.

Rip - Motherfucking CHARGE CHARACTER BABY. This one is entirely because Rip literally has Guile's flash kick and a sonic boom, he does them on screen.

Phil - Full screen zoner. Also the amount of fighting games that have just one extremely weird robot character is absurd, he's basically tailor made to be the obligatory One Robot.

Billy - Copycat fighter. These aren't common anymore, but used to be more common back when sprites were frequent and tracing over another character's sprites was way faster than making a new animation. A character whose entire premise is using other fighters' moves, copying their abilities into an entirely new kit. Mechanically, these characters tend to have weird, disparate kits with a lot of unique options that otherwise would never be on a kit together, allowing them to adapt their playstyle to be the exact perfect enemy to whoever they're facing. Also "bouncing gunslinger" is a very very common fighting game trope, since fighters tend to balance out guns' innate power with weird firing angles.

Juiz - Midrange bait and punish swordfighter. Prioritizes pokes from every angle, allowing you to react and punish everything your opponent can do. Usually calm-collected fencers personality-wise. Maps perfectly to Unjustice's idea - wait until you know what your opponent's intent is, then negate their Justice.

Julia - Protege character who takes after two other members of the cast - being Fuuko and Juiz. Their fighting style usually is a mix of the two, combining their best aspects, copying their moves exactly sometimes, with their own unique aspects in there to show her own persona growing alongside their influence.

Latla - Actively a reference to Rose from Street Fighter. So. Rose from Street Fighter.

Backs - Joke character. You lose to this in bracket, you're going to be posting some real scrubquotes shit.

I can do this for almost every single Negator in the entire manga. The only characters I can't find easy maps to are Chikara, Sean, Tella, Ichico, Lucy, and whatever Unchaste's name was. (this may change if Unchaste actually ever appears again.) But they're all not fighters anyway, they're all support characters or literal children dying of an incurable disease.

[maxwell-grant]

If you were making up a gang of super-villains from classic Horror Movie characters (Count Dracula is an obvious 'In' being pretty much a super villain even in his original novel!), may I please ask which characters you would include and what role they would play in the gang?

First thing to establish is that Dracula is not leading the team. And obviously Dracula’s not gonna be a team player in a supporting role, so what we’re gonna do is this: Dracula is the threat that the team was assembled to fight.

Pretty much anytime you see the classic monsters gathered in any fashion, Dracula’s always the leader, and if we wanted to do that, we already have Monster Mash and Castlevania and so forth. I think assembling a Legion of Doom out of the Classic Monsters makes you particularly subject to law of diminishing returns that affect both supervillains and monsters, in that having a bunch of characters who demand to operate solo in narrative wind up greatly diminished when they're all doing the same thing together. So instead of Legion of Doom, I'm making these something more low-key like Secret Six, Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad and etc.

Here, it's all a bunch of classic monsters, but they all have a grudge with him, because everyone’s got beef with Dracula, and Dracula wants them destroyed so he may rule monsters and humans alike unopposed. Dracula is The Flash, and they are the Rogues. They bond together because it's the only way to win. Dracula is several orders of magnitude more evil than them, has countless weird magical abilities to counteract them, and he’s skilled enough in manipulation that he could conceivably trick them into doing his bidding, but he’s got no need for them past whatever unique abilities they have for momentary use, when he’s already got so much else at his disposal, including the ability to call in the universal ending to most monster stories: Call in the cops to shoot them dead.

In itself, this already gives the team a motivation to stay together regardless of what else is in the setting to give them trouble: They need to survive and beat Dracula, and they can’t call on anyone else for help. In fact, if the urge to have Dracula lead the Monster Squad again gets too strong, we could even establish that Dracula is able to create his own monsters, imperfect copies of their archetypes to serve as his enforcers, and thus, our group could have to fight off Frankensteins and mummies and werewolves and clones of themselves on their way to take him down.

Formation for this hypothetical group goes as follows:

The Leader - The Bride of Frankenstein:

Couple of reasons for why she’s leader besides favoritism being, she’s a Frankenstein and thus has to play a major role, but she doesn’t need to be a shambling brute, and if we’re gonna do a ragtag group of people fighting Count Dracula, in any form, it would be quite wrong to not have them led by a headstrong, brilliant woman. Also Elsa Lanchester plays Mary Shelley in the same movie, and Mary Shelley rules so she's qualified to rule this team-up by default.

We could establish her as having had significantly more time to mature and develop into something resembling the book Creature’s intelligence and sense of self, having picked up alchemical expertise from Pretorius’ notes to combine with her survival skills, and as a Frankenstein she could have the kind of superhuman strength and endurance that follows, allowing her to be sort of a jack-of-trades suitable for the leader position.  Imposing, stoic, capable, and being a Frankenstein, crushingly lonely in more ways than one and in dire need of guidance.

The Mentor & Magician - Imhotep (The Mummy):

Because there’s no way we can pass on having Boris Karloff on this team. If The Bride is the Mina of our anti-Dracula crew, then Imhotep is our Van Helsing. Functionally similar to Dracula in many ways, but playing on a different side (definitely not on humanity’s side though). He's a prideful, manipulative grumpus from a bygone era with his glory days long behind him, with access to a wide array of magical powers, but not quite as rotten or powerful as his ancient enemy Dracula.

Imhotep has lived a long, long, long life and an exceedingly longer afterlife, constantly raised from death to be bothered by mortals again and again, which has granted him a considerable know-how of navigating strange worlds of magic and terror and history, but remaining out of touch with modern times. The team's magic user, with his main weakness being that he’s fragile and old and rotting and dying. Imhotep’s not quite able to transverse the mortal realm as easily as his rival, and he’s held back by the countless forms of decay that have set within him, which is part of why he’s agreeable enough to work with The Bride and for the two to put this team together.

The Resources & Social Interface - Janet Smith Jekyll (Daughter of Dr Jekyll):

We can't have a classic Universal Gathering without at minimum a Talbot werewolf in the mix and Jekyll & Hyde is as Classic as classic monsters get, so we're going here with Gloria Talbott's character in Daughter of Dr Jekyll, a mysterious orphan who inherits a huge mansion and fortune that used to belong to the infamous Dr Jekyll, and who discovers that she may indeed share his two-faced affliction and proclivity for going out at night on uncontrollable murderous rampages (and yes I am very much ignoring the movie's climax to make this character, shut up)

The movie sort of treats Mr Hyde as a werewolf transformation with quite a lot of vampire in the mix, which suits our purposes just fine because now we get to have a vampire on top of a werewolf in the team. She's got a cool homebase for our team to operate from in Dr Jekyll's mansion, she's super rich which never hurts to have in a team setting, she's the only one that can fully pass for human and also the one who accumulates the biggest body count the longer she stays active, so there's always some tension with her.

She is the monster most suited for operating within modern society, high and low class alike, which makes her an invaluable operative in the battle against Dracula and his game of predatory psychological class warfare, and the one most suited for keeping the team out of trouble. However, it's up to question how much can the team trust her. Even she doesn't quite know how much she can trust herself. Her teammates may not have blood, but a girl's gotta eat and all.

The Reality-Warping Assassin - Cesare:

Cesare is, strange. He’s a sweet young man, but around him hangs the faint echo of dead, ancient eons. He’s unmatched at subterfuge, able to slip through the shadows not just unseen, but unheard in a way that shouldn’t be possible, as he makes absolutely no sound whatsoever, not even when he does things that should make noise, like trip or cry or stab people. On the rare occasions he vocalizes, it's like the words emerge in your head fully formed. Everything he interacts with turns colorless and frayed the way he is.

He’s able to tell the fortunes of most he meets, but only for their deaths, and if he's bothered by his own prophecy of Dracula ending the worlds of monster and man alike, he doesn't show it. The world around him seems to occasionally warp into strange angles and crooked architecture and thick, tangible shadows, and it’s difficult to tell if any of it is even his doing in the first place. He also has an unusually intense grudge of clowns and hamburguers

He seems to sleep most of the time off-duty, and he’s docile as a lamb even while commanded to kill, though he may resist more immoral commands. Though his eyes hang open, he only wakes up very rarely, and when he does, the monsters see the world around him blink out of existence to be replaced with a greyed out mental hospital, where they all look like doctors or regular people in straightjackets, and it only lasts for a few brief, maddening seconds before he falls asleep again.

This can be an advantage to the team as a potential safeguard from threats and space to regroup, provided they don’t lose their selves and can get Cesare to stop playing with the flowers and go back to sleep, and you can imagine it only gets harder every time, convincing him to abandon a peaceful existence to once again be a murderous slave for eternity, and maybe convincing themselves to not join him there.

Better he’s on our side than Dracula’s, The Bride and Imhotep figure. 

The Warrior-Healer & Aquatic Specialist: The Gill Man

I already said much of my piece on The Gill Man in terms of their role and personality here and obviously, they gotta be in the team. In terms of their powers & skillset, Gill Man is actually much better suited for this kind of stuff than most of the other Universal monsters. They are strong enough to move boats on their own, stealthy enough to consistently evade his human pursuers (and human civilization for countless years) and tough enough to survive and come back for two sequels. 

Another idea to me comes from using The Shape of Water and it’s take on Gill Man, who was believed to be an Amazonian river god, and throughout the movie displays magical healing powers and traits that call into question just what it is exactly. Dracula would certainly find no use for The Gill Man as anything other than muscle for his army of the undead, but for a team that does have at least a handful of living members and may even depend on human assistance, a medic is a invaluable thing to have, as is someone still living and in touch with nature.

The Scientist & Swarm Controller: Doctor Delambre (The Fly)

Picked here to represent the original version of The Fly but can also adapt traits from Seth Brundle and other takes on this idea. We need a resident mad scientist (who's really not a mad scientist, but when you look the part, y'know), a sci-fi guy to represent that other vein of classic horror, somebody who can contrast the resident magicians and alchemists, and also no self-respecting team is complete without a bug guy, so here we have Dr Delambre, who joins the team as an assistant to The Bride and has found a way to hold off the mental decay process and made substantial progress on his matter-transporter devices as well as find ways to live with his newfound biological quirks. He's even found a way to utilize insects with humanoid limbs and intelligence in daily chores and missions, although he resents the idea that he's "controlling" them, mind you.

But with his wife under trial for his botched suicide ruled a murder, and his inability to show up in society and testify in her favor, and all of his former military contacts having cut off all ties with him, he's desperately trying to find a way to reverse the process of his transformation for good to save her and is willing to do whatever it takes. Doctor Delambre even winds up being sort of the team's wild card, because his technology is very potent and just as capable of breaking reality under the wrong hands as Cesare's weirdness, but he is not a "monster" by birth or choice and is merely a guy in a rush to try and revert his condition, and if Dracula comes along with a better promise to save his wife and life, perhaps...

And last but certainly not least,

The Transportation & Muscle - The Rhedosaurus (The Beast from 20.000 Fathoms)

We might have to shrink them down a bit but we absolutely can’t NOT have a giant monster dinosaur on the team, but neither Godzilla nor Kong would have much business palling around with these monsters. The Rhedosaurus, on the other hand, is a perfect fit, seeing as he’s Godzilla’s inspiration and the movie he’s in is credited as being the revival of the giant monster genre as well as the first to introduce the atomic bomb to the mix. The Rhedosaurus here would be sort of composited from the movie version as well as the original story by Ray Bradbury and obviously composited from Godzilla variants and the Toho kaijus who owe their existence to it, a vicious and violent creature defending itself and one that's deeply lonely and desperate and strangely noble as the last of it’s kind, one that has nothing else to help protect it but these strange not-humans it’s formed an unlikely bond with. It has a particularly strong bond with The Gill Man, the only one who’s able to communicate with and steer it properly.

The Rhedosaurus is a global danger on a bigger and more direct scale than the other monsters, not just as a giant powerful dinosaur, but also a creature whose death could unleash a plague powerful enough to wipe out mankind, something the characters wouldn’t discover until late into the story (something Dracula, and maybe even Imhotep, would certainly want to exploit for personal gain). Maybe this radiation seeps over and forces the team to move their location around to stay undetected, maybe it's instrumental to powering whatever plans Dr Delambre and The Bride are cooking up in their lab, maybe it's affecting the environment or reality itself in strange unforeseen ways the way certain Godzilla works like KOTM and Singular Point have done.

It can be the key to saving the world or destroying it in equal measure, and so the fate of the Rhedosaurus is the fate of the future, and it falls up to the team to protect it as much as it will protect them.

So yeah, maybe I took this from a super-villain team and made it something a lot more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in setup, but this team I imagine is grouped together less by a desire to save the world or serve a higher cause, than a simple matter of survival against a mutual enemy and the world that''s turned against them. They want drastically different things and employ drastically different methods and they each constitute powerful threats, and together, they are as likely to destroy themselves first if not the world with them. But survival is a matter they all have a stake on. Alone, they don’t stand a chance. Together, they may just have a chance and live, if only to finally rest in peace.

[mykingdomforapen]

time travel recommendations for link clickers!

Good time travel stories are inherent to the genre of science fiction as a whole. I also find that in Chinese/Chinese-American sci-fi, time travel appears significantly. I think perhaps because so much Asian storytelling muses on the loss of tradition/past to an unfamiliar modernity, or overwhelming history being unresolved to this day. Other times I think simply put, time travel is about love and family and what artist doesn’t like to ponder that? Anyway, some Chinese/Chinese-American stories about time travel that I would love to recommend…

The Man Who Ended History by Ken Liu

This story is not for the faint hearted. It deals heavily with Japanese war crimes against the Chinese during WWII, but it does remind me a little of Cheng Xiaoshi’s abilities because the story muses on a hypothetical technology that can enable people to intimately experience historical events only once, to devastating effect. Truly, this story is haunting (the kind that leaves you in a funk), but feels eerily reminiscent of Cheng Xiaoshi's timehopping potential. It is also serving as some inspiration for a potential CXS-centric fic idea I have brewing so if that does come to life I gotta give credit where it’s due.

What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear by Baoshu

This isn’t strictly speaking time travel as it is a speculative and unconventional travel through time, which in some ways imagines China’s modern history to have happened backwards. If you’re familiar with Chinese modern history, it is honestly pretty devastating to read, especially because in some ways one can see how it is reflecting reality despite being somewhat opposite of history. While I can’t find a copy of it online, it’s available in English in the anthology of Chinese sci-fi Broken Stars.

Memories of my Mother by Ken Liu

okay this post is low key a Ken Liu works appreciation post in disguise but if anyone has read my fic spinning silk , this is the short story whose pages imagine in which Cheng Xiaoshi would keep his mother’s photograph. if you know of any more that you would recommend please share!!

[inventors-fair]

Awesome Activations: Tricks of the Grave Winners!

~

Our winners this week are @melancholia-ennui, @nine-effing-hells, and @reaperfromtheabyss!

@melancholia-ennui — Anointed Paladin

Okay, let's get this out of the way straight out of the gate: Afterglow is ultimately a variant of Embalm. However, a) I like Embalm and think there should be more of it and b) I would say that does some serious work in setting itself apart that I appreciate. Principally there's the reversal of the dynamic: while Embalm was just another copy of the creature and Eternalize was primarily interested in making it bigger than before, Afterglow actually makes it considerably weaker, which I feel like opens up enough new design space. Interesting how the illusion self-destruct clause doesn't include being targeted by abilities, though. Was that intentional? Well, at any rate, the card itself is a perfectly fine showing of the mechanic, putting more emphasis on what the creature does than what it is in both forms. I'm struggling to figure out the precise flavor of Afterglow—maybe it's just a memory of them rather than any sort of spirit—but that's not a knock against it; on the contrary, I'm interested enough to speculate.

@nine-effing-hells — Sun-Caste Burgomeister

Alas, poor Reinforce. From a rather paltry showing in Morningtide to cropping up every so often in Modern Masters sets, it's fair to say it hasn't really been given a fair chance. The resurgence of Channel would seem to have thrown a further wrench in that plan, as at its core it's essentially a more restrictive version. That's why I appreciate how you've capitalized on what sets it apart: namely, that always doing roughly the same thing means you can build an archetype around it. While I'm ever so slightly dubious about the language used in the ability (as opposed to something like "becomes the target of a reinforce ability" a la Mirror-Shield Hoplite), but it's understandable enough that I don't end up particularly minding. Life is hardly the most exciting payoff for this hypothetical archetype, but scaling it based on power is an excellent direction for rewarding effective reinforcing. I'm also a bit curious about the setting being suggested here. "Caste" would currently imply Bant, but the Germanic title and being a Dwarf kind of upends that.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Thundering Stormkin

Ah, I see I'm not the only one with a profound fondness for Hardened Berserker. Combine that using the newly introduced tech courtesy of Eluge, and I'm just so captivated by this card that I want to pinch its cheeks. While the ability is ultimately quite similar to simply adding a red mana that doesn't empty, it adds a nice bit of flair and, more importantly, takes up considerably less space to make all the more room for the real star of the show, the second ability. Hoo boy, that's something else. While it's largely lacking in the breaking-the-gaminess of other creature-based copiers like Dualcaster Mage, costing nothing in terms of card advantage is a pretty huge advantage. What really pushes it over the edge for me is that it's an on-board trick, which have always tickled my fancy. Sure, it's powerful, but your opponent is aware of the possibility at all times and can plan accordingly. I also love that if this should happen to die in combat (fairly reasonable given its stats), then you're perfectly capable of immediately copying the spell you just reduced. Great stuff!

~

Runners will follow as soon as I can pay the cost. —@spooky-bard

[re-re-redline]

—Mehmed II 1st Ascension— (Fanmade)

After ≈ 27 hours, I did it! I finished my hypothetical 1st ascension artwork and expressions for the boi.

Why yes, yes I did stitch the saber card frame and the archer icon together to make this make more sense, how’d you know? The font on the cards is Palantino, by the way.

That aside, let’s get into the making of this and my design choices before I put down the expressions I made.

Aight so. Running trend with newer servants is wearing modern clothing as an ascension, right? I decided to employ that here by having our favorite sultan wearing crocs, sweats, a neato t-shirt and some cool pins to give off that casual look. I originally wanted to have this give off the vibe of a college student, since Mehmed’s grand achievement of taking Constantinople occured when he was 21 years old and it’d be pretty a funny subversion for the kind of guy he’s remembered as. I will say though that the jacket I gave him miiiiight be too regal. I based it off of a painting of him wearing something exactly like it but closed so as to keep him recognizable as Mehmed II if you’ve seen the painting. The shirt is based of Gentile Bellini’s portrait of Mehmed with the six crowns in the left and right sides of the painting above his head. The pins are references with the top left being the Roman double headed eagle (poorly drawn), the Turkish flag, a flag from the Ottoman empire and the top right being a rose (referencing him holding a rose in Himuro’s World and a painting of him doing the same thing), the big cannon he had commissioned to destroy the Theodosian walls and finally a cat pin (ref. Himuro’s World.) The bouquet of roses is resent for the same reason that the rose pin is but it also serves to make him look more, y’know, casual with the way he has it in his arm. The scroll just kinda hanging off his arm serves the same purpose as well. The three feathers were supposed to be—from left to right— Gray Heron, Northern Bald Ibis, and Goldcrest but my artistic abilities couldn’t quite meet the mark on that one, though I tried my best. Finally, for the background, I wanted to paint the bridge that was named after him but it seems like it came out looking more like the Golden Gate bridge in California, much to my chagrin.

Now, as for two things I am aware of… Yes, I am aware his hand looks like the hecking Hamburger Helper hand, I hate it too (: And yes the position of the crocs looks like it’s copy and pasted because it is, drawing that second croc was a nightmare and I eventually just gave in and copied the first one.

Now, I hope you enjoyed looking at those. I’ll be putting the expressions down under the Read More for the sake of keeping things tidy. Let me know what you think.

—Redline, over and out.

P.S. I have so many more but I’ll leave it at this for now. And if you’re gonna use these for some reason, let me know and credit me, thanks.

[deusvervewrites]

Escaping Gravity: Two thoughts...

First, now any inconsistencies can be explained away as "Zero Gravity" actually being multiple Quirks stacked together in a trenchcoat.

Second, the reminder that the Hosu Nomu had a copy of Hyper Regeneration makes me think Uraraka absolutely made sure to travel there and get a second copy specifically for Midoriya because she can't trust him without it.

Third, I'm imagining that this Midoriya trusts Uraraka more, and so when he learns about AfO, he speaks to her privately and mentions that he heard rumors about this villain with the ability to take and give Quirks. Midoriya goes Quirk nerd mode about how that'd be such a waste, how such a Quirk would be AMAZING for Hero work, or just to help people whose Quirks hurt them somehow! And Uraraka's just switching between screaming internally and trying not to cry.

That is in fact something I thought about to some extent; that the Quirk she's faking may not necessarily exist as a single Quirk, but I am right now leaning towards Zero Gravity being real

She has a very different background compared to canon and thus would want a different internship. She might already be at Hosu. She may already have some kind of combat training/experience, though that's unlikely

While he told her that he's a late bloomer he hasn't told her about One For All. However, Midoriya mentions having heard rumors of All For One online when All Might brings him up, so there's a precedent for him to organically come up in conversation about hypothetical Quirks. Imagine:

Uraraka: "So your Quirk came in late? What kind of Quirk would you have picked if you could." Midoriya: "The one I got?" *laughs awkwardly in All Might fanboy* Uraraka: "If you couldn't be the next All Might, what would you pick?" Midoriya: "Hmm... maybe that one I saw online about that myth of that guy who could steal Quirks? Imagine how useful that would be for Heroes!" *continues gushing about AFO* Uraraka: *Rebooting*

[rowanthestrange]

Someone have fun and play brain tennis with me. Brain squash it’s more dangerous and shouty and done in doubles. Stupid name for a solid idea for a sport. Hit things off walls with me until it gives us points. Just want to run things. Stream of consciousness it.

What are we doing with ‘Triad’? What are we doing with three?

First thought: the same thing we did last time with Chibs, this is a god trinity in three parts thing. Back then that was a physical Doctor, child Doctor, and spirit-projection Doctor.

Doctor as God. Fine. Got the Pantheon, haven’t shied away from it. Probably a mirror, we emphasised the Doctor recognising mirrors this time.

Second thought: Triplets? We’re talking about changeling children, does three rather than the usual two get us anything? We’re solving Ruby’s story this finale. Is she one of three? That’s what being a foundling means you have no idea of your family - we focus on parents but what about siblings? You could have whole maybe identical versions of yourself you don’t know, separated off? Maybe bringing them all together is a harbinger of The End, that’s what we did with the Maestro. Changeling girl, she should be magic. The trap was a triangle - the three together could be a trap.

But more importantly what would that hypothetical do with our “The Doctor literally recognised a character as a mirror in-universe pay attention” situation? What would it mean for the Doctor down the road?

First obvious equivalent that comes to mind - the Timeless Child baby Doctor was originally a trigeneration?

First thought - Stupid dogshit basics: The Doctor and the Master being bigenerations seems rational and neat and organic fine. And I mean we do three, we’ve done three before with them, we do the Doctor, Master, and Rani. Generally keep them together. Sure on paper it’s the most fandom history appropriate option sure, but probably literally impossible rights-wise and eh. Just eh. The idea of it is the psychic equivalent of a soggy digestive. Doesn’t feel good it feels too nerdy in a bad way. Not that my feelings matter, but it doesn’t feel like something Russell Tussell Davies would vibe with.

So who else would you have? You’re not going to be able to pull off a new OC idea for something so essential, I don’t think. I can’t think how you would anyway, and you’d really need the fandom to get on board with the idea.

Would Fourteen, Fifteen, but wayyyyy back the Master count? Bigeneration then bigeneration again is kind of three. But it was bi-generation cus they split in two, tri-generation would have to be split in three surely. It wouldn’t feel like three otherwise. And fuck me we can’t get Tennant for long work anyway.

The thing is the Doctor and Master (who’d makes sense, we know he’s coming back) are already so in balance. The Rani is more amoral selfish so manages to sort of fit in a place with them, but even then she’s villain material. Wonks it. What do you do outside that? You’d need a neutral I suppose. Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil.

We ball and do Iris lol. Hey the Thoschei’s making it in/selfcesty anyway.

…Could you do normal? Like not a freak? Trigeneration implies by its nature the capacity for future regeneration though. …Or does it actually? We don’t know Fourteen can regenerate. Actually makes life harder if they can.

Wait that could work actually right?

Kid comes through portal. Human/Whatever Vinder and Bel are which seems basically the same/Not-thing that copies a humanoid/Whatever, kid comes through portal. Is altered by ‘the vortex’ (Radiation? Sentience? Who cares) like River was, which gives them the ability to regenerate. They fall hundreds of feet and probably do so immediately.

We know there’s a second boy, but the story never explains why he’s suddenly in it, the Master shows him and the accidental murder, but never explains who the kid is or why he’s there.

The fandom default is the other kid was probably the Master, and experimented on by Tecteun using the Child’s regeneration energy to start creating what we’d eventually know as the Time Lords. Frankenstein.

Perfectly logical that the kid could have been a bigenerate that didn’t have the ability to regenerate, but Tecteun’s experiment gave it to him.

The Doctor and Master being changelings for each other, obvious, again I definitely argue Chibs’s intent was the Division would just swap them over, it makes Martin!Doctor’s handholding-without-blinovitching and the Doctor!Master beating the Master!Doctor thing work nicely. And Rusty has wanted to carry on Chibs’s themes and work. So… what if originally there were three? Maybe one got saved? Save the baby, literally finish Chibs’s theme but in an unexpected way.

What if you said fuck the mirror? Maybe that’s literally just Ruby.

They act like siblings. Didn’t we say that from the start?

alright your serve.

Triad, three, go.

[feathered-serpents]

About an Atreus-lead game…

(Note: I originally wrote this for Reddit but it’s not gaining steam there because my god does Reddit hate this idea. But I spent too much time typing it out for it to get no eyes at all so fuck it. It’s getting posted here too. But it’s been copy pasted verbatim so that’s why the tone sounds different than what I usually post over here)

I’m admittedly a little surprise to see such negativity towards this idea, at least on Reddit. But I’ve realized by reading more posts about it that the people who don’t like the idea are picturing an entirely different game than the one I’m picturing.

So let’s talk about it

The main issue I’m seeing is people against the idea are imagining games lead by the exact same Atreus as the one that appears in Ragnarok. I’m not a game dev, but I am a storyteller, and I can tell you unequivocally that this would not be the case

Firstly, an Atreus-led game would almost certainly star an older Atreus. Probably an Atreus in his early twenties. If nothing else it’s just the most practical option if they plan on keeping Sunny Suljic as his actor. He’s already older than Atreus was in Ragnarok and it’ll probably be another year or two before Santa Monica is ready to record another hypothetical GOW game. Not that they can’t recast Atreus, I’d just be really surprised if they did.

This would give us an Atreus that’s a bit more experienced and fun to play for an entire game. While still being inexperienced enough to have a good arc and make lots of improvements over the course of the game.

Next, I see people saying they didn’t enjoy his gameplay during Ragnarok. I think assuming that his gameplay would be exactly the same in a solo game is a little short sighted. People are forgetting his gameplay is not MEANT to carry an entire game in Ragnarok. His segments are relatively short and more story focused than combat focused, at least when you compare it to the rest of the game. If he were to star in his own game, his gameplay would most likely be MASSIVELY expanded. In fact I think he has a ton of potential for fun mechanics in his own game:

Seeing as this franchise has Kratos fight with three different weapons each with unique gameplay, it’s super likely Atreus would get the same treatment. I could see him getting a more close-ranged weapon, think sword or something akin to it, as well as a medium ranged weapon like Kratos’ blades. If we leave the Norse lands with him (which I think we will) it’s likely these weapons will be from other cultures, and we’ll get to see very different designs and mechanics around them.

Secondly is magic. We know he has an affinity for it, but outside of runes the games don’t really have a in-depth spell casting system. This could change with an Atreus lead game, especially if it takes place when he’s a few years older. I could see him having learned more Giant magic in that time, and this could lead the way into some very cool gameplay. Combine that with leaving Midgard, and Atreus could be learning magic from all over. Imagine an Atreus game that takes him to Egypt, and he gets to learn the magic of that land. I think it would be SUPER fun!

Lastly, the mechanic I think has the most potential is shapeshifting. It’s his “Spartan Rage” ability now, but it’s still very new for him in Ragnarok. Loki in the mythos is a natural shapeshifter, he does it constantly, a more experienced Atreus might have that kind of control over his shapeshifting. I could see him learning new forms over the course of a game. Maybe some are story given and others you have to hunt for yourself. I’d imagine it’d work a bit like finding the keys to the other realms, some are given, but others you have to go out of your way to find. I imagine being able to pick between forms, if it stays his “special move” maybe you could select one like you select between the different types of Spartan Rage for Kratos. Each form with its own strengths and weaknesses in combat. Maybe it’s a mix of both, some forms you can access during normal gameplay and others are reserved for more intense moments. He could learn the forms of the new lands he goes to, turning into lions, elephants, even other mythical creatures of the lands. There is SO MUCH you could do with a shapeshifting system.

My point is, I see Atreus as a character ripe with potential for his own game, and am surprised to find people who don’t look past Ragnarok to see it. Obviously I didn’t mind his segments in the game, but I also play on story mode so that should give you an idea of how important combat is to me. Even so, I never thought what we saw in Ragnarok was all we’d ever get from him. This is a character who has just BARELY scratched the surface of his abilities and that shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly.

If you still don’t like the idea that’s fine. Kratos is great! But I think Atreus could be a very fun main character in his own game. If you read all this thank you and I’d love to hear what you think!