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undertalerainbow · 3 months ago

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Lore Log: Vengeful Spirits (MAJOR COMIC SPOILERS)

Explanation will be below, read if you're ok with comic spoilers

Soul Studies #24

As said before, getting information on the Human Soul in the underground is reduced to fables and stories, and what I can gather on that, so keep that in mind as I explain this more questionable story.

Human "ghosts" aren't actually like the monster subtype of "Ghost," but something we coined: spirits. Human souls persist after death; however, only for a certain amount of time before they break and then can move on. There will be cases though where the soul doesn't. Through regret, anger, devotion, or some other strong emotion they will persist on the material plane and become Spirits.

This seems to be the human equivalent of the Determined Monster, where the monster on the brink of death will force their body to continue fighting through some sort of purpose keeping them there. However, unlike monsters who would have a physical form, Human Spirits do not. Any attacks would not touch them nor slow them down. What seems to rid them is completing whatever business they still have on the planet. Some stories say returning a special item to appease them will aid them in passing on, some say destroying them will, to which I think could be both.

There was a monster I met who actually encountered a Human Spirit before being sealed underground, and they said they had to destroy their item, but only after returning it seemed to not work/appease the Spirit. They also told about how powerful Human Spirits can be if they are vengeful or angry. They told me that the most difficult spirits to handle are the ones on a mission and angry enough to plow through anyone in their way to complete it. This anger enhances the power tenfold to the degree they are; however, this can be a double-edged sword.

For the spirits, getting more angry causes them to become more lost in that anger, losing themselves further and further, and if the degree is high enough they may not remember why they're fighting anymore and just become violent for violence's sake.

Their appearances morph, which tells us to what degree their anger is at. The less human they look, the more lost they are. What their appearance morph to differs in accounts: some take their normal form, some look like the things they feared in life, some takes the form symbolic of their vices, some take the form of the people that impacted them in life good and bad, etc, so finding a solid idea of what they look like is finicky.

One thing that's solid though, they will always take the glow of their soul, use the ability of their soul and other attacks they know, and if you don't have their items on hand, your fate is practically sealed.

Last thing in this log I want to theorize. I think there's a possible way to manufacture a Human Spirit. The Human Souls we've collected, we are technically having their spirits persist after death, I wonder if they're walking on the ground now, through the castle and haunting those who've killed them. That, though, is just speculation on my part, after all, if all the stories are true, then wouldn't we see them attack those who've hurt them by now? At the end of the day, this may not be how it works at all and those spirits may just be gone, and that's it for him them. I guess that'd just wishful thinking on my part.

X____DF____

Author: Hi guys! Sorry for the long wait, but I hope the long post makes up for it. Vengeful Spirits has been something I've been thinking about since last year and has been a part of the story since them. I though explaining the lore through a log would be easier then me rambling it, so hope y'all are good with that lol. As for stuff not touched upon in there is that the Soul Kids would get into these forms at the end of Frisk's genocide run and fight one by one against them to force them to reset. This was slightly inspired by Red and Yellow's genocide ending with Clover, honestly that whole thing inspired all of Undertale Rainbow, so the Soul Kids fighting Frisk at the end was always supposed to be a thing.

The fight order goes like this:

Morgan (what was supposed to be the final boss but through Frisk's determination they were able to defeat Morgan and the others had to come in to fight)

Nick

Stella

Percy and Rosemary (duo boss that has two different paths depending on who you destroy first)

and finally Clover

Each one of the kids has a gimmick to their fight (if this was a game). Morgan, every time you die, you respond to a different part of the fight, keeping you from memorizing the battle. Lore-wise, this is because she knew through Flowey how resetting works, thus uses it against you, making her attacks randomly shuffled every reset. Nick has two attacks per round to simulate him rushing you, as he's using something called Skulking, a sneaky, fast-paced fighting style from indigenous cultures where the person rushes you. Stella causes you in some rounds to be stuck in a tiny box where you have to move the box, like when Sans fell asleep in his boss fight, to even press the button. This is to simulate gravity magic being used against you, also referencing omega flowey when you're stuck at the bottom of the screen. Percy and Rosemary are a duo battle as Rosemary is more of a pacifist and wouldn't have fought otherwise, Percy is the one pushing this. Rosemary buffs Percy's attacks and speed, which latter could allow for more turns, and Percy is the one on offence. Kill Rosemary first, you activate hard mode where one hit from Percy instant kills as they are at the highest vengeful a Spirit can be, so you have to be in a no-hit run then. Kill Percy first, while harder to do, it'll be the cannon/easy route where Rosemary powers then and gives up. You are still forced to destroy Rosemary as Frisk just decides that for you. Finally, Clover in their second phase has Ceroba's pink judgement mode that drains your health when touching the walls, and will sometimes shoot out the act and item buttons (which will be recovered late,r no worries lol). They, unlike the others, tries to keep calm cause even though it lowers their strength, it keeps them focused, which won't get them killed like the others. They arguably would've been able to keep a stalemate with Frisk, if it wasn't for Chara stepping in. That I will not elaborate on, as that's too much spoilers lol.

Now here's the character sheets with notes for y'all. Boss music will be posted later when they're ready (still being commissioned rn, we have Clover and Morgan's done, and Nick's is almost finalized). Note: Morgan's second phase face is actually being changed currently to fit more with the song, so it'll be updated soon. Thank you all for reading this far, I really appreciate it. Also btw DF is an important character, keep that in mind ;) Cya later! 🩵🧡💙💜💚💛❤️🖤🤍

Note: yes Stella looks like Ballora from sister location, that was the main inspo. Here's battle mode too of the opening drawing:

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ihaveforgortoomany · 5 months ago

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Rambling about information given by 2.5 (in relation to Manus) (CN Spoilers)

I think it is safe to say 2.5 has aligned enough pieces to speculate the next major players and events since 2.0 has between leading to.

Again, CN spoilers for 2.3,2.4,2.5 (more of the last two since 2.3 is very much removed from main story stuff until confirmed otherwise.

Alr at the end of 2.5 Beryl (Matilda's mother oh my god her voice reveal was not in my bingo card lmao) and Black Ibis, a member of the Vigil confirm the Manu have been hunting five objects likely to reincarnate/ resurrect Arcana ( I lean towards the reincarnation since shes referred to in 2.2 as "Mother of Reincarnation". Currently the only confirmed and known objects the Manus were hunting was Nala/ the toy robot and the cursed film from 2.5. Both item have been destroyed in 2.2 and 2.5 respectively, but Black Ibis they don't necessarily need all five of these items the Manus truly needs to complete the ritual.

My current speculation on the last three is this: Arcana's ashes obtained by Igor in 2.5, because ofc you probably would need something of Arcana to revive her, one item is unaccounted for - potentially my guess is whatever ritual Ms Grace had performed in 2.4, though I cannot remember exactly what it was in relation to Fatutu's people or if she was successful. I believe one of the items/ someone might be Urd.

We know in 2.2 the objective was to obtain the robot toy and Urd, as of 2.5 we now know why exactly the Manus wanted the robot toy/ Nala, but truly we don't know why specifically Urd. From Igor it sounds like someone extremely special to change the fate of everyone, and since she seemingly able to retain in a certain way her identity via the typerwriter/ manuscripts and Memoirs.

Sophia in 2.2 confirms one of the things the Manus plan to do in Antractica (other than chill with penguins COUGH) is to artifically start a Storm instead of accelerating one. 2.2 also has confirmed that reversed people can undergo a form of reincarnation, Karson in a sense is reincarnated into Karson, and this goes for Bonette and Tuesday as well. The properties of the Storm reverse one era and can turn an area to a previous era (for example Vienna is reversed in 1914, then in Semmelweis's anecdote it is seemingly becomes a later era of Vienna, kinda like jumping between different safe files).

One of my original speculations was that Urd in some way created the Storm, or her actions led to its creation: the Foundation potentially had created the Storm, she is potentially a member of the White Marble House and potentially her blindness might have been the result of it. Her creating the Storm might explain Vertin's immunity. Im still keeping this theory until information says otherwise.

New theory - The Manus will use the Storm + Urd to revive Arcana, potentially have Arcana reincarnate into Urd, and potentially be able to create Storms without having to find a prexisting event to accelerate into the Storm. The current relation or similarilty between the cursed film and the robot toy is the way they could house things, desires and even people. The Manus need something to house Arcana since technically her body has been reduced to ashes, so what if the five items are multiple ways Manus have been attempting to find a place to store Arcana's soul or remains to revive her?

Arcana in the way people describe her in 2.2 is almost like a hive mind, THEY is usually used in relation to Arcana if not the Sufferer. It is also speculated Arcana might even be an Awakened, and working on that logic the ashes are the actual current state of her (like the piston of Lucy, Ulrich's ferrorliquid, and Loggerhead's film) , and they all need a body of sorts to move around and such, so what if the five items and/ or Urd is the body needed to fully bring back Arcana?

Moving all reinforcements and supplies to Antarctica, maybe as a means to construct a stronghold of sorts since they probably know the Foundation catching any wind of this would immediately want to prevent it at all costs. The Manus creating a stronghold to ensure they can trigger the Storm + Arcana's revival successfully.

Final bit for this speculation: why didn't Igor take Vertin in 2.2? Arcan has made it explicit she wants Vertin, but so far no attempts have been made by anyone to actually take her, instead its Urd and Nala. Maybe currently it is only something known to Arcana, and not to the likes of Sophia and Igor, maybe even Forget Me Not. Maybe Arcana already knows Vertin will continue to hunt down Urd and once shes revived she will attempt to get her again.

(Alr thats pretty much it, god 2.6 is gonna be wild, still havent figured out to do 2.2 theories, god)

#reverse 1999 #r1999 #forgor remembered #ramblings #cn spoilers #analysis #CN SPOILERS #2 #2.4 SPOILERS #2.5 SPOILERS #SPOILERS FOR CONTENT NOT IN GLOBAL YET #alot of this is rambling and god it would be cool if one of this is right

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nevertheless-moving · 4 years ago

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thanks again to @dykerory and @willowcrowned for this genius au. this is an incomplete collection of very specific set of headcanons/daydreams i had about a tangential version of your au that made me emotional in the middle of the woods. whenever you feel the time is right, i’m very eager to hear your og version on the ‘but obi-wan, tho!’, because i admittedly pushed this one’s resolution really far chronologically because i wanted batman to be involved.

continuation from here

note: my understanding of dcu is as sporadically informed as my understanding of the gffa.

newly graduated clark kent gets his first journalism job and starts settling more and more into the superman thing. the rest of the justice league has been around but his entrance onto the scene is the one that really inspires the various heroes to actually start coordinating to deal with the weirdness magnet that is dcu Earth. Clark is in his early 20s. Anakin is in his late 30s.

He’s been living on Earth, without the force, for nearly 2/3rds of his life. He has a close knit circle of friends who were kind to him even when they thought he was just a weird and crazy emo cult victim (the gradual increase of public encounters with aliens and superpowers sparks some awkward apologies, Anakin at 38 just waves his friends off, smiling and changing the subject, neither confirming nor denying his high school ramblings of spaceships and magic. it doesn’t really change anything).

He lives an hour’s drive from smallville, and runs a successful auto shop. people travel from pretty far to check out some of his more wild and specialized motorcycle abominations. makes enough money selling them to rich idiots to fund his free auto-class and auto-repair programs for impoverished communities.

It took a while but he eventually came around to the idea of helping people without physical force (ironically, this is happening around the same time Clark is coming to the realization that he can help people with physical force). Generally respected as a pillar of the community. When people start to realize how profoundly weird he is as a person in a number of inexplicable ways, someone will generally pull them aside and quietly whisper that he was in a cult at a child, no one really knows much about it except that it’s what inspired his anti-modern-slavery work, which is a little telling. Not married. Was in a long-term relationship for like 9 years. It didn’t end well but no-one knows the details.

Has several cats.

He’s- wistful but settled. He’s been through a lot of therapy. He meditates every morning and night, clearing his mind and examining his emotions in the way Obi-Wan taught him. He thinks Obi-Wan would be proud of him. He know his Mom would be.

Once he gets used to the idea, he never really stops loving the concept of learning just because. Duel bachelors degree in in african american history and american literature, masters in engineering, masters in astrophysics a phd in theoretical physics, another phd in medieval folklore. He’s worked a lot of jobs.

He was already pretty well versed in astronavigation back at the temple. Over the course of his time on earth, he gets more educated in earth astronomy and physics. With is increased knowledge, his theory for ‘how did i get here’ shifts from slight hyperdrive miscalculation, to big hyperdrive miscalculation, to some sort of hyperlane incident. he realizes that none of the stars he knows are familiar in any NASA database. He must be beyond wildspace, which helps him let go of the last bit of hurt he felt that Obi-Wan never found him.

Then he really learns physics- and- light doesn’t exactly work like that right? He thought it was just primitive Earth understanding but... he gets a phd more or less accidentally, trying and failing to disprove that the speed of life is constant constant.

Get’s another even more accidentally, explaining how alternate universes might form if we assume slightly different universal constants. He publishes his thesis anonymously around the same time metas are becoming a household term, and at least one science journalist speculates on it and how alternate universes might explain the increasing prevalence of wildly different superpowers. He doesn’t claim credit for the honorary diploma awarded to the unknown theorist- he doesn’t want to risk drawing any attention to him and by extension Clark, who’s alien differences are far more of the ‘military experiment interesting’ variety then his.

He stops tinkering with Clark’s ship. He finally gets how it works. Now that he realizes how FTL travel has to work in this universe, tinkering with the mechanical generation and harnessing of the massive quantities of energy necessary to do is startlingly familiar. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how far and fast he travels, he’s never going to be able to get back to the life he used to know.

Perhaps this is what being the chosen one actually means- he’s meant to live a life without the force, so that when he returns to it in death he’ll be able to somehow...educate? the force? maybe?

Ok, he’s not great at the metaphysical spiritual side of things, but he does accept that going back is out of his control, and he’s doing good here, even if it’s not galaxy altering.

Despite all the therapy, he never doubts that his early life was real. He has his saber and deep, deep down he can feel a spark in the kyber. He can’t do anything with it, but it’s there. There’s also pieces of the utter wreck that was his ship in the cellar, next to the sleek unblemished pod that Clark arrived in. Shortly before Clark becomes Superman, he asks for his help in melting down his old ship to make unearthly alloys.

He’s not surprised when Clark tells him he met a ‘real’ ‘magic’ user- it stands to reason that considering how relatively easy it is to convert energy from one form to another in this universe (Clark can fly), at least one kind would bend to sentient willpower in a similar way as the force does.

It’s still a little nervewracking showing his lightsaber to someone new for the first time in a decade. Zantana scrutinizes, bewildered.

“There is some sort of power locked within, but it’s unfamiliar to me,” she admits finally. “I could probably brute force it and force the energy to release itself, but it would likely destroy the container.” Anakin politely refuses.

Later, after the justice league’s formation, Clark mentions to J’onn that he has a friend who might be able to work on his ship. J’onn is extremely doubtful when he’s brought to a bizarre autoshop in the midwest that looks half-like a roadside attraction. Anakin sighs and digs his hands into the guts of the craft, muttering incomprehensibly and yelling at clark to melt down some pieces from the special scrap pile. A few days later he explains the patches he’s done to an impressed J’onn. When he asks how a human came to learn such things, he’s absently informed that,

“I used to work in a junkshop in Tatooine. All sorts of ship parts came through.”

“I’m unfamiliar with this world.”

“Tell you what, if you ever meet anyone who’s heard it of it, send them my way, and I’ll make your next repair free.”

“Oh! I’m afraid I don’t have any earth money...”

“Ugh, of course you don’t. it’s cool, capitalism sucks anyway and everyone’s entitled to free transportation, regardless of the area they happen to live. I do ask that if you can’t pay for the repairs that you spend an equivalent number of hours either attending one of my free auto classes, or volunteer at a community-led charities of your choice, here I’ll get you a pamphlet-”

So the Martian Manhunter becomes a weekly volunteer at a Midwestern Food Waste Reclamation Facility. J’onn J’onzz ends up becoming Anakin Skywalker’s friend well before he becomes comes truly comfortable around Kal-El. For a telepath, 39 year old Anakin’s Jedi orderly mind is a soothing relief.

(again, Anakin has spent far more time meditating on Earth then he ever did at the temple. Before all this, spent five years dutifully memorizing the Jedi way even as he struggled to live up it’s basic practices. For the first few years on earth, religiously practicing every meditation technique Obi-Wan ever taught him, thinking obsessively about the philosophies he never had time to really process, is just a desperate attempt to reconnect with the force, prove himself worthy of it. But even after he gives up on ever touching the force again, he keeps up the practice, he can’t release his emotions exactly, but he does find peace. The tendency to stop mid-rant to earnestly pronounce made up zen bullshit and then sit quietly for an hour before picking up on his tirade again as though there was no interruption is one of the things many things people find profoundly weird about him)

Kal-El doesn’t stop asking new aliens and dimensional travelers if they’ve ever heard of Coruscant, or Hutts, or the Jedi Order. Anakin might have given up, but Superman remembers his older brother scrubbing away his own tears to focus on helping Clark calm down enough to touch the floor again. The more the Kryptonian’s powers developed in alarming ways, the more Anakin set aside talk of missing his home galaxy. Anakin might have claimed it wasn’t like that, but Clark was determined to take every chance his increasingly weird life threw at him, no matter how vanishingly small.

In the middle of his first battle with Braniac, Clark starts insulting his incomplete database. The world collector pauses, demanding a more precise explanation. Clark complies, giving his best technical description of Coruscant’s cityscape, Tatooine’s binary star system, and so on. Braniac is so distracted that Superman recovers completely from his kryptonite poisoning and easily saves the day.

Neither the lantern corp or the denizens of the neutral zone have the answers. Superman doesn’t mention it it Anakin, but he never stops looking and listening.

“How did you even meet that guy?” Flash asks curiously after stopping to say hello on one of their after work laps of the country.

“Aliens among us support group,” Kal-El responds deadpan.

“Oh. Wait, what? He’s an alien? I thought he was from the future or something! You’re messing with me. No way that’s a thing. How many people are in the support group? This is a joke, right?”

“Sorry, most of them aren’t out and I don’t want to violate their privacy- a lot of them have high profile jobs. How do you think I met J’onn?”

“SUPES I’M FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW YOU’VE GOTTA STOP”

Anakin is just sort of vaguely known by a solid chunk of the super community as ‘that one midwestern zen space mechanic’ and no one really questions it because everyone’s life has just gotten so goddamn weird. A few of them know he used to be a space wizard of some kind. Space wizards now being a regular hazard of life on earth, no one has reason to doubt this, and it’s as good an explanation as any for Anakin’s general vibe.

well. almost no one doubts this. Batman does not simply accept Anakin’s general bullshittery without carefully investigating and drawing his own conclusions. He does not share these with anyone.

But one day Clark- this is well after Superman became Kal-El to him, and not long after Kal-El tells him to call him Clark- comes up to him and asks for his help finding about an alternate universe. Knowing and dreading where this is going, Batman stalls,

“Shouldn’t you be asking one of the league members who regularly travels between universes?”

“I have, over the years,” Clark admits, awkwardly scuffing a boot on the floor of the cave. “But no one’s familiar with the exact one I’m looking for, and I thought since you’re a detective, and also one of the smartest people I know, you might be able to help me...”

“You’re an investigator yourself, and you can survive the vacuum of space,” Bruce shoots back flatly. “I’ve told you before Gotham is my priority, and this has ‘personal project’ all over it.”

“Come on, B, please,” Superman pleads, trailing Batman around the cave like an overgrown puppy. “In a few months it will have been 30 years! He’s my brother! Just let me see the research you’ve already done!”

“Who says I’ve already done research on your brother?”

Clark shoots him a look. And Bruce concedes the point with a grunt.

“I’ll need need to talk with him first,” Bruce finally concedes. “Bring him by the cave. Take the-”

“Take the tunnel entrance, I know, I know,” Clark agrees with a grin. “This doesn’t mean he’s authorized to know your secret identity. Thanks Bruce, this means a lot. I’ll ask him tomorrow about his schedule.”

Superman flies off and Batman scrubs his face with a gloved hand. After a moment he pulls up Anakin’s file on the main monitor. Bruce honestly respects and likes the man, as much as he respects and likes anyone who’s not family. He admires his sense his style, appreciates his upgrades to the batmobile, and is impressed by both this civil rights work and his additions to the scientific community.

That doesn’t mean he’s not convinced that Anakin’s brother is a bit insane. Again, he’s not judging! He dresses like a bat to scare random henchmen and beat up actual demigods! He wishes his rogues gallery was as capable of directing their ptsd-inspired delusions and staggering intellects towards such productive pursuits!

Bruce was already in quiet awe of the Kent’s ability to raise an outrageously superpowered being without blowing up a chunk of the country; their success in derailing a supervillian origin story just puts him over the edge. He stares at the three most likely profiles he’s pulled together. Christen Jones, from a negligent family, death certificate filled out suspicously sloppily at age 3. Earl Lucas, went missing at age 9, both parents dead in a violent assault. And Jake Hayden, who at age 5 disappeared along with the rest of his family in a seismic accident later linked to Luthercorp.

Anyone of them could have suffered on the streets for years and coped by establishing an elaborate fantasy world, aided by self medication, only to eventually be picked up by the Kent’s and start healing. Certainly Anakin had the intellect to create worlds in his mind. All his rogues were smart enough to create their own little realities in their heads- it doesn’t mean they were actually reachable.

Unfortunately Anakin had a Kryptonian younger brother who was determined to actually find the space wizard knight homeworld, even as the 'Jedi’ in question had slowly moved away his reliance on the delusion as an adult. Batman really didn’t see any way bringing up his conclusions to Anakin or Clark could possibly be helpful, and so many alien allies had a ‘If you find about the Jedi please contact Kal-El of Krypton on Earth’ pamphlet that it would be excruciatingly awkward to try and discretely correct anyone.

Bruce was not looking forward to this conversation.

#star wars #star wars au #dc #crossover #batman #anakin skywalker #corn boy anakin au

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rivalsforlife · 4 years ago

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AA7 Speculation Post: 2021 Edition

So I did one of these back in August, claiming that it was likely we’d get an AA7 announcement sometime in September for the Tokyo Game Show. Obviously it was wrong. So I am doing ANOTHER ONE, because I apparently like publicly being proven wrong?

This will be shorter than the last one because I exhausted most of my material on the first one, and also there’s less material. There is, however, SOME new stuff we’ve learned since August. ... And I was going to make a post in November but completely forgot, so consider this a starting point for the year. I’ll be covering the leaks, in general terms, and theorizing when we will be getting announcements/releases.

The rest will be under the cut so as not to burden everyone with my ramblings.

The Capcom Leaks

First things first, a disclaimer: this information was leaked through a hack which was highly illegal and compromised the personal information of many former and current Capcom employees, and therefore, I do not condone the methods through which this information was obtained and will not provide any guidance as to how to obtain this information, nor have I sought it out myself. However, I will still talk about then in general terms, because the information is out there already, and the information I am discussing will not compromise any personal information.

In summary: early this November, the hacker group Ragnar Locker managed to hack into Capcom’s databases somehow and retrieved 1 TB of information from the company; this includes a bit of information on ace attorney, which was leaked in mid-November after the group demanded a ransom and, presumably, Capcom didn’t pay up.

The two major ace attorney reveals that came from this are as follows: the announcement of a DGS/DGS2 port for the nintendo switch, steam, and ps4 with an English translation, and a calendar for the development and release of this port along with... ace attorney 7.

It’s highly likely that this information was real, given the level detail and the fact that Capcom confirmed some of their information was leaked, essentially confirming that AA7 either is or once was in development -- more news about this than we’ve had in a long time! But what does it mean and when can we expect it? Let’s take a closer look at the calendar.

The Calendar

Unfortunately, this little thing happened in between the creation of this calendar and it being leaked, called “a global pandemic” or something like that, so this calendar is almost certainly behind.

But what did it say? I lost track of the original, but I did find a roughly translated version someone made (from this post which summarizes some of the stuff in the leaks):

So... what does this mean? First, let’s remember two things: one, this calendar was made pre-COVID and things were definitely pushed back. And two, the Japanese fiscal year starts April 1st, meaning that FY2021 starts in April. This means that as of writing this, we are technically in FY2020 Q4 - where, if we were on track, would be nearing the end of DGS1&2 port production and midway through AA7′s production. (We are almost definitely not on track.)

The pandemic started hitting Japan around April 2020, I believe, so that would be in FY2020 Q1. The DGS ports seem fairly unaffected, considering it’s later in production, and also, the DGS games are already complete, so most of the work would be on translating and adapting the games for modern consoles, rather than starting completely at scratch like AA7. AA7 is a little trickier: it was still in the prototype/pre-production stage, most likely, when the pandemic hit. I’m not tooootally sure what that means because I’m not a game developer, but it’s quite possible that this meant it took a serious hit. Given that there didn’t seem to be a lot of other AA7 data leaked, including in a large schedule of releases for Capcom later, there is the possibility that AA7 ended up being scrapped owing to the pandemic or other extenuating circumstances... but I don’t believe that’s likely, with the 20th anniversary coming up. We’ll see.

Another thing of note is that the name “AA7″ is temporary. Here in the English-speaking world that isn’t a big deal because all the AA games have random titles (like “Justice for All” and “Trials and Tribulations”...) but in Japan, they’re referred to simply with their numbers (GS2, GS3, etc. standing for Gyakuten Saiban 2, Gyakuten Saiban 3). The fact that “Gyakuten Saiban 7″ is a temporary name could possibly mean that what we are getting is not another mainline game.

However, again, there’s not really anything to support either of these things. I’m just bringing up random possibilities to cover my bases; but personally I think it’s likely that it is another mainline game, and that it is still in development. If we hear absolutely nothing about AA7 for all of 2021, though... then perhaps not.

Now... obviously, this calendar was pushed back. If we’re in 2020Q4 right now, then by the calendar DGS1&2 is hypothetically going to be released in about three-six months, and there has been absolutely no word on that so far. If this calendar were still being followed, we’d have AA7 on sale in Q3 of 2021 -- meaning October-December 2021, possibly in October for the 20th anniversary of the series, which would be super cool. ... but I doubt that will happen now.

So then, when are we getting the games?

I haven’t seen actual evidence of it, but rumour is that they’re pushing back DGS1&2 for a July release and an April announcement, giving three months between announcement - release. This is a shorter period than the most recent trilogy switch/ps4/pc/xbox release, which was announced in September 2018 and released February 2019 in Japan, a five month waiting period.

When we English-speaking players will get the duology is unknown, too -- the trilogy rereleases took a month and a half before they were released in English, despite already having been translated and the original released in Japan coming with an English language option. (No idea what was up with that!) The duology released in Japan reportedly will have an English option from the outset, though the English released version will not have the Japanese option because of copyright issues surrounding Sherlock Holmes -- sorry, I mean, Herlock Sholmes. Still, we should expect a few months following the Japanese release before we are able to play it ourselves. Same goes with the hypothetical AA7, which seems to typically be around three months following the Japanese release for an English release.

As for when we can expect AA7′s announcement... to the extent of my knowledge, the shortest announcement-release period for a game was Spirit of Justice, announced in September 2015 and released in Japan in June 2016, a period of nine months. Usually it takes longer. Assuming that there’s still that six-month gap between the DGS duology release and the AA7 release, we could hypothetically have AA7 in early 2022, pushed back a quarter, and if the announcement comes nine months ahead... it lines up pretty nicely with an April announcement. If we’re having a DGS announcement in April as rumoured, it would make sense to tie in the AA7 announcement to that as well.

How will they be announced? ... I’m not sure. TGS back in September would have been the most opportune time for an announcement, but I have the feeling that owing to our good friend the pandemic, they didn’t have enough to show for either the ports or AA7 back then and so opted not to show anything. If these games are for the Switch, they could be announced in a Nintendo Direct. Or they could be announced in a Famitsu magazine with trailers released later outside of any other event. Honestly I don’t really know for this part.

Overall, though? This is the upcoming 20th anniversary of the series. I’d be surprised if we ended up not getting anything. Despite the pandemic likely pushing everything back, I think it’s highly likely we’ll get some big ace attorney news soon, even if it’s not quite in time for the anniversary -- of course, the safety and health of the employees comes first, so a bit of a delay will be just fine.

TL;DR: I’m theorizing we’ll have DGS port/ AA7 announcements around this April, with DGS being released around July and AA7 being released late 2021/early 2022, with a few months delay for the English versions.

#ace attorney #aa7 speculation #this one's short but once we get an idea on concept I plan to go wild on theorizing

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argylemnwrites · 5 years ago

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Fight or Flight - Chapter 8: Regret

Pairing: Drake Walker x MC (Riley Liu)

Book: The Royal Heir (canon divergent from the end of book 2)

Word Count: ~3500

Rating: R (language only)

Summary: Thirty one hours since The Walker Absconding

Author’s Note: Shall we even pretend there is a posting schedule at this point? Oh well, another chapter has arrived. This series follows the Walkers, their friends, and Cordonia as a whole after they flee the country with their daughter during Barthelemy Beaumont’s attempted coup. To catch up on this series, check out it’s masterlist. (link can be found via my bio - sorry, Tumblr is once again not putting my posts with links in tag searches)

Drake popped his headphones in, trying not to wake up Bridget as he pulled open a video on his new phone. He was also supposed to be sleeping, at least theoretically. It’s why Riley had gone into the bathroom a couple of hours ago - so that he could turn off the lights and it would be relatively quiet. If he slept now, after all, he would be able to drive through the night. But he’d been wide awake for the past three hours, and at this point, he wasn’t even sure if attempting to sleep was worth it. So he just laid in the dark, his daughter sleeping peacefully next to him. Thank god she wasn’t doing that whole sleep reversal thing she’d been doing last month, where she’d been waking up maybe a dozen times over night. Her being a good sleeper was maybe the one saving grace here.

Today had just been stomach churning since he’d left to go track down a car and supplies. He hadn’t known whether to be grateful or freaked out when he’d returned to the hotel this afternoon, and Riley had a list of things they needed to do typed up on her phone. While he was glad she no longer seemed like she was about to sink into a pit of panic, seeing her planning with this much intensity was just… strange. He couldn’t think of a time she had ever made such a detailed list. She always just adapted to the situation at hand. She never tried to shape the situation herself.

But between what she’d found in her “fugitive research,” and what Hana had told them when she called after the hearing, they were starting to come up with a plan. Hana had told them that Rashad was going to be sworn in as regent tomorrow and that Olivia was technically “investigating” their location at the moment. That as soon as Rashad took on the powers of king-regent, Olivia was going to disclose that Bertrand and Maxwell hadn’t “found” them at Lythikos, so she’d sent Hana to “check” that they hadn’t returned to Valtoria, but that she hadn’t found them there either. They were all repeatedly calling their old phone numbers as well, hoping to make the story believable when Rashad undoubtedly opened an investigation into their disappearance with Bridget.

But all this meant that arrest warrants could be issued as soon as tomorrow morning. The hearing wouldn’t take long, and no one was sure if Rashad would see things as a sign of an attack on all three of them, or if he would correctly deduce that they had made a run for it and willingly left the country with Bridget. Either way, their financial and phone records were likely to be subject to review. And that meant they needed to not be anywhere near Ioannina by the time of the hearing.

The issue was, they wanted to withdraw more cash before the investigation froze their accounts. This meant using the same ATM they’d been using one more time, at 12:01 am when it was a new day and they could withdraw their daily max again without giving anyone a new location to investigate. Then, it would be time to get in the newly-purchased hatchback and drive on to Xanthi, the city they’d chosen as their next stop. Small enough that no one would predict it as their destination, big enough that Riley, a woman of East Asian heritage who only spoke English with a still-persistent New York accent wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. Drake liked that it was past Thessaloniki as well. No one would guess they drove hours further into Greece than a city with an American consulate.

So, in preparation for that drive, Drake needed to be sleeping. Even after several years out of Manhattan, Riley still hated driving, and in all honesty, the thought of her behind the wheel in a country where she couldn’t read the road signs was not reassuring to Drake in the slightest. He wanted to be the one solely responsible for the driving. But that meant he should be napping now. But how was he supposed to sleep at a time like this?

In the past day or so, he’d gone from a very stable existence to literally plotting how to hide out from law enforcement. He’d embezzled money and bribed a used car salesman to look the other way and not require him to register the car for official Greek or Cordonian papers. He’d left the only home he’d ever known, not knowing if he’d ever get to go back. How could anyone sleep after a day like that?

So instead of sleeping, he was watching news coverage of Liam’s speech that he’d given only a few hours earlier. Speculation was rampant as to both why the vote of no confidence was called and as to who the acting regent would be. Who his daughter’s regent would be. Because for the past few hours, the 10 month old sleeping on the mattress next to him had technically been the Queen-Regent of Cordonia.

It was a strange feeling, knowing that going forward, Bridget would be listed as Queen-Regent Bridget in history books, her rule starting today. Liam’s request had kind of always seemed like simple bookkeeping before. Although Liam told the press that Bridget would remain next in line for the throne even if he had children of his own, Drake had always kind of assumed they would readdress the whole situation when Liam actually got married. It had seemed highly likely to him that Bridget would end up just being a temporary placeholder, someone needed to convey stability of the Crown until Liam had a kid or two of his own. And even if she had remained next in line for the throne, Drake never really thought he’d see her take on the title. She was only supposed to rise to that position after Liam’s death.

It was probably something he should have put more thought into, to be honest. But he hadn’t, at least not anywhere near enough. And now there was no great way to undo it. She was the queen-regent now. Abdication for her, as a minor with the title, would be a nightmare at this point. Even if her title was just through the Conclave, the steps that they would have to take to change things now, the support they would need from the assholes who just voted against them and Liam, well… Drake wasn’t counting on that happening any time soon.

He opened up the CBC app to watch another site’s coverage of Liam’s speech, but his phone started buzzing in his hand. The number flashing across the screen had a Cordonian country code, but it wasn’t Olivia or Hana’s burner numbers, which they’d already added to their contact list. This had to be either Liam or Maxwell on a new number. Taking a deep breath, he popped out the headphones and swiped to accept the call.

“Hello?”

There was a brief pause before Liam’s voice came through the speaker. “Hello, Drake.”

Drake didn’t know what to say. It was his turn to speak, but what do you say to someone you’ve known almost your entire life when they lost everything? When you’d let them down? After too many seconds, he finally managed, “So, you… uh, got our new numbers?”

“Yes. Hana and Olivia provided me with them.”

“Right. Well… good. You, uh… you should have our numbers.” Drake ran his hand over his face. He couldn’t be more awkward about this if he tried.

“Indeed,” said Liam, after a beat, “So, how are you all doing?”

“We’re okay, I guess. How are you?”

The pause was longer this time. “It’s been a long couple of days, Drake.”

The weight of that sentence settled over Drake, the guilt he already carried multiplying in that moment. “I’m so sorry, Liam.”

All Liam gave in response was a little hum of acknowledgement, so Drake kept speaking, trying to find some words that would make this better, that would make Liam see how sorry he was.

“We just couldn’t wait around, you know? We didn’t know how things were going to go down, and when Barthelemy started talking about taking Bridget, we couldn’t just risk that, and so we had to do something, right? And I know this leaves you in a tricky spot, but you’ve gotta know, I wish… I don’t know, that we weren’t doing this to you, I guess? But… it’s just fucked up all around, isn’t it?” Drake knew he was rambling, that he'd basically spewed out a whole bunch of garbage, but he just didn’t know what else to do.

“What do you want me to say, Drake? You’re right; the decisions you and Riley made have made things much more complicated for me. Are you looking for me to say that I don’t blame you? That I support this course of action?”

“What else were we supposed to do?” Drake asked. He could hear his voice raising slightly, and he glanced down, checking that he hadn’t woken Bridget, but she was still passed out.

“I told you back when you were trying to have a child that if it ever became too much, to inform me, and we would reserve the proclamation.”

“Are you really trying to tell me that in the middle of everything that was happening yesterday, it would have been a good time to pull you aside and ask to undo all that shit?”

Liam let out a sigh before he answered, “It seems like that would have been preferable to you deciding to commit treason.”

Drake slammed his eyes shut, trying to keep his temper in check. Liam was already dealing with a lot, and he didn’t want to make things worse, but his words were so frustrating right now. “We didn’t even know if you would have the power to undo any of it after that vote.”

“You could have at least waited until we knew the results of that initial hearing. At that point-”

“What if the justice had decided you had no power last night instead of today?” Drake interrupted. He saw Riley coming out of the bathroom and back into their room. She obviously must have heard him on the phone. He just shook his head, trying to reassure her as he kept talking to Liam. “That’s a big fucking gamble to ask of us, Liam.”

“Fine, then some middle-ground or compromise still would have probably been better. You have to know how ill-conceived this scheme you’ve agreed to is, Drake.”

“What would you suggest, then? Sitting around, just waiting to see if we got to keep our kid?”

“Of course not. But if you get arrested and extradited back here, you will absolutely lose custody of your daughter. I would urge you to consider that fact. Additionally, Rashad is not going to be interested in becoming some sort of surrogate parent to Bridget over the next few months.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That the man you have lined up as my kid’s regent has no interest in caring for her?” Riley mouthed “What?” at him from across the room, but Drake just waved his hand and shook his head again. He’d have to fill her in later.

“My point, Drake, is that Rashad would likely be very amenable to you and Riley staying with Bridget in the role as her caretakers and-”

“Stop. I’m not going to listen to that shit, okay? You know that’s not the same. You fucking know it, Liam.”

There was a rough sigh before Liam spoke again. “Fair enough. But you have to understand that you have put me in an awful position. And I’m just trying to find a way to minimize the damage caused by your selfishness here.”

“How is looking out for my wife and kid selfish?” Bridget squirmed slightly next to him as his voice climbed louder yet again. Riley must have noticed, because she scurried over and tucked her against her chest, muttering soothing words against the top of her head, trying to keep her from waking up.

“Did you think about how fleeing the country would impact anyone? Your citizens in Valtoria who no longer have a regional leader? The people of Cordonia who no longer have an heir to the throne? Your friends who have advocated for you and your family time and time again? No. You just left. You only thought of yourselves. That is the dictionary definition of selfish, Drake.”

“I’m sorry, but my family comes first. This isn’t fucking up for debate.”

“Well, some of us don’t have that luxury.”

Both Drake and Liam were silent for several seconds. Drake took a shaky breath, trying to get his emotions back under control. “Liam. I’m sorry. I really am. I never wanted to do this to you, and I know you are left cleaning up the pieces here, but I am not going to come back just for Bridget to get trapped inside the country and possibly taken from us.”

“Drake, don’t be so-”

“She’s queen-regent now, so no way we don’t get stopped at the border if we came back and tried to leave again, right? In fact, I bet we wouldn’t be allowed outside the palace with her, and that’s if we’re allowed to be alone with her at all-”

“Now you’re just being dramatic-”

“Am I? Because to me, it feels like you want me to come back and hang my hat on the hopes that Rashad needs a couple of nannies. I get the risks we are taking here. But at least we have a shot of staying together as a family this way.”

“Look, I understand that this is upsetting and frustrating. I’m upset and frustrated, too. All I want is to try and create a united front here. If we are fractured and divided, it is worse for everyone in the long run. We all want what’s best for Bridget.”

“You aren’t part of any ‘we’ here. She’s not your kid. You don’t get a say.”

The silence on the other end of the line was awful. Riley climbed onto the bed and leaned up against the headboard. One arm still held Bridget tight to her chest, but her free hand snaked behind him and rubbed soothing circles between his shoulder blades. It just did little to calm him. He didn’t know if more of his anger was directed at Liam, for presuming he had any say here, or at himself, for getting defensive when he was the one who had hurt Liam and put him in this position.

“I have never interfered in any parenting decisions you or Riley have made with regards to Bridget. In fact, I have given you both an unprecedented amount of freedom and control, knowing that it was an unusual situation. But it seems to me like we have nothing further to say to each other at the moment. You are unwilling to discuss the bigger picture here.”

“Liam, don’t-” Drake started, but Liam just kept talking.

“I understand why you’ve taken this course of action. But it is apparent that your priorities are only your daughter, whereas I need to focus on Cordonia as a whole. So, I think at this point we both need to just devote ourselves to those tasks and not worry about each other.”

It was a dismissal. A line in the sand. Whatever inner circle Liam had, Drake was no longer a part of it. He let out a sigh and swallowed roughly. “I am sorry, Liam. I just don’t know what you expect me to do here.”

“I don’t expect anything of you, Drake. You should just do what you feel is best for your family, and I will do what’s needed for our country.”

“Come on, it doesn’t have to be this way. I still want to help-”

“No offense, but a couple of fugitives are not likely to be a great resource to me at this point. This isn’t a punishment, Drake; it’s just the reality. We’ve both made the choices we needed to make, and now we both need to deal with the consequences. I need to remain focused on campaigning to regain my title, and I’m not going to have the time or energy to devote to aiding your run.”

“I’m not asking for your help, dammit. I just want-”

“What do you want, Drake? You don’t get to have this both ways.”

“I want… I want us still to be friends.”

He heard a heavy sigh before Liam spoke again. “Of course we are still friends, Drake. We just are headed in separate directions at this time, it would seem. You now have this number, though. You can reach me if you need to, and I will do the same.”

“Liam, I-”

“I wish you and your family the best; I really do. And if you change your mind, you can come find us in Lythikos.”

Drake closed his eyes. There was no salvaging this. Liam was boxing him out and closing the door. He was pretty sure having Liam screaming at him would have stung less. “Alright, I get it. Good luck with everything, okay?”

“Same to you. I really hope you don’t regret your decisions here and that you all can remain safe.” And with that, Liam ended the call.

Drake placed his phone on the bed and leaned forward, dropping his head into both of his hands. He swallowed several times, trying to break up the lump in his throat. He was very aware that although Riley seemed to be in a better spot than she was the day before, watching him cry over Liam was not going to instill much confidence. No need to make things more unsettled.

After a few moments, he took a deep breath and sat back up. Riley was staring at him, head cocked and eyes full of worry. He just shrugged and shook his head. There wasn’t much to say, really.

“Here,” Riley said, shifting forward and passing Bridget to him.

“I don’t want to wake her,” he muttered, but Riley continued, sliding Bridget into his arms before leaning against his shoulder, her hand slipping along his neck and her fingers threading through his hair.

“She’ll fall asleep in the car,” she said. Drake watched as his daughter blinked up at him, her face scrunched up like she was going to start screaming, but she relaxed and started to drift back to sleep when he pulled her against his chest and tucked his head on top of hers.

He just held her for maybe a minute, not saying anything. Riley was quiet as well, her fingers continuing to trace little patterns across the base of his scalp. Eventually, she tilted her head against his shoulder and whispered, “Do you want to talk about it or not?”

“No,” he breathed out, “not… not now.”

He felt her nodding, and her other hand settled on his knee. “Okay. Thank you, by the way.”

“Walker, it’s-”

“You don’t need to say it’s nothing. And I know you don’t want to talk about it now. So just… thank you.”

Neither of them said anything for a long while. They just sat there, trying to brace themselves for the reality of the next 24 hours. They would officially be under investigation and likely be charged with kidnapping of the queen-regent. This was the point of no return, far more than any decisions they’d made up until this point.

Oddly enough, Drake felt more confident in their plan than he had even before. As upsetting as his talk with Liam was, it had somehow helped him see why Riley was so reluctant to rely on anyone outside their family. Something about hearing Liam discuss the risks they would be facing in Cordonia as if they were nothing. As if living under the same roof as Bridget should be enough. As if they had time to wait for things to unfold. Well, it made it very clear that they saw what could be compromised and what couldn’t very differently.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, but eventually Riley sat up next to him. “Did you get any sleep at all?” she asked as he turned his head to look at her.

“No, not really.”

“Well, we better get going then so we can get some coffee before we hit the road.” And with that she slid off the bed and started gathering their few bags of belongings.

She was right. It was time to move on. So he gently clicked Bridget into her new car seat and did one last scan of the room, making sure they weren’t leaving anything they needed behind.

“You ready?” Riley asked.

“Yeah, Riley. Let’s go.”

Permatag: @walkerswhiskeygirl @riley--walker @bebepac @ravenpuff02 @oofchoices @octobereighth @drakewalker04 @kimmiedoo5 @mfackenthal @thequeenofcronuts

The Royal Romance/The Royal Heir: @ao719 @mskaneko @katedrakeohd @jovialyouthmusic @marshmallowsandfire @axwalker @kingliam2019 @sirbeepsalot @texaskitten30 @princessleac1 @ladyangel70 @dcbbw @yaushie

Drake x MC: @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria @iplaydrake @gibbles82 @drakewalkerisreal @notoriouscs @drakesensworld @drake-colt-lover-99

Fight or Flight: @masterofbluff @burnsoslow @bobasheebaby @shz256 @iaminlovewithtrr

#drake walker #drake x mc #trr au #trh au #trr fanfic #trh fanfic #trr au fanfic #trh au fanfic #king liam #choices fanfiction

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mappinglasirena · 5 years ago

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Mapping La Sirena

Welcome one and all to the Mapping La Sirena Project!

If you are a fan of Star Trek: Picard and you would like to know more about the show’s most prominent ship, to check out floor plans and screencaps, and to discuss theories about the layout of this magnificent vessel, this is will be the place for you!

(Long, slightly rambly introduction and masterpost after the cut ;] )

Hi! My name is Lili and I’ve been a fan of pretty much all things Star Trek ever since I started watching Voyager at the tender age of 6. Besides the sometimes goofy, often brilliant storytelling and the wonderful characters, I always loved the worldbuilding of these shows - and in particularly the starships.

When Star Trek: Picard started airing a few months ago, I was immediately drawn to the main ship, La Sirena. The mixture of the monumental physical set, judiciously used CGI, and sheer attention to detail made me fall madly in love with this little mermaid, and I wanted to find out every little thing about her that I possibly could. And since I imagine, I’m not the only one who feels this way, I decided to take you all on this journey with me!

What am I doing here?

As a reader and writer of fanfic, I know how helpful it can be to have a clear sense of the location your story is set in. When I realized that a good month after the final episode of ST:PIC season one aired, there still was no floor plan of La Sirena easily found on the web (easily = using my very limited googling-skills), I figured somebody had to sit down and do it. And apparently, that somebody was me. (May the gods help us all =D)

So, I sat myself down, and over the course of a few long days screencapped every single last scrap of Sirena that appears on the show. I now have a library of reference images and will post my progress as I work through them, trying to determine questions about the general layout of this ship, the details of its architecture and furnishings and all the questions that still remain. By the end of it, I am pretty confident that I will have a mostly accurate floorplan of the set that was used on the show (at least the parts of it that were shown to us thus far). We might even end up with the basis for a plan of the ship as it would exist in-universe (more on the movie set vs. “real place” issue later).

The following soon-to-be-links might give you an idea of what I plan to post over the next few months and I’ll keep adding links to this post as I go. So, without (even more) ado: Have fun exploring La Sirena!

Schematics & Floor Plans

A very crude first sketch

Official Set plan

We finally have an official set plan from the Ready Room!

A First Deeper Look at the Ready Room set plans

Centred Floor Plans from Set Me Up + cross section & more designs

Layout of the Captain’s Quarters

Shape and size

How large is La Sirena as seen on the show and is she larger on the inside?

Upper Deck

The Bridge

Where is the Holodeck?

Picard’s Study

Transporter Pad and Engine

The Trouble with Locating the Quarters/Conference Room

Crew Quarters

Captain’s Quarters

A closer Look at the windows

Conference room

The Mysterious Back End of the Ship

Crates, Tanks, Boxes, and Miscellania

Lower Deck

The Mess

Sickbay: Pt. 1: Size and Construction; Pt. 2: Furniture

So Many Nets

The Wall Problem, aka. Mysterious Nonexistent Corridors

Cargo Bay and other Speculative Spaces

Is there a dedicated cargo bay at the back of the ship?

Where are the rest of the crew quarters hidden?

Overall Design and Technological Aspects

A quick rundown of the Engine placement and history

Some Considerations

Tv Set vs . Starship

The set of La Sirena is just that, a tv set. When building a set, there are many constraints of time, budget, and practicality that will force the creatives to make decisions that will not always make sense when mapped onto a “real” starship. Take, for example, the fact that the Captain’s Quarters and the Conference Room were likely filmed in the same physical set, just redressed for the occasion.

Of course, there can always be Watsonian explanations for these kinds of incongruities and I’d love to hear people’s takes or read fics about them (after all, the entirety of La Sirena is apparently equipped with holoemitters, so I suppose technically, anything is possible).

But I am sticking with the Doylian “it’s a movie set” approach and will generally ignore these kinds of problems when trying to draft an in-universe-accurate floorplan of what we can know of the ship so far. I will be very diligent about pointing out whenever I handwave anything, though, so if you want to stick as closely to what we actually see on the whoe, you’ll know which parts of my analysis/headcanon to disregard ;)

Questions about “silly little details”

I have spend a ridiculous amount of time on this little project so far and in the course of it have gotten pretty familiar with a lot of aspects of the interior and exterior of this amazing starship. If you have any questions regarding details about what we can see of La Sirena on the show, please ask me and I will do my best to help! I absolutely love digging into the really nitpicky, tiny little scraps of information, and at this point, I can probably tell you straight away which scene might provide the info you’re looking for or whether there likely is no answer and you’ll have to get creative. So if you don’t feel like scrubbing through the entire 10 episodes of Picard to find out, say, the colour of the plates produced by Sirena’s replicators, please shoot me an ask, I’m always utterly delighted to help! (They’re white, btw.)

And just to make clear what I mean by “tiny little details”: in the course of writing some of my stories, I have collected answers to such important questions as

On which side of the desk does Rios have his chair? (Both)

How many cups are on the shelf next to the replicators? (4, even when one of them is currently in use)

Could a football roll under the railing on the upper deck and fall down into the mess hall anywhere but where the stairs go down? (No, there is a raised edge all around the rim that would catch it. Bouncing would work, though, since the space between the railing bars is large enough.)

Could I just say “Fuck it, I’ll just write it however, because it really doesn’t matter at all?” Yes. Would it be better for my sanity? Probably. Will I still keep trying to figure out as much about this crazy little ship as I possibly can at every turn? You betcha! So, no question is too silly, please ask away!!

A Quick Thought on Fanfic and “Accuracy”

This whole project started because whenever I write fanfic or make up stories set on La Sirena, my brain keeps insisting that we need to know which side of the mess hall the replicators are on! We need to know where exactly the holodeck is located and whether a football could fall to the lower deck through the railing. I would never hold anyone to these standards of “accuracy” - in fact I frequently don’t hold myself to these standards. Fic is for creative expression, so if in your imagination, La Sirena is twice the size of what we see in the show and has a ton of additional rooms and features, I would love to read that story! I want to create a resource for anyone looking for Sirena references to get inspired, not to point out inconsistencies or canon-divergence in lovingly created fanworks. I hope it comes across that way =)

#star trek picard #la sirena #about the project #cristobal rios #aramis in space

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blueandyellow1 · 5 years ago

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Witch Hunt Chapter 13: Plan

Ao3 link.

“Uh, am I interrupting something?” For once, Connie’s voice was devoid of its usual teasing manner.

Yellow looked at Blue, noting her deeply flushed cheeks and wished for a split second that she was also invisible. “No, Blue and I were just…”

“You guys finally talked about your feelings?” Now a devilish grin had spread across the dark haired woman.

Surprisingly, it put Yellow at ease. She glared at her sister. “Shut up.”

||Hello, Connie.||

“Blue!” Connie’s face lit up, and she turned to face the direction of the voice. “Did Yellow tell you about our plan?”

||She did. Are...are you sure this is safe?||

“Nope!” Another cheeky grin.

Yellow shoots her a look. “What Connie means to say is that we’ll be careful, but it could get dangerous. We’re going to be very careful though.”

||Alright.||

The word is spoken like a sigh. She looks to Connie, still smiling widely, and back to Yellow who is looking at her with an intense stare.

“Wanna see the picture I found?”

Both Yellow and Blue nod.

“I found this in a book with a note that said it is ‘the lost treasure’. The book was misfiled and had a different book cover. I only found it because there was a note in another book that said 613.71. I took a chance and checked that section in the library, Dewey Decimal System and all that. This was in a book in that section. It was blank other than the photo.”

Connie pulls out a manilla envelope and carefully takes a small slip of paper out. It’s the size of her palm. The three crowd around, taking in the girl in the photo.

A young woman stares back at them, probably no more than 20. Although the picture is otherwise dark, the woman has a light quality to her. It’s grainy and blurry, but the woman’s eyes seem to glow. They’re wide open, under heavy lashes and dark lids. Thin eyebrows are partially raised, two squiggly lines across her face. Her full lips are parted slightly and she looks scared. Her hair, curly and wild, sticks up, tufts of it pointing upwards and outwards.

“Wow.” Yellow says after a moment.

“Intense right?” Connie answers. “I wonder what she’s thinking. And who took the photo and why. We’ll just have to ask the witch!”

Blue puts a finger on the photo, to stroke the woman’s cheek. Something about the look in the woman’s eyes made her heart clench.

Connie’s careful hold on the picture had loosened while she spoke, and the paper fluttered to the ground.

Without thinking, Blue reached down to pick it up.

Brown and amber eyes watch as the picture moves from the floor, back towards Connie’s outstretched hands.

Connie gasps. “What is that photo?” she breathes.

Blue’s response comes out quickly, her fear ringing in her voice.

||I don’t know! It’s just--it’s just the woman, she’s so scared. I can almost feel her fear...it’s overwhelming.||

“Maybe we should put the picture away,” Yellow suggests, placing a hand on the phantom’s shoulder. With her other, she gingerly takes the photo from Blue’s loose grip, handing it back to her sister, who puts it back in the envelope.

“Okay, well this is new information. Blue can interact with things that have to do with the witch. Maybe it’s a magical item? Or maybe because she took your body, you’re somehow bound to her and can touch her things? I wish we had more time to experiment with this stuff. Oh man, do you think the witch would answer some questions when we find her?” Connie rambled on, her words tumbling out on top of one another.

“Provided we don’t need to kick her ass,” Yellow retorts.

||How will I join you on the journey there?||

Blue’s gentle voice brought the two sisters back to reality. Connie’s confidence seemed to wane.

“This is a stretch because I know you’re not really a ghost. I was reading about how to transport ghosts, and there’s actually not much on the subject. Mostly just how to exorcise them. Which we are technically doing, since you’ll hopefully stop being a ghost when we come back. But once source said that one of the reasons a ghost haunts a place is because it’s emotionally significant. Because you’re not dead, I thought it was the best explanation for why you stay here,” Connie said, her eyes searching the air where Blue would be.

||I suppose this could be true. I followed a woman who resembled my sister. She lived here.||

“That’s great!” Connie said excitedly. “It’s perfect! Can you follow Yellow?”

||”What?”|| Yellow and Blue ask in unison.

Connie rolls her eyes. “Okay, we can get more into this later, but it’s clear that you two care a lot about each other. I think your connection should be enough to bring Blue along.”

“Shouldn’t we have tested this before? We’re about to leave and if Blue can’t come, then we’ve wasted the money on the bus tickets,” Yellow says, trying to ignore the way the spirit was looking at her.

||I think it will work.||

“Great! See? Problem solved!” Connie says, shooting the two a thumbs up.

Yellow’s cheeks redden. “Okay, well good, one less problem.”

“Now, let’s go over the rest of the plan, okay?” Connie says, taking a seat at the table. Yellow follows suit, and they began their discussion.

…

After two hours, the three had were all caught up with their plan. It was simple, the picture giving them confidence in their bargain.

There was much speculation over what exactly the picture was. Connie thought that it could be used as part of a potion to bring back the witch’s daughter. Yellow thought it was a fake photograph, but the strange hiding spot was enough to admit it was probably something important. Blue knew it was some strong magic. Only she had an idea of the photo’s real significance.

...

By the time it was time to go, the three were casually chatting. Yellow and Connie were making sandwiches and snacks for the trip, and Yellow had packed a small overnight bag. None of them knew how long it would take, but they wanted to be prepared.

Just before they left, Yellow rushed into her room, to retrieve something from her closet.

“What is that?” Connie asked, eyeing the long object in her sister’s strong grip.

The blonde woman flushed, but a determined glint shone in her eyes. “It’s a katana.”

“Why do you have that? And how are we going to take it in the bus with us? They’re going to ask questions if you show up wielding a deadly weapon,” Connie said pointedly.

But Yellow just zipped it up in her duffle bag, its oblong shape just long enough for the sword to fit inside. A bump appeared on each size, stretching the thick fabric tightly.

“Where’d you even get that? Last I checked you don’t teach sword fighting in your classes,” the dark haired woman asked.

“No, I don’t. It was a gift from Sensei.” Yellow hoisted her bag over her shoulders. “Let’s get going. We don’t want to miss the bus.”

The two sisters began to step out of the apartment, shoulder to shoulder. A quiet voice halted their steps.

||Wait.||

“Blue?” Yellow asked, her eyes sweeping the dim apartment. At some point during their discussion, she had moved away from Yellow, breaking their contact. Yellow held out an arm, waiting for Blue to reappear.

When the phantom flashed into sight, Yellow saw her gripping her hand tightly. She looked scared, her thin eyebrows arching upwards and her cobalt blue eyes widened. Yellow’s face softened. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re doing this together, we’ll be here the whole time. I’ll be here with you.”

The white haired woman nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“You can hold my hand the whole way there, okay? I won’t let go of you. Or you know what I mean,” Yellow finished with a chuckle, squeezing her hand. It closed into a fist.

||Okay. Okay. I’m ready.||

#my writing #bellow diamond #yellow diamond #blue diamond #connie #steven universe fanfic #steven universe #steven universe au #witch hunt

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mischiefandspirits · 6 years ago

Text

Rescue to the Rescue (1/3)

Peter puts E.D.I.T.H. to work on the Elemental's case and something doesn't seem to be adding up.

“No matches found under Quentin Beck. Expanding search.”

“That’s alright, he’s not exactly from around -”

“Match found in Stark Industries database.”

Part 2, Part 3, and Also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What else can you do, E.D.I.T.H.?”

“I can do lots of things,” she -- she? Do AIs even have a gender? Or just preferred pronouns? Vision had gone by male pronouns, but was that because he was male or he just preferred male pronouns? Or did everyone just automatically use male pronouns and he’d never corrected them? What about F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Oh man, had Peter been misgendering Karen by calling them a suit lady this entire time? -- said.

Peter opened his mouth to ask how genders worked for AIs when he suddenly realized that during his metal speculation, E.D.I.T.H. had gone on to answer his question and Peter had completely missed part of it.

“Um, E.D.I.T.H.?”

“… inform- Yes, Peter?” she asked, only to continue a second later with, “Oh, I failed to notice your distraction. I apologize.”

Peter blushed and slumped down further in his seat. “No, no, I’m sorry. I should have been paying better attention.”

“Research shows those of your condition can display difficulties with focusing during long speeches or lectures. I will make a note to keep better track in the future so I can properly assist you.”

Fingers coming up to run over the smooth metal of the glasses’ temples, he gave a small smile. “Thanks, E.D.I.T.H.”

“Of course, Peter. Would you prefer I send a list of my capabilities to your phone so you can read through it instead?”

“Oh, that would be great!” Peter blushed again as a couple of his classmates turned to look at him, ducking his head and pulling out his phone and headphones. He quickly stuck the earbuds in his ears and plugged them in to make it look like he was talking on the phone. “Um, yeah, you can do that. Thanks.”

“Your welcome.”

The file popped up on his phone’s screen and he quickly opened it. “So, E.D.I.T.H.,” he hummed scrolling through the list. “What pronouns do you use?”

“… I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

“Like, what’s your gender? You sound like a woman, but, like, do AIs have genders? I don’t know how that works, sorry.”

“I was not programmed with a gender.”

“So you’re agender?”

“That would be the closest identifier according to my findings, yes.”

“That’s cool. So what pronouns should I use for you?”

“I have no preference either way.”

Peter’s eyes stopped on ��Can access security and traffic cameras for surveillance purposes.’ “Would you mind if I use female pronouns, then? That’s kind of what I’ve been using in my head.”

“That is fine.”

“Cool, just let me know if you change your mind. Hey, this says you can scan through a bunch of security feeds and stuff right? Would you be able to pick up anything on Mysterio?” Maybe if he could find out something about the elementals that could help Mr. Beck, then Mr. Fury would leave him alone to enjoy his trip.

“Mysterio?”

“He’s a superhero. Quentin Beck. He fought a big water monster in Venice yesterday.”

“Four hundred seventy-three matches found for the name Quentin Beck, attempting to narrow results.” Flashes of images flew by faster than even Peter’s enhanced eyes could keep up with. Finally, it settled on a blurry picture of Mr. Beck in his suit and helmet. “Many surveillance systems for the area, both on the ground and in orbit, were disrupted due to energy anomalies during the fight, but I have located various videos posted online from civilian and news resources. Is this the person you are asking after?”

Peter frowned and perked up. Something knocked-out surveillance systems? That’s ominous. Was it a result of the elemental’s powers? Or maybe some sort of radiation-like output given off by Mr. Beck and the creatures because they were from another universe? But then why would it only happen during the fight? “Yeah, that’s him. How long before and after the fight did the energy anomalies happen?”

“The anomalies began approximately thirty-nine minutes before the creature is first noted on social media, building in strength until just before the creature’s arrival. They then remained steady until cutting off completely just after Quentin Beck left the scene.”

That makes no sense. There should have been a decay in the energy just like there was a build-up. And if the energy was completely tied to the elemental -- and considering there was no change in power when Mr. Beck arrived, then it should be -- then the power change should have happened when it was defeated, not when Mr. Beck flew off.

“Peter, would you like me to continue searching for Quentin Beck?”

Peter bit his lip, his hand coming up to rub against the glasses again. “Yeah. Try matching his suit to security footage around Venice before and after the disturbance. Try to find something with his helmet off.”

“Searching.” More flash-forward pictures flashed across the lenses.

Peter glanced towards Ned, wanting to talk about this with someone, but his best friend was nuzzled up against Betty watching a video.

“Match found.” A picture of Mr. Beck standing next to Nick Fury came up. It zoomed in on Mr. Beck. “Running facial recognition.”

“It’s just like on TV,” Peter whispered, watching the program run.

“No matches found under Quentin Beck. Expanding search.”

“That’s alright, he’s not exactly from around -”

“Match found in Stark Industries database.” Peter’s eyes widened as a picture settled next to the one of Mr. Beck. The man in the picture looked exactly like a clean-shaven, more put together, and slightly younger Mr. Beck. “Dr. Ludwig Rinehart worked for Stark Industries for seven years before being fired in twenty-sixteen after a mental break that resulted in him attempting to steal files from Stark Industries and making multiple threats against the life of Tony Stark and his loved ones. His most notable credited work is the basis for the hyper-realistic holograms used in the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing, which was also his point of contention with Mr. Stark.”

“So let me get this straight,” Peter sighed, letting his head tilt back and closing his eyes. “This guy has fancy tech and a grudge against Mr. Stark?”

“That is an accurate summary.”

“And he looks just like Mr. Beck?”

“There was a ninety-nine point seven percent match.”

“Could be just a coincidence. I mean, how many guys with fancy tech and grudges against Mr. Stark have actually done something bad about it?”

“Compiling a list for you now.”

Peter peaked his eyes open for just long enough to catch a flash of Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko before closing his eyes again. “That’s okay, E.D.I.T.H. It was a rhetorical question.”

It could be a coincidence. Mr. Beck was from an alternate universe -- although, hadn’t Peter already explained why that idea was weird? -- so it’s not entirely unlikely that someone from Peter’s universe could look just like him.

Peter buried his fingers in his hair and looked at Ned again. “I need to talk to someone about this before it drives me crazy.”

“Mr. Hogan, Mrs. Parker, and Mrs. Potts are listed as emergency contacts for you. Should I try one of them?”

“Aunt May will just freak out and Happy will just tell me to trust Mr. Fury and get annoyed at my ramblings.”

“Should I try Mrs. Potts then?”

Ned caught his eye and frowned. “You okay dude, you’ve got that look on your face?”

Look? What look? “Yeah,” he said, before tilting his head towards Betty, hoping Ned would get the point and separate from his new girlfriend long enough for them to talk.

“Contacting Mrs. Potts.”

“What? Wait, E.D.I.T.H., no,” he hissed quietly and turned away. In the corner of his eye, he saw Ned shrug before focusing back on Betty.

“You have reached the personal number of Mrs. Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries,” a feminine voice with an Irish lilt answered. “I do not recognize this number. Please state your business and I will happily schedule an appointment for you.”

Peter blinked. “I thought her name was Pepper,” he muttered. Was Pepper her middle name? Or a nickname? How did he not know this?

“Oh, Peter, I’m sorry,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said, voice sounding warmer. “I did not realize it was you. Are you borrowing a phone?”

“Uh, no. I’m using E.D.I.T.H. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

“I will log E.D.I.T.H.’s number for future reference. I’ll let Mrs. Boss know you’re calling her.”

“Wait!” Why do Mr. Stark’s AIs always do this to him? “I don’t want to bother her. She’s probably got important things going on.”

“Mrs. Boss is currently unoccupied. She will be with you in a second.”

“But -”

“Hello?”

“H-hey, Mrs. Potts,” Peter stuttered, burying his face in his hands. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re never a bother, Peter. It’s good to hear from you. How are you? Happy told me you went on a school trip to Europe. How is it?”

“I’m okay. The trip is… something. Um -”

“Petey! Is that Petey?”

“Yes, Morgan, it’s Peter. Would you like to say hi?”

“HI PETEY!”

Peter smiled, even if he couldn’t help but flinch at the loud voice right in his enhanced ears. “Hey, little Lady Morgana.”

“Is Petey coming over?”

“Not today,” Pepper chuckled. “He’s on a school trip, remember? Maybe when he gets back he can come over.”

“I’d love to!” Peter answered automatically. “I mean, if it’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay. You and May are always welcome. You can bring your friends too. You three could do with getting out of the city for a little bit this summer.”

“Sleepover!?” Morgan cheered.

“We’ll see.”

“Technically we’re out of the city right now,” Peter pointed out.

“Yes, from one city into another. You guys were going to Venice and Paris right?”

“Prague, actually, not Paris.”

“Well, that’s good for culture, but you kids could do with some nature in your life.”

Peter’s nose scrunched up at the idea of camping or marching through bug-filled forests. He liked the city, thank you very much. “Sounds great, Mrs. Potts.”

“I can hear you making a face, Peter. Honestly, you are so much like -”

Pepper cut herself off, but that didn’t stop the grief-guilt-pain mix from flooding through him.

“Anyways, I thought I told you to call me Pepper. So, where are you right now?”

“Uh… Austria? I think? I know we’re in the Alps,” he said, glancing out the window.

“That is correct, Peter. You are currently in the Central Eastern Alps,” E.D.I.T.H. helpfully provided. “Would you like to know your exact location?”

“That’s okay, E.D.I.T.H. Thanks.”

“You have E.D.I.T.H.?” Pepper asked.

“Yeah, Mr. Fury said Mr. Stark left her for me. Is that… Am I not supposed to have her?” Peter’s voice matched hers in confusion. Had Mr. Stark not left the glasses to him after all?

“No, or yes. Tony left them to you. I just didn’t think you’d get them already. I would have thought to wait until you’re eighteen, after graduation. I should have known Fury would meddle though. That man. Has he been bothering you? Is that why you seemed weird when I asked about the trip?”

“Kind of. Did you, uh, see what happened in Venice yesterday?”

“I think I heard something about a water monster. Oh! Oh, Peter, did you get dragged into that? I’m sorry. I know you were really hoping to get a break from all that nonsense during your trip.”

Peter felt something relax in him for the first time since seeing the suit in his suitcase. He didn’t know why, but Mrs. Potts was the only one that really understood why he had wanted to take a vacation from Spider-Man during the trip.

“Yeah, and right after Mr. Fury dragged me off. It, um,” Peter glanced at his classmates and scooted down in his seat again, lowering his voice. “I guess there’s more of those monsters, one for each element. Or natural element I guess. You know, earth, wind, water, and fire. They’re called elementals. At least, according to Mr. Beck.”

“Mr. Beck?”

“He’s the guy that fought the water elemental yesterday.”

“Oh, right, I think I saw him in the news. They didn’t give a name though. Is he a new superhero?”

“That’s… kind of what I wanted to talk about. E.D.I.T.H. and I were checking some stuff, but something feels weird, and I really need to talk it out to someone, but I didn’t want to worry Aunt May and Happy always gets grumpy when I ramble even though I know he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Grumpy,” Morgan chuckled and Peter jumped, having forgotten she was there.

“Honey, why don’t you go back to your movie. Peter and I need to talk about business stuff right now.”

“Okay,” Morgan groaned and Peter could just see her pout in his head. “Bye Petey.”

“Bye. I’ll come see you when I get back, okay.”

“Promise?”

“Pinky promise.”

“You can’t pinky promise over the phone,” the girl snorted and a moment later he heard a door shut.

“Okay, now tell me what’s wrong?” Pepper said in that voice Peter had only ever heard her use while visiting Stark Industries for something. Business Pepper, MJ called it with approving eyes when she’d overheard Peter explaining it to Ned.

Peter thought over how to start. “Do you know a guy named Dr. Ludwig Rinehart?” he ended up going with.

“The name's familiar. He was on the B.A.R.F. project, right?”

Peter couldn’t help the chuckle that slipped out. Yeah, Mr. Stark definitely liked his acronyms. “Yeah, then he got fired for sending threats to Mr. Stark.”

“Oh yes, him. Does he have something to do with these elementals?”

“Maybe. See, after the water guy attacked, Mr. Fury showed up in my hotel room and shot Ned with a tranquilizer dart then dragged me away to his secret hideout.” Peter paused as he heard Mrs. Potts mutter something under her breath, but he couldn’t make it out and she didn’t say anything else so he continued, “That’s when I met Mr. Beck -- Quentin Beck -- and he explained that he and the elementals came from another universe -- which I thought was crazy because that would change what we understand about -- Oh, sorry I almost started rambling. Sorry, Mrs. Potts.”

“It’s fine, Peter. I’m used to it,” Pepper said, sounding fond. “So Beck and these elementals came from another universe? How?”

“Mr. Beck said it was because of something to do with the Infinity Stones, but I’m actually starting to wonder how true his story might be because E.D.I.T.H. and I were looking into the water monster attack and I noticed some weird energy anomalies, well E.D.I.T.H. pointed them out, but I noticed what was weird about them. I figured they were connected to the elemental because they start to build up right before it shows, but then they just vanish without any decay and there’s a weird delay between it’s defeated and when the energy disappears. And it’s weird that it just so happens to interfere with security systems, right?”

“What do you mean it interferes with security systems?” Pepper asked and Peter could hear what sounded like her fingers tapping at a tablet.

“Oh, well E.D.I.T.H.’s connected to a bunch of surveillance stuff, but everything in that area is disrupted during the fight. We figured it out when I tried to look up the fight. I figured maybe E.D.I.T.H. might be able to help out with taking down the elementals, but she couldn’t see anything about the fight because of the disruption. All we can go on at that time is news footage and social media.”

“That certainly does sound odd.”

“Or convenient?” Peter offered.

“Definitely suspicious,” Pepper agreed and Peter smiled. “How does this connect to Rinehart? And why are you getting involved? I thought you were on vacation. If Beck is handling this, then you should let him.”

“I was going to, but then Mr. Fury kidnapped our vacation.”

“WHAT!?”

“Y-yeah,” Peter said, his shoulders creeping up. “He said the next elemental was supposed to show up in Prague, but I told him I didn’t want to leave my class, and he said he understood so I thought that was the end of it, but then it turned out that he just used his super-spy tactics to get our class sent to Prague instead of Paris like we were originally supposed to. The bus we’re taking is even being driven by one of his guys.”

“He… I’m going to have words with that man.” Peter shivered at the anger in her voice. “Okay, I’ll deal with Fury. Just stay away from his people and stick to your class until I can get this taken care of, alright? This is not something you should be having to deal with, especially not while on vacation.”

“He said he needed me,” Peter explained, though he couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved that this was being taken out of his hands.

“He could have called Rhodey, or Wilson or Barnes or literally anyone that wasn’t a grieving seventeen-year-old currently on a well-deserved vacation!” Pepper snapped.

“Right.” Peter’s fingers once more landed on the glasses. “Thanks.”

“Of course, sweety.”

Peter probably would have blushed at the endearment, had he not been distracted by the bus stopping for gas. He stuck his phone back in his pocket, but kept the headphones on.

“Back to Rinehart?” she said, her voice more controlled now.

“Right.” Peter stood up and followed his classmates off the bus. “So after we figured that out, I asked -” Peter cut off when Dimitri held his arm out to stop him as soon as he stepped off the bus.

The man pointed to where a tall, scary-looking blonde woman was standing in a doorway.

“Peter?”

As the woman disappeared into the building, Peter turned to Dimitri with a nervous smile. “Sorry, I was told to stay with my class.”

Ignoring the man’s glare, Peter followed after the others before ducking behind a barn.

“Peter, what’s going on?”

“We’re at a rest stop. Mr. Fury’s guy, the one driving the bus, tried to get me to go with some woman. I did what you said though.” He said, looking over at where he could see MJ studying a large spider web out of earshot. He shivered, imaging the spider that must have made it.

Then Dimitri stepped around the corner, sending another shiver down his spine.

“Good.”

He took a step back at the bad feeling he was getting.

“Fury said -” the man began.

“I’m on the phone,” Peter interrupted, pointing at his headphones.

“E.D.I.T.H. can you transfer me to Peter’s phone and put me on speaker, please?” Pepper asked, a touch of annoyance in her voice.

“Would you like me to do that, Peter?”

“Sure,” Peter answered, pulling out his phone and unplugging his headphones.

“Excuse me, sir, but Peter and I are having a private conversation about confidential Stark Industries business.”

“Mrs. Potts,” the man growled, scowling at the sound of her voice. “I work with Fury. We need -”

“I’m sorry, but this is an urgent matter that I would like Peter to be involved in due to his status as CTO in training.”

If anything, the man’s scowl grew as he looked up at Peter. “CTO in training?”

Peter blushed. Mr. Stark had had him take an active role in Stark Industries after the whole Vulture incident, but he’d never put a name to it. Peter had just figured it was making the whole internship story legit. Was he seriously considered a CTO in training? What did a CTO even do?

“Yes, now if you’ll excuse us?”

Peter was getting serious death glare vibes from the man, but thankfully he turned and left.

“He’s gone,” Peter said, sticking the earbuds back in.

“I’m seriously going to tear Fury -- I mean, nevermind,” Pepper blustered, her audio returning to the glasses.

Peter snickered. “I’m seventeen. I do know what you were going to say, you know.”

“Hush. You are the pure kid and I will keep it that way!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Pepper groaned. “Morgan told me that I own the word shit the other day and Harley… goes without saying.”

“She told you what?” Peter laughed, leaning back against the barn.

“Peter, Rinehart.”

“Right,” he chuckled before focusing. “So after looking into the energy thing, I had E.D.I.T.H. track down a picture of Mr. Beck without his helmet and then she ran facial recognition. Rinehart was the result.”

“Beck is Rinehart?”

“Either that or he looks just like him. Different universes and all that. But considering how often supervillains tend to have stupid grudges against Mr. Stark and all the weirdness about his story and the energy anomalies…”

“Better safe than sorry?”

“Yeah. He’s into holograms, right? Maybe he’s faking the attacks for some reason. He’d be able to cause a lot of damage without getting any of the blame because everyone thinks he’s the one who saved the day.”

“Holograms wouldn’t be able to cause actual damage.”

“Holograms covering robots would though. Or maybe drones?”

“Weaponized drones!” Pepper gasped. “Like the ones for E.D.I.T.H. They would definitely be able to cause that kind of damage. More, even, depending on how many there were.”

“E.D.I.T.H. has weaponized drones!?” Peter pulled out his phone and started looking over the list again.

“For emergencies,” she emphasized.

“Do all the AIs have Instant-Kill Modes or only mine,” he grumbled, glaring at the list.

“He worried about you. We all do. We just want you to be as safe as possible.”

Peter glanced over as he heard Mr. Harrington call out and he slowly made his way towards the bus. “Right. So you think there might be something to it? The whole Rinehart thing.”

“While I wouldn’t say alternate universes are a crazy idea at this point -- heaven knows after time travel and aliens and… What has life even become since Tony put on that stupid suit?” Pepper muttered that last part and Peter fidgeted with the wire for the headphones as he realized he wasn’t supposed to hear it. “Anyways, I think looking a little closer to home first might be a good idea. I’ve got a few contacts, both my own and some of Tony’s, that I can check in with. Just try to stay out of trouble for now and let me know about any changes. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve found anything out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, coming up to the end of the line to get back onto the bus. He tried to ignore both the insult Flash snipped at him when he stood next to him and the boring eyes of Dimitri.

“Be careful,” she reiterated.

“I will. Talk to you later.”

“You better.”

Anyone else catch that Beck insinuated that's not actually his name?

#mcu #smffh spoilers #peter parker #pepper potts #spider-man

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rins-rambles · 7 years ago

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Callum’s Sealed Letter

You’d think after all my VLD theories I’d learn to not ramble on and on about possible future story plots for cartoon shows, right? Wrong. Here’s another TDP theory, focusing more on Callum and Harrow. Also, there will be reaches, and this is all my personal opinion.

So what’s on my mind today? Callum’s letter from Harrow that he drops and never retrieves. Prepare yourselves, this theory is long.

There was a lot of tension built around that letter Harrow gave to Callum in the first couple of episodes, wasn’t there? I can see it being a red herring to add onto the “Harrow is in the bird theory”, since he technically did die, but now lives inside something else. However, that’s been discussed to death, and not what I’m planning on doing. Like the twin-headed cobra’s, they’re introduced, and when the plot mentions it again, they’re then suspiciously omitted. Why put so much emphasis on that letter if Callum was just going to accidentally drop it as a clue for Claudia to find, causing her to investigate until she ran into them with the dragon egg? One thing it could mention is the identity of Callum’s biological father.

While this isn’t a new theory, many have speculated that Callum’s biological father was an elf, but which race they are is up in the air at the moment *badum-tss*. Although another hint is when Callum seemed to quickly take up magic like fish to water, and his first spell is the wind spell Aspiro. You can argue that Callum is perfectly human, since Viren and Claudia are definitely humans just with a higher aptitude for magic, and Callum just happens to be one of those people. But now that Callum got rid of his Primal Stone, he needs to learn more from someone. I hope we get to see more human mages later on in the story for Callum to either learn more magic from to show how “normal magic” is studied instead of through the shortcuts that black magic has. Or if we’re lucky, we get to see elves train him in their ways of magic.

{Think of this like FMA, where alchemists have to go through intensive training to learn alchemy. A skilled alchemist on their own is powerful, while an alchemist with a philosopher stone can bypass the laws of equivalent exchange. Since Callum’s destroyed his “philosophers stone”, he needs more hands on training.}

Now, to try and steer this horse back on topic, this leads to what Harrow may have written for Callum in his final letter, also make note that this one was specifically for Callum, so let’s assume that Harrow didn’t write anything for Ezran.

A) Harrow’s Message

I feel that Harrow didn’t say all that he wanted when bidding Callum farewell and having him promise to look after Ezran. When writing something akin to a will, you’d tell whoever the person you’re writing to a lot of dark/important secrets you probably wouldn’t have told if you didn’t think death would be knocking at your door soon. One thing shown in Callum and Harrow’s relationship (mostly on Callum’s part), was that while Callum does think of Harrow like his father and he does love him, with all of the reminders that he’s just his step-son, he puts a rift between them as subject and king. In one ending credit card, Harrow was the one to give Callum his trademark sketchbook, and definitely wanted Callum to see him as his father and for most of their interactions, is open to Callum about their situations while he lies when Ezran is around. Yet, if there’s something Harrow seems to be keeping from Callum, it could be about his biological father.

This feels like something he would want to write down to Callum, knowing that he will not be able to speak to his son again, and we’ve suspiciously heard very little about Callum’s biological father. Even though the information we get on Sarai is almost as bare as he is, it’s still a bit suspicious. No one mentions anything about Sarai’s first husband before marrying Harrow, and I wonder if she disclosed this information to Harrow before her mysterious death.

Harrow loved Sarai, as I’m speculating that the picture he looks at before putting it away on Viren’s arrival was a portrait of him and Sarai (or possibly Harrow with a younger Callum and baby Ezran since he knew he wouldn’t be able to see his sons ever again). If she loved Harrow enough to marry him and have Ezran with him, she’d probably tell him about her first husband, and with a mixture of love and guilt (since he blames himself for the supposed death of the Dragon Prince), Harrow would keep this secret for Sarai until Callum was old enough to know, or when he was about to die, depending on how Sarai would wish for Callum to know.

While Harrow certainly had enough time to write a letter out for his son, it still feels odd that he chose Callum specifically of his two sons. I understand that Ezran is still very young, but he has proven to be more mature than he lets on. If Harrow’s letter would just be him writing about how much he loved Callum and Ezran, that final goodbye scene they had would have sufficed. Then, the only letter they’d get to read/open was when Amaya found them out the lodge on Harrow’s orders. However, there is one other theory I have on the letter, and it involves Sarai.

B) Sarai’s Secret

We’ve seen nothing of Callum’s letter after Claudia picked it up, and it remains sealed. But, what if this isn’t a letter that Harrow himself personally wrote? What if it was a letter that Sarai wrote a long time ago and gave it to Harrow either after they were married, or again, before she mysteriously died?

All of the above that I wrote still applies: Sarai’s first husband was an elf, thus leading to Callum and him never being mentioned, but now it’s in a different light since it’s in Sarai’s perspective.

We don’t get a whole lot about queen Sarai as a character. One being, she’s dead, and two, she’s fondly remembered with Amaya even calling her sister her hero. Callum’s small moment of reminiscing when Rayala sees him sketching his mother in his sketchbook has him saying that she was amazing. Still, if we’re to learn something about the characters in The Dragon Prince, not everyone’s pasts and motivations are purely black and white.

Sarai has a wealth of potential to be explored not only to help flesh things out in the current plot, but also with our characters. Who was she before she met and married Harrow? Why was she so revered? Why did she decide to have Callum with her first husband? Why does no one, not even her sister Amaya talk about her past more? Amaya you can argue was probably busy at the border patrolling, therefore wasn’t around her sister often besides maybe communicating through letters. But still, Callum knows ASL, something Sarai likely taught him to communicate with his aunt, and Amaya had to have asked her sister how in Ka-tallest mountain of Katolis she got pregnant with a kid.

Normally, dead mothers to the heroes have small flashbacks of their lives to highlight a certain event going on, or a moment with a character whom they shared a connection with, usually a close friend, relative, their children, or their spouse. So with the skirmish between human and elves, Sarai’s past could be explored through flashbacks of some kind, and bonus points if it involves Callum. If Callum’s father was an elf, this could also hint at how Ezran got his ability to speak to animals. Perhaps some of that elf gene carried on into him so he inherited this skill? If there’s something that highlights the elves abilities, it’s magic and communicating/being associated with animals (ex: Lujanne and her bird). Speaking of Lujanne, thanks to her, and the Shadow-Moon elves, we know that while elves hate humans, they’re not against crossing the border for personal matters, so Sarai meeting Callum’s father this way instead of having to be near the border is more plausible in how their story pans out.

This revelation of Callum being half-elf could lead to the revelation that humans and elves, “We’re not so different after all!” Although that’s highly unlikely, and they’ll have a better shot at just returning the Dragon Prince over this, since it seems like it will just be another move for character development for Callum as a person.

So while Sarai’s letter could have been her telling Callum all about his real heritage, and how she couldn’t tell him because everything about it would be taboo, there could be other ways this is explored, or exploited.

Whoo, I kept getting new ideas and editing halfway through, so I’m going to make a part two of this theory to highlight that last part. I am incredibly sorry for the long rant, but since I don’t make videos, writing is all I can really do to get my thoughts out. HMU if you have had similar theories, or a different idea of what Callum’s letter might have been about.

#tdp theory #the dragon prince theory #tdp theories #tdp meta #callum (tdp)#ezran (tdp)#king harrow #harrow (tdp)#the dragon prince #queen sarai #sarai (tdp)#my theory

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minatsuki-on-main · 7 years ago

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Rambles about the BTB villains’ side as season 2 approaches

As the post-credits scene from the last episode hinted, we didn’t know who BTB’s actual villain was the whole time. I’ve tried to look into the connection between various antagonists and perhaps the hardest thing to figure out about BTB is who knew what and to what extent, so it’s entirely possible I’m overlooking a few details somebody else has noticed (though I try my best to consider everything).

Gilbert and (real) Minatsuki had an alliance, this much is clearly stated. They were both acting in self-interest that had more significance to them than cooperating with the other (which, ultimately, turned out to be the downfall of both their plans).

Gilbert was manipulating (real) Minatsuki by having convinced him he was created as a spare at Jaula Blanca, and his consequent resentment towards Koku. My opinion on this might deviate from everyone else’s, but it’s entirely possible that the interpretation of the Jetblack Epitaph where killing Koku would have made him the new Black-winged King wasn’t something Gilbert directly told him, but rather a conclusion he came to on his own. Obviously, Gilbert knew (maybe through his own predictions) about the idea itself, but he didn’t know enough to figure out (real) Minatsuki wouldn’t have time to go after RIS for his sake towards the end of the anime, resulting in his delirious bout in the car. In other words, he couldn’t foresee the fight planned to take place at the Jetblack in the last two episodes.

It was also an odd detail that (real) Minatsuki had the voice changer on his phone turned on while talking to Gilbert, emulating (phantom) Minatsuki, something he seems to have done several times, including disguising himself when meeting up with government officials. It’s as if every Market Maker public arrangement had to necessarily go through (phantom) Minatsuki. My best bet is that Gilbert did get his share of brainwashing, but only in relation to the two Minatsukis switching places. This ended up not interfering with the main point of his plan, that is: luring Keith to the island and getting him to kill him. Since he was still communicating with (real) Minatsuki, even if indirectly, the confusion with identities didn’t matter to him in any way — the only important thing was that (real) Minatsuki wouldn’t stop concealing his murders or impede his plans concerning Keith, and as long as the brainwashing didn’t influence those intentions, it was irrelevant whether other thoughts had been pandered with and he could go on without ever noticing or bothering.

The Minatsukis also kept some information hidden from him and were trying to work behind his back; keep in mind that they talked about getting rid of him (somewhere around episode 3). They were part of something that was bigger than Gilbert and didn’t involve him. It might be confusing that — as shown by the arm amputation scene — Gilbert also seems to have told (phantom) Minatsuki something about being the ‘reggies’ prophet’. My guess: it’s something written in the Jetblack Epitaph, so Gilbert could’ve used it. There was, however, planning exclusively among reggies he was unaware of.

There’s a lot of emphasis on how Gilbert’s and (real) Minatsuki’s collaboration was another one of BTB’s ties between the supernatural and mundane realms. The reason why I’ve gone on a tangent about all the above is to show that Gilbert wasn’t tightly related to the supernatural other than using it to his advantage on a technical level. It’s implied he’s spent plenty of time at Jaula Blanca, since his father was the CEO, and probably knew about the distinction between reggies and the 13 gods as well as Jetblack interpretations and prophecies for 1) his involvement with (real) Minatsuki and the lies he told him 2) arm amputation 3) him knowing Keith, the latter arriving to Cremona with Heath Flick, who was one of the researchers involved in resurrecting the gods. However, it’s likely he didn’t know or care about much more — as for what ‘much more’ would be, we, as viewers, don’t know either, since it’s what was foreshadowed in the post-credits scene and what (hopefully?) will be a theme of the second season.

The issue here is the identity of the man briefly appearing post-credit with Kirisame. There are several hints at the fact that he was involved with the Minatsukis:

What they say about ‘getting the job done by a reggie’ with Kirisame

Several instances of (phantom) Minatsuki mentioning a ‘prophet’ or someone that would ‘lead their kind to a new world’ (and at this point we can assume that anything he knew, (real) Minatsuki knew as well)

Now, let’s put this info together. Mystery Man has some overarching and probably prophecy-related plan with the supernatural side + the Minatsukis mention a very similar plan that Gilbert doesn’t know everything about = the Minatsukis were somehow related to Mystery Man while Gilbert wasn’t. Either that, or the whole issue had no significance to him, as his goals were centered around Keith and his own murder impulse. It would make sense if, from the reggies’, gods’ and Mystery Man’s point of view Gilbert was just an additional factor they were planning to keep as long as he was useful and then get rid of him. Why would they need him? Because Gilbert kept RIS, especially Keith, occupied. He diverted their focus from everything concerning the Jetblack, where Keith would be a very dangerous opponent considering his familiarity with it. Essentially, he kept the two plotlines from mingling.

Getting back to Mystery man, here’s what we know about him so far:

Kirisame is a sort of subordinate of his

He wants to capture Koku

He was supervising Market Maker and the Minatsukis

It’s likely that if any of the other 13 gods are still alive (like Kirisame), they’re also in Mystery Man’s group. Him needing Koku and trying to get him through the whole Market Maker ordeal could mean his plan requires gathering the gods together. But the most useful part of all this is how he had authority over Market Maker. He knew way more and had more power than Gilbert in the organization. Though Gilbert had a role in Market Maker, enough to carry out the Jaula Blanca attack, he cared nothing about the restored gods (almost getting all of them killed), only (real) Minatsuki whose brainwashing ability he needed, so he wasn’t working for Mystery Man for sure.

Everything from here on is even heavier speculation than what I said so far. Who’s the person among those mentioned in BTB who could be the highest authority in Market Maker? When explaining Jaula Blanca’s history, Keith mentions that the unsuccessful research to restore the 13 gods was about to be shut down, except one researcher proposed to acquire the necessary funds to continue it by founding Market Maker. This happened previously to Heath Flick’s arrival to Cremona (which finally brought results to the experiments), so it couldn’t have been him. Albert Puzo was already dead by the time the after-credits scene happened, so it isn’t him either. I’m pretty sure the researcher mentioned by Keith and Mystery Man are the same person, though we don’t know his name or a lot more about him.

I’m confused about many things; it mainly strikes me as odd that Market Maker would agree to help out Gilbert with the attack. Do Mystery Man’s plans not require the integrity of all the 13 gods? Did he just trust Heath Flick to protect them? Did they let it happen because Koku acquiring some of the other gods’ lohengrin was written in the Jetblack already anyway? Was it all intentional so that Koku would take their limbs? Does the plan perhaps only need the lohengrin of the gods and not they, themselves, alive (something that is said about Koku at one point)?

There are many other possibilities and interpretations to the plethora of things that happened in BTB; one that comes to mind would be that the ‘leading them to the new world’ thing was a lie Gilbert fed to all of the reggies in the Market Maker elite, including (real) Minatsuki. Or, (real) Minatsuki could have actually gotten his Jetblack-interpretation from Gilbert but decided to outdo and backstab him in the last moment.

Anyway, we’ll hopefully know in season 2.

Me, talking about BTB:

#meta #i briefly had the illusion of having figured out shit i cant figure out from current info #but yeh not rly #im like 90% sure abt some of these things #but something gives me the impression theres some huge things im getting wrong #maybe its paranoia

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ryouverua · 7 years ago

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Flashback light! Flashback light!

I just love the animated sequence a lot okay

Aaaw Tsumugi don’t ruin my fun D: Besides, we already missed out on the last one! Which... actually raises an interesting question. If these are being released sequentially, are we going to have a weird gap in our memories because the last one was broken? I guess it depends on how it works - maybe it’ll just bring back the memories that were next in line to be released anyway...

Well, I wonder if Tsumugi has a valid point though. 8′D The flashback lights are probably double-edged swords if Monokuma is giving them out like candy.

... With that said I guess I’m still wondering if all of the memories are theirs? I’ve played around with the ‘they’re regular high-school students who’ve had their memories written over/modified with the memories/identities of Ultimate students who died in the past’ - could at least make a decent jab at the somewhat ‘cyclical’ vibe I’m getting along with the life-and-death/resurrection and escapism theme... And considering there was that ‘Ultimate Hunt’ that showed them being hunted down by an unknown group and that Rantaro seems to have done this before.

Actually with that said, with the reveal of Kaito being sick - that actually... maybe fits in with this a bit. They would do a whole medical exam before accepting someone into astronaut training (forged papers aside lol) and considering the game we’re in, I’d be pretty surprised if this wasn’t a terminal disease he had. So how could he still be the Ultimate Astronaut without a clean bill of health? Well, if they picked up some random kid off the street and gave him the memories of the Ultimate Astronaut without checking for something like that, something that he clearly doesn’t remember - that would make quite a bit of sense, wouldn’t it?

But enough speculating, we have a return guest!

............. Hm.

That is.......... probably a lie, huh.

Damnit Miu, why have we been on the same wavelength so much recently?!

Oh come on, there’s no way that’s going to work -

KAITO I LOVE YOU BUT YOU GOTTA PUT YOUR GREY MATTER TO GOOD USE OUTSIDE OF SPACE TRAVEL

I just have this image of Kokichi with the controller just pressing ‘fast forward’ on the normal pre-flashback light dialogue -

“Come ooooon guys I get it! Blah blah blah dangerous blah blah blah memories blah blah! SHOW ME THOSE SWEET CHEEKS, SWEET CHEEKS!”

Remembered.....?!?!

Unrelated but did he just say talkin’ omg...

YEAH I’M PRETTY SURE THAT’S A BAD THING

So these were definitely the meteorites brought up in Kirumi’s video. And everyone watched that, right? So this shouldn’t be huge news to anyone but uh, apparently it is! Okay! Shit that’s one way to move past the first two games A BIT DRASTIC BUT OKAY

Oh that is not good. We... just got our first glimpse of the mastermind’s potential motive, huh?

THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY THINGS ENDED WELL YOU SWEET SUMMER CHILD

Oooh, new yellow text!

Which I suppose Kirumi would have been helping with...

Could it be because.... the plan required 16 Ultimate talent students? Maybe? but then the ‘Ultimate Hunt’ happened and those students were killed, hence the group funeral? Maybe??? Which is why we have 16 students that may have had to become the original group chosen to save everyone?? I am cramming my square peg theory into a round hole AND IDGAF ANYMORE

Oh fuck we’re not going to find out Miu is part of that cult are we - like it triggered our memories of the world-ending cult for us in general, but she’ll have some sort of connection to it and basically unlock a whole different set of memories for her - ?!

PSYCHE

.... was that just a red herring or is that actually foreshadowing 8′\ Gonta isn’t the only one waving red flags this chapter...

Himiko’s got her priorities straight.

Yeah, see, this is where I’m stuck too. I have theories on all this stuff but they don’t... really... fit together? False memories/identities of dead students (and perhaps them even attending the funeral of the actual students they’re imitating??) - that fits up to the whole ‘getting talents at the beginning of the game/funeral scene, and that feeling I can’t shake about how random/unwanted their talents are to most of them. It can even work with the Ultimate Hunt!

But then the meteors/them being in space or on a spaceship right now, and them being isolated from the outside world makes sense when you consider the meteorites and Kirumi talking about a terrible event she needed to escape to take care of, to protect the citizens of her country. It also makes sense about having the ‘Prime Minister’, an astronaut, an anthropologist, an inventor, a robot and even an artist and musician, along with all of those libraries and other areas containing information/things of human historical significance. You want to have not just kids with potential for a space mission/leadership (... I guess Supreme Leader can technically go there too??) but students representing arts and technology, who can keep those things going. With that said... the only way I can mash that together with the first idea is that the original set of talented children died? Maybe hunted down, aka the Ultimate Hunt, so they found these kids instead??? But even then, some of the talents get a major side-eye like... cosplayer can maybe work as seamstress and I suppose an assassin works as someone cool under pressure/willing to do things that need to be done, but a magician? Really?

I’m definitely still missing some pieces of the puzzle, and that piece is definitely the mastermind’s role in this. .. Are we going the route of ‘the mastermind is part of the world-ending cult’ then? How very VLR of you

Ah right, that’s true... Ultimate Academy, and not Hope’s Peak, right?

Anyway, at least we’re only in Chapter 4. oTL It’s not like I’m out of ideas or anything - I’d hardly call the rambling from earlier being stumped - but nothing is clicking quite... right for me yet.

Man as much as I joke that I relate to Tsumugi and Shuichi, Kokichi and I have been on a bit of a similar wavelength too. 8′D That’s something I never thought I’d say, and yet here we are...

Hm... is that a good or bad thing?

Anyway, Kokichi seems hell-bent on pissing Kaito off. Which does make sense, actually! They’re officially the strongest personalities in the room and definitely have the most leadership potential.

Kokichi why are you calling me out like this

RADICAL-9 OR HINAMIZAWA SYNDROME

............ OKAY KODAKA I GET IT YOU’RE FRIENDS WITH THE CREATOR OF THE ZERO ESCAPE SERIES

Kaito stop smashing the 4th wall open

FUCKING LMAO THAT’S THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE YOU HAVE KAITO?!

Oooh, looks like we still have shades of Angie’s council left over. That... could be a hint, maybe? About susceptibility to cults? It could turn out that someone who was willing to go along with Angie’s council was just as easily swayed by the world-ending cult...

#this got LONG #Ryou plays drv3 #Kaito Momota #Kokichi Ouma #Shuichi Saihara #long post #Miu Iruma #Tsumugi Shirogane #spoilers #drv3 spoilers #and a whooooole lot of speculation

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morningusa · 5 years ago

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The hunt is on for offensive clips of Michael Bloomberg talking off the cuff, and over the weekend a new one circulated. In the version passed around, Bloomberg nonchalantly tells his Oxford audience that he could teach anyone how to farm — “even people in this room”: “It’s a process; you dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” He adds that modern “information economy” jobs require more “gray matter.”The denunciations came quickly and furiously, many of them pointing out that farming these days is a pretty high-tech endeavor. There are three things to know about this episode.First, the version of the clip that went around left out important context. Bloomberg was very explicitly not talking about modern farmers, but rather about “the agrarian society” that “lasted 3,000 years” before the industrial era, which lasted 300. His point was that the modern economy does not create good, reliable jobs for low-skilled workers the way that past economies did. You can see the full discussion starting around 41:30 here (though the actual query that prompted Bloomberg’s rambling answer starts at 37:30):Second, while the added context renders countless responses to the clip irrelevant, it doesn’t change the fact that Bloomberg comes across as a condescending jerk. His entire comment feels like an in-joke between him and the elite Oxford audience. At one point he talks of the need to provide the “dignity of a job” to the masses so they don’t “set[] up the guillotines someday.” And of course, even primitive farming hundreds of years ago was not just a matter of dig hole, plant seed, water, up comes corn.But third, the broad outline of his economic analysis is correct — unremarkable, even — in terms of the basic facts rather than the tone with which they are spoken. So even as Bloomberg proved he was almost comically out of touch, he raised important issues that policymakers really should be thinking about.It is true that, after living most of their history as hunter-gatherers, humans switched to agriculture and later to industrial production. It’s also true, by definition, that in a society where the overwhelming majority of people actually work as farmers — as was the case even into America’s early years — farming must be something that the overwhelming majority of people can learn to do. And most important, it’s true that work is changing today in ways that give a big advantage to high-IQ people with college degrees, while making it difficult for folks at the bottom as those agricultural and manufacturing jobs disappear.When Bloomberg emphasized that old-school work involved “processes,” he evoked the concept of the “routine task,” meaning something accomplished by following and repeating a specific series of steps. It has been extremely well documented for more than a decade and a half that jobs focusing on these types of tasks are in marked decline, largely because routine tasks are the easiest type of work to automate.Back in 2003, one of the earlier papers on this subject found that about 60 percent of the “demand shift” toward college-educated workers from 1970 to 1998 could be explained by computerization. More recent work confirms the decline of routine jobs and adds that robots can displace competing human workers and reduce wages. A famous book about a decade ago argued that, in a “race between education and technology,” the demand for highly skilled workers had outpaced the supply of people with the needed education and training, leading to high wages for a select few and widening inequality.Unlike farming hundreds of years ago or manufacturing work after World War II, many of these new jobs are not the kind of thing that just about any healthy person with a good work ethic can learn to do. They might require extensive training and technical knowledge, a four-year degree or more, specific personality traits, etc. Some people are of the belief that everyone in the country, no matter their natural intelligence or disposition, is capable of acquiring these things with enough effort, but even if that’s true, we have not come anywhere near making it happen. It’s a legitimate matter of concern.As I spelled out in a print piece last year, I don’t think it’s time to panic over automation right now, though the combination of automation and trade has certainly clobbered manufacturing work in the areas that relied on it most. Nationwide, unemployment is low and productivity growth is anemic, which is the opposite of what you’d expect to see if robots were taking jobs at a pace that should worry us.But I don’t think that’s going to be true forever, as robots become able to do a higher and higher percentage of the things humans can. While it’s far in the future, the ultimate fear is that robots will become capable of doing just about anything productive that most people could do — and do it cheaply — paving the way to a world where there’s no need for a lot of people to work at all.At that point, maybe government handouts like a “universal basic income” will be enough to pacify the folks left behind. Or, as Bloomberg speculated, maybe the pitchforks really will come out for the arrogant technocrats who run everything.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

#News #Blogger

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brotherhood-of-okay-reviews-blog · 8 years ago

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Tv Blog

Chris' Tv Blog Timeless Episode 14: The Lost Generation As usual, if you're watching at home and want to comment below, give a spoiler warning ahead of time. So, let me get this straight. We just came back from a long break in December. The show was moving along nicely and next week is the season finale. Unless I'm wrong about that, I'm actually pretty pissed. Onto the blog. Plot Summary Paris, 1927. Charles Lindbergh is to be the first person to cross the Atlantic in the Spirit Of St. Louis. Flynn shoots down Lindbergh's plane and captures him. Lucy, Rufus, and the new guy head back in time to track down Flynn. But everything obviously goes against the plan and they end up in trouble. Thoughts (Spoilers) The Lost Generation is a good build up episode before we hit the season finale. Wyatt is locked up. Rufus and Lucy are lost on what to do. Flynn and Emma seem like a good team. Everything is on a roll.... But fuck this season finale crap! Sorry, sorry. I'll hold my rant in for later. I got one thing right, the new guy dies. I forget his name but we met him earlier in the show. He was Wyatt's friend in the military. He got shot early on and died in Paris. So I got that correctish. Because I was still speculating slightly what the show might do. Lucy now knows she's officially in the Rittenhouse bloodline. She is meant to join the group later on down the line. Obviously Lucy is reluctant to be apart of the organization but that may lead to Lucy teaming up with Flynn, again. Okay, so is this going to happen or not? Is Lucy going to join Flynn? Because I want this to happen so badly. First reason, Flynn is interesting. I like when he's on screen because he brings about new information in the show all the time. Second, Flynn seems legit. In every turn Lucy takes to avoid him, the show keeps connecting the two's paths. Flynn will say something and it tends to pan out. Lucy keeps witnessing the events unfolding and it's becoming harder to deny Flynn's findings. And lastly, the actor is good. Goran Visnjic gives Flynn a calming demeanor. Even though he may seem a little out there, Goran is able to make Flynn not feel not completely evil or completely good. He just seems to ride the line right in-between. On another note, Lucy gets the diary. She doesn't get the future one Flynn has but she gets a journal at the end of this episode. And it's exact same one Flynn has from the future. This actually brings up a good question, how does Flynn have the diary? Actually, how did he know Lucy wrote down the events in a journal? Is Flynn from the future? Is he lying about what's in the diary? Or did he tell us and I forgot? Assuming I didn't forget, Flynn knows Lucy supposedly joins him. It's been a big underlying plot thread throughout. But how did he know that was going to happen? If he stole the time machine in the present day, how would he have known future events? I guess it could be broken down to Flynn doing research and finding out about Lucy. Maybe he went into the future to track down himself and steal the diary? But then that would create a plot hole because you aren't supposed to visit a time that you exist. But if that's the case, every time the team returns from a mission, wouldn't they technically not be allowed to exist because they would interfere with their current selves? Or is the show saying the future isn't written yet, so they can come back to the present because it's no different than a vacation? Am I just breaking myself? A lot of this goes back to the beginning when I mentioned that the show didn't properly introduce its characters, its setting, and the time machine. The only rule we've been living by is "You can't visit a date where you've already been or where you've existed." I might have the wording a little messed up but that's essentially the only rule we've obtained for time travel in this universe. Now maybe Flynn found a loop hole. It's possible he discovered it and was able to get the journal. That could be the reason. It also could be that the diary is all coincidental. It's also possible that the journal is something he made up to get Lucy onto his team because he is infatuated with her. Huh? That would be a drastic turn. The premise of this pointless theory that I literally just came up with is one, I want to see if I get any reactions. And two, there's a slight chance. Looking back on it, Flynn has never harmed Lucy. Even when he captured her, he always made sure she was safe. What if Flynn attended one of her classes and "fell in love?" What if his family dying is a throw away back story? Maybe it was to entice Lucy in some way. Maybe to get her to feel sorry for him? It wouldn't necessarily explain why he's after Rittenhouse, unless he's apart of it. But I really don't think that's a possibility at this point. He did shoot one of the original leaders.... Unless it was a cover up?... No, probably not. I'm sorry if I just went on a fan fiction type ramble. I think it would be interesting if the writers did go that route but that's a far stretch. Plus I think I'm just trying to exactly figure out how Flynn got the diary. It just doesn't fully add up. But we're going to find out about it eventually. If Lucy decides to test the journal Flynn has, and writes something down, and it doesn't change the future journal, we know the one Flynn has is a fake. What else do we have, oh, Wyatt escapes. Agent Christopher helped in some ways but Wyatt is out any ready to go. Not surprising really. Charles Lindbergh was apart of Rittenhouse. Lucy gets captured, again, and Flynn let's her to try and convince Charles to get out of Rittenhouse. She doesn't succeed and Charles goes on with his future plans. This might not be a huge plot point but it does put some legitimacy into Lucy's diary of the future. She wrote that Charles was associated with Rittenhouse and so on. So it does tie back to the journal in some ways being legit. Again, how did Flynn get it? Oh never mind. Lastly, Lucy seems to have a major connection to Rittenhouse's plans. The reason I say this is because, before the episode started, there was a flash back to Flynn telling Lucy to dig deeper into why she was chosen to do these missions. I don't know what her purpose is but maybe everything the trio is doing is on purpose in one way or another? I honestly can't tell but if I've learned anything from this show so far is that Timeless creates paranoia with its viewers because you always think Rittenhouse is right around the corner. Okay, I'm done with that. We dove into the show, some oddly placed fan fiction, and rambled for a bit. I think that's a good way to end everything until the season finale comes out. Next Episode (End Of Spoilers) Public Enemy Number 1 is the name. The trio steal the time machine, head back to the 1930's, seems to be a common theme, and run into Al Capone. Should be fun. Except for this being the end of the season. No seriously, how is it that we waited all of December to come back to 5 episodes? It's all going to depend on how long we have to wait until the next season comes but fuck that shit. I want the show now.... I knew I should've just waited to buy Timeless and binge watch it. Overall The Lost Generation feels like a precursor to the last episode of the season. There's just enough build up that you want to see what happens in the finale. If I had to give a score, I'd go with a 7/10 (Satisfying). The episode did enough to peak my interest. As usual, thanks for reading!

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