Yes! I have officially outposted @Matchstickman and @Rabit in this thread, and now have the most posts in it! (I’ve also asked more questions than Matchstickman, who only got to 100.)
QotD #139 Reply: Favourite parody . . . hmm . . . well, I do like The Order of the Stick, but I’m not sure if that’s my favourite. Some of the Themes of Irregular Webcomic! might also qualify . . . Well, least favourite is probablyMonty Python and the Holy Grail. Ironically, though, I’ve never actually seen it, so I don’t really dislike anything in the film, just the fact that many people (maybe the majority?) think of it before the Original Arthurian Legends. I agree that Affectionate Parodies are of superior quality, but I’m biased and still like non-Affectionate Parodies of things I don’t like.
Question of the Day #140: If you could read one of the Comics “written” during a Writers’ Room episode of The Letters Page, which one would it be?
Day in the Life Absolute Zero is tempting, since you get three distinct stories in that issue whereas most of the others are just a single story (more length not necessarily always being better, so I make the generous assumption that all the stories are equally good and thus quantity wins). I’m also very attracted to the Nightmist version of Jekyll and Hyde, because she’s one of my favorite characters (the other few characters who potentially beat her out mostly haven’t had a Writer’s Room yet), and their twist version on this public-domain classic sounds really fun.
But my actual answer has to be Justice Comics #527, where we look into Sky-Scraper’s past and get a kind of “day in the life” look at the Thorathian culture before the fall of GWV, but probably also at a time when his influence on his homeworld was fairly minimal since he was off-planet with the invasion fleet. (Very much unlike most of our planet’s historical tyrants since the Dark Ages, Napoleon being the arguable exception, as nearly all of the conquerors of the 20th century sat in a bunker at home issuing orders through communications tech, rather than actively leading their forces into battle. This leads me to speculate on whether their predecessors in earlier eras would have done the same, had technology allowed it, but we’ll leave that one as an exercise for the reader). I’ve always been fascinated by totalitarian societies, and wondered about the day-to-day lives of people within them, and Thorathians are a really interesting twist on the usual Nazi/Soviet analog, since they have a racial division with measurable, provable differences built right into it and yet they really don’t care; I think this Sky-Scraper story could give us a lovely window into how most inhabitants of Dok’Thorath go about their business, not really knowing or caring what their armed forces are doing to other planets. It’s been a while since I heard this episode, so I don’t know whether it spends a lot of time planetside, being mostly focused on Portja’s time in the military alongside the other dude on the cover, but even if they’re usually aboard starships, even a few panels of their home life could well be packed with fascinating details that would set my imagination alight.
PS: You should absolutely watch MP&tHG sometime, @fjur. I get being annoyed with how overhyped it is in the pop culture; I feel similarly about Star Wars and its ilk at times. But it is still a really good movie, and if you’re going to go around saying you hate a thing, you really probably ought to make sure that you actually do hate it. Who knows, now that the Green Knight has gotten everyone excited, maybe “straight” takes on Arthuriana will become the next big thing, and you’ll be spoiled for choice on lovingly earnest treatments of the mythology. Whereas describing Holy Grail as even being Arthurian is, let’s say, exceedingly generous. It’s more like a general send-up of the entire Middle Ages where they just randomly happened to pick King Arthur as “the guy”, instead of doing Robin Hood or Charlemagne or whoever else might have been recognizable.
Yeah, I agree about the part about seeing it, but I don’t really hate it. I don’t think the contents of the film are bad in any way, just the fact that it is “King Arthur” in many folks’ minds. And, yeah, they could’ve chosen any other Middle Ages bloke, and if they did, maybe that person’s story would be eclipsed by that parody, but they didn’t.
QotD #140 Reply:Consarnit! I thought of the Sentinels Comics comic I would most want to read, but then I realised that there was never a Writers’ Room about it! Well, it was the issue during the OblivAeon Event that had the fold-out splash-page with the huge crowd of All The Heroes, including the obscure and alternate reality ones. Hmm . . . Cosmic Contest? No, no Writers’ Room . . . An issue of Fahrenheit-X? Nope! Argh! Okay, looking at the Wiki page, I guess I’d choose one of these: Black Fist, Grandmaster of the Streets; Tempest versus Leviathan; Fashion; Citizens Hammer and Anvil, and Idolater, versus Fanatic; the first Silver Age Freedom Four issue; Guise and The Scholar versus La Capitan; Biomancer versus Tachyon and The Wraith; Backdraft Ra; Chrono-Ranger in Feudal Japan.
Question of the Day #141: What future product do you most want GTG to release (excluding those that are already announced)?
Have you actually met such individuals? I would previously have said that nobody could be that stupid, but it’s been pointed out that my tone is a bit harsh, so I’ll soft-pedal that statement and say “nobody could be that divorced from reality” instead. Many people are more familiar with the Weird Al Yankovic song “Jurassic Park” than they are with “Macarthur Park”, the once-obnoxiously-omnipresent pop hit which Al was riffing on. But I don’t know if I believe there are people out there who hear the words “Jurassic Park” and instantly think only of the Weird Al song, having no idea that it was a Steven Spielberg movie (or for that matter a Michael Crichton book). Is this degree of ignorance genuinely something you’ve had to deal with, @fjur ?
That would be neat to see, and not just for the big battle (which would likely be impossible to do real justice to, simply in tactical terms; even Oblivaeon isn’t physically so big that thousands of people can simultaneously attack him, not in the final stages at least, after the shield comes down). What I really want to see out of the Oblivaeon event is a few pages that genuinely make it seem like this battle is actually, meaningfully happening in infinite worlds at once.
We’ve been told that Blivs destroys two realities by erasing all differences between them; I actually want to see that process happen a half dozen or so times, with twelve scenes being established at the start, then watching as forty or so heroes try to stop a Scion from placing a Focus of Power or something. The first two groups both fail, and we see as they are transformed gradually into identical copies of each other, finally merging and being obliterated. Then we see two more such worlds, and they manage to destroy the Focus, but the Scion wipes them and their world out as well. A third pair of groups stops both the Focus and the Scion, but that gets Blivs to come deal with them personally; he shows up while they’re catching their breath and demolishes them without warning. A fourth pair is ready for Blivs and fights him, but loses horribly; a fifth fights much more effectively and makes tremendous progress, but still loses (basically the difference between never flipping the shield card, versus flipping it but not being able to remove it). And the sixth gathering of heroes actually succeed in stopping Oblivaeon from destroying their two realities… except that he can travel in time at will, so he just goes back to before they beat him and prevents them from doing it. And then we get one giant splash page where we can see that variations on this entire massive arc have happened over and over and over across the multiverse, thousands if not millions or even billions of times (and that’s still far short of actual infinity).
At last, the scale of our problem is truly established, and we finally come to “our” world, really feeling the stakes we’re playing for.
Hm, forgot about that one (that’s the one with Shear Force, right?). Probably displaces the Absolute Zero for my #3 spot.
A replacement for Definitive Edition.
More seriously, I would just be happy if they’d get Void Guard back in stock at their online store, so I could finally complete my physical collection, and be able to play all 37 heroes even after I inevitably stop being able to afford a smartphone.
Fair enough. I’ll admit that I haven’t, and have only heard of such folk from secondhand accounts, and I might be exaggerating a wee bit.
No, Fahrenheit-X was the book about the eponymous D-List weather-themed team of the Heroes Doppler, Galeforce, Stormchaser, and Tornado, led by the mysterious and morally-ambiguous Weatherman, introduced in the D-List Heroes episode of The Letters Page. Although an issue of the Shear Force comic would be fun, too.
Introducing Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Definitive Edition! ; )
QotD #141 Reply: Hmm . . . Well, I’m not done with Spirit Island: Jagged Earth yet, so I’m content with Spirit Island things. If I hadn’t made the question so specific, I could’ve said The History of Sentinel Comics book, but that’s already been announced. Oh! Another expansion for Fate of the Elder Gods!
Question of the Day #142: Members of Daybreak. Which one is your favourite, which one is your least favourite, and which one would you want to be?
Least favorite is easy; the pseudo-speedster guy is way too try-hard. I wanna like a character who’s from a struggling poverty background and actually knows the value of money, but the whole backstory with the frictionless box to contain a bug dimension just really feels phoned in and ill-considered. Him versus Myriad is definitely a nemesis relationship where I’m 100% on the villain’s side, right up there with Citizen Dawn; the fact that I can’t even remember the character’s name tells you something.
I’m also slightly underwhelmed by Rockstar, given what a pun she is, but the fact that she’s based on a real person who tragically died makes me hesitate to speak ill of her.
Favorite is probably Aeon Girl by a small margin over Muse. Muerto has things I love and things I groan at, while Muse is loaded with potential but kinda underwhelming in actual presentation. Aeon Girl initially didn’t impress me, being a pretty obvious “hey! look! we’re doing a weird thing!” sort of character concept, but then in the podcast we get the story of why she exists, her personality, and her weirdly one sided “familial” relationship with Lifeline, all of which definitely makes her more interesting as a character.
Overall, Daybreak isn’t my favorite team…too precious in concept, too schizophrenic in design, and trying too hard to seem modern and original instead of just being good. So much for my efforts to be less negative…
QotD #142 Reply:I normally don’t play favourites, but Daybreak is the exception. Why? Maybe I just don’t like teenaged Heroes, or maybe I’m just biased against “new” characters. Anyway, here’s them ranked from my least favourite (#1) to my favourite (#5):
Aeon Girl: She’s a blasted Scion of OblivAeon! Why is it bad to have one or two OblivAeon Shards* lying around (laying around?), but not a battery full of OblivAeon power‽ I tell you, if OblivAeon returns, Aeon Girl will be at fault. (One of my RPG characters would definitely attack her on sight.)
Headlong: I dislike this pseudo-speedster guy because his powers are just so lame. He can become frictionless. What does that let him do besides fall over every scene? Fine, I guess he can “skate” around. So, that’s his power: a guy with rollerskates. “Watch out, Myriad! I’m gonna slide into you!”
Rockstar: I don’t mind the pun name (I like puns : )), and I don’t remember her being based on a real person, but I’ll take your word for it. Uh, the following comments are about the fictional character “Rockstar,” not the person who inspired her, so please don’t take ghostly vengeance on me. Anyway, she just kind of feels boring and “meh.” Her rock powers aren’t all that unique or interesting. She kinda seems like a stereotypical teenager.
Muerto: He, too, seems neither remarkably good nor exceedingly bad. I do somewhat dislike him for being Ra in the Vertex Timeline, because that’s not “my” Ra. I only put him above Rockstar because Thiago Diaz (who was also coincidentally based on a real person who might have died, I don’t remember) was an existing character in Sentinel Comics, unlike these Johnny-come-latelies.
Muse: I like her the best because she’s the most already-established character in the Sentinels Canon on this team. She’s already been through the whole Dreamer thing, and has the most existing connections with other characters.
Yeah, the lifeline thing is cute, but it doesn’t excuse being the herald of the worst threat The Multiverse has ever seen.
Now, I have nothing wrong with the actual characters of Aeon Girl and Headlong, just their existence and lam powers, respectively.
As for who I’d want to be, definitely not Aeon Girl or Muerto. I like being human. Headlong’s powers are still lame and Rockstar is still boring, so I guess I’ll go with Muse on this one too.
Question of the Day #143: Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
*Yeah, I know they’re called “Oblivion Shards,” but I think that was just to not spoil The Big Guy’s name.
She’s really not. She resembles the Aeon Master about as much as one of Gloomweaver’s zombies resembles the poor unfortunate human that they were originally made out of. It’s just in reverse this time, a naturally evil monster was killed, and its “corpse” (that is, the energy that it’s entirely made of) was reconfigured into a new unique being by Lifeline, which presumably expunged whatever taint of malevolence the previous Aeon Men all had in common. It would be nice to get a clearer explanation of how exactly this was done - something about the energy having originally had a “chartreuse hue of malevolence” or some “omnipathy particles” or something, and Lifeline tossing off some alien-death-magic “technobabble” to explain how he scrubbed this negative influence out. But the presentation of Aeon Girl seems to be sending a pretty clear message that no, this isn’t some surviving trace of OblivAeon’s universal hatred that Lifeline unleashed onto the world, it’s just a brand new and totally innocent lifeform that happens to have been brought into existence using resources harvested from the destruction of a Scion.
Thanks to Lifeline’s understanding of the same subject of knowledge that the Scholar was previously knowledgeable in…they might even be leying around.
I think it has something to do with the fact that the Shards are actually made from the “substance” of Oblivaeon, and thus every molecule of its crystalline lattice resonates with the pure hatred-of-all-existence which is his defining trait. Whereas the Aeon energy (which originally almost certainly came from Archaeon rather than Oblivion, and only the fact that most of it was trapped by OblivAeon’s will made the Aeon Men spawned from it malevolent) is more like a fundamentally amoral cosmic power source. Oblivion Shards are essentially still-functioning computer chips extracted from a giant Alienware gaming rig which was pure evil, and so even though they have only fragments of the same code, they’re still pure evil - but the electricity which made them all run, even if it occasionally leaps out and shocks whatever the Alienware’s evil programming tells it to shock, isn’t actually evil itself.
I actually have a very strong vision of how and why OblivAeon will return, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Aeon Girl (who would likely lead the charge fighting against him, the two of them being a true Nemesis match much more so than any of the existing uses of the OblivAeon nemesis symbol). It’s too long to go into the full details of, but for a very quick primer, just go rewatch “Avengers Endgame”, and substitute OblivAeon for Thanos. It’s not actually that, not really even close, but it gives you an idea of the general concept.
Well that doesn’t really prove anything; Arataki Haka would definitely attack Tempest on sight, because she thinks he’s Citizen Storm. So a hero making a mistaken-identity attack on Aeon Girl is perfectly sensible, particularly if it’s a hero who doesn’t really comprehend the concept of gender identity, and doesn’t see any significance to the fact that Windy is a drastically different shape than the Aeon Master or his cronies were.
After all, heroes attacking other heroes, either due to misunderstandings or just as a way of saying “hi”, is pretty much a standard trope of the entire comic book genre. Punching the other guy through the nearest brick wall is pretty much how superheroes shake hands when introducing themselves.
Well at least we agree on something…
Pretty sure if you go back and listen to the Daybreak episode, they say it there when discussing her. If I get around to rehearing it before you do (not likely since I’ve pretty much abandoned the Justifications project, having apparently alienated my only kinda-sorta fan over there), I’ll see if I can getcha a timestamp for the exact quote.
Awww, but it’s the best kind! Goes great with chocolate mint ice cream.
Kinda, yeah. I get a very strong “unfulfilled potential” vibe from her; she seems like one of those characters who premieres in a kinda lame version, then gets reinvented by better writers later on. Kinda like Ra and Haka, where they just both started out as monsterfighters with no real personality, and then Ra got a character arc that forced him to grow and change, while Haka was just retconned into a way more interesting person. Rockstar might need a similar revamp before she becomes awesome, but unfortunately the extremely fleeting nature of musical genres works against her in this regard. By 2047 when the Sentinels RPG is printing its fifth rules edition (which we all know is the best one), probably nobody alive will even understand why her name is a pun, because nobody will remember any of the connotations of what we now think of as “rock music” (or at least not more people than would currently “get” a semi-obscure reference to the Big Band era of the 1930s).
Yeah, as someone who was somewhat invested in Thiago’s story since before Wrath of the Cosmos came out, I don’t find either Tactics Ra nor Muerto to be a very satisfying outcome. I think I’m gonna headcanon that El Mejor Legado is at least a distant relative of Thiago Diaz (he has a sun symbol instead of a lantern, so him being related to a family whose name seems etymologically connected to the Spanish word for “day” is certainly conceivable). That seems like a more fitting, er, “legacy” for Thiago’s future.
I’m less sure about this one than about the Rockstar person, but I think Thiago is indeed based on someone’s real-life son that was a fan of the game, but not somebody who died in this case. I think the real-life Thiago is still kicking around out there somewhere. This might be confirmed in the Daybreak episode, or in the post-sorry-no-Prime-War episode where they wrap up the entire Vertex storyline. Either way, it’s kinda ironic that the character whose name literally means “dead” is based on someone who I’m pretty sure isn’t.
I like her for different reasons, but yeah this is also very valid. Daybreak is definitely quite loose in their connections to the setting; I feel like we could have had some better “deep cuts” to bridge the generations from Sentinels of the Multiverse to the new Sentinels of Freedom era. But then, Adam can only draw so much.
The Silver Surfer would like a word with you…
(For once I’m not touching the actual QoTD; the Monty Haul python is such a Dead Horse trope that I’ve had so many dumb arguments about, I ain’t going back to that well again.)
I will just bop in here to stick up for two of the characters:
Aeon Girl is clearly set up to fill the Spock/Data/Odo/EMH role, and there are very good reasons why people like those characters. I think Aeon Girl makes for a very interesting entry into that lineup, not least because she has to grapple with her origins and connection to OblivAeon. All the stuff that you two are holding against her origin (and you’re not wrong) means that she has a deep narrative vein to mine.
And hey, I like the ideas behind Headlong! Well, not the bug dimension thing. But it’s immediately apparent how he works as a speedster – I picture Frozone just without shooting ice at things to move the way he does, or the Edgedancers in The Stormlight Archive, which may have been a direct inspiration given C&A are fans. And how often is it that we see a powered individual talking their powers and going into business with them? That’s a cool and infrequent narrative conceit.
Well, the canonical Monte Hall problem has a known solution, but it’s usually presented as one door has a prize and two doors have nothing. In that case, it’s to your advantage to switch. (Ignore all the Bayesian explanations about why, that $&#@ is confusing as heck. For three doors, you can convince yourself by writing down all the possible choices and switches, and then tallying up the probability that results. But it all comes back to the fact that the host knew to open a door that doesn’t have a prize behind it.)
So I’ll answer this variation on the Monte Hall problem with another question: Do you want a goat?
Just to clarify, I was mostly pro-Aeon girl there. But I still appreciate your added perspective.
As to goats, I did see a neat goat at the State Fair yesterday, so I’m a bit more inclined toward favoring them than I would be. But actually owning livestock is thoroughly outside my wheelhouse. I suppose if someone offered me a goat for free, I’d accept the gift and then immediately try and sell the animal, so that I would at least get something for it. But if it makes a mess on the public sidewalk and then I’d be liable to clean it up, forget about it.
That depends on how you define “Scion of OblivAeon.” If a Scion is defined as a servant of OblivAeon invested with some of OblivAeon’s power, then yeah, she’s no Scion. But if we define a Scion as someone with OblivAeon Power,™ then she most definitely is.
Nice. : )
You make a good point that I hadn’t thought of before: that the Shards are remnants of Oblivion, and the Energy is a remnant of Archaeon. But OblivAeon’s malice is equal parts Oblivion and Archaeon. Sure, Oblivion started the conflict that led to OblivAeon, but remember that OblivAeon’s goal is the complete DESTRUCTION OF ALL REALITIES!!! Uh, ahem. Oblivion was the Singular Entity of Entropy, and Archaeon was the Singular Entity of Preservation. Neither of those things equal the complete destruction of all realities. OblivAeon’s evil will was born out of both Oblivion and Archaeon. (Your point also brings to my attention that I am probably wrong about why Oblivion Shards are called such.)
I suppose I could see Aeon Girl’s involvement in the possible return of OblivAeon happening in two way: (1) Aeon Girl, some OblivAeon Shards, and some Progeny Will™ will come into close contact and reform The Multiversal Destroyer (possibly in Aeon Girl’s image? That would be weird.), or (2) OblivAeon will reform some other way, and Aeon Girl will be his Nemesis. (Although I think Lifeline [and maybe La Comodora, Luminary, or Stuntman] are suitable Nemeses also.)
Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean this as a reason why Aeon Girl is bad, I meant it as an example of my dislike for her. The character in question is a normal human though (Well, aside from being able to shrink), so it’s not that he wouldn’t see any difference betwixt Aeon Girl and the Aeon Men, it’s that he would know perfectly well what she is and see a potential threat, and being (a parody of) an edgy anti-hero, try to kill it without pause.
I 100% agree. : )
Thanks!
I think SCRPG: Basic Advanced 2.52 Edition (Revised) will be pretty good. ; )
Yeah, 'cause I remember C&A talking about the kid cosplaying as Legacy, which inspired Thiago’s look in Spite’s deck. I might be conflating Real-Person-Thiago and Real-Person-Rockstar, though.
I like her for other reasons too, I’m just not always the best at putting why I like things in words.
True, but there aren’t no connections. Thiago Diaz and (Universe 1’s) Vanessa Long are both existing characters. Aeon Girl was a product of the OblivAeon fight. Rockstar got powers from Isoflux Alpha. And Headlong got his powers from an artifact from a pretty obscure Nightmist story.
Huh, I was unaware of its status as such. I’ve only heard of it from The Letters Page.
I know who Spock is, I think Data are [sic] a Star Trek robot, and I have no idea who those other two are, but I think I know what you mean: The Token Non-Human. I want to restate that I have nothing wrong with the character Aeon Girl. I merely dislike her existence, not who she is as a character.
Yeah, okay, but a Frozone who just slides around and can’t freeze things is also lame.
Hmm, goats are cool, but I’d rather not have that extra work.
QotD #143 Reply:
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Question of the Day #144: Telekinesis, Telepathy, or Flight?
If I can use telekinesis to make myself fly, telekinesis.
Otherwise, flight. I’m impatient, and travelling feels like a waste of time. (And I prefer portals, to be honest. )
And I definitely don’t want to know what other people are thinking. That’s a scary place to go…
Telepathy is very tempting, but I have far more trust in my ability to actually use telekinesis effectively, so that’d be my first pick. If we go the Jean Gray progression, maybe I can get both. Regardless, even if my TK included flight as Jean’s does, I’d be unlikely to use it. The only way I’d be comfortable leaving the ground is on some kind of floating platform, and I’d probably not go higher than needed to clear power lines. Definitely no “up up and away” for me, thank you.
Right you are, that was where Thiago came from. Rockstar’s inspiration was a number of years later I think.
This is a thing I struggle with whenever digesting C&A’s delicious banquet of lies. Did that “obscure Nightmist story” actually exist in the canon of stories as C&A originally conceived it back in 2010 and earlier? Or was it only created when the character of Headlong was conceived, and then the Letters Page told us about that ONS in order to prepare us for Headlong’s announcement? I have similar questions about other such retroactive causalities throughout the Multiverse. Sure, Adam drew a design for Scion Voss and some Aeon Men even in the core set, but how much of the Oblivaeon story was worked out at that point? Did Nixious the Chosen exist in Christopher’s or Adam’s mind in 2010? How about Lifeline? How about El Mejor Legado? How about Daniel Montgomery? How about Soothsayer Carmichael, or the Shear Force guy (I forget which of the names they tossed out in that episode was the actual participant in the Oblivaeon battle)? We know that the original plan didn’t include Doctor Medico, so were the other SW Sentinels invented at the same time, or did Jackson originally have a different roommate and Miranda a different adoptive father? We know Setback was only partly conceptualized as a character before Kismet happened, so what version of the Dark Mind attack on Expatriette would 2011 Christopher have described? These questions will probably always keep me up at night.
Nope, the Monty Hall Problem is one of the oldest chestnuts on the Internet. I guess it goes to reinforce the fact that every time is somebody’s first time with something. I get very annoyed about how people only ever want to discuss the latest big thing, as if movies from twenty years ago and books from a hundred years ago are not still inspiring new thoughts.
Data is indeed a robot (well, “android” is the word consistently used; he has some quasi-organic components, but is definitely artificial, and only “alive” by a very broad definition).
The EMH is the Emergency Medical Hologram of the USS Voyager, aka “the Doctor” (it was an important plot point that he never had a name for longer than one episode at a time). As the term implies, he was a simulation of a Starfleet medical officer, a human-shaped forcefield full of projected light, with a “mind” which was a complex series of programmed algorithms occupying a large subsection of the ship’s main computer, designed for short-term use in crises. The Voyager’s entire medical staff was killed in the pilot episode, so the EMH was forced to remain active for thousands of times its intended service life, causing the original simple program to evolve into a full artificial intelligence.
(Importantly, unlike Data or even Spock, the Doctor does have human-style emotions and no problem with displaying them. While he certainly fits the trope you mentioned in a physical sense, he’s actually quite personable and extroverted. The more Spock-like character on Voyager would be Seven Of Nine, a former member of the hive-minded Borg; while she started out human and still has the capacity for human emotions, she isn’t properly socialized as a result of being Borgified as a child, so she defaults to acting like a coldly efficient robot most of the time, both as a defense mechanism and simply out of habit.)
As for Odo, he’s a little different, just as Deep Space Nine is a little different from other Star Trek shows. Odo is a member of a species of shapeshifters whose natural state is a liquid (instead of sleeping, he reverts to his shapeless state by pouring himself into a bucket). He has a mind which is just as complex and just as capable of emotions as any human, but different, in a way that’s hard to summarize (like Tempest, who is an unusually hot tempered Maerynian and therefore an unusually cool-headed person compared to non-Maerynians, Odo has a similar dynamic of being in between the rest of his species and all of the “solids” who he currently lives among). He fits the “eternal outsider” tropes in somewhat the same way Spock and Data do, but just as both Voyager’s Doctor and 7/9 split the difference between different aspects of the Spock-Data template, so Odo is weirdly similar-yet-different in his own way. He also happens to be my favorite character in the entire Star Trek franchise, but my appreciation for him depends very heavily on my exhaustive knowledge of how his presentation changed gradually throughout the entire show.
I don’t know enough about the SCRPG storyline to comment much on how well Aeon Girl fits this trope.
Well for my part, if Aeon Girl had not hinted at a meaningful continuation of the Sentinels of the Multiverse story after Oblivaeon, I might very well have checked out of the entire franchise. She was basically the one thread left dangling in late 2018 which eventually got me to come back to the franchise after the lockdown killed my gaming group. Prior to that I pretty much assumed that The Cauldron was all the continuation SOTM would have, but AG’s obviously baffling appearance left me with enough “want to know more” to eventually get me to listen to the Letters Page, and now here we are. So I’m kinda in the opposite boat from you… I know her personality only from the brief description in the podcast, but her mere existence is a very large net positive for me. (My favorite thing about her is the idea that she’s the inverse of Citizen Dawn, that she has no idea what she can do with this immense power of hers. If Oblivaeon ever does return via her somehow, I don’t think it’ll be because she’s some sort of Trojan horse he left behind, but rather the ultimate expression of her having “doesn’t understand or fully control her power”, as the central character flaw which keeps her from just being a Mary Sue.)
I don’t know for sure, but all that seems pretty unlikely. Remember, C&A originally only planned to the Iron Legacy Event, thus the Shattered Timelines expansion.
Well, remember that Scion Voss is in the Enhanced Edition Core Set, which was released in 2013.
Well, The Wraith’s father existed as long as The Wraith did. He is an integral part of The Wraith’s backstory, but I suppose that that element could have been added at a later date. I definitely don’t think that him sacrificing himself during OblivAeon was an idea from the beginning, though.
Well, we all know that Soothsayer Carmichael and Hedgelord were created in the CreativeProcesses where we heard them being created.
Well, you could try sending in a letter to The Letters Page asking about all this. Or travel back in time to 2010.
All I meant was that, in Daybreak, Headlong, Rockstar, and Muse are all “normal” humans (albeit with super-powers), and Muerto is a human who died and now haunts machines. Aeon Girl was never human, and is pretty unlike humans in many ways.
Wait, Aeon Girl’s in OblivAeon? Huh, I didn’t know that.
QotD #144 Reply:
Aye, me too. And I’m in no hurry to go rushing through the air, so I’ll take Telekinesis.
Question of the Day #145: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. What do you do?
True, but they did have Aeon Men in the art even in the original version (I think; someone who owns the first release can check the art of eg Cerebral Hemorrhage). So they probably had some vague sense of who or what those guys are, although the fact that they’re shown clutching their heads in psychic pain may suggest that they were originally conceived as being more nearly human than they were eventually portrayed as.
Regardless, questions about obsolete versions of the fluff (as well as the crunch) will always haunt me. IMO it should be mandatory for a company to keep and eventually release earlier design versions of their products, so that those wishing to follow in their footsteps have pretty complete information about the process they went through.
True. I’m still somewhat baffled by the use of artless Environment cards in the initial release. I just imagine Adam going “Okay, I drew 256 pieces of art already, I absolutely refuse to draw 32 more”.
I’ve paged about 12 letters under this and other names; only 2 have thus far been read on the air, in consecutive weeks more than a month ago. I despair of getting any more of them answered (including an important follow-up to the longer one). I’m told that most of this community has decided to shun me because they take exception to my frequently-critical tone; perhaps this attitude extends to C&A themselves, and maybe they can identify my writing style even when I’m “in-character” as one of my aliases.
Please, if I can go back in time I’m going farther than that. At least to 1998 so I can tell my dumbass high school self that going to college is non-optional.
She is not. What I meant was that before OblivAeon was released, or at least before I bought it, I saw a picture of Aeon Girl somewhere and was like, “Okay, looks like they have post-OblivAeon plans that may be worthy of consideration”. I thought for sure that she was initially slated to be in Sentinels of Earth-Prime, but that’s probably my memory playing tricks on me.
Just FYI this is another standard Internet canard, similar to the Monty Haul problem. You’re hearing about them on the Letters Page because people want to get C&A’s take on them, not because C&A or the letter writer sat down one day and thought “Hey, I just dreamed up a really interesting thought experiment that nobody has ever imagined before”. They’re creative, but “there’s nothing new under the sun” has a lot of truth to it. (Better get Ra to move the damn thing so we can find more stuff under it.)
As to my answer, that’s easy. Kill one random person to save five, done. Not even worth debating for half a second. (Though the existence of Tachyon would change that, obviously.) It becomes a more interesting puzzler if they’re specific people who I have some degree of investment in, but if it’s just a numbers game? Solved, without even having to think about it. I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over the one person’s life; I made the obvious correct decision, case closed. (This is sometimes referred to online as a “Justice Lord” position, and frequently contrasted with the character of Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, both for reasons I can explain if you’re interested.)
I have the Enhanced Edition, not the Original Edition, but the Aeon Men are in mine. I’d say it’s equally plausible that C&A originally designed them as “minions of a great cosmic threat,” or just random villains.
Ditto. : )
Ah, I see. I believe Aeon Girl was originally going to be in the Tactics Timeline, though, so you’re kinda right?
Yeah, I know these problems are nothing original to The Letters Page. I merely heard the Monty Hall Problem there first, but I have since seen it many places. And I’ve heard of the Trolley Problem long before I started listening to The Letters Page.
QotD #145 Reply:
Yeah, of pulling the lever or not, I choose this too. Of course, I’d rather Take A Third Option, but I feel that that is almost as cliché as the question itself.
Agreed.
I know that the Justice Lords are Lawful Evil versions of the Justice League from another Earth, and I think I’m fine on Star Trek lore at the moment.
Question of the Day #146: What has roots as nobody sees, is taller than trees, up, up, up it goes and yet, never grows?
)