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TealDearest

@tealdearest

Goku is on Namek fightin that Frieza guy…Goku uhh…flyin or doin somethin over there…

for context’s sake: this is from JBVO, a show hosted by Johnny Bravo where you could call in and request your favorite episode of a CN show and Johnny would play it for you. for the most part it worked out pretty smoothly since at the time cn’s shows mostly had an average episode length of 7 to 11 minutes.

but one day a viewer requested that they play their favorite episode of dragon ball z, a show with 23-minute long episodes. due to time constraints with both dbz AND jbvo they had to work a compromise: a sped up version of the requested dbz episode played with johnny narrating over it so people understood what’s going on

‘Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern or meaning where there is none.’

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THERE IT IS AGAIN!  THERE IT FUCKING IS!  i’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS PHOTO FOR YEARS AND NEVER COULD FIND IT!!  THE LAN PARTY WITH THE GUY DUCT-TAPED TO THE CEILING!!  BACK IN ANCIENT TIMES WHEN PEOPLE STILL USED CATHODE MONITORS AND WHEN COUNTERSTRIKE WAS THE NEW THING.  THIS SHIT IS REAL.  THIS IS REAL SHIT.  SHIT THAT HAPPENED.

Blackundertaker for the link. So kotaku did an interview with a butch of people to track down the people connected with the LAN party.

From the article.

The picture in question originates from Mason, Michigan, where a close group of friends who liked to build personal computers and organize LAN parties grew up. Through Reddit and email, we were able to get in touch with a large portion of the group, as well as obtain verification and additional images…

For the Mason alumni, the night they taped Drew Purvis to the ceiling was just an average day, another LAN party with friends.

“It was still early in the day and the LAN had already become fractured,” said Nick Wellman, another LAN goer. “There were about 10 of us there, and we were already playing three, four different games. Tyler was looking around and said, ‘I think you can duct tape someone to that I-beam.’”

At this point, the teens gathered the necessary supplies, bought duct tape on a friend’s employee discount and had the tallest attendee, Brian, hold the subject, Drew, aloft while the rest taped him up.

What you see in the now-iconic photo is actually the group’s second attempt to suspend their friend from the ceiling with duct tape. After about 10 minutes, the tape digging into his sides, Drew asked to be cut down. They revised their plan, adding pillows, and strapped him back up. Once on the beam, someone else had the idea to stack some tables up so Drew could still play on his computer.

“That is the funniest part about the picture,” Nick told us. “Gaming from the beam was a complete afterthought.”

Drew lasted about two hours suspended above his comrades before retiring to the ground (turns out a duct tape cocoon runs hot).

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Top one most heartbreaking anime scene of all time

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Shit... I found this out and I still haven't mentally prepared myself to continue with Trigun Maximum and the anime and I'm already dreading to continue...

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action movie protagonist to his daughter: Honey…Daddy’s gotta go away for awhile. Pop’s gotta go. I got some bad men after me, some really nasty guys. Some big meanies are trying to catch me, and well dad’s gotta go. I’m sorry sweetie, but dad’s gotta blast. Some really rude men are after me. You gotta go stay with mom because I’m putting not just myself in danger, but my family too. For some reason I think mom’s place is safer than my off the grid apartment/house/cabin

bonus: “son, you’re the man of the house now. take care of mom and your sisters for me. you’re 4 and they’re all grown women, but clearly your penis makes you the most capable one to whom i can entrust y’all’s safety”

do you ever wonder if your choice of blorbo is random baby chick imprinting, or in fact a deep physiological profile that reveals all the things you need therapy for

vash doesn't have a lot of agency, and it's often a direct result of circumstances that knives has created

in the sub towards the end of S1 EP1, zazie's worms return to knives's base, informing him of vash's location. knives then says: "so you've found him. take me there to retrieve him."

in S1 EP3, vash confronts knives after he arrives in jeneora rock, saying "is it the plant?" in the sub

but in the dub, vash asks "why are you here? for the plant or...?" implying that for the past 100+ years, vash has been mentally steeling himself for the possibility of his brother just swooping in to take him away one day—and there would be nothing he could do since knives is exponentially stronger with more mastery over his gate/plant abilities

you can see vash sweat a little (it's clearer in the video because you can see the motion of it forming then sliding down his face) and that his stance here is not particularly confident

knives then proceeds to reminds vash of the vast difference in their strength by effortlessly stealing the plant and razing the entire town of jeneora rock to the ground

the twins' tacit agreement ("just wait for a short while... a mere century or so. i promise i'll build a world of plants.") means that vash only has freedom of movement until knives accomplishes his goal or until he's decided it's time for vash to finally return to him

vash's agency is tenuous and conditional, subject to be revoked at his brother's whims

Gathering all the meta re: plants' bioacoustics and how that is visually and auditorily represented throughout Trigun Stampede (2023) into one post 👇 👇 👇

Did you know that plants speak?

Sound familiar?

As fellow plants, Vash and Knives are the only ones who can hear their sisters' cries.

"Vash, you must have heard them. Their screams." [...] "Didn't you hear them? Their dying cries?!" (S1, EP 9)

In an interview, Akira Kondo—the VFX artist for Trigun Stampede—confirms that Chladni figures were intentionally incorporated into the series.

Ernst Chladni (1756-1827) is regarded by many historians as the 'father of acoustics' for his seminal experimental work on vibrations. Chladni is best known for . . . his invention of a method for visualizing the patterns of vibrations on mechanical surfaces.

Chladni figures are the geometric patterns that appear on the sand in the opening sequence of Trigun Stampede.

A static version can also be found all over the plants' bodies, glowing on Vash and Knives's face (and presumably bodies as well since in a few scenes the markings clearly extend to their necks) when communicating/connecting directly with plants, and on the bodysuits the twins wear as children—which Knives continues to wear as an adult.

From the single close-up frame we have of Knives to compare, it appears that Vash and Knives's Chladni pattern is the same, which makes sense as they are identical twins.

"...[T]hese cymatic patterns are such a fascinating addition to the meta; how [Vash and Knives] communicate and/or interact with this plane of existence- a visual representation of their voices as plants [and] the frequency with which they resonate with the universe, or one another."

Because plants operate at a frequency that the human ear cannot detect, there is indeed logic to Vash being able to hear Zazie The Beast's buzzing sound.

Vash: "That unique mosquito sound... So you're the one controlling the Worms." Zazie: "That's odd. It should be inaudible to regular humans." (S1, EP 4)

In a 2019 study, scientists discovered that Oenothera drummondii flowers "can sense natural airborne sounds."

TikTok user @/cowboylivio astutely identified that the plants have a musical motif.

In a flashback of the twins' childhood on the Project SEEDS Ship, Vash says the melody just comes to him unbidden and feels familiar.

Knives: "What's that song?" Vash: "It just comes to me. It calms me down when I'm nervous. I feel like I know it from long ago." (S1, EP 12)

In the finale of Season 1, after Knives syncs with Vash to forcibly open his gate and access the dimension where the plants' core is located, Vash starts humming the melody again. Immediately after, you can hear the melody in the background music of that scene as Meryl struggles to climb the overgrowth of vines, trying to get closer to Vash and calling his name.

This "plant motif" is also represented in the OST on the track "KNIVES's Piano" by strings which can be heard starting at 1:38.

It's interesting that only Vash knows and hums the "plant motif," further reinforcing him as the twin who is more in-tune with his sisters (no pun intended).

Vash also seems to instinctually know how to calm and soothe distressed plants. We're never shown Knives communicating with the plants, so it's unclear if he's able to the way Vash is.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why Knives has no lingering attachment to Rem?

I understand that him learning the truth traumatized him, but Rem in the manga was very willing to communicate with the twins. Is it because he missed out on her true confession of her failure to Vash while Knives was asleep? He admits to loving Rem before the trauma. I thought he would have mourned his foster mother just a tiny bit.

Nia in Stampede seems much more distant from her, which makes more sense. She also seems to favor Vash a bit more.

TLDR: I think that both Trimax and Tristamp Knives are still attached to her, in their own ways.

‼️ Spoilers for Trigun Maximum ‼️

Oh man, do I have THOUGHTS.

One thing that stood out to me upon reading the manga was obviously the glaring difference between Trimax Nai & Stampede Nai’s behaviour during childhood. Trimax Nai was very sensitive and constantly looking for reassurance, hopeful and warm and just a pleasure to be around and have in your life, it seems: textbook definition of a smol cinnamon roll. Unlike his Stampede counterpart, he seems to be pretty much identical to Vash in terms of power and maintenance: he eats, he sleeps, there is no emphasis on how Vash cannot generate anything while Knives can. I am certain this has been pointed out before, but Trimax Nai behaves a lot like Stampede Vash in my opinion. Trimax Nai was loyal to a fault and the discovery of Tesla’s remains were so jarring to him, he passed out for several days. I think what was worst for Trimax Nai was not necessarily the discovery that: hey, there was someone just like us on this ship before, but she was severely mistreated and left in literal shreds, it was that Rem (and Conrad) knew about this and let it happen, were possibly even participants in the experiments; where he once harboured nothing but love and admiration for the woman who raised him, there was now doubt. And fear. Unlike Vash, he had loved humans and studied them extensively. He had their entire history at his disposal and his tiny, doubt-filled child-mind was left alone to draw its conclusions: about how humans always repeat the same patterns, how they never learn from their mistakes, at least not long-term. Rem had kept Tesla a secret, so who is to tell him that she does not have ulterior motives in mind? Trimax Nai already knew that Rem has tried to keep their existence a secret. When he played around with the engines and caused the crew to be woken from cryosleep, Rem made them hide in their rooms - to keep them secret, and safe yes, but to a scared child, couldn’t this also be misinterpreted in hindsight as an attempt to keep them a secret for her own selfish goals? The thing that slowly but surely killed Nai’s trust and affection for Rem was doubt. He has always been a sensitive child, a tiny boy with lots of emotions and when he notices his brother doesn’t share his views, doesn’t listen to him, doesn’t even try to understand him? He retreats into himself, and his thoughts echo around his head, growing ever louder and louder until they crescendo in one last desperate act, one last chance for Rem to show that she is true and genuine and he can trust her love: Nai causes the ship to crash. But see, this is where he miscalculated. You cannot tell me that prior to his slow descent into madness, Nai would not have stayed behind and tried to save humanity; he had lived humanity and wanted so desperately to be accepted by them, to live by their side. Rem had been the one to sow those seeds, she had been the one to teach him compassion and love. So, as the ship was doomed to crash, Nai waited for Rem to make her choice: come with them, live by their side as their mother, she had claimed to love them, after all, had said that she would take care of them. If she chose to come with them, he could trust her. But we all knew which choice Rem made and this was the second breach of trust, the final evidence that Nai needed to know for certain that Rem’s love was not true enough. She chose humanity over her sons. She left her boys to fend for themselves while she saved humanity - while she saved Tesla’s tormentors - and Nai understood it had always just been him and Vash against the rest of the world. There was no one else like them. Humans had made sure of that. But he is wrong yet again, because while he has had time to prepare himself for the loss of his mother (and it probably still hurt, to have his assumptions proven correct), Vash was robbed of his mother figure. His wound is still fresh and deep and unlike Nai who had bottled everything up and made his peace, he had put his grievances aside, had picked up and nursed hope when Nai had dropped it.

Nai had taught him to love humanity and Rem had made it easy for him to do so, but the tender brother he once had was slowly rotting from inside out while his mother had been burnt to a crisp out of his reach. Vash had lost everything that night, though he still clung to the memory of his brother for a couple more decades. Eventually it had become too much to bear and he ran from Knives, kickstarting once more his brother’s hatred for mankind that had not quite lain dormant so much as it had been “eased” by the certainty of Vash’s presence in his life. Humanity had not been wiped from No Man’s Land, but at the very least he could be certain that they had each other and they were safe. But then Vash left him. Vash just straight up looked him in the eyes when he asked him to wait up and went into some stranger’s car and drove off, leaving Knives behind in the desert, alone once more, well and truly alone this time. He had no one else to blame but himself, but self-reflection is a bitter pill to swallow and it is easier to blame others: Rem had taught Vash to love humans, so it must be Rem’s fault that Vash is choosing them over his own brother, right?

I think one of the main limitations of Trimax when it comes to understanding Knives is that the story is not told with him as the protagonist in mind. We mostly see Knives through the eyes of others (there are exceptions, of course, especially later on in Trimax as Knives merges with his sisters and controls the hive mind), so most flashbacks we see of him are coloured in whichever flavour the person witnessing him associated with that memory: we see Nai’s kindness and ambition through Vash’s eyes, but also his sudden coldness, the way he followed Vash like a lost puppy that doesn’t know yet that its presence is no longer welcome and comforting. We see him rise from the womb of one of his sisters like a monster. We see him slaughter and lay to waste an entire village under the empty gaze of Legato, a ruthless killer, a knight in shining armour, a reason to keep on going in a world that has only ever been cruel to him. We also see Knives struggle, in moments when he is well and truly by himself: when he sees memories of his sisters, when he realizes that Vash is no longer the brother he once had, that he needs to be killed for his plans to succeed. We see him falter, when Vash rescues him. We see him regain purpose, becoming a protector once more as he carrie’s Vash to safety, as he *begs for help*. We see him, humbled and grateful. We see him choose death, not full of anger and hate but at peace. He gives his life in exchange for a blessing. He lets go of his agenda. He learns to trust again. He trusts in Vash. He trusts in humanity. He trusts, once more, in Rem’s words, Rem’s actions. And I ask you, OP, who was it that taught Knives to be a guardian? Who taught him to fight until the bitter end for what he thought was the right thing to do? Who showed him how to shoulder the burden of being a protector of his kind even though that burden might one day become his downfall? I don’t think that Knives ever fully let go of Rem, not even in his darkest hours.

There are some things that go deeper than fear, hate, ignorance. There are some things that stay with us every step of the way, no matter how far we stray from out starting point. Knives turned his back on humanity, but whether he knew it or not, he chose to follow in Rem’s footsteps, however misguided, however twisted, he became a little child’s idea of a protective caretaker. And at the very end, when the plants desert him and he is left with nothing but his brother and some humans who, despite everything, choose to listen to him and save his brother, the only thing he has left, the only thing he ever allowed himself to mourn losing, I think that Knives rediscovers that spark he once had, that warmth and caring that Vash had remembered even decades after Knives had become a monster to him. I think that, at the end, Knives becomes a little more of the boy he once was. The boy that loved Rem, that loved humanity, that wanted nothing more than to be accepted as a friend. And knowing fully well that he is beyond redemption, he chooses to use what little is left of him to leave a lasting impression upon one human. A good impression. It is the last he will ever make, so he will have to make it count. And I imagine that the genuine wonder, the awe, the sparkle in the boys eyes? That it was enough. That he felt accepted. That he was at peace when he left, forever.

Knives’ attachment to Rem always lingered. It was just buried too deep.

So. Stampede Knives. His is a very different story, because while Trimax Knives has always had an interest in living among humans, Stampede Knives seems to have resigned himself to an existence apart from humanity at a very young age. Remember that Trimax Knives chose isolation. I think that Stampede Knives was not that lucky.

Right from the very beginning, the twins’ lives in Stampede are very different from Trimax: Knives is entirely self-sufficient, powerful, the perfect organism, while Vash is not. Vash devours and rests and produces nothing. If it weren’t for the markings on his skin, he would easily pass as a human. Knives is different. He does not need food, he likely needs little to no rest, he can influence the world around him to his whims. His greatest fault is being without flaw, from an outsider’s perspective. We see him as a quiet, curious boy, someone who does not know how to relax properly even in the presence of his mother figure, someone who keeps his cards close to his chest. As a parent, it is often hard to divide your time between your children equally. As a parent of one self-sufficient child and one child that is entirely reliant on your nurturing care, I imagine that Rem - possibly without even meaning to - has always devoted more time and energy to Vash. Remember, Knives is the sensitive child, the one yearning for approval and affection. In an environment where he is taught that someone else’s needs are more important, constantly? I think that smol cinnamon roll all but shriveled up and died, hiding behind a veneer of carefully calculated distance and only breaking through in moments Knives deemed appropriate, when others’ needs weren’t more pressing than his own. From the very start, Knives is taught that he is stronger than Vash, and he sees that Vash is entirely dependent on someone else; on Rem. I think that at that young age Knives lacked the proper emotional maturity to express his sadness upon being excluded as Vash’s most important person (Vash is dependent on Rem, not his brother) as well as not being Rem’s most loved son - twice the amount of rejection for the low price of hitting the genetic jackpot.

I think that even before Tesla, Knives started to blame Rem for the way he felt, not knowing who else to blame for the way he always felt alienated, especially because Rem, no doubt unintentionally, poured gasoline on the flickering flame of resentment growing ever stronger in Nai’s chest: forcing Knives to act like something he is not by making him eat food he doesn’t want to eat, scolding him for making Vash feel inferior when his pride in his self-sufficient is quite literally all he has left, it is, after all, what he is reduced to so often. It’s not easy being someone’s idea of perfect when you really just want to be a little boy getting your family’s attention and care, I imagine. Knives already cannot relate to Vash and Rem on an incredibly fundamental level because he does not understand and share their needs and it certainly didn’t help to be constantly forced to pretend to be something he is not when he is not truly allowed to enjoy the same amount of care and affection that Vash gets.

Tesla happens, once again Nai’s trust falters, only this time he is already somewhat lonely, somewhat angry, somewhat sad and all that unexpressed and untapped emotion that he had kept bottled up but unnamed? He puts her name to it. Rem tries to explain, but he has already understood, has already made up his mind: Tesla was too alien, too different and they could not understand her. So they destroyed her. And much like Trimax Knives Tristamp Knives spent a lot of time studying humans and couldn’t find it in himself to trust them. He was convinced they would eventually reject them and hurt them, hurt Vash who was weaker than him, who was dependent and too afraid of being left alone to even consider that Rem or others might hurt him.

But all was not lost yet. He still held on to Rem, he still believed her to be an exception, possibly, maybe, hopefully, if only for Vash’s sake. Knives offers her his hand, an implicit invitation to come along, to care for Vash like she had always done, like she had claimed brought her so much pleasure. He is doubtful. And as Rem chooses humanity over them? He had loved her and craved her love so much once, but as they leave and Vash cries, he is left silent, pondering. He is used to being pushed aside. Vash is not. He knows this pain. The ships crash, but his victory feels hollow: his mother is a liar, his brother is hurting, his family is falling apart and even through the wreckage and anger Knives is still just a little child who keeps living in other people’s shadows. Something else is always more important than him. He never gets what he wants. Even with Rem gone, Vash is still out of his reach, running away as he is slowly succumbing to insanity, facing the reality that he failed in the worst possible way: humanity lives, Rem dies. This is not what was supposed to happen. They should have been alone, the three of them. He would have provided for them. He would have let Rem live out her life beside them, without threat, to make Vash happy, maybe to make himself happy as well.

But Knives doesn’t get nice things. All he gets is mistakes and wreckage. But he is patient. He has been taught to wait his turn all his life. And when Vash returns, he is so full of hope, so desperate for Vash to see and understand him. So desperate for connection. But yet again someone else is more important, yet again he is pushed aside by the single most important person in his life. He is forced to hurt Vash in order not to lose him; and yet he still loses him. Vash has chosen and Knives is left to make sense of it. And the only way he can make sense of it is by stripping Vash of his agency, by telling himself that it was all Rem’s fault. That humanity had poisoned his brother’s mind.

Knives keeps seeing Rem’s ghost around every corner where Vash is concerned. She is no longer around, but she haunts him. She personifies his ultimate failure: his failure at being just a little more human-like, his failure to understand Vash, his failure to be as worthy of love and attention as others, his failure to keep her alive, his failure to make Vash happy, his failure to keep Vash by his side, his failure to eradicate mankind, his failure to keep Vash from harm. Rem had never been perfect to Knives but he had loved her once, in spite of it. Guess when they called him self-sufficient they had forgotten to take into account his need for connection. Knives is lonely and Knives is desperate and his grief is a blade sharper than any knife he can create.

It must have been like a slap to his face when, after a century and a half, he finally had a shot at getting his brother back, however twisted and hollowed out he had to make him, only for Vash to reject him in favour of Rem once again. He knew that Rem was a source of comfort for Vash, that she was the key to his affection. But when Knives tried to tie that affection to himself, her ghost struck once more and Vash slips right through his fingers.

Knives hates Rem. But before that, he loved her. Until she betrayed him. But the again, isn’t hate the flip side of affection? Stampede Knives is still attached to her, she is the beginning and the end of his woes. I think he wishes fervently to cut himself loose and leave her behind, but as long as Vash does not choose to be beside him, he cannot let go of her as well.

Anonymous asked:

can you explain why knives needed vash for his plan? is vash's power giving plants life?

So from what I gather, Vash is unique in his ability to both give and take from the higher dimension, which is the place where all plants get their energy from, and that's what humans use them for. (This is also where Conrad says their souls are instead of their bodies (possible bullshit, given the unreliable narrators we have), and also given Vash's conversation with Rem in episode 12 it's possibly connected to the afterlife???) Or, at the very least, Vash is different from most other plants, as they can only take. His power has been compared to something black hole-like, but I won't bore you with quantum physics since we don't know exactly what they mean by that yet, exactly.

In order to access and enter the higher dimension to rip souls free and shove them into the plants' bodies to birth independent plants, Knives needed to use Vash as a gate, as a tool, to open Vash up and let himself in so he could funnel that power out through Vash.

At least, that's just what I've gathered from watching Tristamp... way too many times and reading meta as I go. I'm probably a bit off in this explanation, so anyone feel free to add on anything I missed! I think we're going to get way more in-depth in the following season/s with the plot threads left hanging after episode twelve. Hopefully this makes sense! :'D

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Your explanation seems accurate! For various reasons,* I’ve been collecting information on this specific topic, so let me try to elaborate. Note that I don’t know anything about quantum physics or alchemy or whatever the hell is going on with Tristamp’s science, so I’m going to approximate thermodynamics and mechanics language here. And I am going to mangle the shit out of it, but it’s the best I can do as a layperson.

First: At a couple of points in Tristamp’s dub and sub in English, characters refer to plants as “generators.” They’re probably saying it this way because “power plant” is actually kind of unclear. A battery is a kind of power plant, after all, able to output energy even when it’s disconnected from an input. But “generator” is more accurate: an open but one-way system that receives input in one form of energy and outputs it in a different one. But you can’t overload the system. Push in too much energy and it, I dunno, blows up. Take out more energy than is being put in at any given moment, and there’s a point where input can’t keep up with output. The generator becomes just a battery, and if the input isn’t reestablished quickly (and sometimes even if it is), the system breaks down. Or in the plants’ case, they go into Last Run.

And you can’t make the generative system run both ways at the same time, because then it’s basically a loop -- output becoming input becoming output etc. And then (depending on efficiency) you’re not “generating,” you’re doing some shit that cannot exist within the realm of normal physics. We’re talking magic. FMA "transmutation.” I don’t know if there’s a better term for it, but let’s call this kind of system a perpetual-energy machine.

Knives is a factory-standard “generator” plant, apart from being masc and an asshole. Plants produce things like air, gravity, water, chemical compounds, amino acids; all are “energy” per certain physics theories. I think Knives must be a chemical compound generator, given that we’ve seen him make fibers/textiles (I guess the body sock is a textile?) and metals. But he’s just a generator. He runs one-way. He gets the standard plant trickle of input from the higher plane and spits it out as knives. Knives really are his whole deal. Any time he does something flashier with his output (IDK if chopping up a mountain at Jeneora Rock counts), he runs the risk of overloading the system. This limits what he can do. No starting Armageddon just with those little knives, little man.

Vash is (figuratively) a perpetual-energy machine.

He runs both ways. He’s an impossibility. He shouldn’t exist. He IS Armageddon, under the right (wrong) circumstances. When his gate is open, energy can come from it. Matter (energy) can go into it. And as long as the perpetual-energy machine is primed with a source like the higher plane -- limitless input -- there’s no limit on what you can output. A certain amount of that is going back into the system to keep it running, but you could siphon off, like, half of it, and be fine -- and what’s half of unlimited energy? Still unlimited energy. You could do flashy things like fire the Angel Arm over and over again with no consequences. It might take time (depending on the perpetual-energy machine’s capacity), but you could do stuff like... generate infinite masses of black vines and flowers to bury the world. You could generate infinite masses of water and drown the world. You could reach into wherever souls come from, assuming that is a place governed by some kind of laws of energy (like... the higher plane), and snatch one out to stuff into some poor plant. Controlling something like that would make you... God, basically.

Did the dependent plants fuck up? Were they just trying to make a “plant healer” and they didn't realize healers can also cause great harm? Or were they so pissed off about what happened to Tesla that they were like, “OK I’mma fix y’all next time, SURPRISE HERE’S A BABY NUKE”? I would really like to know what they were thinking.

Anyway. Vash is a God Machine. And Knives turned him on.

*porn

Me: Please, I’m begging, stop thinking so much about Trigun
My brain: *THINKING ABOUT TRIGUN ONLY INTENSIFIES*
#it’s a prion disease

Wait hold on let me Google something

Ok yeah that’s funny

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after seeing this post i am now convinced i could make the users of this site support eugenics if i made it seem anti ai somehow like come on this is just bordering on calling people retards

No hardcore fandom has ever died so quickly and so completely as Veronica Mars. This is the story of its murder.

They should study Veronica Mars in Hollywood. I'm serious. It's an incredible story of how to go from "loud, passionate fanbase with its own fandom name that campaigns and advocates constantly for it" to "absolutely zero fucking interest" damn near OVERNIGHT with just ONE epically terri-bad decision.

If you weren't there, you don't understand: From 2007 to 2014, the fandom — the "Marshmallows," as they called themselves — were everywhere in the Internet's geek spaces, my friends. They routinely beat the drum about the series' three seasons and its excellence, lamented its cancellation, pushed others to give the show a try, and always - ALWAYS - proudly and loudly called for the series to be revived.

FULL DISCLOSURE/CONFESSION: I've not even watched that much Veronica Mars, frankly... ? Yeah, I'm sorry! it does seem pretty good from like the four-or-five hours I've experienced firsthand. I just never took the time to sit down with it. Regardless, I find fandoms and their dynamics — both how they operate internally and how they display to others externally — deeply fascinating. And I honestly find them easier to study from the outside than the inside. Like, if I'm IN a fandom, I'm more likely to stay in my corner and ignore places that seem negative. But being on the outside lets me just... absorb what's out there, looking into every forum without judgment. It's like studying pop-culture sociology or something? And it helps that I'm very close to some serious(-ly burnt) Marshmallows. It makes it so much easier to find and absorb the gamut of the fandom.

Besides: There is NO fandom story I've ever seen that's anything like what happened to Veronica Mars and the Marshmallows.

(Time to insert a brief explainer for the uninitiated: Veronica Mars was a TV series that aired from 2004-2007 on the now-deceased UPN network wherein Kristen Bell played the titular character, a high school girl whose single dad was a private detective in the fictional community of Neptune, California. She grew up working "unofficially" as his assistant, which meant that she herself was effectively a teenage private detective.

The three core elements of the series were: 1) Veronica investigating each week's big mystery with plenty of quips and snark, 2) Watching Veronica's various relationships develop and shift, with most of the focus given to a) her relationship to her father and b) Her romantic pursuits (which began as the Veronica/Duncan/Logan triangle before eventually becoming focused on the slow-burn, off-on Veronica/Logan love story), and 3) The gradual development of that season's "mytharc" — the overarching BIG MYSTERY that doesn't get resolved or wrapped until the season finale. So it went over the course of two seasons that took place in high school and the third, shorter season that was at the start of Veronica's collegiate career.)

Just how big and how passionate were the Marshmallows? WELL! When series creator Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy) and star Kristen Bell announced the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie in March 2013, it achieved its heretofore-unprecedented goal of TWO MILLION GODDAMN DOLLARS within less than 12 hours. At that time, it was the biggest Kickstarter goal to ever succeed — and certainly the fastest to reach that kind of height. Fans fell OVER themselves to pay out for it. Hell, my own significant other was DEEP in the tank for VM at the time and invested enough to get multiple t-shirts as backer rewards as well as a disk copy of the movie when it eventually came home.

And AFTER the movie hit in 2014? It was thankfully beloved and embraced! The once-teenage characters were adults who were actually out living on their own and working for a living, but the fandom had grown up with them, so it wasn't like they were begging for them to stay young students. They embraced Adult Veronica and her new adventure. The fandom rejoiced loudly and continued to be all over the geek side of the Internet... where they, of course, still wanted more. Sure, there were new novels in the aftermath (which were written by the creator of the series), but most of the Marshmallows were calling for more movies or a streaming revival.

And then, at long last... season four was actually announced. And there was much (premature) rejoicing yet again.

Yes, Veronica Mars returned for a fourth season on Hulu in 2019. It was just eight episodes, and it was heavily centered on one season-long mystery instead of sprinkling that amongst a bunch of smaller ones, but it would still feature the same ol' Veronica. They promised a new, more "adult" mystery/investigation plus a strong focus on Veronica and Logan's love story.

New Hulu purchased the rights to the first three seasons and hyped up its presence on the platform while marketing the return for the new run. The marketing team played up the most popular quips from the show's history plus put out TONS of stuff centered on the Logan/Veronica ship to pump up the fans.

The season was dropped all at once using the classic Netflix "binge" model in July 2019. And then... afterwards?

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There was a brief explosion of LOUD RAGE from the Marshmallows at what series creator Rob Thomas had to done to burn and spite the fandom and ruin his own goodwill.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4: See, at the end of the movie, Veronica and Logan finally entered into a long-term relationship. In season four, they've been dating for years, and Logan proposes marriage. But of course there has to be drama/obstacles: In this case, Veronica isn't sure she's ready to marry... or capable of being in a marriage. Ah, but of course she eventually realizes how much Logan means to her. The two are married, and, in the season finale... Logan is killed by a car bomb in the penultimate scene. The final scene is a flashfoward to a year later, where Veronica leaves Neptune alone.

For most fandoms, that'd be a memorable point of pain. A big ol' speed bump that ultimately throws some people off the bus, leaving only the die-hards. But the fact that fans had been invested in this relationship for literally 15 years and that Hulu (and creator Rob Thomas) had heavily marketed the new season as being a big romantic event for the ship... it was too much. Unlike the aftermath of the Star Wars sequels, there was no lingering group of die-hard fans who were open to whatever was next — at least no significant one. I did some Googling and could only find TWO people who still wanted another season.

Funnily enough? Critics LOVED this. Vanity Fair infamously penned an editorial about how Veronica Mars had "finally grown up" with the finale. (The same editorial also featured the author openly hating on Veronica ever being in a relationship because it causes "arrested development" and declaring that the movie -- which was acclaimed by both critics AND fans alike, I remind you -- was a lame dud. So. The writer must be a reeeaaaal fun person.)

But a series doesn't live based on critical acclaim, as it turns out. The fandom was murdered overnight. "Marshmallows" stopped appearing in geek spaces online entirely. No one expressed interest in seeing the next season or the next movie. The constant flow of fan AMVs on YouTube and fanfics on AO3 dried up to nothing.

Since 2019 ? Nothing. Chirping crickets. An intensely dedicated fandom of 12 years was just... vaporized.

I've never seen anything like it before OR since.

That's why it's so fucking fascinating.

So what went wrong?

Creator Rob Thomas was adamant about two things: ONE, the series was intended to be a noir show, which meant there couldn't be any happiness for its protagonist. And TWO, the death of Logan was necessary to evolve and grow the series.

Thomas thought that having Veronica in a relationship would be holding her back, and that a marriage would absolutely kill the series and leave her stagnant. It never even occurred to him that marriage isn't the end of a character's life and growth. It never occurred to him that plenty of drama can be had AFTER someone is married, or that development/growth could be that the characters mature enough to be capable of maintaining a committed relationship. Thomas' view of his own universe was so myopic that he couldn't conceive of any possible way that Veronica could still be a private detective involved in life-threatening investigations AND be married at the same time. Futhermore, he felt that fans just wanted Veronica to become a pregnant housewife, which is about as far from what Marshmallows were after as you can get without straight-up killing Veronica and/or Logan. He managed to do the only thing wronger than what he wrongly thought was their insistence.

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On top of the above, Rob Thomas only viewed "noir" as a vehicle for total fatalism... despite the fact that many of the most famous noir stories are cynical and full of moral ambiguity, but they still feature a positive outcome. The Big Sleep still has the protagonist get the girl. The Set-Up arguably ends with the happiest possible ending in spite of the beating the hero receives.

Perhaps most importantly? Despite Thomas own insistence that Veronica Mars was always "noir," the majority of both TV critics and fans did not think that designation ever truly applied. I suspect that's the reason why Thomas decided to go as dark and fatalistic as possible: He wanted to be noir, and he was being told that he wasn't. So he went so far into noir that he killed his own most popular property.

He was adamant that it was the only way for the series to grow. But as it turns out, it was instead the only way for the series to permanently end. Without that season four finale, a passionate group of fans would still be begging for more. With it? It's over. Nobody fucking cares now.

That's kind of amazing.

remember, it's imperative to turn your aesthetic preferences into moral ones. you can't just dislike neutral colors, or glass-and-steel skyscrapers, or flat design, they have to be symbols of neoliberal capitalism in decay. it's incredibly important that you make sure everybody knows that the only reason anyone could like the things you don't like is that they're an empty shell of a person.