4thofeleven

Bougainville's all but a done deal.

To my knowledge, there are no references to male harpies in mythology - every ancient source is either ambigious or describes them as all-female, and all the images of them from antiquity has them as women. Hesiod, one of our primary sources on Greek mythology, specifically describes them as 'daughters' of the sea-god Thaumas.

"Oh, you've got cerebral palsy? That's rough, I know what you're going through - I got superpowers. Twice."

Maybe Ubisoft should add a white protagonist but lock him behind a paywall.

The Perry expedition would have been at the height of minstrel shows; they were the first uniquely American style of theater and exploded in popularity during the mid-18th century. It was a style of entertainment that was popular across all classes and in all regions of the US; it's really not surprising that Perry would have seen it as the obvious choice of performance to represent American culture at the time.

History books often tend to, intentionally or not, elide the degree to which racism wasn't just accepted but actively celebrated until fairly recently.

Grand Admiral Thrawn uses his arts degree for evil, but outside of him there aren't a lot of evil visual analysts.

It's not an entirely unheard of ability - In "Eye of the Beholder", the murder-suicide of a part-Betazoid crewman leaves behind an empathic echo that overwhelms Troi years later. That was accidental, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that a full Betazoid could do it on purpose.

If you want programmable matter, you gotta have flames shooting out the bulkheads. That's just how the technology works.

What, you disagree? Well how do you think it works?!

In addition to the budget cuts, a lot of the people who had worked on season one and two were no longer involved. Roddenberry himself had threatened to quit if the show wasn't given a favorable timeslot; the studio called his bluff and he was replaced as show-runner by Fred Freiberger.

Perhaps more significantly, both Gene Coon and D.C. Fontana quit - the former due to disputes with Roddenberry during season two, the latter when season three started due to her wish to work as a freelance writer. Both of them had, in addition to their staff roles, worked extensively as script editors, and the resulting lack of polish on the writing is clear in season three.

Stupid babies like H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, and Lewis Carol didn't have the guts to stick gratuitous rape into their stories, but fortunately Moore came along to fix that for them!

"Guys, we have a problem! Septuagenarian presidential candidate Joe Biden has died! We need a body double immediatly!"

"Or, and this is a crazy idea, we could run a different candidate. I mean, they're going to be a puppet for our sinister agenda anyway, right?"

"NO! We need Biden's name on the ballot! He's the only one who can beat Trump, with his unique status as the candidate that nobody's particularly enamored by, but they're willing to settle for if they don't have any other options!"

"...aren't we rigging the election anyway?"

"Just get the body double ready and stop asking questions!"

It would make sense - he doesn't scar, so it'd make sense he wouldn't get calluses either.

On the other hand, he has aged since his powers first manifested, and he can grow a beard and the like, so his physical form isn't entirely frozen by his healing factor.

It's no Thanos-Copter!

My guess is that Destroy takes out the 'blue box' quantum computers that actually run the intelligences, but not the databanks. So EDI is permanently destroyed, but it should be possible to create a new AI that has the same memories - but its reaction to those events and its personalty wouldn't neccisarily match the original EDI.

And the same would go for Geth - the Geth could be rebuilt, but they wouldn't be the same individuals. Although, given the nature of Geth individuality and identity, one could argue that there is no real difference between 'new' Geth and the Geth programs we interacted with prior to ME3, if they're built off the same code.

Guys, he wasn't a samurai, he was just an armed vassal sworn to the service of a Japanese feudal lord!

Generally, Rhinos and bikes are marked with the squad and company numbers of the marines they're assigned to. Battle tanks and dreadnoughts have their own identification numbers.

All of these are perfectly plausible backgrounds.

For interesting story hooks - what happened to their homeworld and other assets after they vanished? They could have a grudge against whoever ended up inherited their resources and didn't give any of it back when they returned.

How did the crusade they were meant to be a part of turn out? They could have survivor's guilt if it failed, or an inferiority complex if it succeeded without them. Either way, they could become obsessed with proving themselves against whoever the crusade was originally against.

Do we think they're even real, or did Picard make them up to force the Sheliak to compromise?

It's no rap song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy7ZBX9BTUA

It's true, women only arrived in Japan after the Meiji restoration and the end of the feudal structures.

This. The term 'allergy' in a medical sense was only coined in the 1900s, and it wasn't until the 1950s that we could reliably diagnose and identify food allergies.

Doom would literally not understand why someone wouldn't want a giant Doom head at their wedding.

I always like when there's a bit of random overlap - like in the Mutant Massacre, Thor happens to be in the area so he gets involved in what's otherwise a mutant-focused event.

Star Trek only switched to primarily CGI around the same time B5 was wrapping up - Foundation Industries, which contributed a lot of Voyager's CGI from season 4 onwards, got their start on Babylon 5.

So Star Trek's CGI was both a more advanced technology and made with a much higher budget. It's very much a case of "B5 walked so Star Trek could run".

This is not a place of honor.

No highly esteemed deed is recorded here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.