THE WEEPING SCOPE SCANS ITS SURROUNDINGS WITH THE SCOPE...
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you know it might be unpopular but i kind of disagree with the fandom opinion that Voyager mishandled the Borg. tng's portrayal of the Borg as a mass unknowable and undefeatable entity – a Collective that assimilates by force and eliminates individuality as a natural and perfect opposition to the Federation that expands through peace and is endlessly multicultural (at least allegedly) – is very good. there's a reason that Best of Both Worlds is still regarded as one of the best tng episodes. but the thing about villains that function through fear and the unknowability is that every time you meet them they become less scary and less interesting. (see what happened with the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who as an example.)
if the shows continued with the same portrayal of the Borg then it would have gotten very old very very quickly with a limited number of possible stories. but then if Star Trek ignored the Borg entirely after their few tng episodes it would have felt unrealistic – there's this all powerful alien race that's invaded half the galaxy and can easily overpower the Federation and we're just... never gonna bring them up again? that's not really gonna fly.
i actually think that Voyager's approach to the Borg is refreshing. we're not going to focus on them as the terrifying unknown entity, we're going to focus on their personal effects mostly through Seven. i don't think Voyager ever really treated the Borg as the generic villain because the Borg were presented on an interpersonal level and opened up the box for more stories instead of just constantly rehashing Q Who and Best of Both Worlds. Voyager followed up on tng's question (introduced in I, Borg) of "what if a Borg was separated from the Collective?" and continued to ask things like: "is it ethical to forcibly remove someone from the Collective against their will?" "how is a collective of humans better than the Collective of Borg?" "can a person ever fully lose their humanity?" "if humanity is lost then can it ever be regained?" "can an individual be responsible for deaths dealt by a collective group?" "if they are responsible then how do they live with themselves? how do they atone for atrocities they never chose to commit?" "is prejudice against the Borg just a reflection of our fear of loss of control and humanity?" "what even is humanity?"
i'm not saying voyager's (and other post tng shows) portrayal of the Borg was great in every way. it definitely wasn't. (i'm still like. mildly baffled by the idea of the Borg Queen and how she's written. there are definitely episodes that veer too much into the action flick genre. and even as much as i love Seven there's definitely an oversaturation of her episodes compared to the rest of the cast in later seasons.) but idk i've heard a lot of people say that Voyager ruined the Borg but from my perspective they just took a character based approach to exploring them rather than a science fiction based approach. some people might prefer one to the other but i think a lot of people missed that Voyager was never trying to replicate the Borg we see in early tng. yes they make them a bit toothless in comparison but that's because we're exploring them through the lens of personhood. it's a feature not a bug imo.
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okay i put this in the reblogs of the "personal nightmare-tester hob gadling" post before but i just thought about it again so
imagine dream after being cut off from ppls dreams for over a century coming back and struggling to figure out what's "trendy" rn, like what do ppl wanna dream about these days? what are they afraid off?
and literally the only person he knows who could reliably tell him that bc he's lived among humans for six centuries and has the context for what the fuck is going on with them is, you guessed it, hob gadling
so dream just shows up at random asking him the wildest questions like "hob gadling what is cbat and why are humans having sex dreams about it" and hob is just standing there like pls it is fucking eight am i didn't even have coffee yet
like hob just graduates from personal nightmare-tester to personal dream-trend researcher, and it's just an endless string of "no dream i will not teach your nightmares how to floss that's not even a thing anymore" and "what do you mean can you confirm if this nightmare Iooks like slenderman pls it's two am" or "no dream i do not know why everyone is horny for that four foot tall zombie woman-- wait hold on why are you getting big oh-- oh yeah okay alright i get it"
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post apocalypse au where the plot of stranger things doesn't happen but vecna still tears the world open and brings the upside down right side up. and the scattered people who managed to survive the initial earthquakes and power outages and complete breakdown of society have to contend not only with creatures from the upside down trying to eat them, but also with what the bleeding of an alternate dimension into their reality is doing to their bodies
people with prolonged exposure to larger tears seem to be slowly changed into something else, like some radioactivity from the dimension is mutating them. people grow claws, or leathery wings, or their face peels open, or they turn into unrecognisable piles of eldritch goo. there's vampires, were-demogorgons, flayed, weird ghosts, and the number of super powered people like el was in the show skyrockets
other people who manage avoid this fate shun those that fell to it. and to an extent it's reasonable, some people who get changed in this way completely lose their humanity, like the flayed, and while others retain it it probably doesn't seem that way when a vampire-like person needs human blood to survive. but a lot of people are just as terrified of the changes happening to them as other people are, and while they may not be harmless, they'd much rather use their new biological advantages to keep people safe
despite this, people that have been 'corroded' by the upside down are ostracised, feared, sometimes outright hunted by regular humans. so sometimes, they band together. form their own little apocalypse groups
eddie is in one of those groups. he wouldn't say he's the leader, bc they don't really have a hierarchical structure and eddie likes to think he's managed to maintain his anarchic ideals even in the face of the apocalypse. but he is the oldest, and the most scary looking (if not the most actually dangerous), so the combination of everyone being younger and his ability to scare off corroded-hunters that come looking for them means everyone else kind of follows his lead
so no one really questions when he comes back to camp one day holding two passed out humans. a mole-dotted man and a freckled woman, probably about eddie's age, who were injured and had crawled into a ruin building to die. and like. what was eddie supposed to do, leave them there??? no, gareth, it has nothing to do with how pretty the guy is. no, eddie doesn't know how they'll react when they wake up in the middle of a corroded camp, they'll cross that bridge when they get there. el says she senses that they're good people, so clearly everything will be fine actually!!!!!
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Just rewatched DFF ep 9 and I really do think this show is so beautifully meticulously artistically written, with themes and layers and so much thoughtful care. I trust wherever it leads, even if it doesn't lead to the places I want most in my heart (PerthNon vs. PheeTan revenge teams at crosshairs, culminating in a heartfelt brotherly reunion, lol if playfully grudging at how much they fucked up each other's plans despite having the same goals, and a Non who has moved on with someone who has life experiences similar enough to his to actually understand him, listen to him, and trust him. But most importantly A HEARTFELT BROTHERLY REUNION).
It's just always fun to watch a show where you can expect to be surprised, you can expect to be angry at the characters, you can expect to not get what you want, and you can still expect to appreciate the writing and enjoy the experience. Love to let the story seduce me you see
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HI over the summer I've been doing the art for a horror podcast that's FINALLY released their first episode!! You all should check it out 👀
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So I know that Webb said that it's likely that what would happen (in any scenario where they ended up dead/sainted/etc) is that the Church Electric would just bring in new, less experienced, more easily exploitable employees, and that itself is a horror, but what if... the quick turnaround to getting the lights back on means something a little different? What if, in the frenzy of mass death at the hands of the state, the Saint accepted her striking workers back into the fold, once their ability to fight back was stripped from them? A grid supervised by saints. Buttons pushed and switches flicked by spasming fingers, nerves jolted with divine current. A place of worship manned by the worshipped--surely nothing bad will come of that! The Church puts out some great press releases that say otherwise, but quietly lets it happen. After all, they'll save a fortune on training courses.
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