Honestly, I don’t know if the “best” answer to “Do you realise that your plan to liberate all the nonhumans to a utopian planet has led to you including some of the nastier ones?” is “Uh-oh, really?” or “Yes, of course. All part of the plan”. Both sound bad, but for very different reasons.
Some may also end up with a shorter lifespan than others. But it still looks to me like what I said several days ago (or maybe weeks, I lose track): that Pavane has not considered the repercussions of introducing all of these creatures – almost all of which were created by evil geniuses for the express purpose of evil – into her lovely Utopia. Pavane may “know” what she’s doing, but she hasn’t thought it through far enough.
And then there’s my other, more recent, theory: that Pavane is simply an instrument of Ira to eliminate all the non-humans without a fight. They all boarded the ship voluntarily without any real knowledge of where they’re actually going. And if this theory is correct, then Pavane almost certainly doesn’t know – at least not fully – what she’s doing.
I 100% agree- Pavanne is the alien bee hive mind version of the college student who thinks they know exactly how the world works and what must be done to fix it. Her passion and good nature are heavily offset by her unchecked naïveté.
But Ira sent an army to destroy the encampment of sentients waiting to board the saucer. Apparently he didn’t know why the encampment was there. As I recall, he chose to attack the “hippie encampment” intuitively rather than for solid strategic reasons. Seems to me that if he had such an elaborate trap he wouldn’t have bothered, except maybe to threaten them to hurry along. The only way the boarding of the saucer turns out to be a trap is if we suddenly discover that all of our heroes have been trapped in a VR program for, like, months. In which case they are already trapped so why bother with the saucer. Just send them to pick walnuts. But wait, that didn’t work so well when it was tried…
As for the lifespan thing, how many of these chimera can reproduce? And if, say, HT finds another talking tiger to mate with, will the kits be sentient or just normal tigers?
I can’t help thinking this is like The Rapture, or maybe Hobbits passing into The West. Does anybody ever think about what happens after they get transported to Heaven or to the Isle of Elves?
By applying such pressure and threatening their lives, Ira made everyone want to board the saucer. Even if it wasn’t his plan, it worked in his favour.
Well, technically, only Bilbo and Frodo traveled to the Undying Lands; presumably, the other hobbits remained in Middle Earth.
As far as Mr. Green’s plans, it’s hard to say. Sometimes he’s done things that seemed dumb, and sometimes he seems to be surprised, or even taken aback, by something one of Our Heroes has done, but then, other times, he acts like something that happened was his plan all along. Was he just rolling with it, and pretending that was his plan, or was it really? How much of Mr. Green is Mastermind versus Illusionist?
You say that as if a parent and child (or siblings, in some cases) cannot have such an intense disagreement that they become mortal enemies. It’s a tried and true story throughout history.
In my dark nightmare paranoia scenario, Ari Green either found or created Gavotte. Green has always been a master manipulator, and manipulating the mind of a bee colony through pheromone puffs is even easier than manipulating the minds of ordinary humans, where you have to resort to surgery and/or electrode implantation or something. So he figured out how to implant false memories in her of bees being from Lovetron ¹, and put her in charge of Skin Horse. He also engineered Gavotte budding off into Pavane, and Pavane shares the same false memories that Gavotte does.
He took the idea of Lovetron from Tigerlily Jones. Many Mads think they’re in/from another era; only Jones thinks she’s from another planet as well.
The flying saucer was built from various Mad tech. St. Charlie’s space-folding bigger-on-the-inside is obvious. Tigerlily whipped up a tractor beam on a whim, so that’s no big deal. Etc, and so on.
Gavotte and Pavane are being as honest as they can be, It’s not like they know they were manipulated.
What’s the endgame? Well, once all the nonhuman sapients are on their way, I suspect a fatal accident is in the works.
This scenario is probably wrong, but we’ll find out, I guess.
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1: Which is nonsensical to anyone who knows anything about biology. Bees are related to wasps and ants, and to all other insects, and to all other animals, and all other living things (eukaryotes), right here on Earth.
And I said ‘Littering’ And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench,
There’s even some debate as to UNITY being a bioweapon per se.
The goo that is UNITY just seems to use no longer living biological parts.
She even seems to be able to control decay of said parts.
Yes, Unity is a bioweapon. An autonomous bioweapon. Being autonomous doesn’t make her any less of a bioweapon. If anything, being autonomous might be worse, because, what would Unity do if someone killed Sweetheart and all their friends? Who or what could stop Unity if she got really upset?
Yes, Unity is a bioweapon. Case in point, when she barfs on another being. Yes, she is composed of nanotechnology, but that nanotechnology is also biological, which allows her to control both organic and inorganic creatures.
I’m still quite confused. Tip ran from Leo and HT to board the ship, yet he missed the beam… but Leo and HT -are- in the ship anyway…? Was there a clarification I missed about this?
Yeh. But he should’ve had plenty of time if they still had to get HT (in a cage) up, and Leo hadn’t even moved either. My point is, there was no time shortage for Tip, but he acted like there was a rush…
Has Pavane thought this out? Sweetheart wonders. There’s plenty of room for some blunders. H. T., Biomass, hungry zombies, alas. And two bioweapon discarded blunders.
I know we all hate it, and there are certainly downsides, but bureaucracy actually exists for reasons. One of the upsides is that it’s pretty good at slowing down those who are attempting to abuse power.
That’s what bureaucracy is supposed to do. The problem is that those same people have figured out how to abuse bureaucracy, which makes them even more dangerous than if the bureaucracy wasn’t there at all.
oh crap she doesn’t know what she’s doing
Honestly, I don’t know if the “best” answer to “Do you realise that your plan to liberate all the nonhumans to a utopian planet has led to you including some of the nastier ones?” is “Uh-oh, really?” or “Yes, of course. All part of the plan”. Both sound bad, but for very different reasons.
“If I discriminate in who I take in I’m no better than HT or the Biomass. We offer everyone sanctuary, but some have a shorter leash than others.”
Some may also end up with a shorter lifespan than others. But it still looks to me like what I said several days ago (or maybe weeks, I lose track): that Pavane has not considered the repercussions of introducing all of these creatures – almost all of which were created by evil geniuses for the express purpose of evil – into her lovely Utopia. Pavane may “know” what she’s doing, but she hasn’t thought it through far enough.
And then there’s my other, more recent, theory: that Pavane is simply an instrument of Ira to eliminate all the non-humans without a fight. They all boarded the ship voluntarily without any real knowledge of where they’re actually going. And if this theory is correct, then Pavane almost certainly doesn’t know – at least not fully – what she’s doing.
I’m not trying to crap on the young here, but Pavane has a bit of the “Young Adult who knows everything” vibe about her.
I 100% agree- Pavanne is the alien bee hive mind version of the college student who thinks they know exactly how the world works and what must be done to fix it. Her passion and good nature are heavily offset by her unchecked naïveté.
Yeah, she made that abundantly clear (to everyone but herself) back when she was arguing with Gavotte.
But Ira sent an army to destroy the encampment of sentients waiting to board the saucer. Apparently he didn’t know why the encampment was there. As I recall, he chose to attack the “hippie encampment” intuitively rather than for solid strategic reasons. Seems to me that if he had such an elaborate trap he wouldn’t have bothered, except maybe to threaten them to hurry along. The only way the boarding of the saucer turns out to be a trap is if we suddenly discover that all of our heroes have been trapped in a VR program for, like, months. In which case they are already trapped so why bother with the saucer. Just send them to pick walnuts. But wait, that didn’t work so well when it was tried…
As for the lifespan thing, how many of these chimera can reproduce? And if, say, HT finds another talking tiger to mate with, will the kits be sentient or just normal tigers?
I can’t help thinking this is like The Rapture, or maybe Hobbits passing into The West. Does anybody ever think about what happens after they get transported to Heaven or to the Isle of Elves?
By applying such pressure and threatening their lives, Ira made everyone want to board the saucer. Even if it wasn’t his plan, it worked in his favour.
Well, technically, only Bilbo and Frodo traveled to the Undying Lands; presumably, the other hobbits remained in Middle Earth.
As far as Mr. Green’s plans, it’s hard to say. Sometimes he’s done things that seemed dumb, and sometimes he seems to be surprised, or even taken aback, by something one of Our Heroes has done, but then, other times, he acts like something that happened was his plan all along. Was he just rolling with it, and pretending that was his plan, or was it really? How much of Mr. Green is Mastermind versus Illusionist?
But Gavotte has previously identified Pavane as her daughter (and they conversed recently), so I can’t see how she could be some instrument of Ira.
You say that as if a parent and child (or siblings, in some cases) cannot have such an intense disagreement that they become mortal enemies. It’s a tried and true story throughout history.
In my dark nightmare paranoia scenario, Ari Green either found or created Gavotte. Green has always been a master manipulator, and manipulating the mind of a bee colony through pheromone puffs is even easier than manipulating the minds of ordinary humans, where you have to resort to surgery and/or electrode implantation or something. So he figured out how to implant false memories in her of bees being from Lovetron ¹, and put her in charge of Skin Horse. He also engineered Gavotte budding off into Pavane, and Pavane shares the same false memories that Gavotte does.
He took the idea of Lovetron from Tigerlily Jones. Many Mads think they’re in/from another era; only Jones thinks she’s from another planet as well.
The flying saucer was built from various Mad tech. St. Charlie’s space-folding bigger-on-the-inside is obvious. Tigerlily whipped up a tractor beam on a whim, so that’s no big deal. Etc, and so on.
Gavotte and Pavane are being as honest as they can be, It’s not like they know they were manipulated.
What’s the endgame? Well, once all the nonhuman sapients are on their way, I suspect a fatal accident is in the works.
This scenario is probably wrong, but we’ll find out, I guess.
=__________________________________________________
1: Which is nonsensical to anyone who knows anything about biology. Bees are related to wasps and ants, and to all other insects, and to all other animals, and all other living things (eukaryotes), right here on Earth.
HT was only a threat to humans, and the biomass remerged and has probably made cookies for everyone again.
You tell her, Sweetheart! There could even be dogs that leave fire doors ajar lurking about!
Sweetheart is …… a NARC?
Always has been. (Wait, is this a meme?)
They’re all sitting on the Group W bench, though
That’s what I was just thinking.
And I said ‘Littering’ And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench,
No, UNITY is a bioweapon. Sweetheart is just your average *living* weapon.
Well, I wouldn’t call her your *average* living weapon, but fair point.
There’s even some debate as to UNITY being a bioweapon per se.
The goo that is UNITY just seems to use no longer living biological parts.
She even seems to be able to control decay of said parts.
Yes, Unity is a bioweapon. An autonomous bioweapon. Being autonomous doesn’t make her any less of a bioweapon. If anything, being autonomous might be worse, because, what would Unity do if someone killed Sweetheart and all their friends? Who or what could stop Unity if she got really upset?
Yes, Unity is a bioweapon. Case in point, when she barfs on another being. Yes, she is composed of nanotechnology, but that nanotechnology is also biological, which allows her to control both organic and inorganic creatures.
I was starting to wonder: who didn’t go, who could have? There’s Nick, there’s Artie…it’s been largely who couldn’t go who’ve gotten talked about.
Basically, everybody who loved a muggle.
I thought muggles, in its pre-Potter usage, might’ve been involved in some of this behavior.
I’m still quite confused. Tip ran from Leo and HT to board the ship, yet he missed the beam… but Leo and HT -are- in the ship anyway…? Was there a clarification I missed about this?
He went toward the light, and he missed.
Yeh. But he should’ve had plenty of time if they still had to get HT (in a cage) up, and Leo hadn’t even moved either. My point is, there was no time shortage for Tip, but he acted like there was a rush…
Nothing worse than litterer’s, unless it’s people who misuse punctuation.
Why!! (Do) ; you “say” tha’t
Has Pavane thought this out? Sweetheart wonders. There’s plenty of room for some blunders. H. T., Biomass, hungry zombies, alas. And two bioweapon discarded blunders.
There’s dangerous, There’s insidiously dangerous, and then there’s the type of villains that require someone like Sweetheart to keep in check.
I leave to consider how those should be ranked.
I leave *you* to consider, . . . Darn it, I have to stop commenting on my phone.
I think your first try makes a lot of sense.
I know we all hate it, and there are certainly downsides, but bureaucracy actually exists for reasons. One of the upsides is that it’s pretty good at slowing down those who are attempting to abuse power.
That’s what bureaucracy is supposed to do. The problem is that those same people have figured out how to abuse bureaucracy, which makes them even more dangerous than if the bureaucracy wasn’t there at all.
It’s important to distinguish between litterers and litterbugs. One group produces litter while the other just looks like it.