Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, Form smells a Random Banter #235

[LaZodiac]

Star Trek Deep Space 9 had a race of changelings who were basically just bio-goop and technically a hivemind. They could do stuff like I described.

[Fyraltari]

René Auberjonois. Star Trek: Deep Space 9

That's a very French name for an alien.

At the risk of grossly overloading you... I would love if you did a watch thread of DS9. Best Star Trek by far. And I really love Star Trek.

Do not hold your breath for that.

[Peelee]

That's a very French name for an alien.

Technically it's a very French name for a Swiss.

Do not hold your breath for that.

Look, I'll be happy if you just watch it without constant public commentary. It's really good, and has several of the best characters in all of Star Trek. Garak (the best character in Star Trek), Quark, Odo, Sisko, they're fantastic.

I'd toss an image of a Tumblr post here but a couple of the things in it are not Forum friendly, so I'll just quote part of it:

"We have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime. Watch the Irishman Suffer. The Horrors of War."

Every time a Miles Obrien heavy episode comes up, my wife and I laugh about how it's a Watch the Irishman Suffer episode. That quote is surprisingly accurate.

Anyway, if you only watch one episode to see how it is, I'd recommend season 1,episode 19, Duet. I don't expect you to watch any of it, but if you do, that one is a must-see.

[Metastachydium]

Garak (the best character in Star Trek)

So that's the name of the Gorn from the rightly famous fight scene!

[Anonymouswizard]

I'd watch Star Trek, but I'm still slogging through the Tom Baker years of Doctor Who. Tonight it's more Masque of Mandragora (which means I'm only like two serials away from The Redundant Redundancy, woooo).

Then when I've finished that I've got Blake's Seven and Space 1999 lined up.

Then maybe they'll finally have uploaded Quatermass II to Britbox, and once I've made my way through the serials I can get back to American science fiction.

Unless Fyraltari can recommend any French stuff.

[Fyraltari]

Technically it's a very French name for a Swiss.

It's almost like a quarter of all Swiss are native French speakers. Imagine that.

Look, I'll be happy if you just watch it without constant public commentary. It's really good, and has several of the best characters in all of Star Trek. Garak (the best character in Star Trek), Quark, Odo, Sisko, they're fantastic.

I'd toss an image of a Tumblr post here but a couple of the things in it are not Forum friendly, so I'll just quote part of it:

"We have many fine storylines, such as: Goblin Does A Crime. Watch the Irishman Suffer. The Horrors of War."

Every time a Miles Obrien heavy episode comes up, my wife and I laugh about how it's a Watch the Irishman Suffer episode. That quote is surprisingly accurate.

Anyway, if you only watch one episode to see how it is, I'd recommend season 1,episode 19, Duet. I don't expect you to watch any of it, but if you do, that one is a must-see.

I'm afraid that if I start watching some of the Star Trek, I won't be able to stop until I've watched all of the Star Trek.

[Form]

Darn, guess I have to take France off the list of countries to move to.

My emergency 'plan' for should my entire life go to hell and be absolutely beyond salvaging was to go to France and see if the French foreign legion will take me. It still sort of is? Seems like a decent way to get a clean slate if I have to. Fortunately, I'll probably never need to.

Look, I'll be happy if you just watch it without constant public commentary. It's really good, and has several of the best characters in all of Star Trek. Garak (the best character in Star Trek), Quark, Odo, Sisko, they're fantastic.

Yes, Garak is fun. Everything he says is true. Especially the lies. May he never change.

Anyway, if you only watch one episode to see how it is, I'd recommend season 1,episode 19, Duet. I don't expect you to watch any of it, but if you do, that one is a must-see.

I'd recommend In the pale moonlight. It's a very dark episode and one of the ones that establish Sisko as... morally grey. The character is not like the other iconic star fleet captains who tended to be more idealistic. Also, Garak is in that one.

[Peelee]

It's almost like a quarter of all Swiss are native French speakers. Imagine that.

Fun things happen when you have four national languages, yeah.

My Yes, Garak is fun. Everything he says is true. Especially the lies. May he never change.

That's one of my favorite lines of his. Also, the "bow who cried wolf" scene. Garak has endless wisdom.

I'd recommend In the pale moonlight. It's a very dark episode and one of the ones that establish Sisko as... morally grey. The character is not like the other iconic star fleet captains who tended to be more idealistic. Also, Garak is in that one.

Yeah, but that needs a lot more context to really appreciate the full extent of. Duet, you only need to know the basics.

[Fyraltari]

I'd watch Star Trek, but I'm still slogging through the Tom Baker years of Doctor Who. Tonight it's more Masque of Mandragora (which means I'm only like two serials away from The Redundant Redundancy, woooo).

Then when I've finished that I've got Blake's Seven and Space 1999 lined up.

Then maybe they'll finally have uploaded Quatermass II to Britbox, and once I've made my way through the serials I can get back to American science fiction.

Unless Fyraltari can recommend any French stuff.

Hey, The Deadly Assassin has a goofy name, but it's pretty good. Established a lot of lore too.

As for French Sci-Fi shows, French TV was never really into sci-fi, and these days everything even slightly ambitious becomes an international production.
I do recommend the YouTube series Le Visiteur du Futur, which centers around time-travel shenanigans to save the world (of course...), is four seasons long, and comes with English subtitles. There's also Noob, that's much longer but has some serious variations in quality. It's about a bunch of idiots playing an MMORPG.

My emergency 'plan' for should my entire life go to hell and be absolutely beyond salvaging was to go to France and see if the French foreign legion will take me. It still sort of is? Seems like a decent way to get a clean slate if I have to. Fortunately, I'll probably never need to.

They've tightened their hired standards a good bit in the last decades, you know. For one thing they no longer blood criminals. You may have to try to impress them by singing Tiens voilà du boundin...

[Anonymouswizard]

Hey, The Deadly Assassin has a goofy name, but it's pretty good. Established a lot of lore too.

As for French Sci-Fi shows, French TV was never really into sci-fi, and these days everything even slightly ambitious becomes an international production.
I do recommend the YouTube series Le Visiteur du Futur, which centers around time-travel shenanigans to save the world (of course...), is four seasons long, and comes with English subtitles. There's also Noob, that's much longer but has some serious variations in quality. It's about a bunch of idiots playing an MMORPG.

Oh no disrespect meant to TDA, I remember loving it as a kid and it still has one of my favourite cliffhangers of Who.

I'll have a look at some point, after I've made it through the two to three years of British sci-fi lined up.

Although maybe I'll replace Survivors with one of them. That show might be too topical

[Keltest]

Yeah, but who ever talks about Penn State? Nobody, that's who.

Spoiler: For anyone who needs the frog dissected

Show

Pennn State is also an incredibly prestigious school, effectively being Ivy League without the title.

Cries in University Park

Also, Penn State. Two Ns

[enderlord99]

Also, Penn State. Two Ns

Wookinn{.}

[Peelee]

Cries in University Park

That's not even a city, it's clearly a park!

Wookinn

I greatly appreciate this.

[Keltest]

That's not even a city, it's clearly a park!

Oh god, dont even get me started. Its technically its own city within the city of State College. Freaking main campus is so big is has not one, but two zip codes entirely to itself.

[Form]

There's also Noob, that's much longer but has some serious variations in quality. It's about a bunch of idiots playing an MMORPG.

Ah, like any other MMORPG then.

They've tightened their hired standards a good bit in the last decades, you know. For one thing they no longer blood criminals. You may have to try to impress them by singing Tiens voilà du boundin...

Apparently there's some leeway, but really serious crimes and/or anything that'd result in being wanted by Interpol and I'd be right out. If my life were to go down the drain in such a way that I'd be a criminal then I'd be probably in jail. In which case I can't even get to the French foreign legion. Unless I were really, really good at criming? In which case..... yay?

I guess I'm just enamored by the notion that no matter what (Ok, so not quite no matter what) there would still be a place you could go.

[Fyraltari]

Ah, like any other MMORPG then.

Well, yes. But everybody has a microphone and nobody is making creepy sexual advances towards anyone. It also has a lot of cameos by famous internet French people.

Apparently there's some leeway, but really serious crimes and/or anything that'd result in being wanted by Interpol and I'd be right out. If my life were to go down the drain in such a way that I'd be a criminal then I'd be probably in jail. In which case I can't even get to the French foreign legion. Unless I were really, really good at criming? In which case..... yay?

I guess I'm just enamored by the notion that no matter what (Ok, so not quite no matter what) there would still be a place you could go.

They used to let just anybody in without doing any kind of background check. There's a famous story about a Holocaust survivor who enlisted to get closer to the nazi soldier who murdered his family, who had himself joined several years prior, and murder him.
It turns out that, while purposefully letting the dregs of the earth join so you can send them on suicide missions was viable a century ago, it's harder to get away with it nowadays.

[Beeftank]

Cries in University Park

Also, Penn State. Two Ns

It’s also sort of famous for some uhh… not so good stuff too.

[Anonymouswizard]

Urgh, now the Steam Sale is here and I want to buy all the things.

Anybody got some spare restraint so I still have money to buy Christmas presents?

[Peelee]

Urgh, now the Steam Sale is here and I want to buy all the things.

Anybody got some spare restraint so I still have money to buy Christmas presents?

Sure! You'll never play them, save your money. Helpful?

[Rater202]

I hadn't actually known she can do all that stuff, beyond the clothing thing. That's the kinda shapeshifting I like to see. Utilize your talents to do weird ****!

Yeah, Raven's kind of bull****.

I've mentioned before I think, that she can do things like perfectly replicate someone's entire body down to fingerprints and retinas just by seeing them and perfectly imitate their voice, accent, and dialect from five words of natural dialog? And tat she's essentially constantly rejuvenating every one of her cells which caused her to stop aging at somepoint in her thirties? Irene Adler, her wife(it's an open marriage though) is the Irene Adler(Though she claims that Doyle employed extensive creative license) and they met in London in the late Victorian period when Raven was working as a consulting detective.

(Raven was probably Sherlock Holmes.)

Another storyline involved terrorists engineering a plague that targets people who have had a smallpox vaccine and she... Legitimately doesn't remember if she ever got that.

He main wakness is that she has a limited ability to change her mass: If she tunred into a T-Rex, her body would be easy to tear appart. If she tunred into a baby, she'd be the world's heaviest baby.

The most powerful Shapeshifter, canonically, is Ms/ Marvel(though, note, Apocalypse and his clone Evan were off-planet at the time this was established.) She techncially has the same powers as Muystique, but shapeshifts at the molecular level isntead of the cellular and can borrow mass from her past, future, and alternate timeline selves becuase her moleular structure is dyncyned from linear space time. She also ets superhuman strength proptoionate to how big she grows.

One of the first things she did in her own series was turn into a couch in an attempt to disguise herself while investigating the inventor: a clone of Thomas Edison accidentally fused with a Cockatiel who was gaslighting depressed teenagers into letting him turn them into living batteries by using anti-Millenial rhetoric to play on their feelings of worthlessness.

---

Unrelated: I've finally done it.

I made Neo-Kobe Pizza.

for those of you who don't know or don't remember: In the visual novel Snatcher, by Hideo Kojima, there is an optional scene where the protagonist goes into a restaurant and orders a bowl of dumpling soup... For some inexplicable reason, the English localization changed this to a splice of pizza floating in a bowl of miso soup.

People have tried this in real life and apparently, it's good.

We had pizza last night, had some left over, and a package of miso ramen in the cupboard, so I decided "screw it."

There is but one way to describe how I feel...

This is the Szechuan sauce all over again. It's good, very good, but does not live up to the hype. Regardless, I'm glad I tried it once.

[Fyraltari]

Irene Adler, her wife(it's an open marriage though) is the Irene Adler(Though she claims that Doyle employed extensive creative license) and they met in London in the late Victorian period when Raven was working as a consulting detective.

(Raven was probably Sherlock Holmes.)

Raven was the detective who seriously underestimated Irene Adler on account of her being a woman and tried help the king of Bohemia steal back love letters he wrote to her because he kinda figured she would blackmail him even though she was never a criminal?

Odd.

[Form]

This is the Szechuan sauce all over again. It's good, very good, but does not live up to the hype. Regardless, I'm glad I tried it once.

Damnit, you had me going for a moment there. I thought this could have been that dream pizza with which I can con-, I mean, save the world!

[Rater202]

Raven was the detective who seriously underestimated Irene Adler on account of her being a woman and tried help the king of Bohemia steal back love letters he wrote to her because he kinda figured she would blackmail him even though she was never a criminal?

Odd.

Like I said, Irene claimed that Doyle used significant creative license. Her actual words are that she inspired Doyle's Irene.

We know that something roughly analogous to The Hound of The Baskerviles actually happened in broad strokes in the marvel universe, but that's about it.

I say that Raven was probably Holmes becuase she was working as a consulting detective in London a the time she met Irene... At a point in time before the concept of a consulting detective existed. In real life, Doyle made it up for the Holmes stories and in-universe Holmes claims to have invented the career himself.

Which would imply that, in the Marvel Universe, it was Raven Darkholme who invented the concept.

Raven also demonstrates from time to time a knack for making accurate deductions and then forming plans around those deductions that end up working(The most recent example being X-Men Black: Mystique) though not to the same level as Holmes is typically depicted.

[Anonymouswizard]

My mind is now stuck on the fact that Mystique has full control of what genitals she has. I guess she probably defaults to 'smooth' though.

[Tvtyrant]

My mind is now stuck on the fact that Mystique has full control of what genitals she has. I guess she probably defaults to 'smooth' though.

Pretty sure Mystique is a woman though, why would she choose smooth? I'm pretty sure I would still choose being a man if I had shapeshifting powers.

[HalfTangible]

Pretty sure Mystique is a woman though, why would she choose smooth? I'm pretty sure I would still choose being a man if I had shapeshifting powers.

It's for the censors. Maybe her mutant strain just has her smooth.

[Anonymouswizard]

Pretty sure Mystique is a woman though, why would she choose smooth? I'm pretty sure I would still choose being a man if I had shapeshifting powers.

If she tends to shapeshift her clothing then she clearly spends a lot of time without any anyway. Plus it might make it easier to not have it hurt so much if it gets injured.

Plus genitals have nothing to do with gender. Mystique doesn't choose to be a man or woman, she is a woman whether her crotch has a tower, valley, or flat plain.

[Rater202]

We can infer that he's not smooth by default because mutants who don't possess primary sexual characteristics tend to just walk around naked without any effort made to censor their nudity

Mystique has been depicted as not wearing clothes or having clothes shifted from her mass and in every such occasion either the scenery or creative use of shadow covers up her breasts and groin.

Which based on precedent means that her default form has something to cover up.

[Tvtyrant]

If she tends to shapeshift her clothing then she clearly spends a lot of time without any anyway. Plus it might make it easier to not have it hurt so much if it gets injured.

Plus genitals have nothing to do with gender. Mystique doesn't choose to be a man or woman, she is a woman whether her crotch has a tower, valley, or flat plain.

I didn't say she chooses her gender. She chooses her sex, she is a woman.

Lots of people are more comfortable having genitals that match their gender, regardless of their gender orientation. Otherwise there wouldn't be gender confirmation surgery.

[Rater202]

So yesterday I got into a small argument with someone who claimed that mutant children having time to hang out with other mutant children their age in situations that weren't school or fighting for their lives against killer robots would result in those children becoming mutant supremacists

Today, literally a day later, the most recent issue of Wolverine came out and the first purely human family to immigrate to Krakoa(single dad with daughter) was greeted with a group of mutant children asking the daughter if she wanted to play with them while clearly not giving a crap that she wasn't a mutant.

I just can't help but be amused that the source material immediately refuted the other guy's arguments. Also a bit of an eerie coincidence