Grrl Power #1009 – Does Sydney have accident insurance?
The title of the page is a joke, but… seriously. Wouldn’t supers probably need to have some sort of insurance fund set up in case they accidentally elbowed someone through a wall, or turned them to stone, or extincted an epoch/era?
As it sometimes happens, speculation from the prior page’s comments could be selectively snipped and used to write this one. The proximity to the Chicxulub crater didn’t escape some of you, and that’s half of this page. I’m not saying that event and the orbs are necessarily related, but it might be a Chekhov’s Extinction Level Event.
If it happens that Sydney was involved in wiping out the dinosaurs, could it be considered retroactive species-level self-defence, given that human civilization probably wouldn’t have gotten very far if we tried to evolve alongside dinosaurs, or that any common ancestors we might have could have been eaten by a disagreeable theropod?
I like the Chekhov’s Gun trope. I don’t necessarily agree with it, because it can make plays/movies/stories incredibly predictable, but I like the idea of it, because I can say “Oh, look, Chekhov’s restaurant.” if I’m planning on eating somewhere later. Seriously though, the idea that every scene or thing that the camera focuses on early in a movie needs to be there in order to pay off later is obnoxious, because if you’re paying attention it’s almost like watching a movie with pop-ups saying “The Main Character is giving the love interest a silver amulet. I wonder if that will come up later in this Were-Vampire movie? What do you think, audience?” Of course, if you have no setup, then stuff happening at the end can feel deus ex machiny, so I guess the balance is to set up too much stuff so the signal gets hidden in the noise? I don’t know. “The Main Character is giving the love interest a silver amulet, and a ring with a cross on it, and a broach made of mysterious metal that came from a meteorite, a lucky charm for her keyring, a flask to keep in her inside jacket pocket, and is taking her to the gun range and teaching her offensive driving, Latin, and how to fly a helicopter. What do you think is going to happen now, smart guy?”
I will say that Archon needs to be a lot better about closing doors and drawing blinds when discussing classified things.
Unrelated, I saw Matrix: Resurrection, and no spoilers, but I’m shocked that it has a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes. I kind of figured the 4th time the movie self-awarely brought up the idea of an unnecessary sequel to a trilogy then said in the movie “Warner Brothers is making us do this.” I assumed it was an apology. I don’t think they tried to make a bad, unnecessary movie that added nothing to the lore (in fact it detracted from the lore, IMO), I just don’t think there was a way to extend that storyline any further.
If the movie had been about the remnants of humanity living in a Matrix-esque world while they traveled to another planet, having abandoned Earth to the machines, that could have extended the universe. Or if it had been about a post-trilogy ground war to take back the Earth like the future bits of the Terminator movies, then that could have been something, but neither of those stories require Keanu, and that’s just not how Hollywood works.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Still getting proofed. Didn’t make much progress over Xmas break, but I didn’t think the book would be out before the new year anyway. Definitely January though.
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Purely My Insanity…
I Keep Visualizing the Command Chair on a Ship,
With 5 (or more) Sockets across the top of the Back Rest
And One Conveniently in Each Arm of the Chair
What I will just have to Hope gets revealed Eventually IS
Who Builds Space-faring Tech
That Will Bond to a New User Without An Auth Code?
One that is rogrammed to look for certain patterns and will reveal itself only to those worthy of bonding. See also:Excalibur.
And every damn Lantern Ring (except Orange)
Actually…canon states even an Orange ring will seek a new wielder.
One of the Guardians caused *all* active power rings, regardless of power source (except black) to create a duplicate and seek out a qualified person to deputize during the events of Blackest Night.
The issue is the wielders of the rings won’t share power, so will fight for ownership of ALL of the power.
The Orange Lantern Corps.
Categorical proof that capitalism does not work.
If only your say-so was enough to prove anything, you’d prove the world!
And for an encore you’d prove black is white and get yourself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Yes, sweetie, it just “my say-so,” and not an increasingly obvious death spiral of homelessness & unsold products being thrown into landfills.
*headpats*
I would counter that capitalism does work, as long as you consider those to be desired outputs of the system, rather than the undesired side-effects they obviously are.
Not even a “desired output” necessarily, just something not accounted for in the evaluation criteria. Indifference, as opposed to malice. Capitalism works just fine within its own frame of reference, but that frame of reference is strictly limited and dependent on several crucial assumptions that don’t necessarily hold up to the real world.
The point was: there is, still, only one Orange Lantern Wearer, regardless of who else is deemed worthy (currently punching Larf in DCUO)
There’s only one Orange Lantern, because there’s only one Orange Ring.
Although Lex Luthor WAS briefly the Orange Lantern as well during Brightest Day / Blackest Night I think. Otherwise it’s always Larfleeze.
Actually, there are millions of Orange Rings, Larf just kills and consumes all other bearers when they come to recharge
All those ‘light contructs’ he uses? Former Orange Lanterns, each and every one of them
That sounds like ‘There’s only one Orange Lantern Ring’ with extra steps.
No, plenty of rings, just one bearer
The Orbs are Sentient?
and chose her?
possibly, but a thing doesn’t have to sentient or sapient to have this function; they could be scanning for particular traits (strong will, empathy,) or some other vague hard to properly define thing that is based on the preferences of some advanced beings and feels really intrusive and as Superman once put it with the Green Lanterns feels a lot more like being conscripted than chosen as a hero…
(there is a reason the chosen hero trope where they are chosen by some unknown entities or entity and given something tends to be a child fantasy…although I did love that Digimon once had a meta moment calling out the powers of the Digital world for conscripting impressionable children as its soldiers who would trust the whole chosen hero destined to save everyone without questioning it as an adult would *so…you want ME, a person from another world to fight YOUR war?)
that said it could also be scanning for other traits and bond based on some unknown criteria and have nothing to do with being a hero, like maybe Sidney is the reincarnation of the past orb wielder and the Nth beings were energy beings so her soul is technically the post impact weakened and still recovering individual using reincarnation to hide among the population but their spirit signature is naturally still the same and worked as an ID to activate their own past property.
among other possibilities if the orbs select…also of a scary note the orbs could be sapient but not from a Nth perspective so to a human could have near human intelligence or reasoning but still have just been regarded as a basic AI by those that created it.
The orbs were lonely and Sydney was the first person to wander by in 60 million years
We have an a program built into our web browser that isn’t sentient that’s called a search engine I’d say a Nth tech race could do the same with the orbs; searching for a user that has the right type of mind that is non-aggro capable of rapid, multi-task thinking even in times of stress
as far as a ship goes it could of started out as an asteroid after a few additions it became a ship based entirely on the orb tech it wouldn’t’ surprise me if there wasn’t multiple orb users on board just Sydney’s were the only ones to survive… or were they?
Speaking as someone who absolutely hasn’t been involved in any heavily classified secret operations, how seriously devious are the armed services about compartmentalizing information?
If planned by a devious paranoid, you could have entirely disjoint sets of people on the same ship – some of whom know where the ship is, some different set of which know what they’re doing there, and maybe only a tiny few who know why.
So no matter who’s talking out of turn nobody’s got the whole story. Instead they’ve got
“I was on a navy sub and we went to the yucatan paninsula.” or
“I was on a navy sub and we were handling heavy earthmoving and salvage equipment, no idea where we were.” or
“I was on a navy sub, and we were recovering highly classified equipment from the sea floor,” etc…
And when they get down to that last one who actually knows “We were recovering alien technology,” that would be the one that has no idea where, or with what, or how.
It’s possible, if planned by a paranoid. But I have more the impression that people cleared to be working on a project in general are trusted to know in general what the project is about and how it works, such that it would take only one person to spill the whole pot of beans.
The Senior 2 Officers, and the Senior most Chief Petty Officer
In Each Department will Know What Their Department is Expected to Do
And a General Briefing that may be more or less accurate….
The CO, XO, and First Officer (Top Three Ranks on Board)
Will Be Briefed,
and There will be a copy of the orders and briefing in the CO’s Safe….
That is If the Navy is In Control of the Operation….
If Some Damned Spook Shop has Gotten Involved….
Every Briefing on Board May be a Contradictory Pack of Lies….
Everyone knows what they need to do their part of the job and as little more as possible. To coordinate those parts some people need to know more about how all the parts fit together. Even the people who order them go to somewhere and do something with certain equipment probably don’t know the whole story. And the ones who know the whole story might not be told the operational details unless there’s a reason to push that information upwards because something went wrong.
A Submarine navigator would be in on a lot of the need to know things.
especially back in the day of no computers and hand drawn cartography maps.
While forcers are absolutely intent on secret keeping when they discover, there was a leak, they are not always that thorough when it comes to preventing a leak in the first place. Mate of mine worked for a while as civilian administrative staff for the military and one day, while on cleaning duty, found that the main arsenal storage of the base was unlocked. Another day, while clearing out what on a military base would equate to a Jeffrey’s Tube (some maintainance and cable duct between the walls), he accidently walked in on a SAS prep briefing. Non of the Need-To-Know staff knew that door into that particular room even existed.
And as for having security clearance, that doesn’t work as should half the time either. Another mate of mine was working as civilian staff at the entrance door at a military site. One day, a contractor or someother was required to go there (requested by name) but couldn’t be let in because of lack of clearance. That was not so bad, except that in such a case, the person in question needs to be escorted by somebody, usually one of the door guards, during their stay, and non of the door guards had clearance to even be in the building they were guarding (technically not even allowed in the entrance door’s guard room), and those that were allowed inside had no clearance to escort any uncleared personal. The administrative part of the forces couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery; they’d forget to bring the booze.
“while clearing out what on a military base would equate to a Jeffrey’s Tube (some maintainance and cable duct between the walls), he accidently walked in on a SAS prep briefing. Non of the Need-To-Know staff knew that door into that particular room even existed.”
I’m going to be running a Cthulhutech game in the near future, and one of the player characters is a maintenance tech who winds up bonded with one of the Engels because he wrong-turned out a maintenance corridor into the hangar. One of the recurring jokes we’ve already established is “how do I have the clearance to operate this, and yet not the clearance to know about or talk about it?”
I’m more than a little horrified by the realization this is actually completely realistic, and not the absurdist shenanigans we intended it to be.
Someone threw the Chicxulub meteor at the former owner of the spheres. The spheres survived, they didn’t.
If Starship Troopers has taught me anything, the Bugs are to blame.
Or perhaps Marcos Inaros. Those jerky belters.
I still need to watch the last season-I want Marcos to be spaced or shot.
The Expanse is one of the best hard sci-fi shows I’ve ever seen, I swear.
Or they did and are sleeping inside the final orb in a recovery hibernation
holy fuck if you need a 100 teraton explosion to kill a user of the orbs sydney is more powerful than we first believed
There’s no kill like overkill!
unless overkill is a barely kill no kill then its an “oh shit what are we fighting?” moment.
“We had to nuke the thing just to make it notice us!?”
Last panel, Mamma Scoville ain’t buying that innocent act :P
Neither does her Dad. Or her CO. Or the boffins. Somehow the last 65 million years of evolution are All Her Fault
Was referring to Mama’s narrowed eyes, no one else’s eyes (that we can see) are narrowed like that
Note that Dad may not buy the act, but he absolutely approves of the possibility that his daughter wiped out the dinosaurs. He’s wearing a “That’s my girl!” grin if ever I’ve seen one.
Sorry, but what’s up with Leon’s eyes? You sometimes draw people with these tiny irises and pupils and it makes them look super weird
Believe Leon’s eyes are naturally like that, they just (what is the opposite of ‘dilate’?) more noticeably when nervous like most other people
The opposite of dilate is contract. Which is mildly confusing when discussing childbirth, where you want some bits dilated while others need to contract.
That was it, thank you
So, her balls impacted. And wiped out the Dinosaurs. Potentially.
Of coruse that would mean they have been on earth and in that spot for about 66 millions years, before being found.
The one Ring is a utter amateur compared ot them.
Her orbs wouldn’t have pumped of megatons of vaporized iridium into the atmosphere, which we know happened during the K-T Event. Most of Erath’s iridium seems to have come from that one strike. They might have ridden the whatever-it-was to the surface, or had it dropped on them, but they didn’t do all that damage by their lonesome.
Doesn’t have to have been a meteor, though. Might be a good reason to build a starship hull out of iridium, the stuff’s much more common in asteroids so easier to get at if you have belt mining. Or maybe someone stole every armored vehicle in the Hammer’s Slammers universe, tied them together, and dropped them on the orbs for funsies.
To be fair, the One Ring actively wanted to be found.
Was just wondering: does anyone actually check to see who authorized security clearance, or why?
Or simply check to see that someone claiming to have it actually does?
This depends entirely on the nature of the organisation. Which may well depend on the nature of the government. We can generally assume the governments that spend well on wage/salaries for the plebs like teachers and street cops can reasonably expect high performance from their security-type employees. But it is a fact that where the proles are paid poverty wages, then government security systems tend to be lackluster. Oddly, it is these uncaring governments that tend to start fights against less affluent nations, and then need their allies to pull them out of the mud.
The security/IT people setting the permissions generally need pretty high-level clearance, given that they can just grant it to themselves in the system. Even if they would get caught, a whole lot of info can be leaked and damage done in just a few minutes, which is why most systems require multi-user authorization and/or biometric access to grant admin permissions.
No. The IT and security people cannot give themselves higher security clearance. That’s handled by the various departments and requires background checks, requests from above, interviews, and a lot of time. Well, that is unless you’re a relative of Little Donnie Two Scoops. Then you get it immediately even if the Department in question says “Fark no!”
Access to certain systems, code-worded projects, compartmentalized data? In theory someone could escalate privileges or gain unauthorized access. It happens. And if you are caught it means the end of your career and a long time in Federal prison.
Right, official clearance and access is tightly controlled, but all that red tape ultimately results in someone updating a database record in the security systems, which (without very careful design) can be done without said red tape ever occurring.
Yes, system alerts and monitoring will probably catch such things very quickly, but you only need 2 minutes to steal proprietary data/samples and flee to asylum in another country.
Well executed, Chkow’s Gun works very well and can even provide some clever easter egg hunts. In Shaun of the Dead, the entire plot is revealed beat by beat right at the beginning, when Shaun and his mate talk about how they intend to spend the day, but you wouldn’t notice until you rewatch it. The trope doesn’t demand that everything shown is plot relevant and used before the end of the story (it doesn’t aply to EVERYTHING). A lot of shown/described elements can be just character description, scene building, mood setting, lore dump/world building, … and yes, lampshading or foreshadowing. A well executed Checkow’s Gun foreshadows, a badly executed one lampshades.
I’m guessing the K-T event was the fault of the orbs’ previous owner. Though I can’t rule out time travel being a function of the flight orb.
Point of fact on Chekhov’s Gun, it only states that the plot device be shown so as not to come out of nowhere when it is used. This could simply be a Red Herring, a plot point that seems important but ultimately has no relevance to the story. No decision needs to be made right now.
I forget the series or movie but I remember once a scientist in a show being dead certain something worked a certain way or was for a certain purpose, like advanced alien tech, and this was driving the episode or such but at the end it was all for something totally different and they turn to the scientist who just shrugs “I did say I was only guessing, how the hell would I have actually known?”
which yeah, there are so many moments in sci-fi that feel like they should be red herrings because the human scientist way too easily deduces the nature of the alien tech, space monster, alien life forms, just by looking at them.
Except, since the characters in-story are currently poised to react to the possible red herring, it’s not irrelevant to the story because the characters driving the story are reacting to it. Whether or not it’s related at all, it’s still relevant to the story because the characters believe that it’s a significant possibility.
Chekhov’s gun comes from a comment Chekhov made saying something along the lines of if you hang a gun on the wall in act 1, it should be fired in the next act, otherwise don’t put it there.
The origin of Chekhov’s gun is to not put red herrings. Everything that you put in the scene should contribute to the story. I have not studied literature so the meaning may have changed, but I am very confident the original term “Chekhov’s gun” comes from comments Chekhov made against red herrings, not for preventing Deus Ex Machina.
I don’t understand why they would be looking at Sydney that way. It is very unlikely that she caused the K-T event and even if she did it would have been the best thing for everyone in that room. Otherwise the dinosaurs would have lived and humans would most likely not have been.
Sydney has unlocked the ability to use the pickup line: You can call me an extinction class event because I’m about to rock your world.
Cambrian Explosion?
I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me.
I was just watching the latest episode of “Hot Ones” with Tom Holland and it occured to me that someone as notorious as a Spice Fiend like Halo would most likely be a shoe-in for a ep if it existed in universe, any chance we will see Halo on a expy of it with possible Grakz as a “Special” Guest?
She did not steal them.. she was INFECTED by them as they are parasitic in nature.
The shorter the life span, the faster evolution happens, right? Ergo, bacteria evolve faster than multicellular life. And viruses even faster. According to evolution, life had to evolve from the single cell to multi cell. Whats to say that it didn’t happen for every kind (note: “kind” does not mean “species”) of animal? So humans could have evolved along every other extinct animal, then killed every species that posed a threat to them (or was too delicious). After all, the komodo dragon and the alligator still exist. But what do I know?
No, faster reproduction equals higher rate of mutation. Mutations over many generations that prove beneficial and are passed on become dominant or expressed traits as they are selected for either by environmental pressure or make them more sexually attractive to mates.
so NO, humans could not have and did not evolve alongside every extinct animal; the sheer amount of data points to point out that this is not what happened is staggering.
And a teensy small insignificant little ever-so-slightly-sticky point: your oxidation medium. There’s a reason monkeys did not evolve “under da seee”.
Life didn’t have to evolve from single cell to multicellular, it just happened to do so. There is no intent, purpose, or direction to evolution.
Multicellularity evolved only once for all known multicellular beings. This has been proven quite thoroughly. It might have evolved more times, but if it did those lifeforms are all extinct and they left no evidence of ever existing.
You refuse to use species as a category, so you cannot now speculate about humans specifically since human is a species. You cannot reject a category and then apply it, that’s either absurd or cheating.
So for this question I will ignore your previous rejection of species, and assume you mean that the human species evolved along every (“other” is nonsense since humans aren’t extinct, so I will be ignoring that too) extinct animal species. This shows that you don’t understand how evolution works and how it relates to species. So let me explain.
Species are badly defined, they’re simply a group of populations that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. So there is no way to tell if two populations are are seperate species or not unless you bring them together, but then the act of bringing them together is effectively merging the populations, in which case you didn’t discover a species: You created one species out of two. The concept of “species” is only useful for categorizing living things in our books, it doesn’t actually mean anything. And it further breaks down when you get to non-sexually reproducing species. For example, many bacteria freely share genetic material with unrelated other bacteria. How do you define a species that reproduces by splitting and the individuals remodels their genes whenever they feel like it?
Chaos Chaos smirks and raises a pseudopod. “While we aren’t multiCELLULAR”…
“Kinds” but “not species”? I am giving you serious side-eye. You mean like ” every animal according to its kind”? Humans existed at the same time as all other animals? If you’re trying to sneak creationism in you can stop right now.
The previous orb owner may have been investigating the remnant of the crater for a special mineral.
Perhaps they found something even more powerful in the crater, and abandoned the orbs… 0_o
Maybe the “something even more powerful” was smallish, armed with poison spines and born to stealth tactics. Maybe of the family Conidae (qv), or perhaps a stonefish (Synanceia), or maybe a school of Irukandji or Box Jellyfish. If you aren’t armoured before you meet these charmers, you won’t need the armour… Earth really is a Death Planet.
I wonder if there’s some way Sydney could have brought up the Flight orb’s FTL history to Earth with that fuzzy image and just shown Cora’s crew the data it would have been working on for that journey to Earth.
It’d be interesting to know if they could have seen enough to debug it and determine where exactly it intended to take her on Earth. Depending on the history data, it might have even given an previous position relative to the universe that they could have used to wind back and work out the exact time the journey was made… Scary thought though… The last orb user travelled from Fracture station to Earth… so if something came through with them that caused the disaster or there was some kind of disruption, then it came from the very site she’s consistently visiting… Maybe 66 million years ago… Which I imagine is a very long time, even for an intergalactic site.
As it seems, that at this time, Earth is the only place that has super-type people, I will throw out this idea. The being that had the orbs did have some sort of issue, crashed on Earth. See when Sydney was thinking that the last plase (earth) was fuzzed out. So whatever this being was, its essence spread in Earth’s environment. A concentrated amount? or the last part of the being maybe being a symbiote attached to Maxima. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-414-the-o-g-s-origin-of-the-gold-stuff/
some talk about the mineral spread around the earth from the impact, who know that the being was even made of flesh and blood?
The key thing to make a decent Chekov’s Gun is that it can’t be too heavy-handed. Don’t bury it five hundred red herrings, but also don’t make it the only thing that stands out in the early scenes.
I think the best way to go about that is to make the Gun important for reasons other than acting as the Third Act’s Deus Ex Machina. The Gun should be important to the characters and/or the world in a way that suggests that even if it WASN’T a Chekov’s Gun, it would still make sense that it was placed above that particular mantlepiece, loaded and ready to kill somebody.
Deus Ex Machina Gun?
I’d think that would become noticeable enough even for Checkov.
While laughing at Sidney’s response at the end for like the twentieth time (I love this trope a little too much and wish I could implement it better myself a “Hey I wasn’t responsible for that I wasn’t even there…I think…maybe…actually you know what let me check my ship logs and get back with you on that…I don’t think I was your “God” or…was I…did I do that..sounds like me at times…but…”
any who,
looking at some comments and going back to an old discussion that relates both to Sidney’s orbs and Maxima’s (symbiote whatever).
Are they sapient? In other series when someone bonds with some super power source it runs this line from *not sapient but may be allowing the subconscious to manifest* to it has some sort of intelligence but stays subtle…clear up to it talks in your ear.
funny enough the symbiotes from Marvel comics and the Witchblade have both been everywhere on this scale depending on the writer at the time. *I don’t count full possession like the Angelus as a super suit bonding due to the complete take over of the host…at least until near the end of the Witchblade series right before the entire franchise decided it wanted to set its entire house on fire for some reason.
-mini rant: 13 Artifacts was a terrible idea that destroyed the mythos of multiple characters, convoluted what didn’t need any further convoluting, retroactivity altered key characters in contradictory ways, aimed higher than it needed to and ended with a reality re-write that resulted in multiple properties being written into corners.
any who, all of that aside, main point.
at the end there…what if that is the Orbs talking through Sidney? She doesn’t realize it, what if they are a shared mind with her but rest in her subconscious mind and synched up so what little they express themselves consciously can’t be told apart from a lack on inhibition, ADD moment, or impulse.
in other words when everyone looks at Sidney, where she might have normally not reacted with anything but a raised eyebrow or a “come on really?” the orbs being in her mind now go defensive “Hey I had nothing to do with that” type of response instead.
-this reasoning can also apply to Maxima, but given the longer timeframe how much of her aggression is her vs the war-bot (?) she is bonded with.
long short as I rambled,
what if the orbs are sentient, bonded with Sidney mentally, and what Sidney is saying here is really the orbs talking through her but she doesn’t realize it.
My thing about Chekhov’s Gun is less that everything that’s shown has to have a purpose, more that if something is focused on, it has to have a purpose… Like… why spend 3 real time weeks going into fine detail about succubus history if it’s not going to be relevant to the story at some point? I mean, otherwise it’s a 6 page diversion from the plot for no reason other than to fill pages. If it’s to justify the use of the word “slave”, it’d make more sense in the story to just not actually have it be brought up… I could see Dabbler grabbing Tom’s “lips” and shutting them like…
Not actual dialogue, just the gist of what’s said:
Tom: “… sl-”
Dabbler: *grabs his lips and shuts them* Shh, the people of this planet are really prudish and don’t need to know about the history of our sex life.
Bam, don’t need to explain it.
Yes chekov’s gun can make things too predictable… but only to those who are well versed in story telling. With Netflix’s Voltron thing, I predicted Shiro’s face heel turn that happened in the 7th season… and I predicted it on episode 1… based on a subtle Chekhov’s gun, or in this case, Chekhov’s Alien Tech Prosthetic Arm. It took 7 seasons for the payoff, and by then I’d almost forgotten about the prediction and was starting to think I’d misread the clues.
Thing is, I’m proud of my prediction, and not at all disappointed that the plot was that predictable to me. Yes I love it when a twist is thrown at me that I didn’t anticipate and the plot ends up far away from where I expected. And yes many times the Chekhov’s Gun makes everything ENTIRELY too predictable, but that’s less a fault of the trope and more a fault of using it in too heavy handed a fashion. The trick is to have the gun clearly visible in the background, but have other things going on in the foreground that take the viewer’s attention away from it. If you then have a character go and point out the gun, mention that it’s loaded, and that they do frequent target practice, and they have a bullet with so-n-so’s name on it… well that’s just going overboard and making it too obvious that if not him, then SOMEONE is going to use that gun to shoot so-n-so.
You can avert the trope by having the gun try to be used, but the one it’s meant to be used on might disarm the person first. Hell, have them melt the gun so it’s unambiguous that it can’t be used. It at least is still relevant to the story even if it’s not the gun that stops the villain.
Point is… the chekhov’s gun should be a background thing, indistinguishable from simple set design until it’s time to use the gun, and have the red herrings also be similar… Not to focus on red herrings and leave the gun in relative obscurity. That just ends up being awkward and leaves loose ends for the story.
The best example I’ve seen is in the Mistborn series, after 3 books and much world-building about how the magic system relies on metals interacting with people’s bodies. During the climactic battle, a plain piece of jewelry a primary magic-using character has been wearing the entire time is suddenly recognized for what it really is… I had to put the book down and walk around for a minute to process all the implications.
Complete Left Field Comment
The Orbs were/are tools for Scouts from an Intergalactic or Inter-universal Refugee Ship or Fleet
The Unknown Forces that attacked the Alari
(So far no one has recognized those)
Are What they are running from….
Or the reverse and the mechathulu are on the run from the makers of the orbs and this whole thing is so high up that
These guys treated a whole planet and it’s inhabitants like a plot of land and small animals to be paved over to make a new home but panicked when (the takers) were detected.
Seems Unlikely that the Aggressors would be Willing to allow Unknowns to Simply Pickup Their Tech.
Even assuming that the Orbs represent what they consider to be limited Risk
unless the tech isn’t a weapon, it just has the same tech energy signature as their other tech that the mechathulhu’s responded to and the orbs are actually some ancient accidentally dropped toy or swiss army knife and was forgotten about by the owner.
It would kind of be like if someone scanned a gameboy realizing it has the same components as a combat drone but due to the lack of familiarity and being in conflict with the owner of said tech reacts to it the same as if it were a weapon.
also it could be possible both sides are aggressors only one is significantly less advanced than the other. Things are seldom so cut and dry.
Speaking of Chekhov and his firearm fetish: Marvel has been doing it well from the start, something mentioned in passing in one movie gets referenced or featured in a later one
Correction, “I didn’t have anything to do with that YET”
Don’t forget, to confirm someone stole something from a country, first that thing has to exist.
*flashback to Dabbler showing they don’t exist*
*return to present*
Still going with my hypothesis that they’re projections of Sydney’s power, and not the power themselves.
By that logic did aliens have salvage law about spaceships on another planet? Besides for WMD finders keepers losers die
Now you’ve got me thinking what movie climax could involve ALL those elements.
But yes, I think your solution to Chekov’s Gun is the only viable one.
I used to drive my (now) ex up the wall with that. Some rando would show up in a mystery program, say a line or two, or even just walk in, I’d say “he did it” and was almost always right.
Out of curiosity, how old is that space station Sydney went to? The last place before fuzzy on the orbs’ travel history?
What happened to all the bling on Maxima’s uniform?
I suspect the ribbon racks are discrete items that can be attached to the uniform jackets, rather than each one being individually sewn in. It would therefore make sense for the extraneous (and uncomfortable?) shinies to be taken off and set aside when the team move from the public presentation to the private working environment, even if they don’t take time to change out of the rest of the dress uniform.
i bet 50 krommer that syndey gets into a time travel type shinaniagin and causes the K-T event.