Ep 31 of The Letters Page! Discussion - Visionary- spoilers from people not paying attention to etiquette within

This episode is the Longest one yet! In that it contains the most Longs.

Listen to it here!

Huh. It appears to exist in all podcatchers simultaneously. Weird.

The longest one yet, except for the two weeks past which were longer :P

Also, I think you guys might have lost it with your letters. It is like a soap opera

I maintain it is the Longest.Jokes within jokes!

It is indeed the episode with the most Long. Probably ever.

And I just got it... *sigh*

As did I.

That was painful.

Two episodes in a row where the first appearance is wrong for the character.  Wiki has been updated. 

Vanessa Long is not the only one who can cause mental pain to others!

If you aren't afraid of spiders, you haven't been paying attention.

Finally someone says what I've known all this time. Thank you, Adam!

So I was surprised initially when this episode was announced as being so early in the rotation (for all that this is early...) I figured, with Fixed Point and "the child is the center" and all that Visionary was more or less the most important character in the games, but... Well, I guess not! She's in a lot of things, yeah, but she's not exactly the most important to what's going on.

I do wish they'd mentioned what experiences inspired the Macabre Spectre and Granite Oni, at least.

The sheer amount of Animalverse puns are staggering, though. Kudos to whoever is on that train.

Oh hey, a teaser about more Argent Adept story! I'll just make sure to ask that in time for... his podcast... wait a minute... *shakes good natured fist*

Wow, there's a full fledged villain war going on in the letters. It seems everybody wants a piece of our creator duo... literally, really, considering it's Biomancer and the Gloomys we're talking about. *grabs popcorn*

This somehow contained less info about OblivAeon/timeline stuff than I was expecting.

The moral we should take away from this story is clearly that you should only ever buy your kids harmless adorable toys that can never ever be turned into really scary concepts. Just in case.

The Visionary joining the Prime Wardens in the RPG timeline is interesting. Does she actually outright replace Argent as leader/teammember, I wonder, considering he seems to be pretty tied to Megalopolis by that point?

I figure the MAcabre Specter is your typical skeleton/Halloween type scary.

Granite Oni is one I definetly wanted to hear about.

I also wish there was more about the relationship between Visionary and Dreamer. Visionary wants to keep her distance, and I guess she doesn't devote a lot a thought to her younger self, but... I feel like there has to be more there. I mean, she probably didn't tell the family who she was, so the parents just know a super hero brought back their child, but Dreamer has to have figured out something more is going on during their "psychic therapy" and I'm curious how she feels about knowing a possible future version of herself.

Still future section was totally worth it, I even laughed when they pulled out of spoilers just long enough to say "more spoilers" and go right back in. Go *redacted* and ah *redacted*

Spoilers ahead. Fair warning.

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I really feel the Tactics portion of these stories, not just for Vanessa, but as a whole, are really becoming a red headed stepchild.

Take for instance the young Vanessa. The only mention of her is Tactics is "yeah shes alive but doesn't do anything". What? You have a character with huge amounts of power that is a major crux in the SotM story and in the RPG does amazing things. Then in Tactics, she is just not important and never heard from again. Really? Not even gonna come up with a cool tie-in story down the road with Man Grove who has her toy? 

Then there is the Visionary we all know and love, who is said to just kinda die off. Not in a specific fight of importance or in a glorious sendoff like Ra. Just, ya know, dies. End of story. The deaths of major characters feels like they should be more weighty and important than what we were given here. 

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I feel like there was a missed oppertunity with the Projections and how they relate to the SotM universe as a whole. If Toy Master was a projection that came from older Vanessa through psychic links spilling over, I find it difficult to believe that there was not some of that present in every other projection. The >G crew had very clear connections whether they knew it or not and didn't jump on that oppertunity. The one questioner got it down I thought.

Dark Hero = Iron Legacy (Legacy quote on card)

Omi = Shen Long/Fixer/Operative. Also, Fixer quote on card)

Arracnid = Akash (both have the same eyes and are nature based. Why have Argent quote on the card if not?)

Demon = Apostate (obvious connection. Fanatic quote on card)

Spectre = Spite (Spite coming back as a dead person is ghostly. Wraith quote on the card)

Tooth Fairy = Biomancer (the tooth fairy eating a tooth, which is biological material as an alagory to biomancer using biological material as well. Unity is quoted on the card, but she is a weird foil as she manipulated non-biological material, so the quote is not too out of place.)

Toy Master = Visionary and the Cocoon connection and what her handler made her do with toys (visionary quote on card).

Whipicorn = Well, ok, this one breaks down what I'm doing and makes total sense just being the thing of nightmares of a little girl.

It may not be "cannon" stuff, but to me these connections are solid and give the deck much greater context to the rest of the SotM story. Common Christopher, you had these on a silver plate and chucked it!

Sorry for being a grump, but is anyone else getting tired of the whole Biomancer/Cult of Gloom schtick? 

It's starting to feel like the recurring joke is getting overplayed and kicked into the ground.

It does seem to take up an increasing amount of time in the show, which could instead be used to include additional questions.

I now work at a computer for the vast majority of the day, so listening to a 2 hour podcast is no big deal.  But when that podcast of that length is losing half an hour of content to random in-character shenanigans…ehhhh.

I don't want to poop on anyone's parade, but I'd rather Christopher and Adam drop some of the Cult of Gloom/Biomancer chicanery and answer 4-5 more questions.

As for the big Tactics spoiler…it's not like this wasn't forecasted.  The materials from Sentinels Tactics outright say that she's barely clinging to reality, needing the rubik's cube to provide a mental focus.  And frankly, I'm okay with a hero fading out naturally–sometimes, that's a reward in and of itself.

I think we might possibly be approaching the problematic ratio line of "people spending more time on their schtick than on asking their questions", but I still find the general overall concept amusing/entertaining.

Spite back from the dead occurred long after the Dreamer stuff and not a connection I'd think of.   

I don't have any issue with it.  The Cult of Gloom bit took a bit longer than I would like last week but it was still entertaining which is the point of these podcasts I feel.  I do apologize I did add to the Biomancer questions this week but they are ones I was still curious anout.   I also have a normal long list of questions that hopefully end up answered too.  

Continuing Spoiler talk*

Edit: I apoligize to everyone. I'd never thought of the white text trick, and I was away at Gencon so this is the earliest I could get back and alter this post. I'll try and do better in the future

I think this comes down to the different focuses of the "comic's writers" for both sections. Dreamer does have a ton of power, but look at what all that power gets her? Comas and dangerous mental projections that kill people, and look at the lives led by Supers in Tactics. They are hated by the general populace, disliked by the government, and they constantly are in fights for their lives.

Vanessa is barely a teenager, it isn't unreasonable to assume that she just decides to not take part in life and death struggles and have a large portion of the people who know her hate her for having powers she probably never wanted in the first place. We figure Visionary taught her safety measures so her power is under control, so you have a character who chooses to do nothing… and so nothing happens.

Now, I agree getting told that would have been helpful, and talking about that story and perhaps even taking elements of that story and working it into an interesting arc could all be done, but Tactics is a pretty dark and brutal world in the sentinels timeline and having a powerful character fade out because she chooses to not get involved kind of fits that style of world. Everything is hopeless and bad, the new generation isn't really stepping up, and the stories are more focused on how the constant battle is wearing on the heroes of old.

As to your second point, I disagree for a few reasons, but I recognize this is all opinion.

The biggest is that falling in battle has a different type of narrative structure. If she is killed in a fight, the focus might become the consequences within that fight. The question of "how do we defeat this villain" is still prominent. Instead, the approach they described goes for something a little different. The battle is won, but then she falls. They rush her to receive medical care, unaware of the state of her body and how truly too late it is. And she passes quietly in a hospital room, succumbing to the illnesses and stresses that have haunted her since her first appearance. It is a very somber and stark scene that I picture, one that focuses on her death and also, has echoes of the types of lives that are truly led by people.

She doesn't die in fire and fury on the battlefield. She doesn't die because of some laser blast from a villain or a new threat arising. She dies quietly from her disease, one she has fought longer and harder than any villain. And no villain can take the credit. No person can crow from the rooftops that they killed the Visionary, no villain was capable of it. It resonants with me, perhaps because of the recent loss of my grandmother, but I feel like that is a quiet and powerful moment, instead of something that instead tries to be epic and loud, and it seems to fit her.

Ra, Ra would never die quietly, but he also never had a serious medical problem. Him dying on the battlefield, facing a foe even the gods could not stand before matches his mythic roots, it fits him and the type of character he was. It could work for Visionary, but I think I like a quieter end to her.

Also, this makes the fifth known death of a major hero (Nightmist and Ra from the Card game. Tachyon, KNYFE and Visionary from Tactics) with a lot more hinted at being just utterly terrible. I'm glad things are happier in the RPG, Yikes.

At the risk of being super morbid, are there any other heroes that we think might not make it through OblivAeon?
I’m actually starting to think The Scholar isn’t going to survive, as there’s been little mention of him beyond his mentorly roles and his gift of the philosopher’s stone to Guise.

Hey there people posting spoilers that includes people mentioning dead people- I don't think all of that info was in the "general" portions of their episodes, you can use [ color=white ] [ /color ] to hide what you are doing. And I urge you to do so.

Do not highlight the white space in this post, it may contain spoilers.  Do highlight the whitespace in all my other posts, where ever they are.

Don't forget poor Dr. Medico is dead  in the Tactics timeline as well. (And it's implied that things Anthony's doing might well  leave the Virtuosos line dead yet again .)

Oops, sorry. X3

I actually had been thinking about creating a new thread just for discussing the Tactics timeline anyway. (Maybe one for the RPG timeline too.)

Thanks for the reminder, Matchstick. I'm already dodging mines and such in this particular thread. ;)

Usually, when I drive to and from work, I listen to NPR.

More and more, Wednesday is the best day, because I listen to The Letters Page instead. Today was particularly good, given what’s in the news. Immediately when the episode started, I realized how much I needed to hear a silly joke about the Hanukkah Rhino and hear Adam say, “Ooohhhhh, I see why I was confused!”

Thanks for starting my day with a laugh, Christopher and Adam!

I don’t think La Comodora is going to make it. Older characters usually don’t last long. Also there has not been a nod anywhere that she is around.

Besides question when she really appeared, I get the idea that she is fairly new villian. So there is not much time the readers got to know about her. But they have seen her be young, an adult and get old before our eyes.

Out of the new heroes I am liking La Comadora more than NightMist’s protege or super anime Idealist. It will be sad to see two of my favorite not make it to tactic or the RPG.

I went ahead and made a thread for general spoilery Tactics discussion.

And there's an existing thread for discussing the Fan Personalities, FWIW.

Visionary has premonitions of the future fairly consistently. 

Visionary isn't making the projections though it's the Dreamer.  

They did say in the episode that the Vanessa from this timeline's powers didn't develop the same way as Visionary's, so we don't know for sure she'll be able to predict the future or any variant of that.

You're missing 100% of what I was saying. Visionary's own experiences with the world bled into Dreamers projections and dreams. It's explicitly stated that its this bleed over that created Toy Master. My initial thing was about whos to say where that bleedover started or stopped and how much there could have been.

Obviously, it sounds like >G dissmissed the correlation between past/future events and projections outside of Toy Master, but I'm still calling this a miss on a cool story tie-in that was right there to take, intended or not.

I didn't miss what you were saying.  I don't feel that the correct connection if there is any for that particular projection.  I do agree a lot of them seemed like direct hero analogues when going through the deck but we've beeen told it isn't.   I don't think it's that much of miss but moreso what we inferred especially with seeing Dark Hero. 

So... Adam and Christopher completely misinterpreted my limerick (my fault - my limericks are less than clear at times).  I was asking about the drug that was injected into Vanessa, and who is using it now.

That said, the answer is almost certainly mixed up with Project COCOON, which they were pretty cagey about, so I doubt we missed much information because I was unspecific.  I'll do better next time.

Sounds like all the Be The Gate heroes are going to end up stuck in the core reality after Oblivaeon is over.  That could become a mess, and is actually really surprising.  Usually a "reset" like the OblivAeon arc pares things down rather than adding a bunch of new characters who can easily be confused for old ones.

I'm still unclear on the whole time-travel-post-OblivAeon thing.  Fine, so Visionary didn't actually come from the future, she came from a parallel reality that was further along in time than the core reality.  But Chrono-Ranger and Omnitron-X coming from a post-OblivAeon future still don't make sense.  I can understand when time travelers create paradoxes and prevent their own origins from ever happening, but the coming of OblivAeon doesn't seem to fall into that category.

The impression that I got from C&A's comments was that time/the various universes all advanced as if OblivAeon had never happened.

So Chrono-Ranger and Omnitron-X can both come from "post-OblivAeon" futures because there had never actually been an OblivAeon Event in those futures' pasts.  Those timlines all developed long past the point in time in which the OE occurred because the OE didn't happen (originally?).  But then OblivAeon started messing with realities and the timelines, someone managing to insert himself both before (and yet after?) those futures have come to pass.  The paradox I'm getting here is less time-travely, and more of a eternal-meets-the-temporal variety.

As for the "Be The Gate" heroes, I found that quite interesting as well!  Though they were pretty vague about that...  "We never said all the alternate reality heroes made it back to their realities" versus actually confirmng that some of them are still around.  Plus, we've gone through plenty of episodes know without a single mention of a duplicate hero, so I'm guessing that if there are any, there probably relatively few in number and the exception rather than the rule.

C & A were parsing their words very carefully with that statement regarding alternate reality heroes.  I'm interested to see what comes of that in the RPG, especially.

Can the title of this thread be changed to integrate it has unmarked spoilers? Any discussion of the RPG in this episode is a spoiler, for one thing

It sort of makes sense if you think of time as being in more than one dimension.  In traditional 4th-dimensional time, Omnitron-X shows up in the present, having traveled back from the future to stop himself.  But OblivAeon happens further along ("later") in the 5th-dimension "time", between Omnitrons IV and V, and prevents the Omnitron-X timeline from being reached in the 4th dimension.  I guess OblivAeon has been observing all these time-traveling shenanigans from a dimension outside of spacetime, and at some point in his relative "timeline" he decides he's seen enough and intervenes at a particular point in 4th-dimensional time.

And then I guess, once he decided on that particular point in 4th-dimensional time to attack, he recruited scions who would be active and ready by the time he needed them?  I'm not sure why Progeny and Cosmic Omnitron showed up early, then.

Oh, and also: I'm even more confused about what the Void is now.  In the Argent Adept episode, I gathered it was sort of like the Astral Plane in fantasy/psychic stories, a pseudo-place adjacent to every point in the physical plane, but now we know that Visionary's psyche had a physical manifestation within the Void while she was being suppressed by Dark Mind.  So the Void was connected to Dark Visionary's mind somehow?  Do other psychically-attuned entities have a presence in the Void?

I asked a question that I’m a little disappointed didn’t get an answer: I wanted to know why Dark Visionary didn’t get implemented as a villain, since she goes full-on baddie at some point. From the episode, I guess maybe because Darkmind is there for that role, while Dark Visionary is the dark presence asserting itself while Visionary is a hero?

The villians in SotM represent major crossover story events.  Dark Visionary spent some time as a villain, but she never faced large teams of heroes working together.  That's why she doesn't get a villain deck (although those other details may be relevant too).

She might have been viable as a team villain deck, though.  I'm a bit fuzzier on what the criteria there was.

The other problem is that GtG can only make so many decks.  If they have 11 villains for a 10 villain expansion, somebody has to get the axe, even if they are perfectly eligble from a story perspective.

Also, until OblivAeon, we didn't have any heroes and villains that were the same person.  Alternate-reality or time-traveling versions of the same person, yeah, but not the same character from the same space-time.

She did fight all of Dark Watch at once, but it was that messy situation with Hammer and Anvil.  She would have done well as a team villain, sure--it's not unlike how Plague Rat keeps showing up in other peoples' fights.

Which reminds me: How long was Project Cocoon going on?  In Visionary's timeline, it sounds like it was started in response to the Pan-Asian War, but Major Flay, Truth, and Dare are clearly much older than The Dreamer.

Omnitron-X came from an alternate reality, same as Visionary.  I want to say that C&A said that Chrono-Ranger and La Capitan were the only characters to do any traveling through time in a single timeline and everything else is alternate reality hopping, but don't quote me on that.

As for the OblivAeon event, think of it like this.  You're sitting in a movie theater, watching the The Dark Knight.  This movie theater only shows Batman movies.  At the moment, there are a couple of other screens also showing The Dark Knight.  There are also a few showing Batman Begins, and Dark Knight Rises, while others show Batman: The Movie and Batman & Robin.  Suddenly, OblivAeon cuts the power to the entire theater, and all the screens go black.  You were at the point where the Joker blows up the hospital.  But some of the other screens were further into the movie, and a few others were behind.  Some were watching totally different movies, and therefore timeline comparisons don't make sense.  But they all black out at the same time.

The ChronoRanger is in a screening where some rich fop paid a lot of money to have complete control over the movies shown.  After watching Batman Begins, they decided to skip ahead and watch Dark Knight Rises.  Half way through, they decide that skipping the best movie of the trilogy isn't as much fun as they thought it would be, and pauses the movie to switch it out for The Dark Knight.  Half way through that one is where OblivAeon shows up and cuts the power.

Absolutely.

I'll quote you because I remember that exact same comments in the Chrono-Ranger episode I believe it was.

Also, I have edited my spoiler post. Sorry it took so long, I didn't have internet while at Gencon and I didn't think of such an obvious solution to that particular problem.

It was briefly mentioned that Argent Adept helped exorcised Dark Visionary. Then I went back to listen to the Argent Adept episode again, but couldn’t find the segment that described this part. Will someone help point me to the right episode and the time in the episode? Thanks.

There isn't one. Kind of a thing I guess where the story is really Visionary's and so was held off until her podcast… and yet there was apparently a depth to it on Argent's side that would have been best described in his episode… but wasn't because it was more Visionary's story… etc.

I'm planning on sending in something asking about Argent's side of things to hopefully be covered in one of their "wrapping up stray questions" type interludes.