Editor’s Note #57

It’s the long awaited return of lingering OblivAeon questions!

Upcoming Schedule:

• Tuesday, August 2nd: Episode #221: Creative Process: Nexus Primalus
• Tuesday, August 9th: No Episode! We’re at Gen Con!
• Tuesday, August 16th: Gen Con Live 2022
• Tuesday, August 23rd: Editor’s Note #58
• Tuesday, August 30th: Episode #222: Writers’ Room: Aminia Twain saves the Freedom Five

Recording Schedule:

• Friday, July 29th: Episode #221: Creative Process: Nexus Primalus
• Saturday, August 6th: Gen Con Live 2022
• Friday, August 19th: Editor’s Note #58
• Friday, August 26th: Episode #222: Writers’ Room: Aminia Twain saves the Freedom Five

I think lots of banter is warranted when the gist is “Hey, guys, I’m not dead!”

Bold of Christopher to not consider trees food. :V

Nixious the Picked Last for Kickball.

The himbofication of Benchmark (which I guess just means pointing out that he is one) suddenly makes me like him even more. XD I’m just thinking of that one card image they shared from the Terrorform’s deck.

Cannot wait for the Muppet variants when Vengeance hits DE.

I would’ve thought Bunson Honeydew as Baron Blade, myself. If not Beaker.

I see Christopher is countering the Achilles’ Turtle thing with the classic “WOLF EAT MONKEY!” argument.

Hooray for fixing Alacritous Subdominant. Never noticed the instrument color thing, though. So of course, now I’m gonna go check it out and compare with EE. <.<

I definitely agree with Setback as a himbo, but you only got to the point near the end: Legacy and Haka are hunks, not himbos.

To be a himbo you have to have three elements:

• Pure of heart
• Hot of bod
• Dumb of ass

The first point is crucial. Ansel G Moreau can never be a true himbo because no matter how hot and dumb he is, he will never be pure-hearted. Same goes for Ra.

Legacy and Haka aren’t himbos; they just aren’t dumb enough. To be dumb of ass, you have to occasionally just stare at them and go “How are you that dumb?!” and I just don’t see it with these guys.

Thor is a himbo. Hulk is not.

Haka and Legacy could easily be written as a Himbo but that doesn’t mean it’s how they’re typically portrayed.

I think both of them ride high on the naivete scale, but at the same time, I also feel like that fits Legacy much better than Haka. Like, a state of optimistic, blissful ignorance seems like something you’d find in Legacy stories just in general.

Yeah, Legacy isn’t dumb or ditzy so much as socially naive when it comes to being aware of the darker parts of humanity.

While Benchmark definitely comes off as outright ditzy and unobservant at times.

I have to disagree. I don’t think that Legacy is just naïvely unaware of the bad parts of humanity. I think he’s just not one to wallow in negativity; he focuses on the positive. Just because someone doesn’t cynically talk about how terrible everything is, doesn’t mean that person is unaware of that badness. Legacy doesn’t focus on how terrible people are, he focuses on how they can be better. Legacy is an optimist.

Kind of comes naturally from being an agent of Progress.

As far as him being aware of the darkness, did he encounter Iron Legacy during that event? Or Legacy of Destruction at any point? He should at least know of their existence now due to the Sliver of Creation story. That probably felt like some weird fever dream, though.

We’ve been told he has fought Iron Legacy and that fight left him battered which is why he didn’t go to the Wagner Mars Base for Blade’s trap that would’ve killed him.

As for Legacy of Destruction we haven’t been told if they make any appearance beyond Disparation.

Ah, gotcha. I’d have to relisten to the recent episode, but I thought I remembered Iron Legacy and LoD brought up when the Freedom Five were phase shifting through different variants aboard La Paradoja. But like they said, the heroes may not remember that any more than a bad hangover.

They did but that’s not quite enough time for me to think of any significant interaction from that La Capitan plot. If it was a comic it happens over a few pages at best and you don’t have multiple together.

Makes one wonder what Unity sees in him. Unless he’s just the rebound because Legacy (Felicia) didn’t work out…

I’m sorry, what now? I’m not one for shipping, but that pairing makes no sense to me.

Alternatively, Benchmark and Unity make a ton of sense! Ditzy and unobservant can be cute, so long as they’re not unobservant of their significant other.

I was thinking how in one of the followup questions about the Boldest Legacy episode (what could they learn from each other, IIRC it was), C&A called out our Legacy as often being blind to the nastier things our country does.

And how pretty much the entire reason AZ and Legacy don’t get along is because AZ views Legacy as naive, as too blind to what could go wrong and the bigger picture.

We are talking a woman who is extremely extraverted, extremely perky and genki girl, and treats creating her robots the way a toddler would play with dolls.

So I’m the other way around and feeling like what wouldn’t she see in an extraverted, ditzy himbo who is basically a living robot.

talking about Muppets and classic lit I would recommend Boom Comics Muppet Robinhood. Kermit as Robin and Piggy as Marrion obviously. Sam Eagle as the Sheriff “the ignorant peasants need a strong hand to guide them”
Big, interesting twist is Fozzie as Tuck- he is not a mendicant friar, but Prince John’s court jester sent to infiltrate the merry men. so we get a betrayal and redemption arc. his redemption quest is to find immortal crusader knights to help fight evil
“ho-ho who were you expecting bear?”
also when Richard Lionheart shows up it is Pepe - “I told chu I was a King Prawn m’kay”

“treats creating her robots the way a toddler would play with dolls”

As someone who monologues to her collection of stuffed animals, I for one, am insulted.

Picturing Sentinels characters as Muppets I figure Captain Cosmic would have to be Link Hogthrobe with Strangepork as Infinitor

Akashbuhta could be “the great trash heap” from Fraggle Rock. It’s Henson so it works.

Haka would be Sweatums right?

Chairman played by Uncle Deadly

I agreed that Piggy would be a great Dawn so would Expatriet be Spamala Hamderson? The only Marksman Muppet I can think of is Lou Zealand

Instead of Gonzo as Absolute Zero what about Beaureguard?

For the Alien aspect compared to Muppets how about Doug Jones as Tempest?

Statler and Waldorf as Scholar? one giving people advice and one inside the stone making snark comments. I could also see Swedish Cheff as Scholar “Bork, Bork, Bork” - “oh wow John, that is really deep I have to think about that” Bunsen Honeydew is also older and smart

Link would be a good a Legacy, also.

When they started assigning the Vengeful Five as members of the Electric Mayhem, my first thought was also to have Janice be Friction, at which point my wife turned to me and said, “She’s Ermine. Obviously.”

like, fer sure.

Brooke Sheilds as Skyscraper

In her episode they were doing Alice in Wonderland, so Bunson used a shrinking/growth ray on Brooke

Reminds me of one of the “replace everyone except one human with Muppets” discussion on Twitter. My suggestion was Empire Strikes Back, with the human being Frank Oz (himself, not as a puppeteer) playing Yoda.

The talk of Muppets does little for me, but the idea of Tim Curry playing Baron Blake is an absolute delight. I think a Kickstarter is called for…

So I’ve been trying to cut back on my negativity lately, but I couldn’t contain myself after this episode. Let me be entirely clear that I have nothing against the user who calls themself Achilles’s Tortoise; everybody on the Internet has to come up with a username that will be relatively distinct, so I’m not going to fault you for a reference to that old thought-experiment. But that old thought-experiment ITSELF is f####ing STUPID, and people should stop calling attention to it. It’s ridiculous, utterly meaningless sophistry, as completely invalid as trying to tear a dollar bill in half and then claim that you have two dollars now. Not all of the old Greek philosophers deserved to have stood the test of time; probably the only reason we even know that Xeno’s Paradox existed is that it was so legendarily stupid that nobody could resist the urge to mock it, and thereby feed it with continuing attention (myself included).

Incidentally, all these comments about Benchmark being dumb puzzle me; you remember he’s a chess master, right?

No one called Benchmark dumb? He seems “ditzy and unobservant”.

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Well he has a blind spot for his employment, obviously. I wouldn’t call him dumb in general, just with respect to that particular subject. Heavily invested in something that he depends on to help define his very identity, to say nothing of his economic lifestyle and the future he hopes to build for himself, he turns a blind eye to things he probably should be taking more seriously. Even very smart people are capable of such willful ignorance, around things which they’re emotionally dependent upon.

I personally think that Benchmark is one of those characters that, in RPG terms, has high Intelligence but low Wisdom.

(Also, I second the “Achilles and the Tortoise” thought experiment as being stupid.)

… yeah. Where are you getting that people think he’s dumb?

This is a great way to put it. And off-the-charts charisma.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s at least got some technical know-how, but he’s also high on the himbo scale if I am not mistaken.

The podcast episode defined him as “himbo”, and this thread has defined “himbo” as requiring dumbness by definition. I can’t really argue with word of god, but I can disagree with the community consensus on how word of god is interpreted, or definitions of terms which the creators used without defining their meaning.

Ah, through the “definition” of himbo. I don’t think the “dumbness” within being a himbo is really related to intelligence, it’s more of a social perception. Some smart people can act very dumb.

They can act in a way that is disdained by society, ignoring or flouting its preconceptions. I’m not sure that qualifies as “dumb” though.

Regardless, Benchmark trusted the company who hired him to not be evil; most of us expect a similar degree of faith in their employer to be justified. It used to be the standard after all; you devoted twenty years of your life to working your way up in the company, and in exchange you were guaranteed a parachute of some appropriate color, maybe a nice gold wristwatch when you retired. Only later did screwing over your longest-suffering subordinates somehow become an acceptable business practice. Granted, in the old world, kickstarting a card game created by three people who then later started a lore podcast, all that probably couldn’t have happened in the former world economy. Not sure it’s a fair trade…

So, how about that Zeno’s Paradox eh?

I wish, but he’s largely retired after his stroke. Quite unfortunate.

Christopher’s dead business partner is a Paultergeist.

A good way to think of OblivAeon empowering infinite copies of un-singular scions: they don’t subtract power from him, they just mirror a fraction of the power inside him without taking anything out. He’s not a battery being drained, he’s a huge Tesla coil driving multiple tiny generators.

It would have worked, but also, consider the price.

What exactly is a distinction between tuning out tinnitus versus forgetting you’re hearing it?

I feel like the cave water was in more danger from Christopher’s blood than vice versa. Someone should probably go there and check to make sure that all the blind cave fish haven’t been replaced with miniature Christopher clones armed with tiny spears made from the fish ribs.