Did you ever just feel so lucky for knowing someone you met online? Like.. I was one click away from not following you. I was one second away from never even knowing of your existence.I would never have been this happy!!!...
tbh a lot of my advice boils down to “hey you know that terrible horrible looming thing you’re doing your best to avoid and distract and escape as much as possible but no matter what you do it just keeps looming and looming and ruining your life”
yall think Grace ever got zoochosis. I’m imagining him walking in circles counting exactly how many steps it takes to go around the entire perimeter of his Dome ten times over while staring into the middle distance. meanwhile Rocky is shaking Adrian’s shoulders (?) going Honey We Have To Add Enrichment To His Enclosure. Adrian His Squishy Human Brain Is Melting. Do We Have Any Space Middle Schoolers To Throw At Him.
Edit: if one more person starts talking about zoochosis instead of what this post is actually about (a fictional HUMAN man in an alien dome teaching alien middle schoolers In Fiction, not critical Animal behavior scicomm in Real Life) I Will Kill And Block You In That Order
i keep laughing at the way that eridian culture in the movie and eridian culture in the book are not contradictory at all, if you accept that movie rocky is just a total FREAK
grace: boy i sure can't wait to meet other eridians haha!
rocky, putting on a shirt for the first time in four years: rocky has something to tell grace but does grace promise not to be mad, question?
Torance is still working on clean up after the events of the game and towards the end of the last shift of the day over half the team responds to a call a little outside their normal route in a nicer neighborhood.
The call is about a kid teleporting around breaking into homes.
The kid wasn't teleporting, though no one really figured that mistake out until it's too late.
Specifically till after a mishap with one of Mal's portals, and Sonars scream causing the kid to just disappear, and well after they make it back to SDN HQ.
They had no idea that they just fucked with time and space and accidentally screwed themselves into the bad timeline.
Bad outcome timeline:
During a family BBQ, 11 year old Robert has tragically died due to a freak accident that came out of nowhere.
Mecha Man Astral's identity has been leaked and received public backlash as he took on blame for his son's death.
This causes the brave brigade to break up much sooner than it would with Robert living, however the fall out between Robbie and Eliot still results in Shroud killing Astral with his own loaded gun.
In this timeline though, With no brigade, Shroud is able to take the astral pulse and avoid going to jail, causing the Red Ring to expand a lot farther across LA and is not just centralized in Torance.
With no Mecha Man, and a powered up Shroud, hero based companies had a harder time finding a ground to stand on. SDN is one of the few companies to still exist tho, however it is more so militarized than corporate, and much more private.
Shroud is a lot more ruthless than he is in canon, already seeing the numbers before it happens, if he so much as sees one outcome where he is betrayed, he doesn't wait for it to happen before he kills whoever it is (somehow Toxic is still his second).
There is no such thing as real 'heros', they are a dying breed that's gone extinct.
(There's still a small part of him that mourns a small kid would have grown to be one. The rest of him is glad he didn't)
TrackStar is the only brigade member that still calls himself that, he was there that day Robert died and he knows it wasn't the suit that killed him, but he doesn't know what it really was either.
He's still a old man, but absolutely refuses to give up the hero work even at risk of his life. He never did learn how to be just Chase, anyway.
The Z teams lives all turned out different too:
'Visigal never thought to join the Z-team
Sonar ended up in the red ring, Mal-they don't know where this version of her went, only seeing a falling out and eventual going ghost.
Coupé also didn't see a reason to join the Z-team, and due to that continued to be used as a weapon till shroud set his eyes on recruiting her as well.
Flambea was a drastic change, with no Mecha Blue to arrest him that night he kept his fingers but went farther down in a path of destruction.
Apparently there WAS people in the building he set fire that night, he hadn't thought of a possible night shift, Mecha Man had originally managed to escort everyone out before going in to have a "talk" with the arsonist.
Without Robert, after that Flambea had at some point stopped caring. His biggest crime was managing to burn half of LA down before Blazer managed to stop him.
... His family's neighborhood was part of it.
The rest of the team had similar stories, trying the Phoenix program and failing miserably with no dispatcher to mentor them.
Prism's failure was particularly the most public. The amount of shame and anger at the bone zones click baiting headline was enough to blind someone.
Blonde Blazer and Phenomaman are still a couple too.
Oh I left Beef out because originally I didn't really plan on focusing in the current bad timeline all that much but seeing as I kinda forgot to update the AC I'll be nice and give people two options
Firstly, I tend to lean to the head canon that Robert adopted Beef as a puppy sort of midway through the Mecha career and somewhere in his early 20's. This was going to be a plot point in the au at some point and may still be, idk yet.
I might make a separate post about Beef backstory later but essentially if Robert hadn't of found him, poor Beef wouldn't have made it.
As you said, very messed up, I'm leaning towards this being canon au but I know some people won't go for it so....
Alternatively, we can also imagine that maybe Chase while patrolling the streets he found this malnourished puppy half way to barking up its own grave, and maybe it's small little yipping reminded him of the kid he used to babysit and took him in just as Robert surely would have. (Kid always had a bleeding heart) And maybe the small dog (Who's name wouldn't be the same but something equally dumb) would make it.
This is basically what my physical therapist had me do for my back problems last year and it helped with the pain so much! Also walk for at least thirty minutes a day, even if it's just in small chunks throughout the day.
what if to an outsider pov, seeing robert, prism, flambae, and coupé hanging out together is like: three hot baddies and the random guy they adopted into their friend group. except robert is a baddie they just don’t know it.
Yeah so I know it's been brought up a lot but cutting someone is the stupidest thing in Dispatch. Like it really undercuts the message of the game.
The whole point of the game is about redemption and helping people do better but we're forced to cut someone, because they're not doing well number wise. Yeah, they're screwing up but it's not like they're not trying to do better. It's obvious cutting someone would just make them spiral. Especially when they get no support after getting cut. Especially when "Robert" is just starting out with the team. Rehabilitation isn't linear and Blazer knows this.
Not to forget that Blonde Blazer says she most likely wouldn't have let us cut Visi if she had been on the bottom. Look I don't hate Visi, but it really highlights a major failure in the writing. It not only makes Blonde Blazer look hypocritical and like she came up with the idea on the spot, but breeds more resentment towards Visi.
We're forced to take a gentle and accommodating approach with her or we get the bad ending. But we have to cut Coupé or Sonar who are honestly trying. I'm not saying Visi isn't but we have to force her. It's super unfair.
There's a reason why the No Cut AU is so popular and why it's so easy to argue against.
"Oh who will be big fight then?" Toxic! Toxic is right there! Have Shroud enhance him even more! Instead of making his fight a joke with Punch Up.
Think about it, someone we've dealt with since the beginning and someone we've taken as a joke the whole time suddenly becoming a real threat! So much better.
Heck make it a 3rd option! You can choose to argue with Blonde Blazer, you can fight to keep both! If you succeed you get bonus relationship with Coupé, Punch Up, Sonar and Malevola! They do better on missions, maybe due to getting a small passive perk! Like a slight chance that they will succeed when they should've failed.
People would still play the other paths, but honestly give us something that doesn't undercut the whole message.
Torance is still working on clean up after the events of the game and towards the end of the last shift of the day over half the team responds to a call a little outside their normal route in a nicer neighborhood.
The call is about a kid teleporting around breaking into homes.
The kid wasn't teleporting, though no one really figured that mistake out until it's too late.
Specifically till after a mishap with one of Mal's portals, and Sonars scream causing the kid to just disappear, and well after they make it back to SDN HQ.
They had no idea that they just fucked with time and space and accidentally screwed themselves into the bad timeline.
Bad outcome timeline:
During a family BBQ, 11 year old Robert has tragically died due to a freak accident that came out of nowhere.
Mecha Man Astral's identity has been leaked and received public backlash as he took on blame for his son's death.
This causes the brave brigade to break up much sooner than it would with Robert living, however the fall out between Robbie and Eliot still results in Shroud killing Astral with his own loaded gun.
In this timeline though, With no brigade, Shroud is able to take the astral pulse and avoid going to jail, causing the Red Ring to expand a lot farther across LA and is not just centralized in Torance.
With no Mecha Man, and a powered up Shroud, hero based companies had a harder time finding a ground to stand on. SDN is one of the few companies to still exist tho, however it is more so militarized than corporate, and much more private.
Shroud is a lot more ruthless than he is in canon, already seeing the numbers before it happens, if he so much as sees one outcome where he is betrayed, he doesn't wait for it to happen before he kills whoever it is (somehow Toxic is still his second).
There is no such thing as real 'heros', they are a dying breed that's gone extinct.
(There's still a small part of him that mourns a small kid would have grown to be one. The rest of him is glad he didn't)
TrackStar is the only brigade member that still calls himself that, he was there that day Robert died and he knows it wasn't the suit that killed him, but he doesn't know what it really was either.
He's still a old man, but absolutely refuses to give up the hero work even at risk of his life. He never did learn how to be just Chase, anyway.
The Z teams lives all turned out different too:
'Visigal never thought to join the Z-team
Sonar ended up in the red ring, Mal-they don't know where this version of her went, only seeing a falling out and eventual going ghost.
Coupé also didn't see a reason to join the Z-team, and due to that continued to be used as a weapon till shroud set his eyes on recruiting her as well.
Flambea was a drastic change, with no Mecha Blue to arrest him that night he kept his fingers but went farther down in a path of destruction.
Apparently there WAS people in the building he set fire that night, he hadn't thought of a possible night shift, Mecha Man had originally managed to escort everyone out before going in to have a "talk" with the arsonist.
Without Robert, after that Flambea had at some point stopped caring. His biggest crime was managing to burn half of LA down before Blazer managed to stop him.
... His family's neighborhood was part of it.
The rest of the team had similar stories, trying the Phoenix program and failing miserably with no dispatcher to mentor them.
Prism's failure was particularly the most public. The amount of shame and anger at the bone zones click baiting headline was enough to blind someone.
Blonde Blazer and Phenomaman are still a couple too.
I think my favourite dynamic between Prism and Robert, ship or not (which btw what's the official ship name? Mechaprism? Prismech? Ledlights? Tecnicolor?? i dunno) would be "coworkers/friends that are also mutual fans of their work"
Like Prism is a Blazer girlie first and foremost, but she's also a Mecha Fan to some degree. When the clip of Robert beating the shit the reporter gets posted on socials, Prism is on the frontline defending him and arguing with people who say his reaction "Was totally uncalled for" "Guy spitted on Mecha Man's whole damn career because he didn't fucking die like some kinda martyr! Bitch took out his damn phone, typed the damn number, said 'Hey, go fuck yourself', ended the damn call and didn't expect Mecha Man to call him back?! 'Uncalled for' my ass!". And like part of that is because she likes the guy but also, as a famous popstar that also has dealt with asshole journalists, she empathizes with him.
She later makes a post that says "He was so real for that btw", followed by the same clip but with one of her songs playing in the background. It's surprisingly on beat with the scuffle.
Robert obviously didn't know who she was before working at SDN, and he strikes me as someone that doesn't listen to music that often, so it takes some prodding from Prism (and Flambae, always gotta support your bestie) for him to start listening to some of her songs. Needless to say, he becomes a fan. He hums her songs while walking with Beef and while working, which he obviously he gets teased for by both the team and Chase but honestly? He likes it, so who cares? Prism is openly smug to everyone about that, while also kinda giddy on the inside cause oh my god Mecha Man likes my music!
At some point, while going thorugh her previous albums, he finds a music video where Prism raps about the most famous superheroes in Torrence she would fuck. Was the video made before or after she joined the Phoenix Program? The choice is yours. Not only that, each hero gets their segment singed while Prism wears an outfit based on them.*
Surprise surprise, Mecha Man is in that too, which is both flattering in a way, and also mindopening in another, "Wait, is that where the #RidingThatMechaDick that trended three weeks comes from??"
Also, they have merch of each other, obviously. Robert is kind of fucking broke so he can't afford himself to buy shit initially, but Prism gets him an exclusive, there-are-only-fifty-of-these-in-the-world poster of her, the kind you can only get through raffles, contests, or selling you kidney; and, well, let's just say one of Robert's walls is now worth thousands of dollar more than the others, for some reasons. That poster is only the beginning, don't worry.
One time Prism manages to get a selfie with Robert while he wasn't expecting it. Turns out kinda blurry, but Prism keeps it anyway. "Why?" "Cause you the only one in the squad I ain't got a photo with! By the way, can I post it on my socials? Promise I won't get ya doxxed!" "Sure, um... could you send it to me too? Like, on dms or something. " "Hell yeah, 'course I can! Just don't go showin' it around, wouldn't want my fans to believe they can just get pics with me for free! Consider yourself one of the lucky ones, MechaBob!" "Oh I do, don't worry about that."
That photo ends up being one of the few non-Beef related photos he has saved as his favorites on his phone. Meanwhile it takes all of Prism's willpower to not brag on her stories about how she managed to get a close-up selfie with THE Mecha Man, something that no fan of his has ever managed to get.
Yeah so anyway... fun stuff right?
*note to self: fanart idea of prism wearing Z-team members themed outfits.
origamiaround
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ellievsbear
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
kianamaiart
