Here, have we ever figured out what the craic is with people's lifespans in this setting?
(Hyperlinked dates copy pasted from the official timeline)
The Hootsman I'm willing to handwave because he's a cyborg. Ralathor I'm not even going to ATTEMPT to figure out. But what, pray tell, is up with the McFife family tree?!
Are they supposed to have one Angus per generation? Because if so, ain't no way in HELL their lifespan works like ours. Angi II-IV would've had to reproduce around the age of 100 to make the math check out. And then what, 450 years for Angi VI-XIII?
The only explanation I can think of is that they had a whole bunch of daughters between II and V, but they kept the McFife surname while marrying and continued to rule Fife in the same way as the lads, so maybe there just wasn't a whole lot of boys in those generations for whatever reason.
The 400 years for Angi VI-XII I can comprehend a little more easily, assuming that they're capable of spawning more Angi while well into their 50s like I. Not sure how healthy it is and what their fucking natural lifespan is if they don't get nuked or yeet themselves into a volcano, but sure, okay.
Also, prime!Proletius dies of old age in 1038, so when prime!Ango II is 17. However, 38-B Proletius is still around and able to help 38-B!Ango II on his epic quest, and we're talking about a Prol who dragged I's dead body out of the wreckage left by the nuke, got parts of his face MELTED OFF by the blast, and then spent the next 20 years living in a nuclear wasteland. Did the radiation artificially extend his lifespan or what? What is going on here??
I am hearing you out SO FUCKING HARD YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
Modern AU Angus out there blasting Cascada while lying on his bed, blushing and giggling and kicking his feet and twirling his hair while he's doodling hearts all over his engineering paper with a glittery gel pen.
Buddy you don't even need to cite my fanfic for this THEY FLY TOGETHER ALL THE FUCKING TIME IN THE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO. Tooley didn't HAVE to take him on that moonlit flight after Ango zapped him out of stasis and got him to Humpty Dumpty himself back together, but he did! No words, no pleasantries, just a moment of eye contact followed by GRABBING Ango by the front of his shirt and NYOOM.
And then there's the fact that "Mighty Wings" is a cover that exists and no I'll never shut up about it ever thanks for asking. Non-canonical my ASS we all know it's Angus II behind that mic singing his heart out to his robot crush. I saw that interview Ango. I know what you are.
[DISCLAIMER: I'm aware that it's not that deep but I overthink and overanalyse shit recreationally so take everything you read here with a grain of salt - it's my brain's equivalent of doodling around in the margins of a maths notebook.]
So I know that the Henderson videos aren't official canon and we're not supposed to read a great deal into them, but I LOVE the choice to have the Hammer of Glory be attached to Angus II by a chain.
On a surface level it's cool and practical, letting him throw it and swing it around and have it come back to him - very useful in combat! But I'm obsessed with the potential symbolism of him literally being chained to it.
Chained to his duty. Chained to his vengeance. Chained to his bloodline and all the burdens it carries with it. Chained to his destiny. It's always there, always with him, keeping him grounded and reminding him of his purpose. His literal ball and chain.
[REMINDER: the chain only shows up in "He Has Returned" - he swings and throws the Hammer normally in "Keeper of the Celestial Flame"]
Now, we've all heard "Fly Away": V's lament about his destiny and his desire to be free from it and be able to do his own thing. His idea of freedom is flight: flying away on a unicorn to a better world than the one he knows. Flight is freedom, flight is being unbound by destiny, flight is being able to throw off your shackles and go where you please and do what you please.
II is literally chained to his destiny, but he does get to fly, however briefly. He does get to forget the weight of the Hammer for a short moment - and that's by the side of the Robot Prince.
The thing is, no matter how high up they fly, they're still bound by their respective destinies: Angus still has the Hammer with him in these shots, and this scene corresponds to the lyrics:
Far across the stars he travelled
Yearning to be free
In search of epic battles to
Escape his destiny
The Robot Prince can fly around to his heart's content, but even he is "destined to reign forevermore." He flies around in search of epic battles hoping to outrun it, to escape the burden of the crown. These lines can possibly be interpreted as him wanting to die in one of these epic battles to evade an eternity of dominion, but we're, uh, [clutches heart] we're gonna put a pin on this interpretation for a little while.
The point is, the Angi view flight as freedom, and at least II is visually coded to be weighed down by the Hammer like a ball and chain. He always has it with him, even in flight, even when he's the closest to freedom he can be.
And even when he attempts to discard it and reach out to the Prince with an open hand, with a memory instead of a weapon. (Shoutout to the chained and crucified corpse of the Mecha-King on Tooley's side of the room, looming above him like a phantom of his future - or perhaps even the present, with both of them being bound and corrupted by the Knife of Evil. Metaphorising aside, it's a hell of a sick visual.)
Even with the Hammer discarded, the chain remains attached. No matter what Angus does, he cannot break the shackles of his destiny.
But somehow, impossibly, he CAN break Tooley's. Destined to reign forevermore, eh? Perhaps he would've been, if it weren't for Angus recruiting him for their cause and letting him sacrifice himself in a blaze of glory to deactivate the corrupted robot hivemind. A heroic death instead of an eternity of statis and dominion in a gilded cage.
(Doesn't seem like the Mecha-King was able to move from his spot in the chamber even pre-corruption. He looks a bit like a living statue, and given the fact that corrupting him corrupted all the other robots except Tooley, he appears to be some kind of focus point, the heart of Auchtertool. I wonder if Tooley's destiny involves replacing him. I wonder if it means becoming a living statue. I wonder if it means losing his wings and being confined to his throne room for the rest of eternity or until something finally kills him. What a fate. No wonder he's flying around yearning to avoid it.)
(I wonder if his death was a relief on some level. I wonder if he was happy that at least he would die doing something important. I wonder if he was happy that at least he got to fly with Angus one final time, if only to get him out of the blast zone.)
The Robot Prince was freed from his destiny by death. Angus, no matter how much he might wish for it after the Starlords nuked the timeline and destroyed everything and everyone he's known and loved, will not get the luxury. After all, the Hammer is still chained to him, and his destiny lies elsewhere. And destiny is all that matters, no?
Well, at least one of them is flying free.*
(*or IS he? "He Has Returned" DOES end with "the Robot Prince will return" so it's possible that not even death can save Tooley from his destiny. I guess we'll have to wait and see!)
Now, in light of all that, let's take a moment to wonder why exactly Gloryhammer chose to cover "Mighty Wings" out of so many others songs out there. Sure, it's not canon, we all agree it's not canon and the interview about how it can be interpreted as II singing it to the Robot Prince is probably a joke, but that doesn't change the fact that the band CHOSE to cover this particular song and that this desperate, yearning cry to be taken away on mighty wings lines up perfectly with the recurring motif of flight as freedom.
Destiny is a Hammer chained to Angus's wrist. He can wield it, spin it around in battle, even discard the Hammer for a while, but it will always be connected to him, pulling him down to earth.
Freedom is soaring among the stars, winged and weightless, unburdened, away from expectation, obligations and prophecies. Unbound by destiny.
Angus associates the Prince with freedom - even if for a little while. The Prince, through meeting Angus, defied his destiny and found freedom in death.
Just.
I don't know. I know it's probably not that deep but that fucking chain fascinates me. Henderson couldn't have picked a better upgrade to Angus's Hammer, and the lads couldn't have picked a better song to cover in-between album 4 and "He Has Returned."
(I also think it's funny that V, notoriously reluctant to fulfil his destiny and die, notoriously yearning to fly away and do his own thing among the stars, is portrayed sleeping with a Robot Prince plushie. I know it's 100% fanservice and, again, not canon and it absolutely 100% doesn't mean anything symbolically, but it's just a funky little coincidence given everything I've been overthinking today. Little II has a unicorn plushie. V wants to fly away on a unicorn. V has a Robot Prince plushie. II finds freedom, however briefly, by the side of the Robot Prince. GOD, GLORYHAMMER, PLEASE HAVE THEM INTERACT IM ALBUM V PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE THEYRE5MY FAVOURITE ANGI AND THEY MAKE ME SO UNWELL.)
(ALSO since we all know I love to over-analyse things, II and V are very similar visually. V's helmet looks like a grown up version of II's baby one and he wears the same style armour as adult II. It doesn't mean anything, it's just Alex reusing assets and it's 100% not canon, but it's just a neat detail I noticed while watching "Ultimate Sacrifice" for the first time.)
Same helmet with longer horns, same armour with either flipped greens & blacks or SAME ONES depending on the video, same desire to fly away and taste freedom for once in their lives.
(Same flying bestie who dies at the end of the song, rip Sparky the Unicorn, you will be missed.)
i’m on my fourth reread of asr and i didn’t realize until just now that secunit doesn’t really know how to fight at the beginning. i mean 1v1, sure, it can punch and kick and shoot stuff, but it’s so incredibly competent at combat (offensively, and against multiple hostiles in complex environments even) by the end of the series that i completely missed that it didn’t know how to do any of that shit until it met presaux. it really was just kind of a generic security guard until then, for all that it called itself murderbot. even in ganaka pit, we have no reason to believe the humans put up much resistance, and the malware was running the show anyway, so probably it was just shooting at anything that moved and hoping for the best. it literally taught itself how to be an actual murderbot in order to save these specific humans.
I am hearing you out SO FUCKING HARD YOU HAVE NO IDEA.
Modern AU Angus out there blasting Cascada while lying on his bed, blushing and giggling and kicking his feet and twirling his hair while he's doodling hearts all over his engineering paper with a glittery gel pen.
I was talking to a fellow metalhead about Gloryhammer, aka "HEY I DIDN'T KNOW YOU'RE INTO THEM TOO WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE SONG ALBUM CHARACTER LEITMOTIF ALBUM COVER etc etc". You know, as one does. Anyway I was talking about how Fly Away is a good fucking song and I'm tired of comments shitting on it because it's not Winkler anymore, and they went "hey this actually reminds me of another song with a similar title. Have you heard Fly With Me by ShadowStrike?"
Me, still in the throes of "everything is about Twoley if you're deranged enough" and with a lengthy analysis post about flying as a metaphor for freedom and escaping destiny in my drafts: 👀👀👀👀
mymusician... oughh my little bug [remembers parasocial relationships are bad] [remembers infantilization is bad] this complete stranger is their own huge bug
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7asxci/oc_ygathok_the_ceaseless_hunger_final_boss_of_our/
This is the reveal of this ridiculousness during their game
You are never going to persuade me that the heroes and Zargothrax don’t have, like, drinking and gambling evenings, or outings at the local tavern.
You can’t go around for a thousand years just constantly hating each other’s guts. That’s exhausting. Even for immortal cyborgs, and evil wizards/their clones.
i like to think everyone minus angus does, bc their beef feels only professional. the various angi have legit reasons to beef with zarg, everyone else just does it to support him
Angus (your choice which one) joins them exactly once, but only because they got both him AND Zarg too drunk to give a shit. They do a groundbreaking duet at karaoke night and that single performance is the closest Fife has had to peace in centuries.
