The 2016 multiplatform game Hitman contains a reference to Mario and Luigi as two NPCs in the Sapienza level, who are plumbers with red and green clothing working in the sewers and are named Mario Saltatore and Luigi Saltatore. “Saltatore” translates to “jumper”, further referencing the Mario series. An optonal challenge presented to the player is killing either of them while wearing the other one’s clothes.
[ID: A tweet thread vy Sean Kelly @/StorySlug that reads:
Something I think about a lot:
In Star Trek (2009) Spock Prime, who has accidentally traveled back in time 130 years into a parallel reality, hiding out in an ice cavern, accidentally runs into Jim Kirk and his first thought is, “How did you find me?”
Mind you, Spock hasn’t seen Jim in a hundred years.
In Spock’s reality, Jim died a hundred years ago during the christening of the Enterprise-B, and then again several decades later in events his acquaintance Jean-Luc Picard certainly told him about.
So in Spock’s life, Kirk is double-dead. And he knows he’s in a parallel universe, so reality isn’t progressing the way it did in his memories. The galaxy is branching out, becoming ever-more-different than the one he knew.
Spock is a man who values logic above all else, a man of science and intellect, and all of that combined and his first thought is still, in essence:
“I’m in my darkest hour, so of course Jim Kirk is here to save me. Or at least, to be with me:’
No entertaining “coincidence.”
The really interesting thing is, we have a second data point on this.
In “Relics,” the episode of TNG where they find Scotty trapped in a transporter buffer, Riker mentions he’s from the Enterprise.
Scotty responds, “I bet Jim Kirk got the ol’ girl out of mothballs to find me”
Scotty stood on the edge of a massive hole where the Enterprise-B’s hull used to be, staring into the void that claimed Jim Kirk. He was there the day he died. He knows that the Enterprise-A is a museum piece, that there have been other ships since then.
Now, in reality its because “Relics” aired long before “Star Trek: Generations,” and the writers didn’t yet know the fate of James T Kirk, or that Scotty would be there (most of his lines were originally intended for Spock, Chekov’s lines for McCoy).
But I like to think that, deep down, every crew member of the original Enterprise believed this, deep down. No matter where they went, what dangers they faced, how long they lived, in their darkest moments, they believed, “I bet Captain Kirk is going to show up to save me.”
Imagine how they held on, how they pushed themselves to be better, smarter, braver, because they believed that all they had to do to see another day was to hold out long enough for James T Kirk to find them.
That if they just kept moving, the Enterprise would warp in.
I don’t think this is unique to the original crew, either.
Worf once said to O'Brien that when he was aboard the Enterprise, he felt like they were the heroes of the old stories he learned as a boy, that there was no trial they could not face together.
A couple of years later, Worf is captaining the Defiant, getting ready to ram the thing into a Borg cube, when his helmsman says “Another ship is warping in… it’s the Enterprise!”
And the look on Worf’s face says it all: “Of course it is.”
To serve on the Enterprise - any Enterprise - is to believe in the Enterprise. To believe in the Captain. To believe in your friends.
Hang in there. Do your best. We’re coming to save you. End ID]
There are certain ships’ commanders whose people will follow them anywhere…. because they know their commander will follow them anywhere.
[ID: A tweet thread vy Sean Kelly @/StorySlug that reads:
Something I think about a lot:
In Star Trek (2009) Spock Prime, who has accidentally traveled back in time 130 years into a parallel reality, hiding out in an ice cavern, accidentally runs into Jim Kirk and his first thought is, “How did you find me?”
Mind you, Spock hasn’t seen Jim in a hundred years.
In Spock’s reality, Jim died a hundred years ago during the christening of the Enterprise-B, and then again several decades later in events his acquaintance Jean-Luc Picard certainly told him about.
So in Spock’s life, Kirk is double-dead. And he knows he’s in a parallel universe, so reality isn’t progressing the way it did in his memories. The galaxy is branching out, becoming ever-more-different than the one he knew.
Spock is a man who values logic above all else, a man of science and intellect, and all of that combined and his first thought is still, in essence:
“I’m in my darkest hour, so of course Jim Kirk is here to save me. Or at least, to be with me:’
No entertaining “coincidence.”
The really interesting thing is, we have a second data point on this.
In “Relics,” the episode of TNG where they find Scotty trapped in a transporter buffer, Riker mentions he’s from the Enterprise.
Scotty responds, “I bet Jim Kirk got the ol’ girl out of mothballs to find me”
Scotty stood on the edge of a massive hole where the Enterprise-B’s hull used to be, staring into the void that claimed Jim Kirk. He was there the day he died. He knows that the Enterprise-A is a museum piece, that there have been other ships since then.
Now, in reality its because “Relics” aired long before “Star Trek: Generations,” and the writers didn’t yet know the fate of James T Kirk, or that Scotty would be there (most of his lines were originally intended for Spock, Chekov’s lines for McCoy).
But I like to think that, deep down, every crew member of the original Enterprise believed this, deep down. No matter where they went, what dangers they faced, how long they lived, in their darkest moments, they believed, “I bet Captain Kirk is going to show up to save me.”
Imagine how they held on, how they pushed themselves to be better, smarter, braver, because they believed that all they had to do to see another day was to hold out long enough for James T Kirk to find them.
That if they just kept moving, the Enterprise would warp in.
I don’t think this is unique to the original crew, either.
Worf once said to O'Brien that when he was aboard the Enterprise, he felt like they were the heroes of the old stories he learned as a boy, that there was no trial they could not face together.
A couple of years later, Worf is captaining the Defiant, getting ready to ram the thing into a Borg cube, when his helmsman says “Another ship is warping in… it’s the Enterprise!”
And the look on Worf’s face says it all: “Of course it is.”
To serve on the Enterprise - any Enterprise - is to believe in the Enterprise. To believe in the Captain. To believe in your friends.
Hang in there. Do your best. We’re coming to save you. End ID]
There are certain ships’ commanders whose people will follow them anywhere…. because they know their commander will follow them anywhere.
“why would we make plans in front of you if you weren’t invited?” babe i was left out of everything growing up, i need 100% confirmation you want me there or i simply will not go
Fun fact! This is literally canon in the back story to the Sci-fi novel Blindsight by Peter Watts!
A corrupt and completely amoral biotech company tries to use gene therapy to “cure” autism, they fuck it up horribly, and accidentally bring back vampires.
See, it turns out that vampires are real, but not supernatural. They’re an extinct human sub-species that preyed on normal humans, and the myth that they were immortal came from the back they could hibernate.
See, hibernation is a very useful trick for a species that considers human prey. They are outnumbered so they can’t fight fair, and also eating humans would use up their entire food source really quick, so they do some munching and then go to sleep for a decade or two, then reappear when the heat has died down.
And the vampires went extinct back when humans developed architecture. Yeah, like 10s of thousands of years ago. See, there were never that many vampires, they had a small gene pool, and they got a recessive gene showing up really bad: a form of epilepsy that triggers in seeing right angles. Thus the “fear of crosses” from myth. It’s nothing to do with Christianity, they were gone long before Christianity came about. It’s just right angles. We accidentally wiped them out by building houses.
And some of their genes survived in mainstream humans, due to limited interbreeding. And those genes show up in partial forms in people on the autism spectrum.
Low empathy? For a predator, it’s a weakness to empathize with your prey.
Being wicked smart? You gotta be smarter than your prey, and if you’re hunting humans, you have to be VERY smart.
The best part? Vampires aren’t even a major part of this novel. It’s not about vampires. It’s about first contact with an alien intelligence that’s possibly non-sapient and far smarter than us.
The vampires are just involved because as soon as we accidentally brought back vampires, we put them in charge of everything. They’re super smart and super-logical! They make the perfect manager because they can analyze the fuck out of any situation far better than any baseline human, and it’s okay, they don’t need to eat people or drink blood, we can just give them artificial supplements.
(it’s not okay. This was a bad idea. Blindsight is not a happy book)
ALT
