Baby Raptor Squad thoughts

[spoilers for the Jurassic World movies]

Some things I thought of while writing that latest crying-about-raptors fanfic. (You don't have to read it for context, but in any case, the Raptor Squad stuff is all in the 7th chapter.)

The I.B.R.I.S. raptors, as they would more officially be called in-universe (as in Integrated Behavioral Raptor Intelligence Study, the project they were created for), are named after letters in the ICAO phonetic alphabet, with Blue as the exception but obviously still standing for "B" in the theme naming, and mostly in alphabetical order according to their ages from oldest to youngest. Charlie is the exception there, being youngest instead of second-oldest.

I think a likely explanation is that Charlie is a bit later addition, and is in fact Charlie version 2 after something happened to the chick that originally hatched next after Blue. She could have gotten ill or suffered an injury, or she might have been put down due to behavioral complications that made her considered unsuitable for the project. That last one is what happened to Subject V-2, and I guess despite the concept art of her that exists being of an adult raptor, it's not out of the question that Subject V-2 was the first Charlie, with Blue being V-1 before getting a name.

Owen referring to Delta in the video logs as both "one of the survivors from the second group" and a "holdover", and Blue as being "from the new group" is a bit confusing, though, if Blue is supposed to be the oldest. It sounds like there was a group of hatchlings/eggs that was lost entirely, then another group that at least Delta is part of ("one of" implies at least one of the other raptors is, too), and then a third one which included Blue, making her possibly the youngest. The raptors' ages being Blue, Delta, Echo, and Charlie from oldest to youngest is info from outside the movies, so, fair enough, it might not actually be canon.

But, if I'm still treating it as canon,

Rainbow at sunset

Which one's the big one?

(spoilers: it's this one)

The Velociraptor referred to as "The Big One" is a pretty memorable creature in the JP franchise, even though the movie she appears in never actually clarifies which one of the raptors she is in each scene. Being the only named - or at least nicknamed - raptor in the movie and responsible for a lot of the species' scary reputation, it's understandable for fans to want to credit her for all of the most notable on-screen raptoring, but we can't really know for sure. There is, however, grounds for some educated guessing.

Anders Manifesto

Originally posted to tumblr on March 15 2018. Reposted here for archiving of posts I want to keep.

Anders (Act 1, Tranquility): But my anger... when I see templars now, things that have always outraged me, but I could never do anything about...

He comes out. And he is no longer my friend Justice. He is a force of vengeance. And he has no grasp of mercy.

Justice (Act 2, Night Terrors): I am Justice. Anders has told you of me.

Or in other words,

Anders: Justice is no longer Justice. I corrupted my friend by being too angry about the oppression I face, because I ruin everything.
Justice: Nope, still me. Please love yourself.

[TW: death, suicide, abuse, mention of blood]
[post contains spoilers throughout the Dragon Age series, mostly DA2.
Also note, I use singular they/them pronouns for both Anders and Justice outside direct quotes from canon, not because they’re a 2in1 deal but because agender headcanons, I trust this will not be a problem.]

Anders and Justice merged with good intentions, but with neither knowing very well what they were doing. They have both had strong influences from ideologies that treat being what they are now as something inherently wrong and threatening to both their kinds, which hardly alleviates their doubts about whether what they are now is deserving of a label like “abomination” after all. I doubt it helps that the language they mostly speak doesn’t seem to even have a more neutral term for a being resulting from a spirit and a mortal merging, or that the merging in particular was extremely traumatic.

New dino (and one non-dino) figures

Here's some mostly raptors I've acquired since the raptor repaints I finished last December. And some plans I have involving them and paintbrushes.

Two newer JW raptors and two of the original Kenner JP1 raptors. I have no intention of painting the latter, but I wanted to have a couple of them since I never got to as a kid. They're still really cute, and scale up pretty well with the new figures. And I'm glad I could find the brown Legacy raptor from the set of like six figures by herself on ebay now, as the whole set would have cost an arm and a leg and the only figure from it I actually wanted was that raptor.

Some smaller ones. The rex is an older CollectA figure I ran into at a flea market, and she looked so lonely and kind of in serious need of a dentist. I usually don't buy toys at flea markets, because I feel like I'm taking them away from a kid who could have bought them and I sure appreciated having access to nice but cheap ones when I was tiny and wanted toys to play with, but I thought this rex could use someone fixing the sloppy paint job around her mouth, especially since the mouth is kind of the attention-grabber in the figure.

The Stygimoloch, Mosasaurus, Indoraptor, and Blue are Takara Tomy JW figures. They're about the size of the regular JW mini figures.