[Tapper]

Wasn't it Luke's task to philosophisizizizizizizise on what it is they are, what the world has come to, and how to deal with it metaphysically?
In a post-apocalyptical world where the strong rule, or in the FA case, provide a haven for the weak, it is no wonder there is a. no real use for him/ any philosopher in general and b. he grows bitter and justifies the means by the ends.
It also means he explored what they are quite thoroughly. Whether he is the strongest... maybe. I myself think it not likely. Kirk is pushing his endurance on a daily basis. Arkady goes around doing stuff because she is weird. Kait mind-reads with quite some frequency. Jack goes treasure hunting under potentially dangerous circumstances. They all seem to get more power-excersize than Luke.
However, he certainly is the one who understands what they are and what they can do better than any of the others, Mark excepted, who quite likely pushed himself to all kinds of limits while out of Whitechapel. I'd say he might do knowingly what they do instinctively, and thus have a far better control over it all.

[Abyss]

Tho' Mark, not withstanding his exile and Kirk/Karl spiking his brain, hadn't developed the teleport ability yet and (at least it appeared that) Kait was able to resist him pretty effectively.

Interesting theory that Luke was the strongest not because he's inherently stronger but because he's been exploring the limits of the package. It's been suggested that Arkady did that almost by accident but then she also had the power-up from her OD.

I absolutely love the idea that Arkady inadvertantly or deliberately prompted Connor to self-up-Darwinate.

As for the rest of the world, i suspect Ellis is holding that in reserve for the moment, since there's enough internal turmoil at Whitechapel to keep us interested for a while. It would be interesting to see a retaliatory invasion force or even a different set of Freakangels from another part of the world. Since we don't know how they came into being, we don't know if they are unique either.

[Grief]

Well, Kait surprised mark a bit, but he seemed pretty certain he could take her, up until the rest showed up. And he managed to survive(or maybe not? If he died, he was back alive very fast though-or at least alive enough to appear unconscious-it's possible the unconscious shield he does is just what happens when they die, to avoid more harm) an attack from a load of them at once, just by shielding. He lost consciousness but two of them managed to kill him once, and they seemed surprised he survived, which suggests they weren't deliberately going for unconsciousness.

Arkady has the teleporting, but so far, Mark is the only one we've seen able to do anything unconscious, which is a big advantage. Any of the others are buggered once they're knocked out(well, as buggered as they can be, being unkillable). I think that the different powers are just to do with the direction they've explored in.

As for Luke, there is some evidence he hasn't just been doing nothing, right at the start, when he's talking to the sleeping people in their dreams or whatever he says he's doing.

He also gets the better of kirk from a large disadvantage. Barring Mark Luke and perhaps Arkady(she's trying to expand her powers, but they both seem to have actually thought about it more. They have came to conlusions about what they can do hypothetically without actually doing it, while she is just testing the limits of what she can do), they don't really seem to have come to terms with their powers. They seemed outright surprised when Luke suggested they could change the weather. Just seems like they didn't really think about it much, but I think that#s going to change now, which will be interesting.

[Abyss]

 Grief, on 31 August 2010 - 10:26 PM, said:

...Just seems like they didn't really think about it much, but I think that#s going to change now, which will be interesting.

...and i think you hit the main upcoming plot swing there, tho i look forward to at least Kaz or maybe Miki telling them all to go fuck themselves if they think she's going to put a bullet in her own head to power-up.

[Abyss]

Been meaning to do this...

Arkady - teleporting spacecase, power-up'd post OD and again post drowning
KK - helicopter girl
Kait - cop wannabe
Kaz - builder
Miki - healer
Sirka - sex fiend, had a thing with Jack

Connor - recorder, emo boy
Kirk - watchman
Karl - gardener in the tinfoil hat, power-up'd to change the weather
Jack - scavenger, had a thing with Sirka
Mark - exile, power-up'd when Kirk and Karl psi-spiked/killed him
Luke - dickhead, power-up'd when Alice and Jack shot him repeatedly

Alice - honorary Freakangel, all around awesome.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 02 September 2010 - 03:29 PM
Reason for edit: Kirk and Karl are konfussing

[Grief]

Do we actually know what Marks job/speciality was?

It's hard to tell whether or not some of them have powered up. We don't know at all how much any of them have powered up due to practise/straining, rather than dying. Arkady, particularly, since she seems to have spent quite a while practising, though gave the impression this was more exploring the limits of her OD power up.

There are also a couple of possible power-ups.

Jack for example. Early on, he was shot and pushed from a boat. Sirkka or KK sees this, and screams his name. He ends up back on the boat, and kills his assailants. It's possible he actually died here. Though then you'd think whicever of the others were monitoring it would've realised he'd come back.

I'm not sure it matters though, now that they know about the dying thing. I think that knowing how to control it will be more important than raw power-since raw power issues can be easily gotten around. Though the whole idea of them not being able to die is going to change a lot-because it also means that they can't kill each other, so stopping each other from doing what they want to is going to be a bit harder, when the threats are essentially empty. Sure, they could imprison them, but then they'd need to actively be stopping them using the packade to kill themselves. Hard, perhaps even impossible, since the person could just struggle until they are exhausted and die...

[Tapper]

Well, I guess at some point in time, they may experiment a bit with blenders, axes and grinders to see how dismembered someone must be to no longer be able to reconstruct and/or live on... all three who died up until now were in one piece (ok, Luke was partly splattered) but then you probably get someone taking over another person's body. Or something.

[Puck]

 Abyss, on 01 September 2010 - 02:12 PM, said:

Kirk - watchman in the tinfoil hat
Karl - gardener, power-up'd to change the weather

Karl's the one with the tinfoil hat, not Kirk. Trust me, I've just spent the entire day on reading FA. Now my head hurts, buuut the whole thing's just freaking cool.

[Grief]

 Tapper, on 01 September 2010 - 08:42 PM, said:

Well, I guess at some point in time, they may experiment a bit with blenders, axes and grinders to see how dismembered someone must be to no longer be able to reconstruct and/or live on... all three who died up until now were in one piece (ok, Luke was partly splattered) but then you probably get someone taking over another person's body. Or something.

Well, Luke grows part of his brain back, and heals a lot of bullet wounds. I'm not sure there is a limit-particularly considering that the things they speak to in the death experience seem more likely energy beings. It would probably take longer to come back from though. There's also the question of which of them would be willing to experiment like that. Luke and Mark might, if they thought it would actually work. Kirk and Karl seem the "do what must be done" types. Kaitlyn probably would, if there waqs law breaking. I think Connor and Miki would be strongly against it, as would Sirkka, KK, and Kaz. Jack is harder to tell. I'm not sure he'd go with it. Necessary execution yes, but I don't know about that kind of experimentation.

Them taking over each others bodies, or screwing up each others minds, could one way for them to "kill" each other. Removing/changing their personality. Possibly like what Arkady did to connor. We haven't really seen anything that suggests that they couldn't, and Arkady gives Luke some OD experience earlier.

[Abyss]

 Grief, on 01 September 2010 - 07:03 PM, said:

Do we actually know what Marks job/speciality was? ...

The 'titles' were mostly a thing Ellis did around ep 50. The 'roles' are ones they've taken on since establishing Whitechapel as FA territory so to speak.

 Puck, on 01 September 2010 - 10:15 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 01 September 2010 - 02:12 PM, said:

Kirk - watchman in the tinfoil hat
Karl - gardener, power-up'd to change the weather

Karl's the one with the tinfoil hat, not Kirk. Trust me, I've just spent the entire day on reading FA. Now my head hurts, buuut the whole thing's just freaking cool.

Noted and editted. Both are skinny white dudes with shaved heads so it's hard to keep them straight.

 Grief, on 01 September 2010 - 10:36 PM, said:

 Tapper, on 01 September 2010 - 08:42 PM, said:

Well, I guess at some point in time, they may experiment a bit with blenders, axes and grinders to see how dismembered someone must be to no longer be able to reconstruct and/or live on... all three who died up until now were in one piece (ok, Luke was partly splattered) but then you probably get someone taking over another person's body. Or something.

Well, Luke grows part of his brain back, and heals a lot of bullet wounds...

Them taking over each others bodies, or screwing up each others minds, could one way for them to "kill" each other. Removing/changing their personality. Possibly like what Arkady did to connor. We haven't really seen anything that suggests that they couldn't, and Arkady gives Luke some OD experience earlier.

Luke spent a chunk of time walking around chattering while blood poured out of the hole through his head, which suggests to me their bodies aren't all that important to their existance. hence, you could basically run the FA through a woodchipper, burn the cole-slaw like remains to ash, feed the ash to series of farm animals, kill the farm animals and feed them laced with diarhetic to a bunch of starving people who are immediately transported to various cities where they poo profusely and flush the laced remains and in theory the FA could still reconstruct their own body from one cel... Okay we don't actually know that but i was having fun with the hypothetical. Point being Luke was functional with a large hole in his brainz and he grew the pieces back so i suspect anything goes.

Mindfuck they've done to humans so it's likely an option on another FA if they were strong enough. 'Possession' in the 'take over another person's body entirely' sense... dunno.

[Puck]

I rarely engage in these lengthy discussions, because of fear of not getting across what I'm trying to say, but as I already said I spent yesterday reading FreakAngels, and I came up with my own theory on what happened back when they combined their powers.

According to what I think the flooding was a side effect and what they actually did was to dislocate/displace the axis of the earth. In my opinion that's a pretty simple but effective way to cause lots of flooding and other strange occurences like the aurora borealis they saw immediately after waking up again as well as the strange time discrepancies like KK [I think it was KK] remarking how Miki's and Mark's movements seem somehow slowed down immediately after the big crash thing.
It also would explain the weather changes. I have no first hand experience, but I hear it rains a lot up in England. And at some point KK [or someone else] points out to Alice that it's mostly sunny now in the sky over London.
If my theory is true, than the whole world should be pretty messed up. That would explain the remarks made about seeing no Americans ever again [because they barely come by where they are - no time to travel around] as well no other country in the world sending an expedition or help to England, which would have been the case would it have been only England that's flooded.
Also, the water had to come from somewhere. I bet there are a lot of places flooded now but also quite a few which were once but aren't anymore, because the water moved due to the new angle of the earth's axis.

Just my guess, though.

[Abyss]

Today's new ep...


last frame, p4... scariest. Arkady. Ever. Duffield you insanely talented sick fuck.

last frame, p6... once again, even when you know what's going to happen, it's awesome.

Also... Jack's a dick.



@Puck - your reasoning is sound and that's an interesting observation re how the weather has changed there. It also makes me wonder what exactly Kirk did when he stopped the rain.

[Grief]

Last frame was great

And it looks like they can suicide and survive too. Which means that really, any power-advantage anyone has is negated. I wonder what direction it's going to go in.

[Abyss]

 Grief, on 03 September 2010 - 02:24 PM, said:

...really, any power-advantage anyone has is negated....

Not necessarily. Kirk and Kaz are sitting around doing a great job of ensuring Mark, despite his power-up, doesn't get up to anything.

In theory they can still 'immobolize', reprogram, mindfuck or beat the hell out of each other. Kirk kept the supposedly stronger Luke down for a while just by shooting him in the leg and forcing him to put resources to healing. Obviously given that healing isn't really necessary any more that specific ploy won't work but similar brain resource intensive distractions might be effective in keeping someone out of play, at least for a while.

[Grief]

I was thinking more in the long term. Mindfuck is still a possibility, but I don't think immobilisation is really practical.

[Abyss]

 Grief, on 03 September 2010 - 03:51 PM, said:

I was thinking more in the long term. Mindfuck is still a possibility, but I don't think immobilisation is really practical.

I'm thinking of the OD download Arkady hit Luke with way back. A perpetual loop of that would probably take another FA out for a while.

[Tapper]

OK, so Connor did shoot himself.
And according to Arkady, Karl did not upgrade himself, either.
And Kait seems convinced she can mind read Arkady if she wants to, against Arkady's will, despite Arkady being upgraded.

Quite some revelations this episode.

[Aptorian]

I totally called it.

[Grief]

 Tapper, on 04 September 2010 - 09:13 AM, said:

OK, so Connor did shoot himself.
And according to Arkady, Karl did not upgrade himself, either.
And Kait seems convinced she can mind read Arkady if she wants to, against Arkady's will, despite Arkady being upgraded.

Quite some revelations this episode.

I'm not sure whether Arkady would not about whether or not Karls upgraded.

About Kait thinking she's able to read Arkadys mind, it's possible that she thinks she's better at using the package, it's possible that she just thinks she could but couldn't, or it's possible that she means that she could because of Arkady's mental state.

I'm really wondering most about Connor though. He says that "changes some things" when Arkady does whatever she did. However, all the images shown are just describing things that she's already told connor, and those things hadn't changed his mind.

I'm also not sure if Jack wasn't right about him just wanting to kill himself, or if that at laest contributed.

[Abyss]

 Grief, on 04 September 2010 - 03:14 PM, said:

 Tapper, on 04 September 2010 - 09:13 AM, said:

OK, so Connor did shoot himself.
And according to Arkady, Karl did not upgrade himself, either.
And Kait seems convinced she can mind read Arkady if she wants to, against Arkady's will, despite Arkady being upgraded.

Quite some revelations this episode.

I'm not sure whether Arkady would not about whether or not Karls upgraded.

About Kait thinking she's able to read Arkadys mind, it's possible that she thinks she's better at using the package, it's possible that she just thinks she could but couldn't, or it's possible that she means that she could because of Arkady's mental state.

I'm really wondering most about Connor though. He says that "changes some things" when Arkady does whatever she did. However, all the images shown are just describing things that she's already told connor, and those things hadn't changed his mind.

I'm also not sure if Jack wasn't right about him just wanting to kill himself, or if that at laest contributed.

re Arkady knowing about Karl - agreed. Tho iirc Connor was monitoring Karl when he did it so he may know.

re Kait - i took that as Arkady's thoughts being so chaotic that Kait preferred she just tell Kait what happened than go digging.

re Jack - the interesting thing there is the level of contempt Jack shows for Connor. Goes to show that aside from Luke and Mark being generally despised, not all the other FA's are all hugs and smiles to each other.