Originally Posted by
BobbysWorld
Ugh, sometimes I am a truly ridiculous person. I took my Adderall right before sitting down to do a work project that got pulled at the last second leaving me with gas in the tank and nothing to spend it on, so I hyper-fixated like a boss and pounded out a literal 13K in six hours expounding on my theories for where I think Hickman was actually going. And what his intended Third Act was all along. And what the entire line is building towards if in fact they are keeping to his outline as they insist. And like. Other stuff. It was LONG, yo.
And then I fell into a rabbit hole of examining what the actual themes and underlying messages of all his major story beats suggest IMO and how its totally the exact OPPOSITE of what most of the people who wish he stayed so he could write 'and it all falls down' usually assume was his actual intention....and to be completely honest its also pretty opposite from what I was thinking until I literally just changed my mind too - but like I think the usual interpretation of what he was doing with Krakoa and Moira and Inferno might actually have everything totally backwards? Which could be just me projecting as much as anyone else does, but also if I'm right could end up being fucking HILARIOUS instead. Anyway, the really funny part to me is all of that came out of me posting an initial reaction to this thread, cocking my head and going huh as something I hadn't considered before occurred to me....and then the train left the station and 13K later here we are.
So like, the specific source of the LULZ, especially considering how much (and which posters in particular) hate this fucking arc with a vengeance and are like 'wtf Orlando' for even coming up with it let alone devoting his first year to this whole storyline....
Is I feel pretty confident that none of it is actually even Orlando's idea? Like, the 2099 elements are his own preferences and flavoring, I suspect. But I'd bet anything right now that Threshold was Hickman's idea and a key part of his outline and integral to his proposed Act Three. Its not like, the actual END goal of what he was building towards, I don't think, that was a specific climax I've got a hunch about too, but Threshold's entire story and concept is IMO actually entirely born of his Third Act and crucial to it, and Orlando's literally just writing the part of Hickman's outline that the X-Offices wanted his book to tackle.
But like I said, ridiculous essay is truly absurd even by my standards and it'd like, probably take a literal seven posts because I was working it out in my head as I was writing so I got a bit....flowy with my musing lol and of course I'm not going to post it here and I'm just debating whether or not its worth making a whole thread just to dump it in and also the inevitable 'I'm not reading all that' stuff. And by debating I mean of course I'm going to DO it, like I literally have no self-control and I already wrote it and also I do not take constructive criticism so I have immunity, duh. Soooo...yeah. I'm probably gonna go do that unless I don't and it only just occurred to me that I probably should at least say something relevant to this thread because I did enjoy this a lot, actually, and not just because I'm a slut for Cerebra. (The biological/organic but still fictional version, not the robot version of course. I'm no Madison Jeffries. I don't say 'microplastics' nearly often enough, for starters).
Anyway, I unabashedly love the 2099 universe and characters and so am beyond hyped to see Cerebra used in the present day. I hope she sticks around for a good long while. And given how much time-traveling this team is doing and the fact that the comics have ALWAYS made a point to stress how Shakti is basically an organic version of Cerebro...I'm betting Orlando intends to extend that similarity to her discovering she can back-up the consciousnesses of other mutants the Marauders meet while time-traveling...as long as they grab a strand of hair or something to take with them on their way back to the present, they can thus resurrect any mutant from an alternate timeline. Thus by introducing Cerebra (most likely to serve a specific plot function in wrapping up the Threshold storyline, or to resurrect key Threshold mutants in the present day), I think Orlando's also backdoored his way into being able to bring back any XSE characters he might want to, like Shard. I'd bet anything that at the very least Shard does come back in his run, with him using Shakti to do it. If I'm wrong and he doesn't actually have any plans to use Shakti to bring back Shard, then like....whoops, but also I think he should still do it anyway.