no, Betamax Girl is not Trillian in human mode. She's actually somebody else - Jessie Kaminsky, a side character from this story I'm coming up with with the dinosaur and the doggogirl, while also a lead character in a couple of other stories. She, like all the others, are autistic, but she's way more of a keet. In fact, she's a bit of a cinephile herself - a horror nut, a logo fanatic, an old-AV-tech geek.

Mandy and Katie just wanted to relax for the night and pop on some movies on Mandy's absolutely insane Blu-Laserdisc player. In this crazy universe, DVDs never really took off - in fact, CDs became a thing in 1974 due to Philips prioritizing audio archival over letting people own movies, but with that in mind, plus the insistence that movies = more disc, the Laserdisc still comes out. And since VHS (or I should say Beta since I thought it'd be funny if Beta won the format war despite being crap at long-play) was still seen as a time-shifting thing, plus the fact that in this universe, Laserdisc went to HD quality in by 1985, Laserdisc just becomes that thing people are used to. People buy the players, buy the discs, they never think about shrinking the form factor (though with blue laser tech, they're able to get the Laserdisc down to one side for the feature, the other side for the accoutrements). So by 2013, we got 4K Laserdisc players that can play your old Discovision titles properly as well as the new stuff.

And what better thing in mind than also letting Woody Allen, famous alleged nonce and occasional comedy writer and movie director, have an action-movie career? Not as a sidekick, but as a musclebound (and I mean RIPPED, RIPPED like a bodybuilder) action filmmaker. He also apparently invented cyberpunk. I don't know why I smashed together Woody Allen and cyberpunk noir in my head, but that's what my dream said. And since the reprint of "Arcane and the Belmonts" (yes, that's the name of the book the movie's based on) was done through Arcade, I know for a fact he got dropped from Hachette over the sex scandal. To be honest, I thought it'd be funny to put in here rather than just trace over another movie still.

Mandy and Katie just wanna sit back, watch the new movie, and not be bothered. Usually, their movie nights are exciting, with Henry, Mickey, Lorelai, Jessie, and (much to Mandy's chagrin) Trillian coming over to watch things on the Big CD. But this week, Katie's feeling really sick. Sicker than usual, to be honest. She had hot chocolate and she's realizing that her new biological form is, well, unable to metabolize it. Mandy's been her caregiver for the past week, giving her chicken noodle soup, rubbing her paws, grooming her fur, just making her Katie-Kat feel better. Today, Katie felt okay enough to try to watch a movie - and Mandy knew just the thing: the $100 million picture Arcane and the Belmonts, directed by muscleman Woody Allen, full of action, blood, guts, suspense, cyberpunk thrills, and plenty of 1970s wit. Mandy called off the movie night earlier in the week - but her message didn't get to Jessie. And Jessie came over, much to Mandy's shock. But the girls ultimately didn't mind. Jessie's got the Manischewitz, the kettle corn, the elote she got from the dining hall at Gold City University - she's going to make this the best movie night to never forget. But as long as Katie has her Silly Goose and Mandy has her Katie-Kat, any movie night is a great movie night.

also i screwed up with that Vista Cruiser outside, that's supposed to be Mandy's car.

Jessie Kaminsky, Mandy Kerkorian, and Katie Hoopes belong to me.
Saurians/raptormorphs belong to  whitecougar
FMA-style chimeras belong to Hiromu Arakawa.