Before you leave your "Stegosaurus" comment, be aware you're like the 10,000th person to say it.

The Qu are human but you've over complicated it. A Qu is formed when a sufficiently large group of British people are waiting.

Maybe the real qu were the friend's we made along the way.

I think this loop you've noticed was intentional but not in the way you describe. I see it more as humans following in the Qu's footsteps, becoming gene modifying gods. Like it's the natural endpoint of advanced species, not that they're the exact same species. Humanity doesn't literally become the Qu, they just end up echoing them

"humans' greatest enemy in All Tomorrows turned out to be themselves"

I wish the "All tomorrows" story was either extended, detailed more, or something similar. Its an incredibly interesting story obviously, and i wish i could hear more of the future or past of the humans and the Qu.

Alr alr hear me out how about instead of humans directly going back in time to turn the star people into gaming chairs they find primitive Qu then get confused then realize “oh wait we wouldn’t become fart gods without these guys turning our ancestors into gaming chairs” then they genetically modify the primitive Qu then send em back

Honestly i think that the Gravitals probably were more brutal with their toying than the Qu were. Although it could be that we didn't see most of the species that were more broken, all the Qu's creations were still fairly practical organisms, and i personally think a lot of the other posthumans went extinct in the same ways animals irl do rather than because they were impractical and broken. But the Gravitals just messed with the Bugfacers for fun and based on what we hear, they didn't care about practicality of an organism just a fun toy/pet/art piece.

Humanity travels back in time to take out revenge on the exact qu that tortured them, just to find that there are no qu anywhere to be found. Slowly they realise they are in fact the qu and to keep existing they have to torture their own kind. They do that with a stoic face to keep up the facade and preserve the timeline but on the inside they experience incredible pain.

It would explain the pointless cruelty and willingness to inflict horrors on other life forms.

So in the original timeline where the qu don’t intervene, humans, star people, and the martians are slowly getting to the stage where the qu are at, the qu would then be made, go back in time, start the time loop, boom?

I don’t think the Asteromorphs are literally the Qu, but they certainly adopted Qu-like traits.

I think if this theory is true, then the genetic modification of the therizinosaur was deliberate, them knowing that the Star People will discover this, and thereby force their innovation into hyperdrive due to the fear of an invasion.

“Old story” and “2008” should never be in the same sentence

I think the message is that history repeats itself even over such an incredibly long period of time, and they just resemble the Qu to show that they have accidentally followed in their footsteps.

I've seen that story and it's terrifying af

maybe the Qu instead of transcending to another dimension, they transcended franchises to taunt humanity as they explore the galaxy in their beige and pastel ships. They don't even change their name, they just let the humans think they call themselves by an English letter. Their favorite person to torment is a bald french captain.