#which is partially why he only wants to think of fusion AS an act of violence

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Hi hi hi, I would love to hear more of your Dan thoughts! I'm intrigued!!!

>:]!!!!!!!!!! >:D!!!!!!

Ok ok so I've never really tried to put my thoughts into words before so this might be a bit of a mess usually I'm just rotating him in my mind but yes yes yes I have Dan thoughts I want to share my Dan thoughts

I only focus on agit at the end so this is pretty spoiler free for that I think maybe. Thumbs up emoji

Dan is a fun character because despite only having one episode we can still tell alot about his personality and such, as he's rather bold with it and is a fusion of two characters we do see alot, and it really shows! I flip between saying Dan or more Danny than Vlad and saying that they're basically equal in the fusion, but I think a good way to describe it is that he takes different aspects from them, for his appearance and memories he very much takes after Danny, but his personality and how he acts n talks oozes Vlad. Yknow??? If I'm saying the right words here. Dan works so well as a fusion because he also manages to feel like his own character as well

Dan is made from the two's ghost halves, so I'm a fan of the theory/thought I do believe I've seen before that he's based on the ghost halves. Like. Vlad used his ghost form and powers for scheming, attacking, gaining power, and so on, I'd easily imagine he doesn't use it nearly as much as Danny. Danny had to use his ghost form mostly for fighting other ghosts, very frequently, and also used his powers for his own benefit as well, though not nearly as extreme as Vlad. As Danny was in his ghost form more, and as it was more connected to his ghost form (phantom just being an inverted Danny VS Vlad's completely different from himself ghost form, even down to body type) it makes sense why Dan would be more Danny focused, especially in terms of his relationship with others and memories. Vlad's things don't matter to him nearly as much. I mean, he seemingly couldn't find Vlad's new hideout that was under a Welcome to Wisconsin sign, and its ghost zone entrance behind a football

"The only remaining portal, the one my idiot cheesehead archenemy has? As soon as I find it that's going too."

He doesn't respect Vlad in the slightest or seem to care about him. Danny found Vlad's portal almost immediately. So either Dan simply couldn't remember things Vlad liked well enough to guess, and/or, he truly couldn't care less and didn't bother too hard with the search. Both makes sense, and since Vlad is fully human that very likely adds to the contempt and not seeing him as threat enough to find the portal quickly.

Something interesting, is the fact Dan knows Vlad had a portal at all, Dan partially destroyed Vlad's castle after being formed and its clearly in a different location now, unless that cave Vlad is in streaches all the way to his castle's basement Dan hasn't bothered checking? Which is. Unlikely. Which means Vlad had to make a new one. And Dan knew he did. Much to think about there I believe.

I do also think Dan actually doesn't remember his past terribly well. I know I know I just said he's focused on Danny's memories and life, and he is! But also. Its a bit separated from him, the episode itself actually points out him forgetting things about his family several times, it really does feel like they're trying to stress to you, really hammer it in that he's forgotten them some way. It's mentioned offhand like 2 or 3 times.

When Jazz confronts him and admits she knew about his ghost powers he says "You knew?" So??? Softly???? Like PLEASE listen to that line especially after hearing how he usually talks oh my GOSH??!?!!?!?!?! AUGH. slamming my hands on the floor I could make a whole separate thing just thinking of that interaction alone. God. He never knew she knew, it took him by genuine surprise for a moment. And just????? Augh??!???!?!!?!?! He had one family member always in his corner and secretly looking out for him, she believed in him and knew he was trying to do good and she had been waiting for him to reveal it to her in his own time but that time never came because she'd died and haiabsjahasguaaaai u ghjjfhdhfjshauhghhhhh

When Danny enters the future Valerie immediately thinks he Dan, she doesn't question it in the slightest, or question him saying "I have really bad feeling im the one responsible". Before attacking she says "You can't fool me this time Phantom". I take this as either meaning Dan has disguised himself as a young Phantom before, or Valerie is so used to his tricks and and finding new powers that him suddenly looking younger doesn't phase her in the slightest. I do like the idea him disguising as a young Phantom before more. It seems very probable considering he can be Danny Fenton. But this interaction also makes me wonder if Valerie knows, or ever learned that Fenton is Phantom, the trick from before easily could've been Fenton. "The explosion at the Nasty Burger, you, Tucker, Danny's family- and it was all your fault!" She's points her blaster at Phantom while saying that last bit. It makes me wonder if her saying "Danny's family" is showing how she doesn't know he's Danny. There's still other options like her knowing but not admitting he's Fenton, or her knowing he was Danny once but isn't anymore, hence saying "Danny's family" instead of something like "his family". Honestly, her knowing or not are both equally likely. As I said in my tags before, Dan seems to like to get a rise out of people, to get a reaction, he very easily could've told her in an attempt to anger or devastate her, and at the same time he simply could've not bothered at all. I think I prefer the option of her not knowing personally

I don't think I could describe Dan more concisely than I did before, he likes to get a rise out of people, revel in reactions. He twists the past to credit himself for the Nasty Burger explosion after he more than likely blamed himself for it as Danny. He likes to seem in control. He's dramatic. He hates being insulted. Hates losing. He's very casual about alot of things he does.

He caused destruction in both the human and ghost world, the first thing he did upon entering Amity was completely destroy the ghost portal, with plans to destroy Vlad's. I'm not sure what his plan in the end was, but after destroying both portals, I must point out that Dan has the power to summon his own ghost portal with ease, a power I believe is quite rare, I think other than Dan only Wulf has it, though do feel free to correct me on that. So he would've been one of the only people who could go in or out

He was actively trying to/did ruin the lives of the ghosts he knew

Powers. Ohhh boy powers. When I started my DP rewatch my initial plan was to actually take note of every power Danny uses to know what he can do, and by extension Dan. I didn't. Oopsies. So most I can focus on here are what Dan shows in the episode, other than the obvious

I do like thinking on ice powers, and what that means with Dan, obviously he's never shown to know them as they're not introduced until season 3, the writers themselves didn't know it'd happen lol. But in universe, that's something to chew on, Dan never met Frostbite, so if he ever unlocked this power he would've had to figure out the problem and train it on his own, and then there's the potential that Dan never learned, and the ability for ice powers eluded him due to fusion. The ghost sense is a result of his ice powers after all, and Dan's ghost sense isn't a breath of cold blue air, so that could be a sign of this power being one he doesn't have

But moving onto more straightforward powers

Dan destroyed Amity Park in a very short amount of time, all on his own, as while the Fright Knight had been there after the shield went down, he's simply never seen again after that, makes me think Dan just ordered Fright Knight to chase Valerie to Fentonworks and leave after

Related to Amity Park, while there are other destroyed buildings around, the land surrounding the ghost portal is a completely barren wasteland, no doubt from Dan's attempts at destroying the forcefield over the years, and simply scaring residents.

One could argue Dan was the reason lighting was striking around the forcefield, weather manipulation I wouldn't doubt is in his wheelhouse, especially since he's shown to have electrocution powers, at least it looks that way to me

Dan has fire powers, at least immunity to fire. Fire rises after he enters the lab through the cracks he put in the floor, and when he's thrown into truck it bursts into flame. Both instances of the fire happening I suppose you call coincidence, but his immunity to fire at least is undeniable

Dan can force Danny to detransform, and shorted out Danny's powers while holding onto him. This is also the moment where it seems like mild electrocution

Dan can suspend people in ectoplasm, Sam and Tucker also seem frozen completely for a scene, and in a later scene move their heads n such around

He can use a time medallion to enter the exact time and place he needs/where Sam and Tucker went

He specifically used the word fused to describe putting the amulet in Danny, which I find interesting. Entering something while intangible seems to be what causes fusion. Though more to it than that since ghosts can possess other ghosts (or was that a special case since the only example I know is Poindexter possessing a still half ghost Danny🤔)

Dan can form ropes of ectoplasm that can wrap around and trap people, as well as using ecto energy to cover people's mouths to stop talking

Dan is very resilient, I mean, he literally flys through a light pole non-intagabily and doesn't even react. He, while injured from it, did pretty much tank 1 ghostly wail, and still got up after the second, but was weak enough after to be sucked into the thermos

Dan seems to have minor technology powers, nothing major, but like, he does make himself appear on Valerie's watch so he can tell her about the ghostly wail

The ghostly wail of course, which is naturally much stronger than Danny's version. Can destroy nearly all glass in future Amity Park, destroys all the ghost shield towers one by one in a line, makes the Fentonworks building fall down when directly hit. Flips tanks and makes helicopters lose control. Destroyed Ember's vocal cords somehow

He can duplicate himself very easily, and become one again with the same ease. He turns into to a gas form to dodge Valerie's grenades

---

I don't have the time to focus on his behavior in AGiT rn, but it lines up with my thoughts. I do like the confirmation that Dan wanted Danny to suffer as he had/didn't think it fair for Danny to get a second chance to save his family. And it deeply trapped by his own emotions and just unwilling to admit it. I can still skim the book to think about powers. I put AGiT powers in this own little section to be skipped if you don't want spoilers

-He 100% has fire powers no doubt about it now

-I should've described his ability to suspend people in ectoplasm as telekinesis

-Can make shields, usually briefly and by swiping his arm

-When Dan emerges from the rubble, he briefly turns it into lava, and then water, I cannot be sure if this is because of having Clockwork's powers, or just his own at work

-His powers seem to turn blue rather than green, but its hard to tell for certain. But we do know his fire is blue so it's not completely out

---

In conclusion I'm very normal about him and have watched TUE a reasonable amount of times thank you amd goodnight <3 (lying voice)

#ask #danny phantom #dan phantom #sorry this is all just nothing i love just writing what happens down

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 2

I wasn't even intending to write a Deltarune post, but here we are!

Have some extended ramblings/theorizing about Undertale, Deltarune, and the role of the "Player" vs character agency.

[Warning: full spoilers for ALL routes in both Undertale and Deltarune!]

.

Frisk’s Agency in Undertale

So I'm not sure how common this is nowadays (I haven't been following Undertale theories for a while), but I personally prefer the interpretation that there is no "Player" as an in-universe force in Undertale. I think it's a far more elegant story if the fourth wall isn't broken.

I'm also fond of the Narrator Chara and "Chara isn't pure evil until Murder Route teaches them to be" interpretations too.

And, of course, the third plank bridging those two is that I don't see Frisk as a just a pure, innocent cinnamon roll.

Because I like the story best when it's Frisk who chooses mercy or murder. It gives Frisk a much more complex character, if they are allowed to have the capacity for both immense kindness and immense cruelty. It even gives them an interesting implied character arc, if you take the natural progression path of True Pacifist > Murder Fun Times > Soulless Pacifist.

Just like Flowey, Frisk first tried to use their powers of Determination for good, but eventually they also grew curious and began to see the world as a game. And then they went too far and ultimately regretted it. Regretted it so much, in fact, that they were willing to sell their soul for just a chance to fix it.

After all, it's not you, the "Player," whose SOUL Chara wants. It's you, Frisk.

I also dislike the idea of an in-universe "Player" because that implies that "Frisk" is nothing but an empty shell - on ALL routes. All of those heartwarming moments in the True Pacifist route? All of the silly Flirt actions? Yeah, that's not Frisk, that's just as much the "Player" puppeting some poor kid's body as the events of the Bad Times.

Who knows what Frisk is truly like if their every action - good or ill - is controlled by some unseen, eldritch force? Now Frisk no longer has any characterization.

And given that said force overrides Frisk's agency, then isn't the "Player" evil no matter which route you take? It's become a story where they only "moral" choice is never to pick up the game at all. Hrm.

Anyway, but that's all Undertale. Which brings me to...

What the heck is going on in Deltarune?

Unlike Frisk=the Red SOUL in Undertale, we don't seem to control Kris=the Red SOUL in Deltarune. The game repeatedly underlines that the player only controls the Red SOUL, not Kris.

(Though, with stuff like the sound of the bathroom faucet only being audible when Kris's actual body is nearby - it seems like even when separated, the Red SOUL may still be perceiving through Kris's other senses besides sight...?)

With Spamton's dialogue and Kris's reaction after the non-Weird NEO fight, there's also a lot more emphasis in Deltarune of Kris (and the rest of the party!) being puppeted by some other force. And that's on top of all the stuff in the first chapter highlighting Kris/the Red SOUL's lack of agency.

Because of all those hints, Deltarune seems to be much more explicitly pointing toward that dark interpretation of Undertale - that the "Player"/Red SOUL is removing Kris's agency, regardless of route.

Indeed, I'm somewhat intrigued by the possibility that we/the Red SOUL might be forcing Kris to act nice just as much as we force them to act cruel. The way that Kris deliberately removes the Red SOUL in order to do some very suspicious actions might support that. As do some comments in Chapter 1, like characters in the post-Dark World walkaround noting how Kris is being less weird and more inquisitive than usual. Maybe Kris is the Knight and the Red SOUL is possessing them to undo their evil actions. Maybe the real Kris doesn't want to be friends with Susie and Ralsei at all!

But taking that interpretation to such an extreme also doesn't quite fit. Why does Kris slash the tires on Toriel's car? The only reason I can think of is that they want to keep Susie at their house. And why does Kris create the Dark World in their house? Is Kris creating the fountains because they want to have fun with friends? Especially right after the chapter emphasized how great the Dark World adventures were, that seems very likely.

There are also some smaller details too, of Kris interpreting the Red SOUL's input with their own spin (like saying things sarcastically), or of Kris chatting in a friendly way with Ralsei which the player/SOUL can't influence.

So, I'm pretty sure that even outside of the Red SOUL's control, Kris genuinely does like their friends.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of hints this chapter that Something Bad happened to Kris, Noelle, Dess, and Asriel when they went exploring in the forest by the graveyard. Most likely, they went into that ominous bunker south of the town. Is that incident related to Kris’s current strangeness?

And then, and THEN, there's the Snow Mercy route. That route seems to imply that the Red SOUL is both evil, and very much not Kris. Noelle says Kris isn't like themself, that their voice changes strangely, and she can still hear the creepy voice even when Kris is downed.

How to make sense of this all?

A Theory on Kris and the Red SOUL

One idea is that as scary and zombie-like as Kris looks without the SOUL, they're probably a nice, if lonely kid who desperately wants friends after their big brother went to college. (And possibly after something traumatic happened to them/their neighbor.) They're creating the Dark Worlds for the sake of fun and escapism.

But the Red SOUL puts an end to Kris's happy fantasies. Indeed, if the Red SOUL gives up, "the world is covered in darkness." So without the Red SOUL, would Kris simply keep creating fountains...? (What ARE the fountains, why can Kris and theoretically any Lightener create them?)

Maybe in the normal route, the Red SOUL is trying to gently help Kris move on and accept reality in some way. At the very least, I suspect Ralsei is working toward this goal.

But in that case... that's a pretty strange way for the Red SOUL to go about it, forcibly taking control of Kris to the point that the kid notices and seems to greatly resent it.

But what if the Red SOUL didn't have a choice about this arrangement either?

After all, the Red SOUL's customized vessel was discarded at the start of Chapter 1... and it was placed into Kris instead.

Here's a question: will Kris die if they're without a SOUL for too long?

Because there are an awful lot of moments in these games where characters break free of something they are bound to, but it doesn't end well: -Spamton collapses when his strings are cut. -The Darkeners can move freely outside their origin world for a while, but eventually turn to statues if they stay in another world. -Regardless of whether Berdly removes the Queen’s wires himself, he's exhausted and unable to fight any more after being under her control. -And when Kris takes the Red SOUL out of their body, their movements become slow and clumsy. Like it's a struggle for them to move at all.

Meanwhile in Undertale, post-Pacifist Asriel could maintain his form to say goodbye, but without SOUL(s), he inevitably returns to being Flowey.

So here's a theory: Kris died and/or lost their original soul. Perhaps due to some action/inaction on Noelle's part in the exploration incident. And as a last-ditch resort to keep them alive, the Red SOUL was somehow implanted in Kris.

(Also maybe Dess died/went missing at the same time...?)

And now, the Red SOUL the only thing keeping Kris around. 

But just like in Undertale, it seems like Deltarune SOULs have wills of their own.

Which means Kris's current state is similar to the Chara-Asriel fusion, or Omega Flowey, or even Frisk-Chara. Control of the body is shared. The difference is that instead of the SOUL we play representing the original owner/will of the body, this time the SOUL we're playing as is the intruder.

Essentially, this time around we are playing the role of the Chara-equivalent instead of the Frisk-equivalent!

(Though whether Kris themself is more of Chara or Frisk I’ll leave to other theorists...)

Anyway, while Kris likely wishes to be rid of the SOUL and dislikes this whole body sharing arrangement, they know they can't survive without it. And perhaps Kris being in a partially soulless state might explain why they do questionable stuff like creating Dark Worlds and slashing their mom's car tires in order to play with their friends. (Again, see also: Asriel/Flowey.)

But when the Red SOUL and Kris are in alignment, things go okay. The Red SOUL suggests commands, but Kris is willing to follow and seems to enjoy being with Susie and Ralsei.  

Let’s Talk About Snow Mercy

It's when the Red SOUL and Kris aren't in alignment... well. That seems to be what's happening in the Snow Mercy route. That kind of situation sure didn't go so hot with Frisk and Chara in Undertale, so I doubt this will end nicely for Kris and the Red SOUL either. At the very least, Kris seems to have been visibly upset after what happened with Noelle in this route.

(By the way, there are two other moments in Chapter 2 when Susie asks if Kris is okay - first after the normal Spamton NEO fight and subsequent discussion of what it meant and second after she and Kris approach the bunker.

Three different moments, but Kris appears to react similarly. Are all of these things related? The bunker, Kris being puppeted, and the events of the Snow Mercy route?)

Meanwhile, here’s a contrast. Undertale's Murder Route seemed to exist for the sake of curiosity and power - either the "Player" or Frisk's desires, whichever interpretation you subscribe to. And the changes to the world were all logical consequences of that - because of the Fallen Child's rampage, friendly NPCs disappear, major characters fight you more seriously, etc.

But the actions in Snow Mercy are... weirdly specific, weirdly unpredictable. It doesn't come across as a simple power trip. Instead, Snow Mercy is a bunch of really bizarre actions that feel even more mysterious to the player as they are to Noelle and Kris. I sure wouldn't have guessed that backtracking to the trash heap and freezing a bunch of enemies would lead to new items spontaneously appearing and then giving Noelle access to a scary new spell. It's like something straight out of a creepypasta!

The overall tone that comes across to me is that the Red SOUL seems to know what it's doing, even while the player is kept in the dark. And given Noelle's responses, it almost seems like the SOUL is trying to remind her of events/actions from her past, events which are obviously unknown to the player. All of which leads me to think that the Red SOUL has motives and goals of its own... so just like Undertale, this probably isn't a situation of the "Player" being a fourth wall-breaking force either.

The Red SOUL is its own character.

And I'm certainly curious to find out more about them!

#undertale #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2 #frisk #kris #chara #noelle #the red soul #no separate player #undertale analysis #deltarune analysis #my ramblings #read more #is this my first ever deltarune/undertale analysis post? #huh I think it is! #haha I guess I've always just been a reader until now

[earthstellar]

Rewatching Transformers G1 S2: Episode 1: Autobot Spike

Yes, this is where the Surprised Ratchet meme image comes from:

This episode has a lot going on including near-death of a human character on screen, body horror/a Frankenstein plot, and some genuinely unsettling scenes mostly made creepy due to the combination of some interesting dialogue/voice acting and typical G1 Quality. 

And Spike shoots Starscream in the ass mid-flight, which is fantastic. 

He also shoots his dad, which is less fantastic. 

Being a horror nerd, I love this episode, so here we go! 

Gonna put this below a cut because I’m taking a lot of screenshots here:

You can watch the whole episode on YouTube here in 4 parts, if you want to watch along! 

Alright, so it opens with Sparkplug trying to create “Autobot X”, which is straight up just a Frankenstein’s Monster of autobot parts. It’s weirdly creepy, and vaguely reminiscent of the infamous Ratchet-Megatron fusion in the Marvel comics.

I want to point out that Sparkplug says “I wanna see what I can do with a lotta spare Autobot parts and some human ingenuity” before the reveal shot above, and that’s horrific if you think about it for more than like, three seconds. 

It also may have been the origins of the MECH plot line in TFP, actually! Very similar body horror type thing going on. Anyway.

It works briefly, but it flips out and has to get shut down. 

Ironhide fires a laser, problem solved, nobody’s worried. They put Autobot X in storage, because surely a rampantly aggressive seemingly sentient pastiche of random Autobot parts is nothing to worry about. It’s fine. 

Wheeljack is like, hell yeah, I’ll help you work on it later. Which is when we get the Surprised Ratchet image, because yeah, I bet Ratchet’s freaked out a little since this thing is made of SPARE AUTOBOT PARTS. 

Then we’re swept immediately into a fight with Megatron, as many Seekers as you can fit in frame at one time, and Soundwave. 

For whatever reason, Bumblebee shows up driving through a bunch of partially blown up missile/rocket components, with Spike in the driver’s seat. Even Spike is like, dude, why are we here? And Bumblebee is just like, I mean, we couldn’t NOT show up. lmao

Unsurprisingly, Bumblebee gets shot-- In alt-mode, with Spike inside. Uh oh. 

Megatron leaves, because Frank Welker can only voice so many characters at once, and our attention is turned to the carnage. 

Ratchet is like, sure, I can fix Bumblebee right up! Meanwhile, Ironhide is like oh god, oh my god, is this how you hold a human??? Is it dead??? Optimus is gonna be pissed. 

So Optimus rolls up like, listen, take him to the hospital, come on. Ratchet lets him in the back of his ambulance mode, and Prowl goes with him so that he can throw his emergency lights on to give the illusion of a police escort, ensuring the drive is even quicker. 

(I miss the days when Prowl wasn’t a total asshole.) 

It cuts pretty quickly to Spike in an operating theatre; Apparently getting shot by alien space lasers isn’t conducive to human health: 

It cuts again to the attending physician standing at Spike’s beside, presumably in ICU although they appear to be in a private room, with Sparkplug on the other side of the bed. 

The doctor says “Hmm, if only there were a way of separating Spike’s mind from his body while we work...” Which, uh, what? What surgeon says that? You can sort of already do that in actual human medicine, it’s called an induced coma. 

But sure, we need exposition here, I get it. The screenplay here is tight. Sparkplug says he has an idea...

Back at the Autobot hangout, things seem fairly chill, considering. 

Ratchet is welding Bumblebee’s ass in alt-mode, while Bumblebee complains about how long it’s taking. lol 

Meanwhile, Wheeljack and Sparkplug somehow have Spike hooked up to a Ghostbusters colander helmet, which will hopefully transfer his mind into the malfunctioning/in stasis Autobot X frame. Yikes. 

It works! Spike is now also Autobot X. We will call him Spike X for short. 

And for some reason, Spike saying “D-Da-ad?” with this faceplate expression is incredibly funny to me, while also being really weird and creepy: 

However, this is only cool for like two seconds, at which point Spike X truly starts to lose his shit. 

It gets real creepy here, with Spike X saying in a very oddly flat inflection “Why? Why did you do this to me? Why?” and it’s pretty wild. There’s even a mild strobe effect for a few frames. 

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker try to help calm him down, but Spike X throws them both across the room. 

Optimus is like, oh shit, we made a giant metal teenager. Stop him, but use low power, because if the Autobot X frame is damaged too much, then Spike’s consciousness may not be able to be returned to his actual human body. 

Note that Optimus says this in a pretty relaxed way, then levels a shoulder mounted cannon straight at Spike X, which is incredibly funny. 

It quickly gets deeply weird and creepy again when Spike X is temporarily able to talk with his dad, and states that “it’s hard to think, like something is telling me to do... bad.... things!” Yiiiiiikes. 

He gets it under control again, apologises to his dad for the outburst (I think it’s OK, Spike), and Optimus says that he’s cool to stay at the base and he’ll be taken care of while his human body heals up. 

However, oh shit, the Decepticons have found out that Spike now has an Autobot frame-- And they know he’s unstable. 

Starscream tries to roast him, but Megatron’s like, shut up nerd, we’re gonna make Spike X turn against the Autobots! It’s a good plan, I’m serious! 

Back at the Autobot base, Ratchet is still welding Bumblebee’s ass, and Bumblebee is still complaining. Wheeljack hooks up Spike X with some network television, and he’s watching... Frankenstein. Because the six year old kids who are the intended audience of G1 may not be familiar with the source material for this episode’s plot, I guess, which is fair. (Frank Welker nails it here as Dr. Frankenstein, but that’s unsurprising, because he always nails it. I think he’s also voicing Frankenstein’s Monster, but I haven’t checked the credits.)

Obviously, this isn’t a great thing for Spike X to be watching at this particular moment, so he freaks out again. 

Wheeljack and Sparkplug come running, and somehow Sparkplug is covering ground faster than Wheeljack. It’s fine, don’t worry about it. 

Ratchet’s progress on welding Bumblebee’s ass is interrupted by Spike X breaking through the wall and seemingly flying away. lmao 

They just sort of stand there, like, well, we lost him, I guess. 

Bumblebee is like, alright, gonna go get my boy. 

So he drives out of this massive crater, and Ratchet is like, wait! Your radio transmitter still doesn’t work. (Apparently their radio transmitters are located in their asses. Fascinating.) 

Spike X sits on a cliff and says “what a drag”, which, yeah. Being a Frankenstein space robot would be cool if not for the immense psychological damage this is absolutely causing. 

However, he also calls himself a “walking garbage can” in a completely genuine put-out tone of voice, which absolutely sells that this is a teenager in a giant robot body and I laughed, I won’t lie. 

Some of Megatron’s cronies locate him and hold his position. 

At the same time, Bumblebee shows up and tries to talk Spike X down from a random destructive rampage. 

He throws Bumblebee off the cliff! And Megatron’s squad is rolling up. (Well, flying up, anyway.) Uh oh! 

Spike X is like, hell yeah, bring it. More ass to kick. And it turns out his arm mounted cannon works, because he shoots Starscream directly in the undercarriage and says “YEAH, MAN!” and it’s so genuine. 

This is the perfect reaction to being a teenager in a giant robot body and just suddenly being able to shoot lasers and kick ass. Look at how happy he is, that he just shot Starscream in the butt mid-air. It’s awesome.

Unfortunately, the Seekers do actually beat him up, although Spike X puts up a good fight. 

Megatron then takes advantage of his further weakened state, and swoops in to pitch a classic “Join Us” speech. Spike X calls him “Megacrumb”, which is probably acceptable because he’s absolutely concussed by this point. 

Megatron is willing to overlook this for the sake of teaming up. 

Bumblebee eavesdrops, and drives away-- But Spike X gives Megatron a handshake, and agrees to “make them pay”. Oh shit! 

For some reason, Optimus and Ironhide are back at the rocket facility to watch a launch. Because I guess whatever, this whole situation is chill, let’s go watch rockets? IDK 

But either way, Optimus roasts the inferior quality of human technology, while Bumblebee just drives up on site despite Military Police levelling sniper rifles at him in order to report that Megatron is taking advantage of Spike X’s inability to think clearly. 

Optimus says “I feared something like this might happen”, which, if that were the case, why not take actions to prevent it, maybe? Not the strongest Optimus episode. 

To be fair though, Ironhide transforms and is already driving off before Optimus even gives the order to roll out, so I guess Ironhide either really wants to kick some ass or cares slightly more about Spike X’s wellbeing. He has no dialogue here, so we can only guess. 

They get there, with even more Autobots who showed up at some point in the rapid scene cuts here, and Spike X is super unhinged-- Charging his weapons, he starts speaking in a more strained and angry way, and engages the Autobots! 

He hits Optimus with what appears to be a chest laser? It’s hard to see. But it’s super effective: 

Optimus pleads with Spike X to calm down, but Spike X straight up pulls MEGATRON IN GUN MODE out of his sub-space and shoots Optimus directly in the faceplate. Damn! 

The Seekers and Soundwave drop in, and start rapid firing on all the Autobots present. 

We get some great shots of Megatron in his gun alt-mode as he tries to convince Spike X to keep attacking. Optimus and Bumblebee hide behind cover, attempting to bring Spike X to his senses long enough to disarm him. 

Suddenly, Wheeljack and Sparkplug roll up; Sparkplug attempts to talk some sense into Spike, too. 

Optimus and Bumblebee are at a loss; If they take out Spike X, the damage might take him out for good. 

However, Sparkplug fails in his efforts to talk to Spike X; He SHOOTS HIS DAD AND KNOCKS HIM OFF THE CLIFF. 

Can you imagine if they put an ad break here? lmao 

Luckily, he has like, a claw machine arm, and he catches his dad before he becomes a human smoothie. 

This shocks Spike X badly enough that while he still has Megatron in gun mode, he takes a few pot shots at the Seekers and the Decepticons decide it’s time to bounce, so Megatron bails too. 

He apologises for almost killing his dad, his dad is like hey no beef man, and it cuts to them in the hospital: 

Sparkplug takes his son’s body back to the Autobot base (that sounds worse than it is), and they prepare to transfer him back into his body. 

What’s extra funny here is that he nervously laughs and says “Hope you fixed this thing up good, Ratchet!” And Ratchet says absolutely nothing. Not a word. 

It’s a success! Dad and son hug, totally not even addressing anything that happened this whole episode, because that’s a job for a therapist. 

Ratchet, who continues to not really care about any of this, tells Wheeljack “You know, I could probably repair that mess, but I think it’s best that I don’t.” (This is a play on what Wheeljack said earlier in the episode when he offered to help Sparkplug fix up Autobot X to begin with.) 

I love how tired Wheeljack looks. LOL

Spike, now recovered, leaves us with a great question to close out the episode: “I wonder what it’d be like for a robot mind to be transferred... to a human!” 

Depending on what kind of kid you were, his question was either imagination fuel for fun humanformer ideas, or was a blatantly bad question indicating he learned nothing and providing nightmare fuel trying to imagine one of the Autobots losing their shit in a human body the same way Spike lost his shit while inhabiting Autobot X. 

Anyway, great episode! 10/10 Scary, funny, creepy, Starscream got shot in the ass by a teenager. 

#g1 #transformers #maccadam #optimus prime #ratchet #wheeljack #bumblebee #transformers review #g1 review #autobot spike #spike witwicky #sparkplug witwicky #megatron #starscream

[inkweaver22-blr]

Here’s another filler chapter! I like how it turned out so I hope ya’ll do too! Enjoy.

AO3 Link

<Previous | First | Next>

Scattered Cicadas - Chapter Twelve: Memory Proof

Tang learns a bit about the twins. Being in the same body as them might have something to do with that.

----------

Tang hid behind some debris in the ruined theater as he watched Macaque approach the shattered Shadow Lantern. He had been hoping to collect the pieces for himself to try and study the artifact’s ability to trap souls. The data he could potentially obtain from it would be priceless in trying to come up with a counter to his curse once he found it’s cause.

But just because they were intelligent, didn’t mean they had common sense. The amount of harebrained plots and ideas they had that blew up in their faces due to not thinking everything through was almost comical.

Abandoning his plan for now, Tang waited patiently for Macaque to leave so he could make his exit as well.

Suddenly the Mayor was there.

Tang tensed in his hiding spot as he watched the man taunt Macaque before surprising the monkey and grabbing him by the throat.

Tang’s pulse raced as he watched Macaque get captured with little effort.

Was this why they never saw Macaque again after these events? Did this happen in every cycle? Just how strong was the Mayor to be able to subdue the shadow demon so quickly?

He needed to get out of here.

Tang froze when he realized the Mayor had vanished without him noticing.

“Now what do we have here?”

Blinding white and blue pain flashed behind Tang’s eyes as he stumbled back. Gasping in panic he looked up to find the Mayor right in front of him, giving the scholar his trademark nonchalant smile.

“Can’t have you running off to spoil the end of the show for the others, now can we” the Mayor said as he held up the Shadow Lantern. “I do love a captive audience!”

Before Tang could react, the lantern was activated, and he knew no more.

----------

He was in the cave, thankfully. The voices called out in concern. The golden-yellow light wrapped around him.

----------

Tang awoke with a start, gasping in panic.

Damn that man!

He hadn’t been killed this time, but being a puppet for the Mayor until the cycle ended was just as unpleasant.

The more he learned about him, the more terrifying to Tang he became.

He would have to do his best to avoid him as much as possible from now on.

Once he got his breathing under control, Tang made his preparations for the day and began his remembering ritual.

It seemed this cycle was one where there were only a few changes. Everything seemed mostly the same except for two details.

The first was that Jin and Yin had been good friends with Mei for years, acting almost like older brothers for her.

The second was that this cycle had Fusion.

Tang groaned at this revelation.

There were many strange and weird magics and powers he had come across in the timelines, but Fusion was the most conflicting for Tang.

Fusion was a special ability where two or more beings would physically combine together into a new, more powerful being. The result was usually a much larger combination of the participants that mixed together their physical characteristics and often sported extra limbs and eyes. Whether the minds of the original beings remained separate or fused into a new personality as well as the permanence of the Fusion tended to be randomly determined like most things in these cycles.

The only constant was the need for absolute trust between all parties that fuse.

Fusion was an intimate process as you shared not just a body with someone else, but your mind as well. Thoughts and memories could not be hidden from a Fusion partner. It was an implicit sign of trust, and oftentimes love, to want to fuse with someone.

Forcing two unwilling beings to fuse was possible, but never went over well in Tang’s experience.

Tang didn’t dislike Fusion. It was an incredible experience the few times he had done so with either Pigsy or Wukong. He had never felt so close with anyone as he did when fused with them.

The problem was the curse.

Fusion required trust and the participants working in synchrony to function. His curse made it impossible for anyone except himself to know about it. When fused, his partners would become confused at the strange gaps in Tang’s mind they couldn’t perceive. The disorientation would destabilize the trust between them, causing them to fall out of sync, and result in the Fusion ending prematurely.

The questions he would receive were ones Tang couldn’t answer, and he was usually treated with suspicion and distrust for the remainder of those cycles. The same problem would occur if he refused to fuse at all, as that implied he didn’t trust anyone.

Luckily for Tang, he wasn’t in a romantic relationship with anyone this cycle and hadn’t fused with anyone yet. There was also a precedent this time for some people finding Fusion nauseating, so he could always fall back on that if pushed.

Hoping it wouldn’t even come to that, Tang left his apartment and made his way to work. He began to think of the second change as he walked.

Jin and Yin. The Gold and Silver Demon Brothers.

The two trouble makers loved to spread chaos wherever they went. Even during the rare occasions like now where they were allies. Schemes, pranks, and hijinks were to be expected whenever they were around.

The twins were smart. That was pretty much a given being the former lab assistants of Lao Tzu. Their talent in crafting magical items was impressive by mortal standards.

But just because they were intelligent, didn’t mean they had common sense. The amount of harebrained plots and ideas they had that blew up in their faces due to not thinking everything through was almost comical.

Tang had to admire their tenacity though. Their determination never faltered no matter how many failures they had. This was particularly handy when they were allies.

The twins’ self destructive tendencies usually got smoothed out whenever they befriended the group as well. Tang was genuinely surprised a few times by what they had managed to come up with when given a proper sounding board to help point out problems.

He may not consider Jin and Yin to be a part of his extended family, but Tang couldn’t help but have a soft spot for them. Perhaps, in time, he could include them. Maybe when their redemption became more common in the cycles.

But for now he was perfectly fine with just being their friend.

----------

The attack came without warning.

They had all been hanging out at Pigsy’s Noodles when multiple explosions went off across the city. Tang wasn’t sure what happened in all the confusion, but he was currently with Jin and Yin, the three of them separated from the others.

They had been trying to find everyone when the twins had suddenly pushed Tang away from them. There was a loud crashing sound and the air was filled with dust.

Coughing and waving away the dust, Tang stood and looked around. As the smoke began to clear, his heart dropped at what he saw.

“Jin! Yin!”

The twins were trapped under the rubble of a partially collapsed building. Jin’s entire left side was stuck under the debris while Yin was pinned from the waist down.

Neither demon had super strength and were completely helpless. They couldn’t even fuse to escape as they were just out of reach of each other and Fusion required contact.

Tang scrambled over the torn apart street and knelt next to the groaning brothers.

“G-go get help Tang,” Jin said, teeth clenched in pain. “We’ll be fine for now.”

“I am not leaving you two here,” Tang said, looking around for anyone to help, but the street was deserted.

“Come on, we’ll be right here when you come back,” Yin said with a strained smile. “I promise we won’t get up and leave.”

Before Tang could scold him for joking, there was another distant explosion followed by a rumbling sound. The three looked up in horror as the remainder of the building began to sway.

“Shit! Tang you need to leave now!” Jin pushed against the concrete trapping him, but made no progress.

Tang’s mind raced.

None of them were strong enough to push the rubble away. He had no time to go get help before the rest of the building fell. Jin and Yin couldn’t grab each other to fuse.

But he could.

Tang reached out and snatched up the hand of each twin.

“Fuse with me!”

“What?!”

“There’s no time! Fuse with me!”

Spurred on by the urgency of his voice, the twins closed their eyes and focused. Tang did the same and the world melted into gold, silver, and yellow light.

Fusing was always an indescribable experience. Tang felt warm as he felt his body stretch out and merge seamlessly with the twins’. He had no idea which physical traits would be picked from each of them, but their appearance was the least of his worries.

When they opened their eyes, they were standing several feet away from the pile of debris, just as the building began to topple.

“Shit! Go go go,” Jin said from their shared mouth.

They quickly dashed away from the area, their much taller stature allowing them to easily outpace the collapsing structure. Their new body didn’t feel strange in any way, and their combined movements came naturally.

‘Damn, I think my legs are broken,’ Yin said in their shared mind once they paused to take a breath. ‘We’ll have to keep this up until we get to a hospital and unfuse inside.’

‘Pretty sure some rebar had stabbed into my side so ditto on that,’ Jin added.

‘That might be a problem...’ Tang’s nervousness caused their stomach to twist.

‘What does that- Oh. Huh. That’s interesting.’ Jin explored the gaps he found in Tang’ mind with curiosity. ‘Hey Yin, take a look at this.’

‘Whoa. Trippy. Haven’t seen a memory-proof seal like this in a while.’ Yin poked at the spaces gingerly, not wishing to be caught completely in its effects.

‘Look at how big it is though,’ Jin said. ‘You are much older than I thought you were Tang.’

‘No, no, no. His body is definitely only 41 years old. So that means his mind is much older.’

‘Time travel?’

‘That usually has the person physically moving through time, so I doubt it.’

‘How are you two not disoriented by this,’ Tang said as they began to move towards the sounds of the explosions.

‘Should we be?’

‘Oh, yeah, I see what you mean,’ Jin said as he found the context for Tang’s confusion.

The demon didn’t vocalize it, but he projected how he found it interesting that he could get the knowledge on Tang’s past experiences with fusions without the full picture.

‘Oof. Forcefully unfusing and being treated as untrustworthy must suck,’ Yin said.

Tang was about to ask how they were being so unconcerned about this when the context came unbidden from their minds.

Lao Tzu had placed his own memory-proof seals on the twins to prevent them from revealing his secrets. They had to deal with it every time they fused.

Along with that knowledge came the feelings of the desperate need for approval and attention from their master, but never receiving it.

Always having their ideas dismissed. Being told their work was never good enough. Belittling their reliance on one another. Outright destroying their inventions at one point.

‘What an ass,’ Tang said vehemently.

He had worked too hard across the cycles to keep MK from drowning in his insecurities. It was insulting to him that someone he had once respected for their vast knowledge would ever treat anyone like that to make them feel this way.

‘I know, right?’

‘Why do you think we left,’ Jin said.

Tang sent over the context that, while he couldn’t tell them how, he had become an accomplished magician and artificer in his own right.

‘We’re going to make him regret ever dismissing you two,’ Tang vowed.

‘You… You want to take us on as students?’

Tang’s righteous protectiveness over how small Yin had sounded shocked the twins as they felt his warmth of comfort envelope them.

‘I would be honored to have you two as students. There is no way I’d ever let my family feel like they are unwanted.’

‘Family?’

Tang let the context for that free as well as the love he felt for his family, which now included his two new students.

They had to stop walking for a moment as Jin’s and Yin’s emotions caused them to start crying. Tang made sure to keep watch from his set of eyes while they were indisposed.

The joy and appreciation they sent his way in silent thanks was returned with his own.

‘Let’s get you two to a hospital.’ They continued to move once they had composed themselves. ‘I would never forgive myself if I let my favorite students perish from a simple collapsing building.’

‘Aren’t we your only students?’

‘Oi! And what do you mean by a “simple collapsing building''? Are you saying there are other ways you’d let us perish?!’

The master and his students bickered playfully back and forth as they looked around for a hospital that had been undamaged in the attack.

Tang may not have been expecting to add the twins to his family this soon, but he knew he wouldn’t regret it. How he felt for them would live on even past the memory erasing effects of the curse.

Jin and Yin returned the sentiment a hundredfold.

----------

And thus Tang’s family grows in numbers once more! He’s almost completed the whole set by now.

Fusions are an interesting concept and there are plenty of great designs for different combinations out there. While none of them show up in this chapter, I’d like to give a shout out to @winterpower98, @smallpwbbles, @sketchquill, and @ninja-knox-ur-sox-off for their amazing fusion designs! Go check them out!

Don't worry about that bit with the mayor. It's fine.

Next chapter will be another filler! Until then!

#Ink Writes #Monkie Kid #Scattered Cicadas #Tang #Jin #Yin #Lao Tzu #Fusions #Fusion #winterpower98 #smallpwebbles #sketchquill #ninja knox ur sox off #Tang Monkie Kid #LEGO Monkie Kid

[passionate-reply]

In 1993, Billy Idol--yes, that Billy Idol--went completely mad and made an electronic album full of futuristic themes, samples, and techno beats. Many consider Cyberpunk one of the worst albums of all time, but on this week’s installment of Great Albums, we provide a somewhat more positive approach. Check out the video, or read the transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, I’ll be taking a look at an artist one might not normally associate with the usual “pantheon” of synthesizer jockeys I usually talk about: Billy Idol. Initially known as the frontman of punk outfit Generation X, Idol found success as a solo artist in the early 1980s, fusing tough-as-nails punk aesthetics with a lavish, almost camp sense of glam, and his visually arresting pop-rock made him an MTV-friendly star of the “Second British Invasion.” While one couldn’t fairly argue that Idol was an “electronic musician,” his early work does contain moments of mild electro-curiosity, perhaps most notably the mercurial ballad, “Eyes Without a Face.”

Music: “Eyes Without a Face”

But despite the minor synth touches of the hit single “Eyes Without a Face,” few in the 1980s could have possibly expected the turn Idol’s career would eventually take by the time of his 5th studio LP: 1993’s Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is, of course, an album with a reputation that precedes it, and that reputation is not a particularly good one. Cyberpunk is a deeply fraught album, which commercially underperformed upon release, and did even worse in the eyes of critics, with the magazine Q dubbing it the 5th worst album of all time. In the nearly 30 years since the album’s release, opinions on it don’t seem to have softened that much, either. But as with everything I choose to talk about, I think Cyberpunk is worth listening to. I think it’s a daring and challenging work of art, and one that stands on its own terms when approached head-on. Whether you’re familiar with this album or not, I encourage you to give it a fresh listen, and a fair shake.

Music: “Wasteland”

Perhaps the most immediately apparent feature of Cyberpunk is its increasingly electronic soundscape, including a prominent sample-based hook on the track “Wasteland.” The album was created in less than a year, and chiefly through use of computers and digital audio software, which Idol evidently found easier to explore and use than earlier forms of music technology. I’m partial to the argument that sees the use of digital software as perfectly compatible with the famed DIY ethos of punk, and hence, not far from Idol’s wheelhouse at all. In the 1990s, computers were still something that far from everyone owned, but in our contemporary world of Soundcloud rappers on seemingly every street, it’s easier to accept the notion of computer music as a grassroots, egalitarian field where even the unskilled are welcome--perhaps even moreso than punk ever was, in the 20th Century. This is one sense in which I think Cyberpunk has aged better than anyone could have possibly imagined. Besides pushing the texture of Idol’s music into new territory, Cyberpunk is also a fairly risky album structurally, opening with a sort of manifesto being read, and peppered with brief interludes between its tracks proper.

Music: “Interlude 3”

It’s only fitting that an album so concerned with the bleeding edge of technology might also try to push the boundaries of the still-fresh CD age. Liberated from the confines of designing chiefly for vinyl, artists like Idol were empowered to create CDs that ostensibly had 20 “tracks,” with no need for empty grooves to separate these brief interludes from the album’s major compositions. This avant-garde touch adds significant amounts of texture to the album, and, dare I say, a sense of world-building. Undoubtedly, one main reason why this album was so poorly received at the time is that it is, quite simply, not what one expects a Billy Idol record to sound like--at least, with the possible exception of its second single, “Shock to the System.”

Music: “Shock to the System”

“Shock to the System” feels like something of an orphan in the tracklisting of Cyberpunk. While tracks like “Wasteland” certainly maintain a rough-edged rock mentality about them, and could never be confused for straightforward techno floor-fillers, “Shock to the System” feels more like it was tacked onto the album just so that it would have something that appealed to those who exclusively prefer Idol’s earlier style--and, given that most of Idol’s greatest hits compilations tend to include “Shock to the System” and nothing else from Cyberpunk, this may have worked. Cyberpunk, as a genre, is often concerned with political themes--its great literary progenitor, William Gibson, once said that “the future is already here, but it’s unevenly distributed,” epitomizing the extent to which the intersection between technology and class is a central issue in cyberpunk media. “Shock to the System” is the most overtly political track on Cyberpunk, inspired by the wave of riots that broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers alleged to have used excessive force in the arrest of a Black man, Rodney King. While the role of computers in daily life has changed a great deal since the 1990s, police brutality and anti-Blackness have sadly remained quite similar.

Few have commented on the perhaps uncomfortable implications of Idol’s dramatization of the LA riots from outside, which seems to transmute the scene into one of high-tech fantasy while largely eliding over the racial implications of why people were rioting in the first place--something that seems particularly strange when one learns how upset members of the underground “cyberculture” were about the alleged co-opting and appropriation of their culture. Some have characterized Idol as an honest appreciator of cyberpunk who just wanted to make art that engaged with its ideas, and others more cynically consider him a profiteer who thought he could commercialize a more palatable version of the counter-culture. While the latter hypothesis may well be true, I’m not sure if it can rightfully be said that Idol had “no right” to mine cyberculture for inspiration, particularly since cyberculture has often encouraged amateur participation. Still, as a sometime fan of the literary genre myself, I’m tempted to agree with those who have questioned how deep Idol’s understanding of cyberpunk actually was, particularly when faced with tracks like “Neuromancer.”

Music: “Neuromancer”

In William Gibson’s novel of the same name, Neuromancer is a super-advanced AI with the ability to preserve people’s personalities in virtual reality...though you probably wouldn’t have guessed any of that from this track. Many who interviewed Idol seemed to think he had a weak grasp on the finer points of cyberculture, and even Gibson himself, upon meeting Idol, failed to take him seriously. Still, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to draw a line in the sand, as some have done, and say that Idol was particularly, individually, responsible for the dilution of cyberpunk ideals, as presented by authors like Gibson. While it may be easy to poke fun at the clownish, overwrought figure of Idol, as the embodiment of people who love books they don’t understand, it’s not like that many people owned this album. I think the success of popular films like Blade Runner and The Matrix has done much more to simplify and proliferate ideas cribbed from Gibson.

But however you feel about this, it’s clear that Cyberpunk was an album that ended up appealing to nearly no-one--it alienated Idol’s existing fans with its stylistic diversions, as well as feeling too commercial and inauthentic to cyberpunk enthusiasts. Something else that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussion of this album is the fact that Billy Idol really wasn’t the first to combine the ideas of cyberpunk and music. By the early 1990s, industrial acts like Front 242 and Front Line Assembly had already been making electronic music about cyber brain implants for years, albeit largely underground and often unnoticed by rock-focused critics. I can’t help but think that the prior existence of this stuff was yet another factor that caused Cyberpunk’s failure to thrive. Compared to the electronic body music scene, Cyberpunk comes across as less subtle, less insider, and much more surface-level.

The cover art of Cyberpunk has attracted nearly as much derision as the associated music. The image of Idol’s face bleeds and distorts “into” and “against” a gridlike field, perhaps the greenish terminal of an early computer screen, a representation of the hacker figure entering the virtual world of cyberspace, and identity blurring along those lines. With its wobbly image distortion and queasy complementary colour palette of yellow and purple, it instantly evokes not only cyberpunk aesthetics generally, but more particularly the fusion between cyberpunk and another popular aesthetic of the early 90s: psychedelia, which experienced a substantial resurgence around this time, related to rave culture and its embrace of hallucinogenic party drugs. So-called “cyberdelic” themes abound on the album as well, particularly on the hypnotic “Adam In Chains,” a track that sounds less like 80s New Wave, and more like 90s New Age.

Following the release and subsequent panning of Cyberpunk in the 1990s, Billy Idol went silent for over a decade. While he claimed that his disinterest in making new music was rooted moreso in mismanagement by Chrysalis Records than it was the album’s failure, it’s very tempting to look for a correlation here. Over the years, Idol was often asked if he ever planned to make more electronic music, and consistently claimed that he was chiefly interested in guitar-centric rock, while never completely trashing his vision for Cyberpunk. True to his word, when Idol finally did return to music with 2005’s Devil’s Playground, he delivered on his “classic” sound, and he’s continued to do so ever since.

Music: “Scream”

My favourite track on Cyberpunk is its lead single, the total showstopper “Heroin.” “Heroin” is actually a cover of a song by the seminal Velvet Underground, and it’s everything I think a cover ought to be: exciting, bizarre, and capable of taking something familiar and kicking it into a whole new territory. What’s the point of covering something without changing it and doing something a bit different? “Heroin” is naturally one of the most psychedelic-oriented tracks on the album, being a cover of a drug-themed 1960s classic, as well as one of the tracks with the most influence from dance genres like techno, boasting a very appealing extended outro that makes it feel like a 12” remix. While I think Cyberpunk is a fascinating album, “Heroin” is the one track I think really crosses the bridge from being interesting to being, quite simply, good, and it’s something I’m much more inclined to sit down and listen to recreationally. That’s everything for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Heroin”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #billy idol #cyberpunk

[marshmallowprotection]

As someone with DID, i respect you so much for your talk about Saeran and his system. It seems like so many people just gloss over it and/or act like Saeran, Ray, Unknown(though its debatable, i agree with you that he's seperate from Suit), and GE Saeran are all the same people. They use the name Saeran interchangeably for all of them, erasing the fact that theyre all seperate. And i think it has partially something to do with Cheritz's not so great rep of DID but... Idk, its just sad and disappointing, and stressful to see the DID/OSDD erasure.

TW: Dissociation, Abuse-Mention

I try my best to do what I can to salvage what Chertiz did and flesh it out further because the concept is there, it just needed better touches. I’m aware that it is not perfect but it’s there and more people should be willing to talk about it as it’s hard to find representation in media for DID/OSDD that is written properly and in a way that isn’t patronizing or harmful. 

Don’t get me started on the bullshit that horror movies do to people with DID. People with DID are victims of extreme abuse and are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence in the way that film tries to make it out to be. Just as the rate goes for anyone with mental illness, we’re more likely to be harmed than to be doing harm. 

I try my damnedest to ensure that I’m writing them properly and that I’m being respectful. So, like, don’t hesitate to tell me that I need to work on something or fix my angle if I’m doing something wrong. My partner has DID, as we recently discovered this past year, and because of my interest in learning more about Saeran’s system, I already had a bit of insight and knowledge from my research to better understand what was happening when we learned what was going on. I’ve spent much more time trying to learn everything I can and be a good ally as well as someone who can write about this topic with care. 

I’m a singlet, but yeah, I’m only human so if there’s any system here that feels like I could use advice or tips to better write with them all, I’d be happy to hear what you all have to say! Ray is not Suit Saeran. Suit Saeran isn’t GE Saeran. Unknown and SE are the same person, in my opinion, just pre-and-post therapy in the timeline. 

It really is debatable if Suit Saeran and Unknown are one and the same, but they just don’t feel the same to me, personally. Two years is a long time to be trapped in Mint Eye. I always assumed that when Ray eventually went dormant from exhaustion, Suit Saeran was pushed to the bone until somewhere along the line in that anger, there was a fracture or a split which led to Unknown coming to the surface. There’s a hard line to tow with that, though, so I’m always open to any other opinion on the matter. 

Fusion does happen out of the blue sometimes, and both Ray and Suit Saeran hit a wall during that last night when they were caught by Rika. There was just this mutual agreement in their feelings that they needed to be strong enough to leave that place and protect their MC, and in that, they just sort of... connected in a way that they didn’t plan or expect in that way, and there was definitely an attempt on Cheritz part to show that. Because there was a fumble of speech on GE Saeran’s part, where he isn’t sure if he’s Ray or Suit Saeran... a lot of “we” and not “me”. 

GE Saeran isn’t Ray nor is he Suit Saeran, nor is he both of mushed together where one voice is stronger than the other. He’s his own person that has both of the experiences of Ray and Suit Saeran. He doesn’t really settle on a name for himself, he just says it’s okay to call him Saeran or Ray. When I’m writing with GE Saeran, I tend to let my MC follow that, sometimes she’ll call him Saeran, or Ray, just whatever feels right at that moment, and GE Saeran happily answers to either because she’s respecting what he asked. 

Integration and fusion isn’t the goal for many systems, even though the world wants to push that you need to fuse to heal or “become normal”. Wrong, wrong, wrong! For many systems, they might never integrate and that’s okay. It’s a case by case basis and comfort zone for every system and what feels right for all of you. You do what you have to do and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for having a different opinion. 

I don’t like it when people erase their identities. Just because they happen to use a similar name doesn’t mean that they’re the same person. That’s why I always make the point to label which system member that I’m talking about so that they have that clarity. It’s not cool to just think that they’re all the same person, they may share a single body, but they are not a singlet. Respect that notion and it’s the first step to being a better person. 

There’s so much that I could say about it, but I feel like I’m babbling, haha. 

#tw dissociation #tw abuse mention #ray choi #se saeran #unknown #suit saeran #saeran choi #mm #mysme #mysticmessenger #mystic messenger #mod kait

[mythgirlimagines]

I’m sorry for being late! Guess you could call this a tardy Talentswap Tuesday! Anyway, introducing Myth, the Former Ultimate Nurse!

——————————————————

BACKSTORY AND TALENT

Growing up, Myth was one of the more empathetic and level-headed people of her friend group. She’s always carrying a first aid kit, in case her friends get into any accidents. After her recent scoliosis surgery, Myth decided to get into the medical field, and she started by volunteering at multiple hospitals in her teen years. She was well-known amongst her patients for her kind-hearted and courteous attitude and her amazing bedside manner. But what really catapulted her to medical stardom, was her involvement in the “M-0 H-5” incident. After a fiery explosion at a rock concert has left the lead vocalist amputated, burned, and partially deaf, Myth managed to stay calm and heal up the rock star, until she could stand again.  In her adult years, she is studying hard to pass medical school. But she is willing to put her studies aside to chaperone the Ultimates and Jr. Ultimates on their Kibo-Con journey.

——————————————————

RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Musician

Ever since Myth met Wyre at the “M-O H-5” incident, Myth has been helping Wyre get back up and rocking again. Despite their clashing personalities, they get along very well. Although Myth usually has to remind Wyre to wear her hearing aid and prosthetic arm, for Wyre has a very bad tendency to be reckless and impulsive, and thus regularly forgets them.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Animator

While Myth admires Scar’s dedication to her craft, Myth wishes that Scar wouldn’t sacrifice precious sleeping hours to work on her latest project. It‘s very clear that all of those sleepless nights had taken a toll on Scar’s mind, for her “Demon of Reanimation” schtick is heavily concerning Myth to say the least.

Fusion Anon, Reserve Course Student

Both Fusion and Myth have a mutual respect for each other, in part due to their similar wise and caring personalities and even interests. They regularly meet up with each other to have conversations about various topics over some healthy snacks, such as studying methods and the antics of their more reckless classmates.

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Mechanic

While they initially didn’t get along very well due to their opposing personalities, they both found a common interest after Myth witnessed Fusion II not only fix but also improve Wyre’s robot arm: prosthetics! Now Fusion II is on Wyre duty alongside Myth, watching over Wyre and making sure that she doesn’t damage her prosthetic limb again.

Just Anon, Ultimate Yakuza

Between Janon‘s hostile demeanor and his dangerous family business, Janon is one of the most concerning individuals in Myth’s book, and that just gives her more reasons to constantly keep an eye on him. Janon can’t stand Myth’s constant coddling of him every time he gets harmed in fights against rival yakuza families. Janon’s resentment of Myth isn’t helped by her constant teasing of him over his romantic feelings for Curious.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Team Manager

Apart from Wyre, Sparkle is the Former Ultimate that Myth gets along with the most. They both could, in a way, be considered the ”moms” of the Kibo-Con roster, for they regularly care for and pump up the young Anons, when they’ve got a bad day. Behind closed doors, Myth regularly flirts with Sparkle, which only manages to boost Sparkle’s already large ego.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Gamer, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Photographer

This cursed twosome manages to tick a lot of boxes in Myth’s checklist for “NEEDS HELP IMMEDIATELY”. Between Wet Sock’s violent and aggressive attitude and cursed comments, and Egg’s impulsive and somehow even more cursed comments, Myth regularly tries to crack open the Freak Twins’ psyche to find out exactly what went wrong in the twin‘s life to make them act this way.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Animal Breeder

You’d think that with their similar talents, Myth and Curious would fit each other like a glove, and you’d be right. Curious has a calm and tranquil demeanor that puts Myth at ease whenever she interacts with both them and their pet Collie, Barkley. Barkley reminds Myth of her own dog back home, and that just makes her even happier being around Curious.

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Traditional Dancer

While Nerd‘s dance moves are tranquil and peaceful, Nerd has a foul-temper, and the mouth to match when off the stage. You’d think that it’ll discourage Myth from interacting with him, but there is a slight issue: Nerd has a very blatant crush on Myth, that he isn’t doing a very good job of hiding. Myth regularly flirts with the dancer, and endures fan smacks and geta stomps from him. It’ll be worth it in the end, when she gets him to open up to her.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Princess

Myth can’t help but feel humbled when around the crowned princess of the island nation of Kyuuhai, but Dream insists that she should be treated like any other student here. Dream is always happy to show off the customs and athletics of her home country. Unfortunately for Myth, Dream has a hostile bodyguard/boyfriend that prevents Myth from getting closer to her. Speaking of which…

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Swordsman

Having been trained as Dream’s bodyguard for all of his life, Eldritch has a hostile distrust towards everyone, apart from Dream, and Myth is sadly not an exception to this. However, Myth is working hard to prove to the overzealous swordfighter that she is worth trusting. From patching up Eldritch after sparring sessions to attempting to set up Eldritch and Dream on a date, Myth’s attempts have slowly, but surely restored Eldritch’s trust in people.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Gymnast

Iris might just hold the record for the most visits to Myth’s office, and the various bandages on her person could easily explain why. Despite her talent requiring grace, Iris is superbly clumsy when off of the balance beam. Myth ends up regularly thinking, “Oh, Iris! What will I ever do with you?” anytime Iris has an accident and Myth winds up having to patch her up. 

Purple Anon, Ultimate Lucky Student

While Iris holds the record for most visits to Myth’s office, Purple holds the record for most accidents escaped unscathed. Because of Purple’s timid and avoidant nature towards anyone besides Fusion, Myth isn’t really given many opportunities to talk with or socialize with her. According to Fusion, Purple avoids others to prevent them from being infected by her luck and dying in an future accident because of it.

-——————————————————

APPEARANCE

Nurse!Myth wears her undyed hair in a shoulder-length bob that covers her right eye. Her hair is decorated with a white flower barrette and a pink hairband with a heart pin. She wears a white lab coat with a Red Cross design on each pocket and pink lining on the end of the sleeves and pockets, over a pink turtle neck sweater. She also wears a teal skirt, black stockings and white slip-on shoes with pink soles and a Red Cross design that matches her lab coat.

——————————————————

PERSONALITY

Around the younger Anons, Nurse!Myth is a calm and tranquil person, who would always be there for you in case of an emergency or a bad day. So, Nurse!Myth is more of a mom compared to Romantic!Myth. But when around the Former Ultimates, she shows a more devious side. Around the adults, Nurse!Myth drops her ”mom friend” facade, and becomes more teasy and flirtatious, a bit more like Romantic!Myth. Nurse!Myth just lives for the reactions of the people she flirts with. Despite her laid-back attitude, Nurse!Myth is still very studious and educated. She is a professional nurse, after all. Nurse!Myth’s personality can best be described as Kirumi with a hidden Teruteru side.

——————————-————————

Once again, I’d like to apologize for my tardiness, but I hope this Myth makes up for it? What do you think of Nurse!Myth and the other talentswaps in this AU? I’d love to hear your personal thoughts on this AU!

-Fusion Anon

—

No need to apologize! I really really like this version of me, it kinda showed me a little of what it would be like if I had become a doctor or nurse (which I actually did want to do after my surgery haha). I think I would like to be her the most out of the other Myths

#submission #anon #fusion anon #art #not my art #my evil twin #anon scar #fusion anon ii #just anon #sparkling anon #wet sock anon #egg anon #curious anon #anon nerd #dream anon #eldritch anon #iris anon #purple anon #anon kg #i speak #talentswap

[iturbide]

(hey you should totally flex ur science muscles on crests/relics because that stuff STILL wilds me out it's so cool even if i only really truly understood part of it)

oh no bany what have you unleashed

okay so for anybody not in the know about this (which is...probably everybody?), I have a deep fascination with science shit.  Biology was absolutely my jam in school, and sometimes I still just go Wiki-diving into weird little science topics for no reason besides “I saw something cool mentioned in a post/article/fic and now I want to know more.”  I have a Science Hat that I mostly only get to wear when Pokemon comes into play, but somehow or another Three Houses managed to hit just the right balance of magic and technology to let me run wild on the science side.  Usual disclaimer applies, this is all just personal speculation and headcanon territory.

Anyway let’s talk about the Crest Virus.

I have this very weird theory.  That dragon blood, when it enters the human system, essentially acts like a virus -- more specifically, like a retrovirus.  The genetic sequence from the dragon ‘donor’ invades the host’s cells and begins to rewire them completely: it splices its sequence into the host’s DNA and begins to produce a shocking variety of new proteins and other molecules both within the cell and attached to the cell’s exterior surface.  It also reproduces its gene package and ships it off within the host organism to continue spreading the genetic material -- which is a key strategy in the early ‘infection’ stage, when the host’s immune system is going on the attack; the repackaged genes originated internally and hijack some of the host’s unique personal antibodies, tricking the immune system into thinking that they’re not invaders at all.  Once all host cells have the ‘donor’ genes (characterized by the altered cellular receptors, which won’t accept the gene package), the virus itself becomes inert and cannot be transferred to another individual. 

Depending on the quantity of dragon blood received (and possibly depending on the method of transfer, as well -- direct injection would be vastly more efficient than ingestion), the ‘infection’ process could be very rapid, overtaking the host within a matter of days for large quantities that rapidly gain a foothold in many locations; or very slow, requiring weeks or even months for small amounts where the virus must spread from one point out while fighting the immune system at every turn (since a human immune system will get wise to infection pretty damn fast and can attack its own infected cells; this autoimmune response may be what’s responsible for the deaths in the Twisted experiments, since their reserves of dragon blood carrying an active virus can’t be replenished and they’re trying to be sparing with their limited stock.  Ultimately, though, anyone who survives the procedure ends up with a Crest due to all the extra genetic material inserted into their genome -- which could additionally explain the extraordinarily long lifespans in first-generation Crestbearers. 

In humans and many other organisms, DNA replication is not a perfect thing; with every copy, a tiny bit of genetic information is snipped off the end.  To defend against genetic deterioration, chromosomes end in a number of repeating non-coding sequences called telomeres; their decay is what causes ageing and associated physical decline in humans.  By adding in so much additional genetic data, it could stave off normal ageing, especially if the new code is added in a place that it defends key human genes from deterioration.  It could also explain the bizarre case of Maurice: somehow or other, the Crest-bearing genes ended up in the wrong place, and vital human genes deteriorated through repeated divisions over time -- and once they decayed too far, the dragon genome inserted in his cells took over, transforming him into a beast who retained his human consciousness.

As an added “bonus,” though, this particular virus doesn’t just affect somatic cells the way most viruses do.  It also affects reproductive ones, as well -- though in that instance, it’s not the sex cells themselves that get the virus, but the germ cells that produce them within the reproductive organs.  Because the Crest genes undergo meiosis along with everything else, the genome is incomplete, and because it’s not a normal part of the human genome there’s no guarantee that the sequence will be completed upon fusion with another gamete the way it would be in dragons.  And this is part and parcel of why Crest inheritance is such a gamble: a thousand years after the death of the Ten Elites, the Crest genomes are scattered all over, and there’s never any guarantee that meiosis is going to preserve the gene or completely strip it away.  People lucky enough to get all the correct genes markers end up with a Major Crest; people with partial gene markers end up with a Minor Crest; and those with incomplete gene markers end up with none at all; they could still be a carrier, technically, but key Crest markers would be required to actually produce a Crest in any offspring (and that’s assuming the meiosis is kind).

Now then from there we can turn into the madness of Relics.

So dragons are, to put it gently, weird.  It might be possible to kill their physical bodies, but their Creststones (effectively their heart) clearly retains some measure of life even after death; Sothis’ Creststone within Byleth imparts a literal part of her within them, after all, but beyond that a Relic is inert until its proper Creststone is embedded in it, at which point it starts twitching.  It’s made of bone, but it twitches and moves simply from having its heart attached.  It’s important to note, though, that while the Relic might move, it’s not technically ‘active’ at that point because it’s not yet a complete system; the heart is present, as is the body, but there is no blood.  Relics can only be activated, and their special powers accessed, by the appropriate Crestholder, because their blood in proximity to the bones and heart fools what remains of the dragon into thinking that the system is complete.

Unfortunately, repeated use of a Relic by someone without the appropriate Crest stresses the unbalanced system, and eventually the remnant of the dragon within the Creststone will try to rectify the matter -- by trying to recreate its body, using both its true bones as part of the Relic and the body of whoever’s unfortunate enough to be holding it both as the basis of the change.  Which is exactly what happened to Miklan.  Miklan wasn’t actually granted a Crest, though: the Creststone just consumed his body, so even if he had survived he wouldn’t have ended up with a Crest.

And I think that mostly sums up my weird thoughts on how Crests and Relics work it’s a lot of mumbo jumbo mostly but it’s a ton of fun to me.

#answered #banyanas #fire emblem: three houses #fe:3h spoilers #headcanon #i don't usually get to flex my science muscles with fire emblem #it's just been one thing with accursed divine and robin's condition #usually i wear my science hat for pokemon this is a delightful change of pace

[ice-cream-nekogirl]

Sayori is the fusion between Fumikage Tokoyami and Ashlen Kyanse

As Amy goes a bit fusion-happy with her new spell, she proposes to Ashlen to try it out with another person she has a fairly decent relationship with, and recruits Tokoyami to see if he could fuse with Ashlen. Naturally, the two of them are uncertain since the spell worked twice, but that doesn’t mean it will work all the time. And then Shinsou was hesitant for Ashlen to fuse with someone else other than him, or at least, another GUY that isn’t him, but Amy and Ashlen reassure him that it’s fine.

Madison gave him false hope and claimed that it ‘might not work’ since Ashlen and Tokoyami are fairly awkward, especially around each other. However, she was well aware that they had capability to fuse as Ashlen and Tokoyami’s dance starts off slow but steady and sweet and the two of them go for a twirl that instantly allows their bodies and powers to blend into a fusion.

When the fusion is born, she is confused, startled even as she contemplates her new existence while Amy, Shinsou and Madison are stunned, and Amy has to tell the two of them that they successfully fused. The fusion becomes a bit excited although Shinsou and Amy can’t tell, and Shinsou was too busy being mildly horrified to see Ashlen fused with Tokoyami rather than him. As Tokoyami and Ashlen contemplate their fusion, they both decide to name their fusion ‘Sayori’ as the fusion gives a smile that Shinsou can tell is Ashlen’s but can’t feel any kind of tenderness since he sees Tokoyami in the fusion.

Sayori goes by ‘she/her’ pronouns as Tokoyami had no issue taking on a more feminine approach if it made Ashlen comfortable. She has very long, straight hair that’s partially also feathers from Tokoyami, and while she styles it up spiky, the ties the rest of it in a long, thin ponytail akin to Ashlen’s own ponytail. She’s also quite lithe and slender from Ashlen’s physique but has feminine curves as well while retaining some muscle from Tokoyami’s physique, and has central heterochromia as her eyes have both a mix of Ashlen’s brown eyes and Tokoyami’s red eyes.  Sayori is one of the shorter fusions, standing only at 5’7 while the other fusions were at least 5’10 or even 6 feet, which may stem from both Ashlen and Tokoyami’s shorter than average heights for a girl and boy respectively. She has a somewhat androgynous appearance, but Amy and the rest of 2-A remark that this makes her very visually appealing and attractive to both genders. 

Because Ashlen and Tokoyami are both calm, collected introverts, Sayori is a stoic, poised and even elegant individual who is also an introvert as she has shown to be somewhat shy and reserved but is still nonetheless a very docile mix of Ashlen’s affable nature and Tokoyami’s dark, brooding one. She’s got a very level head and generally is above petty matters and the immaturity of Ashlen and Tokoyami’s classmates and has no issue telling them that they’re acting like children. This shows that she isn’t nearly as tolerant of crude jokes as either of her components, as she doesn’t even give Amy or Kaminari a smirk when they act childish, which may stem from Tokoyami’s dry sense of humor outweighing Ashlen’s. That doesn’t mean Sayori doesn’t have a sense of humor though, as she burst into laughter when Amy reminded her of how Shinsou imitated Brendon Urie’s rump shaking gif much to the latter’s annoyance and embarrassment.

She has a strong sense of justice and is extremely honorable to the point of living by a moral code that she absolutely refuses to break and is devoted to fulfilling her responsibilities as a hero in training. Showing that Sayori is a right-minded and chaste hero with the goal of keeping peace and staving away the real evils of the world, but she doesn’t have a problem delivering ‘divine justice’ by making a corrupt individual pay a price should they commit an ugly sin.

Sayori isn’t all serious however, as she was heard muttering Tokoyami’s catchphrase ‘revelry in the dark’ as she stared at the sun setting and expressed both delight and a melodramatic soliloquy about how much she enjoys the beauty of night which shows that she’s capable of being theatrical like Tokoyami and cracking an amusing statement like Ashlen. She’s not above some pranks though, as she was heard giggling when she used her quirks to scare both Kaminari and Ashido. Sayori is also capable of being snarky as she cracked a sarcastic remark towards Shinsou, and also threw some shade at both Bakugo and Madison when the three of them made fun of her which may come from Tokoyami and Ashlen both being able to defend themselves through wit alone. Also, Sayori can humor people, as she was able to sing a little song for Amy because of Ashlen’s friendship with her and Tokoyami’s neutral but friendly terms with her.

While she’s shown to be unflappable, Sayori can be easily flustered and somewhat sensitive to certain remarks (especially from friends) as she gets embarrassed when someone says something vulgar, especially when Kaminari asked them how does their body work. And her feelings are also somewhat easily hurt when Shinsou gets annoyed and calls them ‘the goody goody fusion’ and she calls him a jerk in return, much to the latter’s dismay. Sayori cares about what people think of her despite her somewhat aloof and dark demeanor, as she tries to assert that she can have fun and be funny too, something that comes from both Ashlen and Tokoyami’s insecurities. However, Sayori gets embarrassed when asked to make a spectacle of herself as when Amy asked them to ‘make a funny face’, all Sayori could do was stick her tongue out and immediately got embarrassed afterwards. But Sayori still has pride as she tells Amy not to pity her when she tells them ‘A for Effort’.

Also, much like her two components, Sayori is a very kind-hearted and noble person, as she does whatever she can to help her friends out, and is generally pleasant and polite to nearly everyone (except for Bakugo and Madison). While not outwardly affectionate or very outgiong, Sayori is still a very nice girl and has no meanness or sin in her heart and still can express her care by giving her loved ones soft smiles and pats on the head. Sayori is also something of a bully hunter however, as she stops both Amy and Shinsou from being mean to Ojiro and Uraraka, and scolds them for being jerks, which is partially why Shinsou called her a ‘goody goody’ fusion. 

She’s also very sympathetic and retains some of Ashlen’s emotional nature as Sayori can shed tears when overwhelmed or if she feels bad for someone. Sayori can hold back her feelings because of Tokoyami’s tendency to keep his emotions in check, but Ashlen’s emotional side can encourage Sayori to express more feelings. That being said, Sayori is a very tender person who just wants everyone to be safe, happy and healthy, albeit at the cost of herself since both Ashlen and Tokoyami are self-sacrficing, as a result Sayori is also selfless to a fault to the point of neglecting herself.

But despite being so kind-hearted and moral, Sayori is the last person anyone should anger as when she loses her temper she is much more intimidating and can get somewhat violent due to Ashlen and Tokoyami’s limited control over Dark Manifest and Dark Shadow respectively. Sayori becomes colder and much more menacing when angered and shows almost no mercy to her opponents when in this state. However, because Tokoyami has Ashlen to also keep him in check, Dark Shadow can freely go berserk without causing too much collateral damage to others, but it becomes an issue if Ashlen loses control over Dark Manifest as Tokoyami has to keep her in check when her control begins to slip. 

What keeps Sayori together though is Ashlen and Tokoyami’s close friendship as the two of them can comfort and reassure each other because the two of them are devoted to making sure the other feels secure and happy. As a result, Sayori is one of the more stable fusions as neither of her components have any lingering bitterness and full trust in one another, without their insecurities to hold each other back and most likely due to the deep understanding of each other. Something that makes Shinsou even more jealous as Amy laughs at him. Sayori is so stable that she can unfuse willingly without anything stopping her from doing so as Ashlen and Tokoyami can come to a mutual agreement and give each other enough space without being dependent on one another.

When it came to ability, Sayori was a very powerful individual and a hard opponent, while not as dangerous as Adrianna, was still not one to be taken lightly at all due to having both Ashlen’s Cancel and Dark Manifest quirk along with Tokoyami’s Dark Shadow. Because Ashlen and Tokoyami both have a darkness related quirk, Sayori has full control of darkness and is a master at Umbrakinesis, which allows her to control, manipulate, construct and even conjure up all darkness as Sayori can power up her sword and conjure up 10 other swords all made of darkness in a move she calls ‘Dance of Darkness’. Dark Shadow, who can communicate with both Ashlen and Tokoyami, also has a much wider range and can even separate from Sayori freely for about 10 minutes until he’s forced back into her. However, this makes Sayori extremely versatile and powerful as Dark Shadow acts as a battle partner with less to hold him back as everything Dark Shadow sees and senses, Sayori can also see and sense. and because of Ashlen’s quirk, Dark Shadow can also cancel out opponents’ quirks. Sayori also has an ability she calls ‘Dark Paradise’ in which she can enable Dark Shadow to grow large and drag her opponents into a dimension of dark energy to either horrify them, trap them, cancel out their powers or beat them while they are trapped. Every time the opponents are freed however, they emerge from the darkness frozen with both fear and Ashlen’s ability to paralyze her enemies. A master of the darkness, Sayori is a serious threat in battle and hard to beat because she has the power of swords and darkness at her side, and the ability to literally make her opponents freeze in fear. Amy and Shinsou, two strong students on their own, had a hard time battling her as did Bakugo and Kaminari, students who had the quirk advantage still lost to her.

So with that, Sayori is a lovely and stable fusion, but hella powerful and the last person you’d want to fight in battle because she’s the queen of darkness but also a true knight with a sense of honor.

She has the voice of Amy Lee~.

Ashlen is my girl @ashleigh-luvs-14cats‘s OC~!!! :D :3 

#bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #tokoyami fumikage #tokoyami x oc #fusion #steven universe #bnha tokoyami #mha tokoyami #ashlen kyanse #fumikage tokoyami

[pokelolmc]

Really, your first ask? Then get ready for more! I think it makes sense that the Grays (Val and her dad) would both be in the loop eventually and can’t wait for more, so I’ll ask about what’s on my mind. How does Dani work out? I mean, as Danny’s clone, will she and the other clones have bending?

Well, although I want to keep the ghost half/secret identity reveal for later, Valerie and her dad will definitely be in on the secret of the family’s bending. They’ll recognise the identities of the Elemental Four the moment they see them use their bending on TV, because they only know one family of four with said powers.

In the case of Dani, it makes sense that she’d have bending too since we know that bending is passed down through some genetic aspect. However, the nature of her as a clone and how she was created (as well as ectoplasmic energy vs ATLA spiritual energy) come into play. So brace yourself for some long background context.

The clones – even Dani, who has a confirmed human form – all melt into ectoplasm when they destabilise/melt, but even in his ghost form, Danny is still half-human and has some form of organic/carbon-based aspect. We even see that in his ghost form he sill has bones, which are composed of minerals like calcium phosphate (minerals found in many organic bodies) and contain complex organic mechanisms like bone marrow which produce human body cells. Perhaps there’s the chance that ectoplasm can mimic solid physical structures to some degree, but since Danny’s half-human and has a human half that is always present to some degree – regardless of which half/form is dominant at the time – Occam’s Razor says it’s more sensible to assume that his bones in ghost form are his human bones, there because his human form has some remnant presence in his ghost form. If we assume that Danny still has organic structures in his ghost form, with at least some partial traces of human bodily material mixed with the ectoplasm (the organic matter can clearly still be affected by intangibility and invisibility like the rest of the ghost’s body, since ghost powers can be used to make other people or inanimate objects – usually humans in Danny’s case – intangible or invisible as well; so, having remnants of human tissue or organic material in his ghost form wouldn’t impede on his ghost powers, especially since he can use them on his own body in his human form), then, well...human bodies can’t exactly melt into green goo, can they?

It depends upon how much of that human tissue remains in the body, but we can assume that the Dani as a clone, having Danny’s genetic material and therefore also having human and ghost bodies, would have at least some of the characteristics that Danny does (like bones in his ghost form) – so why can they (including Dani) dissolve into green ectoplasm with no traces of human remains left behind, like bone fragments?

My guess is a headcanon on how Vlad made them; Danny was born normally, and grew a human body in-utero like we always do, but the clones had to be fabricated without a pregnancy process to sustain and grow the human body (or another process to grow the cells and allow them to replicate/multiply into a multicellular organism that resembles a teenage Danny straight out of the manufacturing, rather than cloning into a baby Danny that has to grow up), which is rather difficult. My idea is that Vlad focussed on growing the clones by the ghost half as a form of sustenance (something about ectoplasm making it easier to replicate/clone/develop life forms, wth ghosts starting out as simply structured and only getting more complicated as they further develop), and hoped the human half would develop properly alongside the ghost half – that is, grew them initially in ghost form, replicating and forming them as ghosts with the human DNA there to hopefully develop a human form while the ghost half was the anchor for clone growth – and this, in part, led to them being less cohesive in their two halves and slightly less biologically human than the original Danny. We know that they were unstable and their ectoplasm couldn’t last because they lacked mid-morph DNA (DNA taken during the change between human and ghost forms, which I assume – in mid-change state from prominently organic to prominently ectoplasmic – has some sort of new genetic information, or property that allows for biological cohesion between the two contrasting halves) – which I’m assuming, in this headcanon, is the other reason for that lacking cohesion between the clones’ two halves. Without that, the clones’ halves couldn’t meld together properly and their ectoplasm remained unstable (perhaps their ghost halves didn’t grow properly stable as a side effect of the improper growth/cloning of the human half, since the two are still somewhat linked in development, and so it is unstable on its own – and if it was biologically linked to the human half properly, the organic stability of the human half would provide extra support for the support of the ghost half’s ectoplasm? I don’t know, it’s just a headcanon).

Assuming this, which applies to Dani, how biologically human is she (versus how ectoplasmic)? We know that she has the genetic component from Danny that would’ve given her bending, but there’s also a spiritual/supernatural component to bending. The spiritual power that gives bending – ATLA spiritual energy – is kind of related to ghosts in this AU (ghosts and spirits, and their respective worlds, have some basis in ectoplasm), but ghosts and Ghost Zone matter cannot be affected by bending or possess bending the way spirit world matter can (as long as the human enters it while in their living body via a portal); in this AU, this is because the Spirit World and its energy are a fusion of ectoplasm and a type of spiritual/supernatural energy possessed by both the spirit world and of living creatures in the human world (kind of a human life energy) – creating a new fusion type of spiritual/ectoplasmic energy that is different to either of its initial components – where the Ghost Zone and ghosts are purely ectoplasmic. According to Legend of Korra, the Spirit World (or at least spirits) bled into the Avatar human world (creating the Spirit Wilds) in Avatar Wan’s time (and Korra later fused them together again). I am going to assume that, back when this first occurred (before Wan’s time), this led to a mixture or bleeding in of human-world energy, life force or matter in spirits or the Spirit World where the Ghost Zone stayed perpetually isolated from the DP human world. Think of the Spirit World and Ghost Zone (and their respective matter, energy, inhabitants, etc.) as like two species who have a common evolutionary ancestor but are now too genetically different from each other to reproduce with one another.

So, as a half-human clone, Dani would possess the potential for bending – as it is a human power – but how cohesively can she tap into her human form and abilities if there’s a lack of proper fusion/cohesion biologically between her human and ghost halves? In D-Stabilised she’s fine in her human form but destabilises in her ghost form or when using ghost powers, so I am assuming that the ghost side was still the side that acted as the growth anchor during the cloning process, but when using her ghost powers it requires more use and energy to run, so Dani remains in her human form as a means to minimise the expenditure of her ectoplasm or ecto-energy (as remaining in a ghost-dominant form would cost). Bearing that in mind, I am going to assume that she’s still 50% human, but with the ghost form as the main core of her power and sustenance (with her human form acting as a secondary one), she is more predisposed to ghost powers than bending – and with a lack of cohesive support/stability and melding between her two forms, it is extremely hard and finicky to tap into her bending. I’d say she probably needs a sample of mid-morph DNA from Danny to establish the proper balanced framework of how her human and ghost forms/halves connect to each other, stabilising her ghostly ectoplasm and properly connecting the biology of her two halves together, to allow her to disconnect from the reliance on her ghost half and its ectoplasm and tap into her human half’s bending instead. Sure, the bending doesn’t cost ecto-energy from her ghost form because ghosts can’t bend, but since her ecto-energy is the primary source of sustenance keeping her whole body going/animated/alive, if the ectoplasm destabilises then she dies altogether – and she certainly can’t waterbend like that.

Danny would probably have to give his parents his mid-morph DNA and hope they can crack open Vlad’s methodology to successfully alter the cloning process and fix Dani, before she could learn to bend. Before she’s stabilised, she’s certainly not going to be accidentally bending something like Katara in the first episode of ATLA – trying to bend would require too much effort and concentration.

On other hand, Vlad – now knowing more about bending and getting bitter/envious about it – would probably be partially motivated to clone Danny for research into bending as well as for a half-ghost son of his own. He’d get frustrated when none of the clones show any signs of bending powers, so he can’t even use the failed clones as bending research material – which is pretty dark.

Long story short: Dani, as a clone, was ghost-half-dominant in her creation (because cloning a ghost is easier than cloning a human; the human half was just dragged along during development) and lacks a stable connection between her human and ghost halves because she lacks Danny’s mid-morph DNA. So, her body relies primarily on her ghost half’s ectoplasmic energy for long-term sustenance (she still has to feed her human form food, but the ghost half is the main driver of sustenance because if even just it destabilises then she dies altogether) and her ghost half is too unstable to ease off of this ectoplasmic dependence. So, until she can permanently stabilise her ghost half to cut this dependence on ectoplasm and get the proper stable connection to her human half (and it’s power) via mid-morph DNA, she had the potential to bend but it is extremely difficult for her to do so, almost impossible.

She goes off to travel the world after Kindred Spirits, but she’s going to come back later to be permanently stabilised and then stay with the Fenton’s to learn waterbending from Danny.

#danny phantom #avatar the last airbender #crossover #fentonbendersau #dani phantom #kindred spirits #ask

[donnienickelzpiccardi]

Awakening the subtle layers: The third technique

Awakening the subtle layers: The third technique

3 The third technique: WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER.

We are divided into the center and the periphery. The body is the periphery; we know the body, we know the periphery. We know the circumference, but we do not know where the center is. When the out-breath fuses with the in-breath, when they become one, when you cannot say whether it is the out-breath or the in-breath... when it is difficult to demarcate and define whether the breath is going out or coming in, when the breath has penetrated in and starts moving out, there is a moment of fusion. It is neither going out nor moving in. The breath is static. When it is moving out it is dynamic; when it is coming in it is dynamic. When it is neither, when it is silent, non-moving, you are near to the center. The fusion point of the in and outgoing breath is your center.

Look at it in this way: when the breath goes in, where does it go? It goes to your center, it touches your center. When it goes out, from where does it go out? It moves from your center. Your center has to be touched. That is why Taoist mystics and Zen mystics say that the head is not the center, the navel is your center. The breath goes to the navel, then it moves out. It goes to the center.

As I said, it is a bridge between you and your body. You know the body, but you do not know where your center is. The breath is constantly going to the center and moving out, but we are not taking enough breath. Thus, ordinarily it does not really go to the center – now, at least, it is not going to the center. That is why everyone feels ”off-center.” In the whole modern world, those who can think at all feel they are missing their center.

Look at a child sleeping, observe his breath. The breath goes in; the abdomen comes up. The chest remains unaffected. That is why children have no chests, only abdomens – very dynamic abdomens. The breath goes in and the abdomen comes up; the breath goes out and the abdomen goes down... the abdomen moves. Children are in their center, at their center. That is why they are so happy, so bliss-filled, so energy-filled, never tired – overflowing, and always in the present moment with no past, no future.

A child can be angry. When he is angry, he is totally angry; he becomes the anger. Then his anger is also a beautiful thing. When one is totally angry, anger has a beauty of its own, because totality always has beauty.

You cannot be angry and beautiful, you will become ugly, because partiality is always ugly. And not only with anger. When you love you are ugly because you are again partial, fragmentary; you are not total. Look at your face when you are loving someone, making love. Make love before a mirror and look at your face – it will be ugly, animal-like. In love also your face becomes ugly. Why? Love is also a conflict, you are withholding something. You are giving very miserly. Even in your love you are not total; you do not give completely, wholly.

A child even in anger and violence is total. His face becomes radiant and beautiful; he is here and now. His anger is not something concerned with the past or something concerned with the future, he is not calculating, he is just angry. The child is at his center. When you are at your center you are always total. Whatsoever you do will be a total act; good or bad, it will be total. When you are fragmentary, when you are off-center, your every act is bound to be a fragment of yourself. Your totality is not responding, just a part, and the part is going against the whole – -that creates ugliness.

We all were children. Why is it that as we grow our breathing becomes shallow? It never goes to the abdomen; it never touches the navel. If it could go down more and more it would become less and less shallow, but it just touches the chest and goes out. It never goes to the center. You are afraid of the center, because if you go to the center you will become total. If you want to be fragmentary, this is the mechanism to be fragmentary.

You love – if you breathe from the center, you will flow in it totally. You are afraid. You are afraid to be so vulnerable, so open to someone, to anyone. You may call him your lover, you may call her your beloved, but you are afraid. The other is there. If you are totally vulnerable, open, you do not know what is going to happen. Then YOU ARE completely, in another sense. You are afraid to be so completely given to someone. You cannot breathe; you cannot take a deep breath. You cannot relax your breathing so that it goes to the center – because the moment breathing goes to the center your act becomes total.

Because you are afraid of being total, you breathe shallowly. You breathe just at the minimum, not at the maximum. That is why life seems so lifeless. If you are breathing at the minimum, life will become lifeless; you are living at the minimum, not at the maximum. You can live at the maximum – then life is an overflowing. But then there will be difficulty. You cannot be a husband, you cannot be a wife, if life is overflowing. Everything will become difficult.

If life is overflowing, love will be overflowing. Then you cannot stick to one. Then you will be flowing all over; all dimensions will be filled by you. And then the mind feels danger, so it is better not to be alive. The more you are dead, the more you are secure. The more you are dead, the more everything is in control. You can control; then you remain the master. You feel that you are the master because you can control. You can control your anger, you can control your love, you can control everything. But this controlling is possible only at the minimum level of your energy.

Everyone must have felt at some time or other that there are moments when he suddenly changes from the minimum level to the maximum. You go out to a hill station. Suddenly you are out of the city and the prison of it. You feel free. The sky is vast, and the forest is green, and the height touches the clouds. Suddenly you take a deep breath. You may not have observed it.

Now if you go to a hill station, observe. It is not really the hill station that makes the change. It is your breathing. You take a deep breath. You say, ”Ah! Ah!” You touch the center, you become total for a moment, and everything is bliss. That bliss is not coming from the hill station, that bliss is coming from your center – you have touched it suddenly.

You were afraid in the city. Everywhere there were others present and you were controlling. You could not scream, you could not laugh. What a misfortune! You could not sing on the street and dance. You were afraid – a policeman was somewhere around the corner, or the priest or the judge or the politician or the moralist. Someone was just around the corner, so you could not just dance in the street.

Bertrand Russell has said somewhere, ”I love civilization, but we have achieved civilization at a very great cost.” You cannot dance in the streets, but you go to a hill station and suddenly you can dance. You are alone with the sky, and the sky is not an imprisonment. It is just opening, opening and opening – vast, infinite. Suddenly you take a breath deeply, it touches the center and the bliss. But it is not so for long. Within an hour or two, the hill station will disappear. You may be there, but the hill station will disappear.

Your worries will come back. You will begin to think to make a call to the city, to write a letter to your wife, or you will begin to think that since after three days you are going back you should make arrangements. You have just reached and you are making arrangements to leave. You are back.

That breath was not from you really; it suddenly happened. Because of the change of situation the gear changed. You were in a new situation, you could not breathe in the old way, so for a moment a new breath came in. It touched the center, and you felt the bliss.

Shiva says you are every moment touching the center, or if you are not touching you CAN touch it. Take deep, slow breaths. Touch the center; do not breathe from the chest – that is a trick. Civilization, education, morality, they have created shallow breathing. It will be good to go deep into the center, because otherwise you cannot take deep breaths.

Unless humanity becomes non-suppressive toward sex, man cannot breathe really. If the breath goes deep down to the abdomen, it gives energy to the sex center. It touches the sex center; it massages the sex center from within. The sex center becomes more active, more alive. Civilization

is afraid of sex. We do not allow our children to touch their sex centers, their sex organs. We say, ”Stop! Don’t touch!”

Look at a child when he first touches his sex center, and then say ”Stop!” and then observe his breathing. When you say ”Stop! Don’t touch your sex center!” the breath will become shallow immediately – because it is not only his hand which is touching the sex center, deep down the breath is touching it. And if the breath goes on touching it, it is difficult to stop the hand. If the hand stops, then basically it is necessary, required, that the breath should not touch, should not go deep. It must remain shallow.

We are afraid of sex. The lower part of the body is not only lower physically, it has become lower as a value. It is condemned as ”lower.” So do not go deep, just remain shallow. It is unfortunate that we can only breathe downwards. If some preachers were allowed, they would change the whole mechanism. They would only allow you to breathe upward into the head. Then you would absolutely

not feel sex.

If we are to create a sexless humanity, then we will have to change the breathing system. The breath must go into the head, to the SAHASRAR – the seventh center in the head – then come back to the mouth. This should be the passage: from the mouth to the sahasrar. It must not go deep down because down is dangerous. The deeper you go, the nearer you reach to the deeper layers of biology. You reach to the center, and that center is just near the sex center – just near. It has to be, because sex is life.

Look at it in this way: breath is life from above downwards; sex is life from just the other corner – from down upwards. Sex energy is flowing and breath energy is flowing. The breath passage is in the upper body and the sex passage is in the lower body. When they meet they create life; when they meet they create biology, bio-energy. So if you are afraid of sex, create a distance between the two, do not allow them to meet. So really, civilized man is a castrated man; that is why we do not know about breath, and this sutra will be difficult to understand.

Shiva says, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. He uses very contradictory terms: ”energy-less, energy-filled.” It is energy-less because your bodies, your minds, cannot give any energy to it. Your body energy is not there, your mind energy is not there, so it is energy-less as far as you know your identity. But it is energy-filled because it has the cosmic source of energy, not because of your body energy.

Your body energy is just fuel energy. It is nothing but petrol. You eat something, you drink something – it creates energy. It is just giving fuel to the body. Stop eating and drinking and your body will fall dead. Not just now, it will take three months at least, because you have reservoirs of petrol. You have accumulated much energy; it can run for at least three months without going to any petrol station. It can run; it has a reservoir. For an emergency, any emergency, you may need it.

This is ”fuel” energy. The center is not getting any fuel energy. That is why Shiva says it is energy- less. It is not dependent on your eating and drinking. It is connected with the cosmic source; it is cosmic energy. That is why he says ENERGY- LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. The moment you can feel the center from where breath goes out or comes in, the very point where the breaths fuse – that center – if you become aware of it, then enlightenment.

Download the Insight App absolutely free for more Quotes, Jokes, Insights, Meditation Techniques, E-books, Videos, Audios and Wallpapers.

http://onelink.to/osho

[elven-ariaera]

I was watching Steven Universe pretty much since the beginning. I thought it was a cute show at first, but I also didn’t mind missing a few episodes here and there. With each new episode, I was becoming more engrossed in this wonderful world created by Rebecca Sugar and her crew. While I will be the first to admit that the show did have its problems and there were some elements I personally feel did not need to be added, I would still rank this show as one of my all-time favorites overall.

Now that the series has finally come to a conclusion (spoilers ahead if you’re not caught up), I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the series and take a look back at some of my favorite characters. To me, they were the heart of the show (along with all the Gem lore), and watching them grow throughout the series is definitely what kept me coming back. With that being said, here are my top 10 favorite Steven Universe characters.

Of course, before we begin, I must provide the disclaimer that this is, in fact, my personal opinion. There is no right or wrong best character (though there is a correct worst character, and we all know that’s Renaldo — Kidding. Sort of.) Whether you agree or disagree with my list or the order, perhaps I can at least offer a different perspective on these characters that I just find fascinating.

10) Yellow Diamond

Yellow was the first Diamond we were introduced to, and she clearly made a presence on the show. Her enormous stature and terrifying expressions were enough to show us that she was a force to be reckoned with. Her design and demeanor alone were enough to capture my attention, but there was more than just that as we saw more from this so-called tyrannical leader.

“What’s the Use of Feeling, Blue?” is one of, if not my absolute favorite songs from Steven Universe. Yes, I love the melody, but Yellow Diamond shows her true colors during this piece and it is evident. It’s clear that she’s affected by all the strife of the past, but to maintain power and appearance, she hides it all away. She grieves with aggression, taking it out on other planets and people, but deep down she’s hurting badly. It’s clear to hear near the end of the piece where she tries so hard to keep from breaking down.

9) Pink Diamond/ Rose Quartz

A lot of people started to hate Rose Quartz when her identity as Pink Diamond was revealed. I personally found it fascinating. Rose was by no means perfect; it’s made quite clear that she’s had quite the troubled past both by her own doing and the doings of the other Diamonds, and through it she’s done some pretty terrible things. I understand that. The thing is, though, she learned from it and eventually lead a whole rebellion to right her wrongs and allow Gems to have their freedom.

I think the main concern of why people only seem to hate her more and more is because in the beginning, we learned how ‘good’ she was and as we learned more about her, going further and further back, we see all of her biggest errors. If we play those events in reverse, we see her grow as a person. Her dynamic change is what makes her such a well-written character. The mystery, the reveals, how we learned about her bit by bit — it all built up to some very heavy drama, which for a television show, is a great thing.

I also believe that her transformation from a childish tyrant to a compassionate mother was a genuine one. I don’t doubt that she really wanted to have Steven more than anything. Even with all that we know about her now, looking back at that videotape she made for him, those feelings stand the same.

8) Amethyst

If you asked me my opinion on Amethyst when I first started the series, I would say that she was a fine character. She made me laugh, she had a fun personality; there was nothing wrong with her as a character, but I thought that she would only ever be comic relief. I never expected so much depth to be behind this goofy facade. Then “On the Run” premiered.

I never expected the episode to take such a turn. I always had a feeling a Pearl-Amethyst fight was coming with the way they constantly butted heads, but I never thought it would be for reasons like this. This was probably the first thing that really impacted me on an emotional level in this series. Amethyst’s face when she wails out “I never asked to be made!” still stands out in my mind to this day.

As the series progressed, Amethyst learns to love herself and embrace her faults, leading her to become, as Steven says, the most mature crystal gem. She has seriously come such a long way and I’m so glad that she was not simply comic relief. 

7) Greg Universe

I feel like a lot of us were expecting Greg to be a kind of absentee parent when this show first started, but he proved us wrong and has definitely shown us what kind of top tier dad he can be.

Is he perfect? No, but that’s okay. Yeah, he’s made his fair share of mistakes, but everything he’s ever done has only ever been for his son. The lengths he would go to keep Steven safe or to even push him to be his best self astounds me. There has been a lack of role model father figures in animation for a certain point, and ever since Steven Universe, I’ve definitely noticed an increase in them. While I’m not sure if he is the reason (probably not, but), I definitely think he’s an example to be followed for storytellers to come. 

I guess it comes with getting older, but I find myself feeling more sympathetic, interested, and entertained by the parents of the child protagonist rather than the protagonist themselves. Seeing Greg come to learn about the Gems from an outsider’s perspective rather than Steven’s somewhat knowledgable background, being partially raised by them and all. I think that so many of Greg’s flashback episodes are among my favorites of the series. 

6) Rainbow Quartz 2.0 & Sardonyx

I had to give a tie to these two fantastic fusions because I adore them both for the same reasons. They’re fun, flashy, and always a pleasure to see them on screen. Also, they both include Pearl, who’s quirks are evident in each fusion.

I was immediately drawn to Sardonyx’s larger-than-life (pun fully intended) personality. She’s bold and poised, but also knows to get a chuckle out of her audience — No, really, she plays up her act as if she were performing for an audience. She has a tendency to break the fourth wall, but in a more subtle way than Sunstone. Everything she does is simply entertaining and I just love it.

Rainbow Quartz 2.0 is similar in the sense of having a whimsical charm. Rainbow has a bit more tendency for being a caregiver than Sardonyx, but that only makes sense with both Pearl and Steven’s gentle natures being a key component in Rainbow’s makeup. Still, that doesn’t stop Rainbow for exerting a goofy attitude as well, which is so much fun to watch. A natural Mary Poppins! 

5) Spinel

A character that I thought would be a one-off movie villain has squirmed her way right into my heart. She is one of the most precious characters I have ever seen. Seriously, I was going into the movie with not many expectations for this new Gem, but man was I blown away with just how equally charming and threatening this character could be!

As a villain, she was terrifying and crazy. There was clear reasoning for her behavior, but even though we didn’t find out her motivation until about the halfway point, that hostility was clear and kept me wondering why. To find out she had been abandoned for so long was heart-crushing, especially after getting a glimpse of who she used to be. While I still like Pink/Rose as a character, this was something that I could not just let slide by.

She can still hold her own once she makes peace with what happened and moves on to befriend the other Diamonds. My heart skipped a beat when she reappeared for the series finale and she was as bubbly as ever. It’s so nice to see that she got her happily ever after too!

4) Peridot

The first of many characters with solid redemption arcs, and I think hers was the most effective and well thought out from a writing perspective. The Crewniverse were allowed to really take time with this one and so it felt genuine when Peridot finally decided to make up her mind and join the likes of the Crystal Gems. I truly think she had one of the best arcs in the series.

Aside from that, she’s also got such a strong personality. Gems made in Yellow Diamonds court have a tendency to be more on the snobby side, which she definitely is. Despite that, she still manages to be charming with her naiveté of Earth and its people. Even when she does have downright “unlikable” moments, such as her degrading mannerisms towards Pearl or the way she insulted Amethyst without even thinking, she eventually comes to the realization that what she did was wrong and makes it a priority to apologize in her own Peridot way.

Peridot is the product of what kindness can do to someone. Steven had no reason to keep caring for her the way he did, but in the end, it changed her. She kept her core personality traits, which I so appreciate as well, but she also didn’t revert back to her old ways either. She’s a changed Gem and had returned the favor by being a kind ambassador for Lapis, Bismuth, and I’m sure plenty of uncorrupted Gems once Little Homeworld had been completed.

3) White Diamond

White Diamond was exactly what I expected and what I wanted her to be. She has a radiant presence (quite literally) and exudes authority. As an antagonist, she was a worthy final opponent. While I would have loved the finale to be a few more episodes to get some more depth on the matter, what we did get, I loved.

From her first appearance, I knew White would be a threat like no other. While she certainly had unbelievable physical prowess, it was her manipulative brain-washing that had me both intrigued and terrified. Simply when we first saw Pink Pearl, who we assumed was White Pearl, you could tell something eerie was going on. Slowly, one-by-one, she took hold of all Steven’s allies — even the other Diamonds — and she proceeded to remove his gem. She had all the power. Of course, if anyone was going to stop her, it was Steven, but she put up one heck of a fight up ’til the very end.

A lot of people are iffy about how quickly she turned to Steven’s side, and I do understand that. Like I said, I wish there could have been a bit more time for that, but regardless I don’t mind what we received. I love how over the top White is, and how she’s trying so hard to be more compassionate but in the end, she’s still, so to say, living in her own head. Again, I love that these characters have a change of heart, but they still struggle with their past.

2) Blue Diamond

Throughout learning about the Diamonds, we are told by the Crystal Gems how heartless they were and what tyrannical rulers they could be. Granted, all these stories were true, and these actions should not be simply overlooked, but what we weren’t told is the tragedies they too have endured. After seeing the brash conqueror, Yellow Diamond, it was easy to label them as the clear “bad guys.” However, when we first meet Blue Diamond, she is weeping over a loved one.

Grief and sadness is something I easily relate to, so Blue was easy for me to sympathize with right from the start. Seeing how (for lack of better words) human she was made me think that perhaps there was another side to the Diamonds. Maybe they could be talked to instead of fought against. Seeing as Blue seemed like the most empathetic of the group, I was hoping that she would be the one they would turn to first, and she was.

Getting there wasn’t easy, and I’m glad it wasn’t — disregarding the last few episodes that needed to be a little bit squished to finish the story. Blue was the most emotional of the Diamonds, but she let them overtake her, deafening herself to hearing anything that might help her. Even Yellow Diamond, her closest confidant, could never fully restore her to a sound mind. This is an all too real problem, to let depression consume you, so to see that she was eventually able to be freed from this grief was truly satisfying.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Connie Maheswaran Connie is such an endearing character and the rock which Steven relied on. She was always the voice of reason and her love and dedication always shone above the rest.

Bismuth The only way to properly describe this character is strong. Strong personality, strong warriors, and strong beliefs. Though a little misguided, she believed in her cause and wanted to do what she could for her newfound family.

Padparadscha A precious angel of a Gem who needed much more screen time (along with Lars and the other Off-Colors.) Though her abilities were not so much helpful, she was still eager to do her part and help her friends. 

1) Pearl

So here’s the thing about Pearl: I loved her since the beginning. She was my favorite character from the start, being able to relate to her overly-protective behavior and somewhat neurotic antics all with a side of salt. I always admired how graceful she was and enjoyed the show most when she was on screen. Wonderfully brought to life by the voice work of Deedee Magno Hall, I was eager to see what would be in store for my favorite Crystal Gem. Little did I know how much she had been through and was about to endure throughout the course of the series.

The world-building and mystery of Steven Universe are some of its most fascinating elements, and so much of this is explored in Pearl’s overarching story. There was so much we didn’t know about the world of Gems and in turn, so much we didn’t know about Pearl. There was so much hidden within her, whether it be her history with Homeworld, Rose, or the alleged shattering of Pink Diamond, there was so much to be unveiled and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to learn more.

Pearl has been through so much suffering in her life, struggling to know where she belonged, and once she thought she knew what that was, she was ultimately denied it in the end. After grieving the loss of Rose Quartz, she took it as her new duty to be there for Steven as she once was her. Though she was technically a liberated Pearl, she was still binding herself to someone.

Throughout the series, we learn these secrets and see her as she still struggles to overcome these foreboding obstacles. It was so uplifting and such a victorious moment when she claimed “I do this for me!” in “Reunited.” I know she’s a fictional character, but I am so proud of how far she’s come and the independent individual she’s finally become. She doesn’t need someone else to serve or define who she is, no matter what her future entails, she is the master of herself. 

It’s rare that you find a show that has such an exceptional cast of characters where so many can resonate with you on a personal level. Each character in Steven Universe, whether we personally like them or not, has such depth and thought put into every one of them — and yes, that includes the townies. While I understand it’s not necessarily a show for everyone, I myself am glad I decided to give it a shot when it first aired. These characters have shown me so much in terms of both writing and personal growth, and I hope this little list of mine serves well as a love letter to thank all who worked on this show. Though it’s over now, these characters will always be in my heart.

I’m curious to know, who are your favorite characters from this show? Have any similar opinions? Different? Feel free to respectfully share your comments down below! 

Now that Steven Universe has finally come to a conclusion, I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the series and take a look back at some of my favorite characters. I was watching Steven Universe pretty much since the beginning. I thought it was a cute show at first, but I also didn’t mind missing a few episodes here and there.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 127: Are You My Dad?

“This might be serious.”

Those of y’all that check out my episode rankings at the end of every post know that my favorite “normal” episode of Steven Universe (so not Steven and the Stevens or Hit the Diamond, which are in their own category of perfect character studies) isn’t Lion 3 or Alone Together or Jailbreak or The Answer or Mr. Greg or Mindful Education. And, spoiler alert, it won’t be Jungle Moon or A Single Pale Rose or Reunited or Change Your Mind. It’s Mirror Gem. 

So it’s not a shocker that I’m drawn to another episode that’s the beginning of a two-parter closing out the first half of a fifty-odd episode chunk, which starts out goofy but grows increasingly ominous and ends in a confrontation with a new blue Gem. In terms of tone, Are You My Dad? is an incredible exercise in tension, albeit one that benefits from two prior episodes’ cliffhangers in a way Mirror Gem manages without (but to be fair, Mirror Gem arrives when we still don’t know there are other Gems, which gives its mystery a major advantage).

The silly beginning here is strengthened by the return of all three original Crystal Gems, who haven’t been in a room together since Rocknaldo. They’re increasingly out of focus as we get into more Steven-centric storytelling, and I’ve heard this lobbed as a criticism of latter-day Steven Universe; while I agree that these characters are terrific and am always down to see more of them, I can appreciate that their big moment is Act II (Seasons 2/3), and Steven’s is Act III (Seasons 4/5). If Act I is about creating Steven’s universe, and Act II is about developing Steven’s family, it’s because Act III, which the other two have been building towards this whole time, is about Steven.

Episodes like Storm in the Room and Lion 4 fundamentally don’t work with the Crystal Gems around, and our last two episodes place Steven among Beach City citizens to prime us for a finale about Beach City paying for Steven’s past. So I get why we haven’t seen the trio as a whole for a while. But I sure am glad to see them again.

Amethyst’s offer of beans and suggestion to barter them for donuts is great, but come on, nothing beats Garnet and Pearl’s sand castle. I love glimpses into the Crystal Gems’ leisure time independent of Steven (he’s around, but clearly wasn’t involved with the construction): because the Gems are so often characterized in relation to Steven and/or in big personal ways, it’s a pleasant change of pace to just see them reading the paper in Watermelon Steven or assembling furniture in Shirt Club. Doug Out and The Good Lars are celebrations of the mundane tainted by the supernatural in their last moments, so it’s perfect to ease us into this new story with more slice-of-life lazing.

Still, this beach day is a backdrop for Steven wondering where his mail is (in the first of many callbacks, we get his Mr. Postman song from all the way back in Cheeseburger Backpack). On its own this might not be a big deal, but we know that Onion and Sadie were being stalked by new Gems and that Lars didn’t show up at the potluck (which, for now, we can lump in with other disappearances), so even though Steven doesn’t know anything sinister is afoot, Jamie’s absence sets off warning bells for us. 

The scenes that follow build dread with masterful efficiency. First we get an uncharacteristically worried Sour Cream, which stands out even more than normal because we just saw him behaving as usual in The Good Lars. His concern is tempered by fun visuals: our MISSING poster is a repurposed WANTED poster, and we get a neat flashback aesthetic as Onion’s haunts are seen as if through an old-school View-Master (calling back to Onion Gang, Arcade Mania, and Onion Friend). While the audience knows new Gems are to blame, Steven is able to write this off as another weird Onion thing, and is more disappointed than concerned when he hears the Big Donut is closed.

Even now, Steven thinks things are probably fine, assuming Lars and Sadie are blowing off work to watch scary movies (calling back to Horror Club and The New Lars). It’s here where we’re introduced to the most clever element of this first act: Barb Miller. She’s connected to Sadie, so she can reveal that her daughter never came home after the potluck, but is also connected to Jamie, who she sent out that morning with Steven’s package. And she’s overprotective enough that she doesn’t make rationalizations like Sour Cream and Steven did for Onion (although she does reference Island Adventure, finally acknowledging how weird it is that three kids went missing for days and nobody seemed to care). In one fell stroke, Steven realizes that this is an alarming pattern, and starts looking for answers at last.

But he still hasn’t caught up to us. Sure, he knows his friends are missing, but he hasn’t seen the looming shadows from the end of Doug Out and The Good Lars, so when he comes across Aquamarine he has no reason to suspect her of kidnapping. A lesser show might build suspense making its characters too thick to put obvious hints together, but Steven Universe makes it clear that none of these threads are obvious to Steven. A more cynical version of the character might deduce earlier that this new Gem is bad news, but despite everything he’s been through in Season 4 he’s still empathetic to his core. After all, the pivotal event of this season was his own dad’s disappearance, so he’s primed to help a kid in a similar situation.

But finally, after knowing more than Steven from the beginning of the episode, Aquamarine asks the titular question and brings us back into the unknown with him. “Are you my dad?” is a brilliantly weird question: of course it’s odd for anyone to ask this of Steven when the answer is so self-evident, but it’s even odder for a Gem to do so. As Steven later tells Connie when she suggests the stranger might be a hybrid, this is a full Gem, and Gems don’t have dads.

Steven’s council of Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Connie shows that his instinct isn’t to go it alone, lending weight to his solo sacrifice at the end of this two-parter. But for now, it offers a moment of respite by reveling in the artistic differences of these characters; on the one hand, it makes little sense for Steven to not just draw Aquamarine himself, considering he’s the one who saw her and we know he likes drawing from Shirt Club and Open Book and Barn Mates, but on the other hand, this scene is a delight. Connie draws a manga-influenced figure using an amateur ball and plane method, Amethyst goes abstract, Pearl undersells her dramatic flourish, and Garnet just draws herself; I actually think Pearl’s is closest, but we go with Connie’s and set off.

This is the second time since Lion 4 where we’ve explored the potential for other half-humans like Steven, and in my first viewing of Are You My Dad I saw it as foreshadowing for fellow hybrid. The trend never really continued, and while it seems like a red herring in retrospect, the close proximity of two stories about Steven maybe not being alone shows just how alone he really is. There’s nobody else like Steven, and while this makes him special, it adds to his burden as a bridge between worlds, a burden that’s partially thrust upon him and partially created by his own sense of outsized responsibility. 

Connie lightens the mood as they search by inventing exciting new scenarios to explain this new Gem, contrasting her further with Pearl. Connie’s art is cutesy while Pearl’s is dramatic, and where Connie sees hope for a new friend, Pearl is the only member of the team who advocates preparing for a fight. We don’t go very far down the “optimism is wrong and cynicism is right” road, because that isn’t at all what this show is about, but I love that youthful innocence from both Steven and Connie isn’t championed as an absolute positive in this story.

The light mood of two friends hoping for the best leads to Steven making a game of looking through Onion’s woods, and his facetious search of an empty log ends up getting him trapped. Again, this show isn’t here to build suspense by dumbing down the characters: Steven needs to be out of commission for Connie’s kidnapping to work the way it does, but getting stuck comes from realistic playing around rather than stupidity or ineptitude. And it continues the thread of others getting punished for Steven’s perceived mistakes, which of course adds to his guilt complex (and is furthered by Connie getting kidnapped because Steven shouted her name). These are small moments of getting us from Point A to Point B, but it’s so important that this crew pays attention to such details for the story and themes to flow smoothly.

Aquamarine’s questioning becomes even more confusing when she corrects Connie, saying she’s not looking for “your dad” but “my dad.” Connie’s condescending Tarzan speak is a bit out of character, but it at least makes sense that she wants to simplify her language for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the meanings of words. Aquamarine’s hidden nastiness emerges, with a wicked snicker at Connie’s “Me Connie” routine before she calls for Topaz.

While I prefer Mirror Gem to Are You My Dad? in most regards, the reveal of Topaz takes the cake in the horror department. She’s announced by thundering footsteps that clear birds from the surrounding trees, and emerges first as a shadow before we see our missing friends trapped inside her body. None of the captives’ mouths are free except Onion’s, and he's nonverbal, so their struggles are joined by muffled and incoherent screams while their captor lurks in silence. The soundtrack lurches into unnerving strings as Connie panics at the sight, substitutes more typical digital music as a moment as Topaz splits up, and returns to even tenser strings as Connie is viscerally absorbed into the giant Gem. As with the Ruby Squad’s giant fusion, it’s a brutally practical application of something the Crystal Gems have made beautiful, and Steven is as helpless as Connie to stop it.

A key element of Steven’s martyr complex is that his sense of ownership over everything bad that happens around him is unwarranted, and this sequence is a perfect example. Yes, he’s stuck in a log when Connie is taken, allowing him to blame himself for the kidnapping, but once he’s free he doesn’t stand a chance against Aquamarine’s magic wand. In the best-case scenario, where he and Connie manage to fuse and fight off Topaz, Stevonnie would still lose: as we see in I Am My Mom, even four Crystal Gems working together are beaten with ease by the wand’s ridiculous power. If anything, getting stuck in a log was the only reason Steven was able to regroup and fight back later in the first place. But in the moment, it seems like he made an avoidable mistake that cost Connie her freedom, which is certainly on his mind when he makes his sacrifice.

Aquamarine follows the Holly Blue Agate mold of brief but memorable villains, and while both are petty monsters, Holly Blue Agate’s Professor Umbridge has nothing on Aquamarine’s Eric Cartman. It’s one thing to let middle management power go to your head, but Aquamarine is cruel for the simple joy of being cruel, an attitude captured magnificently by Della Saba’s refined British accent. She taunts Topaz as readily as her enemies, and unlike the fiercely loyal Homeworld villains we’ve seen before, she sees her duty as a waste of time that she begrudgingly fulfills because she’s the best. Like Kevin, this is a troll who’s just mean to her core, but she unfortunately has a lot more power than your everyday toxic douche. 

As is standard for two-parters by now, we end with a cliffhanger, this time evoking Steven’s Dream (another first-parter that ends with a new blue Gem). A loved one has been taken, Steven blames himself because he put this person in harm’s way and couldn’t stop it, so now it’s time for a rescue mission. An unprecedented streak of consecutive serialized episodes already began with Doug Out, but now we get a proper two-parter, then a four-parter, then a six-parter, then another two-parter all in a row. It’s a special time in the series, highlighted by Earth plots and Homeworld plots colliding in ways that backdrop Steven’s role as a child of two worlds, and Are You My Dad excellently escalates the plot.

In closing, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is the final episode from the amazing Raven Molisee. Other veterans like Joe Johnston and Kat Morris ended their roles as lead-credit writer/storyboarders to fulfill other roles for the show, but this is it for Molisee’s tenure as an active member of the Crewniverse. Her work speaks for itself: she helped introduce Lapis in Mirror Gem, Peridot in Warp Tour, Jasper in The Return, Yellow Diamond in Message Received, and now Aquamarine and Topaz in Are You My Dad?. She helped bring to life the comedy of Kindergarten Kid and The New Crystal Gems, the tragedy of Rose’s Scabbard and Monster Reunion, the horror of Frybo and Keeping It Together, the wonder of An Indirect Kiss, the catharsis of Earthlings, and so much more. We were lucky to have her, and I really hope she didn’t leave because she was abducted by aliens.

Future Vision!

Steven is down to watch a movie about an orphaned Gem whose parent figure left for Beach City and never came home. So were the fans, apparently.

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

The ages of Lars and Sadie were nebulous at first, but it’s more or less been established that they’re teens of sorts by now, which makes Barb’s declaration that Sadie’s an adult confusing in a way that I find surprisingly annoying. It’s really not a big deal, but it bothers me way more than your average nitpick.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

It’s not unheard of for first-parters to make my greatest hits list: Mirror Gem is certainly one of them, and we’ve also got The Return and Steven’s Dream. But it’s hard to put an episode without a proper ending up with the best, and despite its wonderful tone, meeting Aquamarine lacks the conclusive impact of meeting Lapis, we don’t get a huge moment of Steven summoning his shield and protecting his team, and Aquamarine isn’t a Big Deal like Blue Diamond. I still love Are You My Dad a lot, but this is a hard list to crack and it does feel like half an episode when viewed alone.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

(It took some serious sleuthing, because the amazing Are You My Mother parody image is unsourced on Google Images and comes from a TeeSpring shirt that is no longer available, but I tracked down the artist as Zaccrim.)

#are you my dad #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[octerminal]

this might be a silly ask, but what are some trivial things about nadia? things like, favourite colour, animal, smell, touch, taste, things like that?

It’s not silly at all, I love any excuse to talk about my Shepard lol. Thank you so much for the ask!

Favorite Color

To be terribly predictable: black. I don’t think it’s something she’s conscious of, though. She just gravitates toward it without realizing, until one day on the SR-1 Ashley is like, “do you own anything that has color to it? Dress blues don’t count.” And she just hands Ashley one of her N7 color schemed items, and Ashley’s just like, “That doesn’t count either.” 

I think part of it is a comfort thing—it’s easier to blend in when she wears darker colors (if not black, then she favors grays; if she’s absolutely forced to wear something more color than not, she goes for dark hues like maroon, lilac, etc.). There’s also something to be said about how it reminds her of space, too. But…it’s also for practical reasons, lmao. Blood isn’t as noticeable.

Over the years I think she grows fond of certain shades of blue because she starts associating it with Kaidan. (Which is funny to think about, because who even knows what Kaidan’s favorite color is? But all of a sudden, whenever Shepard buys him something she’s always buying it in blue and he’s just like, I Guess This Is My Life Now. He does strike me as the type who’d like blue, though.)

Favorite Animal

I don’t really think she’s much of an animal person. She didn’t have pets growing up (unless you count the strays in her neighborhood, but after a certain point trying to bond with them served no purpose because they’d always go missing sooner or later) and as an Alliance marine who spends most of the year deployed in deep space doing Suspicious, Super Classified Shit even before the tours on the Normandy, she doesn’t have the time nor living space to take care of any as an adult. 

I think Joker is the one who first gives her a pet fish aboard the SR-2¹, and she’s just kind of like, “…uh, okay” and proceeds to let it die because looking after a fish is not particularly high on her list of priorities. But afterward, when she’s cleaning it up, she feels a weird pang of something², and the next time she visits the Citadel she impulse buys a replacement. Then it kind of grows from there, with the rest of the crew sometimes chipping in. (I feel like this is something Kasumi would absolutely delight in.) Grunt gets her a hamster instead of a fish because “it’s basically the same thing, right?”

She’s actually secretly pretty disappointed no one took care of her fish while she was under house arrest, because she was also secretly pretty proud of herself for keeping them all alive after the first one died.

Anyway, that doesn’t really answer your question, though, does it? I think she discovers she’s a dog person after the war when she gets a therapy one. Kaidan thinks it’s funny, because her personality is way more like a cat’s.

Favorite Smell

This is an interesting one. I feel like she’s probably grown accustomed to the artificial smells of space stations and ships, but she prefers, in James’ words, “real air.” I think she really likes going planetside and being able to take off her hardsuit’s helmet and just smell the air. Especially when it’s uncharted worlds like the ones you explore in the first game—that’s really exciting to her.

As far as specific scents go, I associate her with spices and woods, though in reality she really only smells like sweat and the Alliance issued soap she uses, because she’s certainly not the type to bother with fancy versions of things like that. She definitely likes how Kaidan smells (though she’d never admit that out loud, at least not during the trilogy) even though I imagine he smells much the same with the added bonus of eezo…if that even has a scent, lmao.

The other scent might be something like cinnamon, since she has very few intact memories of whatever family she had at birth, but she does remember a woman who always smelled like cinnamon.³

Favorite Touch

She definitely likes textured things. Smoothness unnerves her. This is actually a big reason why she never bothered healing any of her pre-Lazarus scars, even though the technology to do so definitely exists.⁴ She liked herself better with them; it felt more honest. She’s relieved when she starts accruing new scars not associated with her cybernetics after Cerberus brings her back.

As far as specific objects go, I think her equipment? Taking apart her guns and hardsuit to clean and feeling all their grooves frequently calms her.

Beyond that, honestly, Nadia is never going to be much of a words person, so physical touch is really her main language. It’s unfortunate for herself and everyone around her she’s not very good at it.⁵

Favorite Taste

I have a headcanon that one of the first things she does when she visits a new place (and has the time) is to make a beeline for any food joints. Since food was scarce growing up, I feel like it’s one of the few things she allows herself to indulge in without much guilt (within reason, anyway). She definitely spent a lot of time on the Citadel in the first two games checking out the various wards for hidden gems.

I have another headcanon⁶ that during her house arrest, she ditches James one night and sneaks off the compound partially because she’s getting stir crazy, partially because she’s just sick of the slop they serve in the cafeteria and she knows from her time on shore leave that wherever there’s an amassing of marines, there’s also going to be vendors nearby to take advantage. So, James has a heart attack thinking he’s lost track of The Very High Profile Commander Shepard, Who Very Much Needs To Stay Within The Alliance Headquarters Because (Political) Reasons, and Oh God, What Is Alliance Brass Going To Do To Me When They Find Out? What Is Anderson??? and then he gets pinged on his omni-tool that his credit chit has been flagged for suspicious activity at a location not too far from the compound and he heads over to find The Great Commander Shepard sitting on a bench near a food truck digging into a takeout container full of some, like, fusion, hipster-y food you’d find in most big cities. And she’s just like, “oh, you finally caught up, took you long enough, anyway here’s your share” and James can’t get over the fact The Great Commander Shepard robbed him and bought him food with his own money and then acted like she was the one treating him. 

Anyway, to actually answer your question…she’ll try anything at least once but she prefers savory over sweet, and especially spicy foods. But she does have a (guilty pleasure) sweet tooth for those delicate and pretty pastries, again because it’s definitely a luxury she never got growing up.

Favorite Hobby

You didn't ask about this one, but I think it fits with the general theme, so hopefully you don't mind lol.

I think before and during the trilogy, she didn't have a lot of time for hobbies that didn't also directly correlate with or benefit her work (e.g., exercising, tinkering with her equipment, programming), but she does have a couple. She likes taking pictures⁷, particularly of scenic views since "exploring space" was one of the biggest reasons why she signed up with the Alliance even though she knew she was trading one cage for another and was under no illusion she'd actually ever be doing good work for the Alliance. (The fact she ultimately does during the trilogy is...unexpected.) She just has this sense of wonder about the galaxy that never goes away, even when she's forced to repress every other emotion. So she likes to document it. (Sometimes she shares them, and I think it becomes something of an extranet meme because it's just so completely at odds with the rest of her social media presence—which is negligible—and also how she appears in interviews—which is not very complimentary—so everyone just kind of thinks it's funny.)

There's also the model ships, but like with the fish, I think someone else gets her started on those first. In my mind it's Miranda, who takes one look at how Shepard is coping in the second game and is like, "Why don't you [assemble some toy ships] and maybe you'll calm down.png" and well, to be fair...it does help, lmao. It's similar to when Shepard takes apart her guns or the like to clean them, only the end result is toy ships. Usually, her favorites are, funnily enough, enemy ships because they're more complicated to put together. (But she does have a soft spot for the SR-1, of course. And the Mako, even though that one doesn't exist in trilogy canon because BioWare exists to spite me.)

Post-war, she has a lot more downtime than she's comfortable with and to prevent herself from going stir crazy she picks up a few more. The main ones I've thought of center around restoration, like restoring obsolete tech or objects to make them functional again. I think she also picks up tinkering on cars and shuttles, partially due to Cortez' influence, partially due to the fact it was one of the jobs she had before she joined the Reds, partially due to her previous experience repairing her beloved Mako, and partially just because I imagine most of her recovery happens on Kaidan's family's orchard, and there's not a hell of a lot to do there.

So, basically: most of her favorite things to do generally involve taking things apart and putting them back together.

Thanks again for the ask! Sorry if this is way more than you anticipated and/or wanted, lmao. If it's not obvious by now, I have a tendency to ramble.

¹It’s because he feels guilty over and responsible for her death and subsequent “employment” with Cerberus, and he read somewhere fish are supposed to be relaxing or something, right? Maybe if he gets her a fish her face will stop doing that creepy glowing thing it’s doing. Not that he says any of that. He pretends it’s a joke gift. (EDI sees through it, obviously.)

²[Narrator voice] That feeling was loneliness.

³I envision this person being her grandmother.

⁴The other reason is because she thinks it’s a frivolous waste of resources, which is also the reason she doesn’t erase the renegade scars despite the fact she does actually hate those.

⁵Like, she gets better (marginally—she’s still never going to be touchy-feely with a lot of people, but at least she’ll one day be willing to sometimes hug her friends), but she definitely does not like touching most other people, and she does not like most other people touching her (even though she simultaneously craves it). Kaidan is really the only exception to this, but even he takes until the third game to really get to that point with her. Anderson is also something of an exception, but to a much lesser extent.

⁶This is actually a scene from a fic, if I could ever finish one of those anyway

⁷This is how I justify how many screenshots I take in game.

#elhresvelg #replies #ch: nadia shepard #* #sorry for being a little tardy in my reply! #i worked on this before and after (mostly after lmao) work the past couple days #it was a great de-stressor and i had a lot of fun #thank you!!!

[silyabeeodess]

FusionFall Writing Prompts: Oct. 2019, Prompt #2: Part 4

Part 3: https://silyabeeodess.tumblr.com/post/188285373604/fusionfall-writing-prompts-oct-2019-prompt-2

The cold pricked Silya’s bare arms as she stepped out of the research participants’ quarters, followed by the fellow victim.  Much to her ever-growing horror, they weren’t alone: A group of Fusion Fighters were gathered together outside—among them, her missing roommate.  She couldn’t tell whether there was more than one Ectonurite involved or if just one or a handful had split their DNA across the whole of group, but she could still tell each human present was possessed because of the cold, cruel smile shared between them.  

As they waited for more of their numbers to gather, some exiting the barracks and a few others coming from the outskirts of Tech Square—most likely the ones involved with the cut power—they remained clustered in the shadows.  She could see flashlights in the distance, hopefully from the still-free soldiers looking to restore order.  No one could call out to them though.  People twitched and spasmed, fighting for control over the ghosts only to soon lose it again.  

Held prisoner in her own subconscious, Silya raced through anything she knew about the alien species. Unfortunately, outside of a small collective of stories and basic facts, her knowledge was limited.  She wasn’t a Plumber, so that information had been glossed over during training.  In order to keep up an act of normalcy, however, it didn’t seem like the Ectonurites were exuding full control over anyone.  She could still think clearly and read her surroundings, so that in itself was a good sign.  From what she could tell, he would have to shut her mind down completely anyway for total control, so that could rule out the possibility of him reading her thoughts.

It meant she could try to come up with some kind of plan.  What were an Ectonurites weaknesses again?  Direct light? Well, they’d already taken care of the electricity and they were pretty much invincible anyway so long as they remained in their hosts.  If there was any chance at beating the ghosts, they would need to be cast out of their bodies first.  Just how though?

The whole of their forces soon gathered.  There was only around two or three dozen people around her, but almost every research participant who’d stayed for the experiments had tested the Ghostfreak transformation.  That meant any remainders were either out on-duty, guarding Tech-Square’s borders, or were off on some other errand for their puppetmasters.  A new worry bubbled up inside her: She imagined the controlled soldiers taking out their companions and letting a hoard of fusion monsters through the blockades.  

They split off into two smaller groups: One headed to Mandark Industries and the other—hers—to Dexlabs.  All at once, the humans around her started talking; light-hearted chatter Silya knew was fake because a lot of it was the same kind of dialogue she had heard and said herself over the course of the week.  Only, just as before, it wasn’t them: The Ectonurites were just feeding them used lines.

It fooled the four watchmen at the front doors though.  They only stopped the large group with a curious brow, asking to see one of their ID cards. Looking it over with a tactical flashlight, the guard grunted, “Looks like the power’s out all over.  Dex and the other nerds are already on the case though, if that’s what you’re here for.”

A girl’s eye twitched, the Ectonurite controlling her forcing out a sigh of relief, “It is.  We were worried if it was some kind of emergency. The lights just shot on their own while we were all hanging out in our rooms.  Anything we can do to help?”

“Not unless any of you are technicians.”

“Ah… Well, in any case, can you send someone over there?  The emergency lock went off in one of the buildings.  No one can get in or out.”

Here, the watchmen shared a glance, and for a second Silya thought they might pick up that something was wrong.  Although the front doors of each of the barracks were electric, everyone who stationed at Tech Square regularly knew how to access the manual controls—not to mention most of them weren’t averse to just making their own exits if they had to. She thought she could signal them, fighting to regain control of her arm only for her other hand to swiftly grab it and pull it behind her back in a false, nervous stretch.

They didn’t notice anything. After a minute’s debate, two of the guards jogged away to the barracks, leaving the group standing with the final pair. The girl turned to them once again, “We were also thinking we could take advantage of the darkness.  We’ve all got our Spinal-ARCHs and there’s not much else to do, so we thought some extra training might be good.”

The same guard as before shook his head.  “Sorry, can’t even let you in to grab your gear.  Orders from up-top: Dex doesn’t want anyone wandering through the building without his authorization until the power’s back.”

“I think you’ll find that we answer to a higher authority.”

The young woman saw it coming, but her mouth was bound shut.  From around the edge of the facility, two large figures—sure enough, another two possessed research participants—darted from the shadows and struck the guards from behind.  Before either could cry out in shock, they were gagged and beaten: One struck in the neck and the other thrown against the wall until he was rendered senseless. Both collapsed, unconscious, and were dragged away in the same minute after one of their attackers tossed another Ectonurite a pair of keys.  Said alien quickly began to fiddle with a manual control hatch alongside the doors, the others keeping watch.

Eventually, someone managed to fight for control enough to collapse to the ground with a pained grunt, hands knotting through their hair as they stammered out a question bitterly, “W-what’sss… even about?!  Sabotage? You c-can’t!  Labs’ locked down.”

They had a point. Getting into the building itself was one thing, but any of the actual labs would be shut down by double or triple encoded locks that only Dexter or his team of scientists would know how to access. The research participants were only allowed so far in, and if they were caught anywhere else—whether or not anyone inside knew the full situation—they would be taken into custody.  The same standard applied over at Mandark’s—if they weren’t even more severe.  The Ectonurites’ puppeteering was pretty much useless from this point forward.

One of ghosts gave a jeering laugh from a young man’s body, “We’re not as contained as you would wish.  We only need you to get inside and use as cover.” As if to illustrate, he partially summoned one of the Ghostfreak tendrils, waved it, then quickly dispersed it. “Your employers may experiment on you all they like, but I doubt they would purposefully harm their prized lab rats.”

“That’s right,” nodded the one at the door, which made a faint click as it unlocked.  The Ectonurite pulled it open, motioning the others in with a mocking gesture.  “And if you’re lucky, maybe a few of them will trade themselves over for your sakes.  It wouldn’t be as fun, but I’m sure Lord Fuse would reward us well if we brought him a few of Earth’s finest minds as souvenirs.”  

The very idea of being used as a hostage made Silya want to curse.  For a second, she was able to push her will enough to curl her hands into fists at her side, even as she marched past the door with the others.  Beyond the faint light shining behind them, they were soon swallowed by darkness; however, the ghosts possessing them didn’t seem to mind—even when they still had to use their human eyes to get by.  Unlike during the day, the halls were bleak and empty, the metal walls somehow less pristine and more cold than usual.

It also seemed that the Ectonurites had memorized the way through the building, at least in the areas that the research participants regulated, hinting that they may have been secretly monitoring everything from the humans’ subconscious ever since their DNA had been accessed through the Spinal-ARCHs.  They passed the main lobby, the waiting areas, and the gyms, heading deeper through the winding halls to the silent areas few of them had ever explored without escort.

Soon enough, the group began to split off on their own investigations.  Two of them stopped in front of one door that Silya had never gone through.  She was forced to watch, disgusted, as one of the Ectonurites ripped out a girl’s body, her struggled cry muffed by a clawed hand before one of the other research participants—still possessed—gripped her from behind.  Not that she could wrestle away easily, given the way she leaned forward in exhaustion when the ghost finally broke free.  Fading it, slipped through the door, its host still bound and waiting for its return.

A light, a light… Silya panicked.  If she could just find something, anything to use against the spirit possessing her, she could try to attack him as soon as he snapped out of her body.  For a second, her mind angrily went to Dexter and his denial of all magical elements in favor of ‘real’ science.  Maybe if he wasn’t so quick to dismiss them, he’d have something useful on hand that didn’t have to be plugged into an outlet!  Maybe—!

She froze.  Magic… She had a magical being strapped right at her hip, Aoi!  He was a Demongo nano: His demon fire could burn anything right down to the soul!  

The idea came upon her so suddenly and terror reared its ugly head so much that the Ectonurite controlling her wasn’t prepared when she shot her hand out a second time with a loud, vicious scream.  He muffled her fast, her side thrown against the wall hard enough for her to see stars, but she had already ripped Aoi’s nanochip off of her built.  It went flying from her grasp, scuttling across the floor, and with a burst of blue light her familiar companion appeared in front of her eyes—confusion in his own gaze when he looked around to see just where they were and why she had jarred him awake.  Seeing her dazed on the floor, he tried to approach, but soon halted when Ghostfreak tendrils shot out from her back.

Bracing herself against the ground, shaking as she fought to rear the ghost inside her in, she fumbled for words.  They came out as a broken, sibilant whisper before she could manage to get out a soft, “Fire…”  Again, she cried out, louder even as it felt like the Ectonurite was seeking his claws into her throat and the tendrils twisted menacingly around her, “M-me…. Use you’re f-fire on me!”

It wasn’t an expression she was used to seeing, but a child’s fear lit in his stare at her order, “Silya—?!”

“Now, Aoi!” she gagged.  She was losing it!  Her vision was already beginning to cloud over and she could feel the Ectonurite regaining power over her limbs, limply pulling her off the floor.  He was taking full control!

But not long after darkness shrouded her completely, everything seemed to erupt in a cerulean light. Flames danced before her mind’s eye, tracing every inch of her body.  It hurt a lot—like nothing she’d ever experienced, even compared to the intense burns she’d get from overexposure to fusion matter.  However, when she heard a scream, it wasn’t her own.  For everything she felt, the Ectonurite was bound to feel it tenfold.  

She collapsed again. She couldn’t see.  She couldn’t move.  All she felt was the cold floor under her and all she heard was a loud ringing in her ears.  For a moment, she wondered if she died for real, Aoi’s powers somehow distorting whatever hold Grim’s magic had over her to connect her lifeforce to his Resurrect ‘Ems.  

Slowly though, the world began to piece itself back into existence.  She was in the same hall.  It was still dark.  And there was Aoi, hovering over her with a terrified expression on his face and his hands still held out in front of him from his attack.  She wanted to smile at him—the blasted demon-child that spent most of his time trying to get on her nerves.  She couldn’t though: She was too weak and beyond him she could see blurred figures racing onto the scene.  She had to warn him.

“Ghostfreaks, they’ve—” Silya huffled, struggling even with that small effort.  Not only was she still in pain, she couldn’t believe how tired she felt. “No time... Free the others, Aoi.  Burn those freaks to a crisp!”

It was hard to breath and things started to get dark and hazy again.  The little Demongo clone opened his mouth to demand answers, but was interrupted by the sound of feet hurrying toward them.  He jerked his head around as two more lights—red and yellow—spiraled off of her belt in near unison to join him at his side.

And then Silya’s mind slipped away.    

END OF PART FOUR

Part 5 (END): https://silyabeeodess.tumblr.com/post/188674258524/fusionfall-writing-prompts-oct-2019-prompt-2

#fusionfall #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #aoi #demongo #nano #oc #silya #silyabeeodess #fusionfall retro #video games #oct 2019 prompt part 2 #ghostfreak #ben 10 #ectonurite #part 4

[stevenuniversecritical]

Beach City Witch Project

warning: criticism inbound

note: I am not discouraging fanworks by any means and neither am I saying that I could do any better, I'm simply giving my opinions

I personally found beach city with project to be disappointing on many levels.

The episode relies on the premise of Connie doing a school project about witches, which leads to garnet participating in fortune telling. However, schools are only allowed to mentioned witches in a historical sense, specifically how witchcraft was an excuse used to persecute women and non-christians as well as other minority groups. Even if people truly took part in actions they believed to be witchcraft, we were never supposed to study anything considered supernatural, as that would be deemed unscientific and therefore not educational. Some would even consider it pushing belief of something akin to religion.

Also, even then, in the historical idea of witches, if you were to study them, you would most likely not hear about fortune telling, but rather about potions and spells. People back then would fear so called witches, and would often only ask for the help of one in dire circumstances.

Then, I disagree with how the writers portrayed stevonnie as a whole, and much about connie. Connie is portrayed in the show as being very smart. Of course she makes mistakes, but I doubt that in the show she would truly believe that she is meant to be at a standard equal to stevonnie, seeing as stevonnie is actually old enough to drive a car, can world a sword and shield rather than just one of the two, and is also made up of two people, one being a half gem that gives stevonnie at least partial floating abilities. I also don't think connie would ever think garnet isn't supportive of her seeing how garnet seems to treat her very well, especially in mindful education with the sign that says go steven and connie, and on the other side stevonnie, which she doesn't use until stevonnie is physically present.

Even though stevonnie is their own person, mindful education thourougly shows that both stevonnie and garnet are still the sum of their parts. Stevonnie can not exist without Connie, garnet cannot exist without ruby or without sapphire. Any single time garnet praises stevonnie, she is fundamentally praising Connie and Steven. A fusion while still fused can also speak through the different components, which we see with sardonyx in know your fusion, garnet after meeting the gem experiments and in keystone motel, malachite in jailbreak, and alexandrite in fusion cuisine.

Another thing that bothers me is garnets use of future vision. It's been seen through her character that she is careful with who she gives this information to, and how much of it she believes in the first place, as we've seen how easily future vision can be wrong or changed. Even when it is used, it seems to only be in important situations. If she DID choose to use it on the beach city residents, it only makes sense she would feel the need to mention that they aren't 100% true, and while she does do this at the end of the episode I highly doubt she wouldn't do this upfront, even though I doubt she would do this at all in the first place.

The animation and voice acting were often pretty bad. The worst part is, I love fem-usa's work and constantly watch mkatwood and princely. They all produce great content, but BCWP felt very sloppy and rushed. There were a lot of weird pauses, lined that sounded forced or rushed, and animation that was just terrible. During the beginning of the episode, part of the couch garnet is sitting on appears to have been directly created in mspaint on such a small scale that you could see individual pixels, which could've been easily remedied by simply using a different program, or making the drawing in mspaint bigger so that the pixels were smaller and less noticeable. I dislike how three or four of the characters were voiced by the same person, who didn't seem to do particularly different voices for the characters. In the case of MLP for example, they can get away with using the same voice actors because of how different they can make their voice sound. The audio it's self seemed like it was recorded on sub par equipment, it honestly kinda sounded like when I've had Skype calls before. I feel that even if some of the lines had been recorded a few more times, they could've been more lively, and have better timing, instead of pausing in weird sections that make it obvious someone is reading a script rather than a character talking normally.

A lot of the minor details got me too, like why did they decide to wear costumes? Wouldn't it make sense for them to dress as witches as that's what the lesson is on? Why does pearl looking nothing like a vampire? Why does garnet mention sadie having a band when that doesn't occur until way later in the show, and is something that would be directly influenced by what happens with Lars, which hasn't happened yet? Some of the things garnet says to the BC residents seems to be references or jokes that aren't complete. Why is Mr smiley selling his bed? Is this a reference I'm missing? Is it an inside joke? I feel the same about some of the other comments.

Even when garnet has been blunt in the past, I highly doubt she'd tell sour cream that he can fall back on fishing when she KNOWS that he wants to be a DJ and that he seems to hate fishing, or at least the idea of being a fisherman. Garnet would never say anything so cruel.

Don't even get me started on the incorrect usage of trigger warning. The word "warning" works fine, using the word trigger warning is only specifically used in situations where you know a triggering topic will be used in front of someone who may need a warning.

"Real life doesn't have (trigger) warnings"

1) Movie, TV ratings, and game ratings all go into specific details about why they receive a rating, including violence, cursing, use of tobacco, things of sexual nature and more.

2) TV shows mentioning the stories of people who were raped or murdered often are proceeded with "the following program has disturbing content, including *insert subject* so viewer discretion is advised", and the news will often say "were about to talk about/show something disturbing that can be hard to watch, change the channel or turn off the TV if you can't handle this topic".

3) Other forms of media have different ways of adding warnings of any type.

4) When someone is going to tell you bad news, they often have you sit down and try to keep you calm when they tell you it. A doctor who comes out to tell you someone you know didn't make it doesn't just go "they're dead. next." because not giving someone a warning is a dick move? there's nothing wrong with needing a warning. Being a dick doesn't "prepare you for the real world".

The real world DOES come with warnings.

I think if the animation had as much care and time put into it as examples such as "gemanimate" and "the smothering" along with other fan works it would've had a much better result.

TL;DR the beach city witch project had a lot of issues. It was by no means terrible, I'm sure it took a good amount of work and time, and these are fans doing it for free in spare time. However I think it could've been much better.

#beach city witch project #BCWP #Steven universe #steven universe criticism #steven universe critic #su critical #su critique #su criticism #su crit crit #su crit