#(details: Linast)

[justashadetalkative]

⚔️ CROSSED SWORDS — do you have any skills that you are absolutely grateful you have and that mean a lot to you? how do you usually use these skills? would they come in handy if someone you cared about was in trouble? ( Phosa + Linast )

The constructs glance at one another, flickering briefly in silent conversation.

“There’s a lot of stuff that means a lot to us that… other people would take for granted? Or wouldn’t think of as skills?” Linast offers after a moment. “Body language. Moving things. Making s-sounds.” He makes a face. “Talking, even. I’m ffinally getting to where that feels like my own skill, now, instead of something that’s only there because it was shoved in my head.”

“The skill of not crisping people with radiation unless I want to,” Phosa adds. “Pretty grateful I can do that. Took a lot of work.”

“…that,” Linast agrees. “But! Again… Lots of people, they take those things for granted. It isn’t exactly… fun to bring up.”

“So my skill is that I’m good at planning, and at committing to doing the work of… mm. How to put it. Following through on my decisions?” Phosa says. “Kind of the reverse thing, I guess… I’d probably take it for granted if I didn’t see other people have so much trouble with it. But it means a lot to me that I can be proactive. And it’s good when there’s trouble — whether that’s real danger, or just a friend having trouble cleaning their room.”

“And mine is my art. Which… I guess is part of body language — our bodies, those are kind of art we make, right? They’re our designs — but I more mean the, ah… the physical stuff I make. Sculptures, and paintings. I use it for… journalling, I guess; helping my own thoughts make sense to me, or at least getting them down somewhere. And for making gifts! I really like that I can make things that other people find beautiful, or that help them understand ssomething. I dunno if it’s good for other people in trouble, though… I guess it might cheer them up? But that’s about it.”

[justashadetalkative]

Phosa brightened at the news of their shared interest, and the warmth she felt at the small point of rapport bloomed into a pleased smile. “It is! My sibling Linast, he figured out how to make these shunts for blood vessels…” Too much detail. Phosa flickered. “...and, well, yeah. It’s fun to figure out how things fit together.”

She carried the plate back to the bot and held it up, trying to gauge whether it’d be possible to reattach it here or whether they’d just need to carry it. She faltered at the question, trying to decide how truthful to be.

“Ah… my community, I guess? Organizers.” The training was a requirement for anyone serving in the disaster response groups, volunteer militia, or as a courier — all three of which applied to Phosa — but describing the Spire’s specific defense practices was pretty solidly discouraged. 

Phosa's smile animated again as she moved on to safer territory. “More people like you than people like me, anyway, yeah. Ten or twenty? Then there are lots more non-sapient drones, and keeping those fixed up is important, too.”

The machine watched as light and heat bent the fallen plating back into shape. Oh! What a neat ability! It did pass through their processor that it could possibly be dangerous if used against them. So far though the stranger seemed unlikely to do that. And they'd really rather not think the worst of someone who was currently aiding them.

"Oh. I like puzzles too," Yellow Three replied. "I suppose a body is very much like a puzzle. "

It was reassuring that the other was familiar with working with metal and electronics, at least. If the machine noticed that brief discomfort - which was unlikely - he did not bring it up.

"They? Who is this they you speak of?" Were there others like this being before the yellow android was what the AI wanted to ask. But perhaps they will leave that for later.

"Are machines like myself common where you are from?"

[pitofghosts]

I just want them to be at Linast alreadyyyy

[grumpyoldsnake]

[Image description: An illustration of Phosa and Linast reimagined into the Hollow Knight universe as sharing the body of a modified kingsmould construct. Detailed description below the cut. End ID.]

Hollow Knight AU for Linast and Phosa, mostly because I can and inspired by some interactions with @ausp-ice​ . I had fun with the design. :D

The vague undeveloped concept is that they’re a kingsmould that the Soul Master had gotten ahold of and used to experiment with storing large amounts of soul. Eventually the soul coalesced/broke free into a being of its own shaped by the kingsmould‘s original form, and there was enough life energy involved all around for sentience. Phosa is the soul-based being and Linast is the void-based being.

[Detailed ID: Two beings share a body that is shaped like the four-armed Collector from Hollow Knight; their head has the pronged crown shape of a kingsmould. The illustration is a turnaround showing them both with and without clothing; the clothes are a simple robe with a golden clasp. On the left, Linast is dominant and their from is black; Linast holds a blue lifeblood butterfly and cracks of white light cover their form. In the middle, Phosa has partially split from Linast, hovering above him as a white wraith connected to him by tendrils of soul and floating motes of void. On the right, Phosa is dominant, standing in a fierce pose with nail drawn and black legs fading into a white upper body that is covered in tendrils of void. End ID.]

[justashadetalkative]

!! ‘anxiety’ and ‘excitement’ for both linast and phosa!!

(Send me an emotion and I'll describe how my muse expresses it non-verbally!)

.

Anxiety

Both

They both get more protective of the core when anxious, so whoever's carrying it will tend to manifest more heavily around it; a solid layer of brighter light or darker shadow, respectively.

They both "shiver"; a low-level, unsteady flickering along the edges of any manifestation. This might be just a brief flicker of discomfort, or it might be an ongoing reaction that doesn't stop until they manage to calm down.

Depending on the source of the anxiety they can both get very jumpy; much more likely to flinch, to rapidly retreat from or lash out at any unexpected stimulus, etc.

Phosa

Phosa gets tense and less emotive; stiff shoulders, restrained motions, thinned mouth, wide or tense eyes, eye contact avoidance. She has a tendency towards defiant posture if it's mild, and a tendency to curl up or shrink down if the anxiety is worse. If it's really bad she might get shaky and uncoordinated; she'll be tempted to fidget with things to distract herself, but she'll also be much more likely to drop or break them.

If she starts dissociating, she seems to grow steadier; any shaking stops, and while she might not straighten unless prompted, the tension drains out of her. But her reactions will get sluggish and dazed. She stops making any unnecessary movements, and her expressions will be muted or absent.

Linast

Linast gets tense, fidgety, and sharp-edged with even mild anxiety. His shoulders will be hiked or hunched, his manifestation gets more angular and forms more spikes, and he’ll almost certainly be drumming his fingers, most often against his chest. He'll often pace, and any gestures he makes will be jerky and agitated. Severe anxiety tends to prompt flight, violence... or else a very tenuous, huddling shut-down as he tries to prevent himself from fleeing or attacking anything.

Anxiety is one of Linast's main triggers for self-injurious stimming. His stims usually involve either seeking/exerting pressure, or scratching; scratching the core, wrapping his arms too tightly around his chest, digging his fingers into things, etc. During that human incident, he also often bit his wrists and hands.

.

Excitement

Both

Their respective lighting will tend to grow more intense; darker or brighter manifestations, and often a bit of an impact on ambient light as well. If they're both excited and present, it's kind of like turning up the contrast on the world, hah.

Any light or shadow in the general vicinity of their focus, including any active manifestation, will give a rapid triple flicker when their mood first shifts or when responding to a conversation about the topic of excitement. Flickersign uses repetition for emphasis, and yes-yes-yes is a pretty common exclamation of approval or excitement.

They both get a bit fluttery; excess, eager motion, a bit of wiggling or rocking from existing manifestations, and often nonspecific wisps and tendrils of magic that gently pluck or tap at their surroundings.

In humanoid forms (manifestation or that human incident) they will noticeably perk up; lifted head, wider eyes, straightened posture, often leaning forward or up. They both smile; excitement is usually something that they want to communicate clearly to the people around them.

Not really many individual mannerisms to add; they both express excitement fairly similarly! Any exceptions more or less mirror how they express enthusiasm, wherever that doesn't contradict with what's here.

.

[justashadetalkative]

Aaaaa this is wonderful! :D Thank you so much. It’s lovely to see that scene in the Archive illustrated, and it’s always neat to get a more direct idea of Wiki and Elk’s opinions. (And ahahaha, the entire exchange at the end regarding Phosa is amazing. xD)

@justashadetalkative Elk and Wiki see Linast and Phosa as very reliable in different ways, I suppose!

And just generally like them a lot heh

[justashadetalkative]

Details: Phosa and Linast

Phosa and Linast don't really have an immune system, particularly not in their core.

They do heal over time, and relatively quickly! But it’s more like regeneration than it is anything adaptive. If the nature of their magic itself doesn’t repel something, if their regeneration doesn’t outpace it, and if said thing doesn’t eventually fizzle out on its own, then there is nothing in their system that’s ever going to figure out how to “fight off” a harmful process.

External help or physically removing the source of the problem are about their only options at that point.

This omission was entirely intentional on Clemcy's part. Making an intelligent construct that he thought might become powerful enough to consume stars was one thing. Intentionally giving that construct the kind of adaptability that might let it develop an immunity to anything he could use to try to kill it would have been quite another.

Phosa is the main (unintentional) exception to this! Her magic is more adaptive. But that only helps if the issue is in her magic and her magic alone. :’D

.

(A bit of a follow-up to this ask from @outofthiisworld !)

[justashadetalkative]

@outofthiisworld asked:

8. getting sick (a cold, flu, etc.) for Phosa & Linast! Could magical constructs even get sick? If so— is it different from what we might see as a cold? What about when they were humans for a hot minute? 👀

(p.1 answered here!)

.

Linast:

"Ughh. Yeah. I was... I mean I lost track, but apparently I was human for about a year and a half? And I got sick, ah... maybe s-sseven or eight times, through that, with different shit. Clemcy healed some of it, so those times didn't last long. But a few times, when he wanted to, ah... leverage it, he left me sick.

"It wasn't too bad if it was s-ssomething I could just sleep through, I'm used to being achy. But the rest of it f-ffucking sucked.

"And I don't know how — I mean, those times aren't even counting just... I was, what're the words... I couldn't drink milk? And it also isn't counting throwing up f-ffrom panic or something, that happened some too. And, like, of course that'd always just make me panic more, it was... do you even realize how much is just — just involuntary for organics? Most of the things your bodies do aren't under your control even when you're healthy! I don't know how you stand it!"

.

Phosa:

"I wasn't human for very long — maybe a few months? And I didn't really leave the Spire while I was, so... I don't think I ever really got sick.

"But I got a fever after some of the vaccines they made me rush. And I'd get headaches, those sucked. And, um, eating in general was bad, something about how most foods felt just made me gag. It was annoying. Drinking was better? So eventually Millie just put me on meal replacements.

"And — hah! I guess... maybe I did get something close to a cold, once. Piper had this perfume when I went to visit once, and I could not stop sneezing. I don't think that kind of, ah, involuntary stuff bothered me quite as much as Linast, though. I mean — it was uncomfortable, yeah, but it didn't... it wasn't that bad. Just had to wait it out."

[justashadetalkative]

8. getting sick (a cold, flu, etc.) for Phosa & Linast!

Could magical constructs even get sick? If so— is it different from what we might see as a cold? What about when they were humans for a hot minute? 👀

(Headcanon asks | Accepting!)

Ooh. 👀 Okay for this one specifically, to heck with the "one headcanon" bit. I'd rather just generally exposit on this, my favorite topic (speculative physiology & pathology). 😂

.

Since Phosa and Linast’s core doesn’t really have anything truly resembling an immune system, I don't tend to think of most of what can happen to them as illness, I'll admit. Most of it's better described as injury, starvation, interference, corruption, corrosion, parasitism, or getting cursed.

But all of those things can and do happen to them! And for many of them the symptoms mean they might as well be sick, hah. Though admittedly — never really anything that directly resembles a cold!

Short of esoteric curse-based nonsense, the main symptoms they can experience from various afflictions are vertigo; fatigue; pain; malaise; itching; difficulty with coordination/magic control; cognitive symptoms (such as memory issues, confusion, hallucinations, mood changes, etc.); and energy processing or routing issues (which SOMETIMES resemble nausea, and other times a fever, but most often are pretty dissimilar to either).

.

As for that brief period of being humanoid... Phosa and Linast will answer that here!

[justashadetalkative]

Details

Diamond very carefully does not think about how often Phosa and Linast act as child soldiers because the fact of the matter is that they are literal forces of nature that can barely be contained by the entire dimension of the Spire and sometimes (often) he needs that.

But like. They are. That is what is happening here. They are literally in the Spire’s defense militia.

[justashadetalkative]

Enthusiasm ( Phosa and Linast )

(Send me an emotion, and I’ll describe how my muse expresses it non-verbally!)

.

Phosa:

Humanoid manifestation — Her eyes will brighten; quite literally, hah. She’ll usually be leaning forward, her hands raised or restless somehow — like she’d physically urge whatever she’s enthused about forward, if she could. Her expression is more likely to be intent than to look overtly happy; when Phosa’s actually, truly enthused about something, she stops paying much attention to animating her face in favor of focusing on whatever it is she's trying to accomplish.

Natural ‘body’ language — Any active light manifestation will tend to burn brighter than normal, and she's more likely to move with curling, twisting motions. Even if she isn't manifested, the ambient light in the general vicinity of her focus is likely to brighten at least a bit when her mood first shifts; a gradual but definitive pulse before fading.

.

Linast:

Humanoid manifestation — Linast also often leans forward, and he'll usually noticeably perk up; straightened shoulders, lifted head. He's a lot more likely than Phosa to smile or even outright grin, and it tends to spread all through his manifestation; any small details and struts tend to curve upwards a bit at the edges in small, non-threatening curls.

Natural 'body' language — Linast doesn't darken with enthusiasm, but the curling motion with manifested magic is similar to Phosa. When his mood first shifts, shadows in his general vicinity might also curl; a small twisting motion that might make it seem like any light sources in the area moved briefly before steadying.

[justashadetalkative]

👻 GHOST — is there someone or something that you feel is missing from your life? do you know if there's any way to find it/them? (For Phosa and Linast!)

.

Phosa:

“I don’t… mm. It’s. I guess? Maybe? I don’t even know how to put it into words, though, and I don’t know if missing is the right…”

Phosa trails off. It isn’t entirely that she doesn’t know how to describe it, it’s that she doesn’t want to; doesn’t want to admit to the endless sneaking feeling that she’s doing something incorrectly somehow, that she’s never once interacted with someone without misleading them. She wants, somehow, to find some way to talk to someone—or some person who acts differently towards her in some way she can’t define, perhaps—where that feeling isn’t there. Even just once.

“…anyway. Doesn’t matter. If there’s a way to find, or, or fix it, I don’t know it.”

.

Linast:

“There’s stuff I’d like to change, or… dynamics? That could be different? But no, I don’t think there’s someone or something that’s missing, or anything. Maybe… ssomeday I’ll want more of a — a purpose, I guess. Something I can do that feels important in… a lasting way, instead of, uh, a preventing-disaster way.”

He shrugs. “But right now, it’s enough work just keeping up with life, and… ah, well, trying to make things suck less, hah.”

.

[justashadetalkative]

hc + 🌍 for a travel-themed headcanon — For Phosa and Linast? :3c

Phosa and Linast really enjoy people-watching, and they find the realm of the Spire itself claustrophobic, so they spend a lot of time off-Spire.

Their travel time is a roughly even split between visiting existing off-Spire friends and exploring new realms. They have the most practice with interpreting and mimicking humanoid body shapes, so humanoid-populated spaces are their most common destinations, but they’ve been to plenty of other realms as well.

They can spend a consecutive month or two off-Spire safely, but they don’t tend to push it that far. The Spire is their home, no matter how many mixed feelings they have about it, and they often get restless staying in any one place for too long—no matter where that place is.

[justashadetalkative]

hc + 🤥 for a lie-themed headcanon (phosa and/or linast)

Both of them prefer to lie with the truth when they can — not necessarily for any particular moral reasoning, they just find it much easier to do, hah. It also means that they’re less likely to accidentally contradict each other. They both lie fairly frequently when outside the Spire, mostly to misdirect people about their origins or activities.

For a long time, Linast found it very difficult to lie. This was mostly due to his difficulties with communication in general. It was hard enough for him to convey ideas in general, so lying with any more complexity than a “yes” when the truth is “no” or vice versa tended to leave him tongue-tied and confused; he’d quickly revert to the truth out of frustration.

Phosa didn’t have nearly as many difficulties on that front, and she has even fewer moral reservations about lying than Linast does. She also has more reason to lie… including to herself. Phosa tries very hard to seem like she’s always on top of things, even when she isn’t.

That said, all of it pretty much boils down to trying to protect themselves (physically or emotionally) or the Spire’s secrets. They don’t tend to lie for their own advantage, or even for social politeness’s sake. (Especially not Phosa. 😂)

[justashadetalkative]

Details: Linast

Linast is genuinely, deeply bitter that socializing with people almost always means spending time in lit surroundings. In many cases it is their convenience balanced against his pain, and he is resentful that it is often convenience that wins out.

At the same time… Linast also feels uncomfortable with the actual fuss and inconvenience of being accommodated, particularly among people he doesn’t trust. He works very, very hard to interact with people in the ‘right’ ways, and has a habit of only asking for the bare minimum of what he needs.

All of this is also in the context that the person that he’s closest to in the world, the first person he could ever talk to, the person that literally shares a body with him… she’s composed of light. 

[justashadetalkative]

Details: Phosa & Linast

Mundane video technology hits something not unlike an uncanny valley for Phosa & Linast on two fronts:

1) Their spacial awareness is intense and encompasses the electromagnetic field around them, so trying to process 2D images as representations of 3D objects & space was a learning curve for them. Even after they learned the trick of it, it’s still more like viewing an autostereogram than anything natural or automatic. (They have to trick themselves into perceiving it as looking at something that is very far away and outside of themselves, even as it's (usually) radiating from inside their range of perception.) 2) They don't have a brain that smooths a rapid sequence of images into a perception of smooth motion for them, and while their conscious processing speed isn't precise or rapid enough for them to truly discern the actual movement of light through space (unless working with large enough distances), they can still sense it to some degree. Between those two factors, it's like touching a vibrating surface; they sure as heck couldn't count the individual jerks, but they can feel that something about the motion isn’t smooth.

Some of these factors were mitigated during that human incident, and it went a long way towards helping them figure out how to interpret 2D images the way most sighted humans do.