My Headcanon for Liminals
I've been having a lot of fun posting headcanons, and I'm starting to realize just how many I've built up over the years, so here's another one.
So I've stated before that part of the reason why Danny and Vlad are so different is because Danny was inside of a portal when it turned on whereas Vlad just got a face full of energized Ectoplasm and other assorted nastiness. The still human and already ghostly halves of Danny fused into a cohesive whole in order to survive the opening of the portal and continued supporting eachother. Vlad's human half forcibly integrated his resistant ghost half as it formed in an effort to survive. Rather than a cohesive whole, Vlad is two dischordant halves.
That said, I do not consider Vlad's state the default result of humans being exposed to ectoplasm.
Part of it is because the exposure was violent and his human body was so incredibly unwell that it made sense for the part of him with less emotional attachment to it to want to escape. This illness did not stem directly from the ectoplasm. We know this much because other people exposed to ectoplasm did not get ecto-acne, and figuring out the involvement of the cola was what allowed the Fentons to cure it.
Part of it is because Vlad has a superiority complex. This means that, in any given state, Vlad considers his current way of being superior. As a human, Vlad considers humanity superior. As a ghost, Vlad considers ghosts superior. This leads to a whole lot of clash between the parts of his psyche which each consider the other half to be lesser. Combine this with the fact that each half despises the illness and associates the illness with the other half, and you get a whole lot of internal toxicity.
For the average person with ectoplasm exposure, there wouldn't be so much of a clash. They would take on some ghostly traits (more and more over time, with continued exposure) and maybe start doing some prep-work for ghosthood, but they wouldn't be trying to leave their human lives early. They probably won't have insane healing factors like Danny, but they won't be tearing themselves apart like Vlad either.
They're preparing for the afterlife, but they wouldn't be so eager to discard the human life they are still living. If you've ever had a favorite hoodie that you wore all the time until you loved it to pieces and it came apart at the seams, that's kind of the feeling. It's not the end of the world when you can't wear it anymore; you can wear other jackets when you're cold, but you want to hold onto it for as long as you can.
The more someone is exposed to ectoplasm (in terms of both frequency and amount), the more ghostly they will become over time.
A random person who just happens to live in Amity Park on the opposite side of town from Fenton Works and and was somehow never at the sight of a ghost fight, will probably just experience a slightly increased awareness of ghost-related stuff and perhaps a slightly smoother transition when their time comes.
Other kids at Casper high, who attend school with Danny every day and get caught up in ghost attacks sometimes will probably start to form the wispy beginings of their ghostly self. Sometimes you just catch a glimpse of what sort of ghost they are going to be. They may also develop some slight powers while still alive.
You look at Paulina carefully shaping and lacquering her nails into something both beautiful and dangerous, and for a split second you just know that, someday, she's going to be all claws and glittering scales and passionate pursuit of her goals. She will transcend the human form and shape herself into a work of art of her own design and a powerhouse none can deny. Then she turns to her friend and giggles over a funny story, and the moment passes; she's just another kid steadily making her way to adulthood.
She's just another kid until some jerk at the mall oggles her a little too blatantly and her jewelry flashes brighter than the lighting should allow, blinding him so that he trips into a fountain, and Paulina smugly watches him sputter before turning to walk away with a satisfied spring in her step.
Sam and Tucker, Who hang out with Danny every day and frequently explore the ghost zone with him, will start forming more of the foundation of their ghostly selves and probably develop more powers sooner. They are more likely to develop to a point of being able to take on a ghostly form while still alive.
Typically, a halfa formed through extreme, prolonged exposure like this would have a bit of separation between their human and ghostly halves, but without much discord between the two. However, with Sam and Tucker spending so much time around Danny during their formative period (and having so much less contact with any other ghost than with him), it's entirely possible that they would subconsciously learn the integrated system approach, in much the same way people pick up habits of speech from the people around them.
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I'll be the first to lambast a lot of bullshit that comes out these days wrt youth illiteracy both traditionally and in tech, but I think we need to be extremely careful not to let that sentiment cross over into yet more generational conflict. The upcoming generation has not individually chosen to exist in a media environment driven by hegemonic algorithms, their deprivations are not inherent flaws of their personhoods. There's going to be a media landscape that panders to our fears of the future soon, our fears for that generation, and its going to exploit that fear for disdain and distrust. We have to reject that and be in equal parts enraged on the behalf of younger generations and sympathetic to their plight, we cannot continue the cycle of meaningless generational warfare as a vulgar replacement for class solidarity across generations.
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@spookyagentfmulder // x
It wasn't every day that Vash went into bars for anything other than plant maintenance checks. Yeah, maybe he'll have a drink or two every now and then -- but, just as he'd always done, his first instinct when arriving to any new place is to scout the shadiest bar out. The one furthest from the cops, or normal civilians -- anyone who would turn him in.
Or, at least .. that's what he had been doing for as long as he can remember. Visit a town, check their water supply, fix their plants. Spend a day scouting out the shops, avoid the people so they don't get hurt. Leave. Find a new town. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. The endless deserts of Gunsmoke had been familiar to him for one hundred forty nine years. it's all he'd ever known since the great crash, too. And anything he knew about Earth, about plant life -- he either knew it from Luida or Rem, and he was always told that Earth had become a wasteland.
So, then --
Why now had he awoken on a planet so similar to Earth? Where was he? He can't even remember how he got here, or why there's so many people, or why the city streets are .. decidedly less higher tech than he's used to; if he didn't know any better, he'd almost say this WAS Earth. But, that wasn't possible -- it was supposed to be gone, wasn't it?
Then again, he knows more than anything that despite the weird vibes he's getting, and how out of place he feels, he must stay calm. Irrationality leads to dark places, and though it was tempting to freak out, he'd only JUST gotten here. He needs to familiarize himself with his surroundings, keep a keen, observant eye on everything going on. Maybe it was just a new place he'd never seen before on Gunsmoke, where they just HAPPENED to not have any sand or worms or endless bloody red oceans from where he could see. Then, it was time to do what he always did. Check out the nearest bar, and get the low down on just where he was. Shouldn't prove all THAT difficult, right?
... Ultimately, it took longer than Vash would like to admit to find a bar. There was no real clear cut signs, and this place was so colorful and vibrant that it almost felt overwhelming. The place wasn't made of the typical Gunsmoke building materials; nothing here felt as rustic. It looked kind of retro to him, with patrons all in equally bright clothings and chattering away to each other.
The thing that was sounding alarm bells more and more, though, was the fact that nobody really turned to look at him. Granted, he was still kind of condensed, as to not freak out the other humans in the bar -- but even so, he stood at a hefty six foot five in said form. And yet, while he was pretty tall, there seemed to be other humans his size, too? Usually, he'd stick out like a sore thumb from that alone, and from his signature bright red coat, but here .. that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
How.. very, very strange.
Well, alright. Might as well try to find a seat.
So, that he does. After gazing all around the establishment, he sees one open seat -- with a man sitting in one side of the booth, and the other completely empty. He seemed to be drinking alone -- and though Vash couldn't tell you why, he felt drawn to him. Keeping his head hung a little low, Vash weaved his way through people with inhuman fluidity -- and once he got to Mulder's table, he knocked gently.
"Auhhhmmm..." Vash sheepishly smiled, brows knit upwards ever so slightly. Scritching the back of his neck, and with a slightly nervous laugh, he shoots his shot. Hopefully, his smile was gentle enough to not be offputting in any kind of way.. "Excuse me, is this seat taken? I can't find anywhere else to sit, so ..."
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Hello! You said in your pinned post that we can ask about your inner world. I don't know a whole lot about how that works, but I know inner worlds can be very different, and I was wondering what yours is like.
you can indeed! i was wondering when someone was gonna take us up on that offer. not gonna go into too much detail here for privacy reasons but ok you know how in a lot of mcyt fics the setting is still minecraft but it's this weird half-realism version of minecraft with a lot of the same mechanics and dimensions and monsters and magic systems and stuff? it's like that, but there's also an entire expanded multiverse and a few pantheons floating around
currently, there are several dozen people living in the village immediately surrounding front (where people can come up and talk to people outside the system and even control the body for a bit if they want. we call this "piloting" because it is incredibly similar to having a robot mech like in evangelion i've never seen evangelion), although most of them keep to themselves and come up here quite rarely. i say "people" quite lightly here- there's a lot of nonhumans, including the two permafronters (me [Ray] and Lance)!
it's pretty chill actually. we get a lot of people who wander in and out looking for a place to stay the night or who are escaping rough places. not all of them have clearly defined sources, but those who do 99% of the time come from within headspace itself, because for some reason our brain saw every mcyt we've ever been fixated on and went "what if i ran that through the autism filter and then made it an actual place that you can visit up here" and then did that. this applies to the multiverses as well which means that at any given time there are at least two Pixlriffses and three Xisumas living in the same general area, to name a few (they all find the situation hilarious and get along great).
there's never really a dull moment because after two years of "hey wait a minute there's more people in my me", a lot of inside jokes and silly rivalries have formed. there's also a fully recognized pantheon of deities for the main universe (the one where front is physically located) alone, but that's a whole nother bag of rats
but yeah. headspace my beloved <3
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