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tarklesbehindthescenes · 3 years ago

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Transformers Prime was so disappointing. As I said in tags, I'll try to be nice, but I just. I'm going to put this under keep reading. It will be lengthy. I do have some good things to say about it and I will, but I have so many complaints. Can't say I didn't warn you.

I'm going to start off with: I saw Cliffjumper in the first episode, paused immediately and told my friend that if he got red-shirted in the first five minutes to prove the situation was serious, I was going to be ANGRY. Lo and behold, Cliffjumper died to prove the situation was serious. And what was the time? Oh, around 4 minutes 30 seconds give or take. I screamed. My friend said something to the effect of, "I think they killed him off because his voice actor was The Rock and he was pricey". My response to that is, "Then maybe they shouldn't have hired him and gotten someone else."

My boyfriend came to the conclusion at one point that Optimus Prime sets the tone for the Transformer shows he's in. And I'm inclined to agree. Optimus is an absolute edgelord in this and I can't make myself like him. And the rest of the show follows. All I'm seeing is a show that tries too hard to be dark and gritty. It's like the writers were focused so much on the dark themes that the characters, their personalities and their backstories, they were all just an after thought. To me. Just my opinion.

Bulkhead... Why the heck didn't they keep Animated Bulkhead's personality? Why did they make him a generic brute? Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with the generic brute types, but Bulkhead is different. It just feels like a slight on what Bulkhead's character was in Animated. I understand that each continuity has every right to their differences. But it still bugs me.

I don't like Arcee. I don't care about her, I don't like the show's half-hearted attempts to make me care about her, she's so darn bland, and it really feels like she is looking to bring down the moods of anyone around her. "Smokescreen's too cheerful and immature. Time to berate him." Glitch, let him have some fun! Dumping hamburgers on someone's car is not something to be mean to him for. Just roll your optics and leave the mood be.

Ratchet does not hit it for me like G1 and Animated do. Maybe because he's racist? He treats the humans like vermin. And then the show just suddenly shows him with a slight change of heart when Raf gets sick. No warning or build up. Just "You humans are so annoying. Oh crap, this child I suddenly care about is dying!" I may be exaggerating, but that's how it felt to me. I guess an argument could be made that Animated Ratchet is racist, too? So if that's the case, then maybe that's not what rubs me the wrong way. But either way, I really don't care for Prime's Ratchet.

I don't care about Raf or Jack. They're just... there. Jack's blander than Arcee. Raf is just some kid with computer knowledge. How in the world does he understand Bee? This isn't G1, they can't just pass it off with "He just can". And I think you said you like Miko, so I'm sorry about this, but I loathe her. She just grates on every fiber of my being. Why is she allowed to put everyone in danger with no repercussions? If they do acknowledge it, it's usually just a slap on the wrist and she goes and does it again. I consider myself a pack animal, so if anyone was pulling stunts that endangered my family, I wouldn't hesitate to deck 'em and give 'em an earful. I'm sorry.

Starscream feels like a joke... He's so hung up on killing Cliffjumper. Like dude. Surely you killed more than just that one tired and beaten Autobot throughout the entire time the war has been going on. And if you haven't, how the heck did you get your position? People say his design is sexy and I just... don't see it. He's very expressive, and the way he moves his wings is great, but aside from that. His voice actor did a great job. But Starscream having a deep vampire-ish voice is not my cup of tea.

Soundwave really should have gotten more screen time. When I saw him slam down Airachnid, I knew I really wanted to see more Soundwave action. Megatron looks like Shredder's armor grew a face (TMNT). I can't take Megatron seriously whatsoever. From his bulging optics that can't look straight ahead, to his alt mode that shows his head and eyes peaking out at the top.

Can the Decepticons in general just have some more color, please? Knock Out and Breakdown are okay. Skyquake and his bro can get a pass. But most everyone else are just colored black, grey, super deep purple, etc. Airachnid should have died in the explosion caused to the Autobot base.

The Autobots are really not much better than the Decepticons. The amount of vehicon violence. They make it a game. But vehicons are filler, they're there to be cannon fodder, etc. Vehicons are so used to being killed off that the second they get punched, they lay down and pretend to be dead so they don't actually die. And the Autobots just laugh amongst themselves and treat it like some game. G1 treated Decepticon battles like a game sometimes too, I know, but they weren't actually killing their enemies. They were just thrashing their butts. The Prime bots kill off the cannon fodder, but don't kill off the main Decepticon characters when they get the chance? Oh! But Bulkhead smashing Starscream's clone to a bloody pulp and killing him! So unnecessary when the clone was clearly not a threat.

The abuse that Megatron throws at Starscream isn't really addressed in a satisfying way. Nobody tries to comfort him or help him get out of the abuse. It just happens. I haven't gone through all of season 3, so I'm only going off of what I've seen so far.

How. Dare they tease the idea of Breakdown having a change of heart and then kill him in such a stupid fashion. Just as I was getting past the fact that they turned him from a paranoid combiner in G1 to another brute like they did with Bulkhead, and beginning to like him. And he was friends with the vehicons! He was the only one that treated them with respect and gave them the time of day! And the writers killed him off! I will never not be salty about that.

...Okay, I think that does it for the negative stuff. Mostly. Now I can move on to the positive stuff.

Smokescreen is precious and I adore what they did to him. It was not worth waiting two seasons for him, but now that he's showed up, I can tolerate the show a little more. He just wants to be the best he can be and prove himself to Prime. The team does not deserve this ray of sunshine.

Knock Out and Breakdown's dynamic was adorable. It took a bit for them as individuals to grow on me, but in the end, I like them and I like their relationship.

I appreciate that the show gave the Decepticons some wins as well as the Autobots. Really made it feel like an actual war and that the "good guys" weren't overpowered.

Scraplets were a nice touch. I like the concept of some tiny terror being a predator to mechs. Makes the bots feel less indestructible. The bringing in of the Insecticons was kinda nice. Wish the design was different, but I appreciate they were even brought in. They really feel like a threat.

I liked the arc where Earth started being cyberformed. I don't think I will never not like the concept of cyberforming.

June Darby with her crush on Optimus. Oh, how I wish they explored that.

Miko and Bulkhead's dynamic is nice. They have a good friendship. I like the idea of a troublemaker dragging around their dim, but sturdy friend around and getting into trouble.

Ratchet on the synthetic energon was great. Give me more kickass doctor, please. Minus the vehicon torture and slaughter.

Predaking is precious as well. I think his fate has been spoiled for me, but we'll see. Hope I'm wrong.

I appreciate that around season 2 the humans started doing more work. They were no longer freeloading.

The vehicon that knocked Optimus' ass out with a tree trunk. He must have had direct beef with Prime and was training for that moment, because oh my goodness.

There was more that I liked about the show. Hence why I don't hate it. I'm just super bummed that I can't move past all those negative points. It had potential. And I want to enjoy it. Whoever loves Prime, like my sister, that's great. I'm glad you do. Somebody has to enjoy it. But it's not for me.

#Transformers #Prime #rant #strong opinions #tl;dr #I don't hate this show #But I can't enjoy it as much as others do #which is sad

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amritflower-blog · 3 years ago

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darkdreamingsongs · 4 years ago

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Grace in Terrible Times

Somebody, he couldn’t remember who, sang “sometimes the most amazing things come from the most terrible lies.” That may or may not be true. What was true that sometimes grace could be found in most terrible times. Take the last year, for instance...

This was the longest year of Kyvan’s existence. Which was saying something given the nightmare of the couple of years preceding it. Not to mention the 8 centuries before that. Of course, those weren’t all bad. Not by a long shot. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

In many ways, however, this pandemic year had been one of his best. Perhaps it was a blessing that it had lasted so long. Gave him time to recognize and appreaciate it. Two things he wasn’t always good at.

The pandemic, COVID-19 as the humans called it, hadn’t immediately drawn his attention. Not only were vampires immune to it, but the initial wave of contagion also seemed to jump over Russia. What happened in the rest of the world mattered very little to him, then or now.

Of course, he couldn’t avoid the outside world forever, even though he tried.

He’d gone to ground in Lyubech, a small village in what was now called Ukraine. For centuries he’d been quietly buying up property in the region. Sometime around the Revolution he’d purchased Zamkova Hill, where the old citadel used to stand. During the Soviet era, he’d permitted an archaeological excavation of the site by the noted academic author Boris Rybakov, with whom he’d also shared the old stories (Rybakov had turned those into The Tale of Igor’s Campaign and Its Contemporaries which he published in 1971). After the Soviet collapse, Kyvan had planned to build a dacha on the site but never quite got around to it.

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise as well.

In late 2019, Kyvan had taken up residence in the long forgotten monastic cells and tunnels dug into the slopes of Zamkova. In them he lived a solitary and silent life especially compared to the glamorous rock star life he’d lead since vampires came out of the coffin. Surprisingly, he hadn’t missed his former lifestyle once he’d had electricty and high-speed fiber-optic cable laid in. He, like the village, had lost their strategic value to the outside world, despite their colorful and significant history. Neither seemed to mind.

When COVID had finally come to Russia, it hadn’t taken a genius to recognize isolation was the best defence to the new disease. That was both harder and easier than it sounded for the villagers to accomplish. They were, largely, their own social bubble, however, they still required supplies from outside.

That was where he came in. Or out as it were.

Initially he transported supplies from some of the larger village nearby like Ripky and Sedniv. Unfortunately, as the pandemic wore on, those villages began to struggle too. Many saw multiple unneessary deaths. Before long, Kyvan found himself going to the oblast capital of Chernihiv to get supplies to keep the villages going.

He never bothered to ask himself why he cared whether they lived or died.

#plague Ukraine KyvanRus

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onstarsandiron · 4 years ago

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Cannon Character Descriptions

Here’s a big master post of cannon character physical descriptions, for all your related needs. Let me know if there’s anything I missed/should add!

Ana

"She had warm bronze skin and wide golden-brown eyes, full lips, and a heart-shaped face. Her hair was as dark as space itself, but it always curled into tangles. She wore it atop her head in a long braid and shaved the sides. She was moderately tall, solidly built for a life of evading death at every turn, and wore hand-me-down coats like the red one she wore now and darned trousers that never fit right. She looked like a girl from any part of the Iron Kingdom—and nowhere all at once.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

“Tattered burgundy coat, a Metroid at her hip, long black hair in a renegade braid, and looking like she hadn’t bathed in a week—the girl must’ve been an outlaw.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Robb)

When Ana arrives at the palace and is shown to her new quarters she has a little break down in the bathroom -- and who hasn’t had one of those? -- and shaves her hair off. In SoS, 6-months have passed since the coronation day and her hair is describe merely as “short”.

As D09: “His hood was pulled low to disguise the slats and plates that made up his face, without a nose or ears or eyebrows. He was more dented than other Metals, having fallen through mine shafts on Cerces and been shot at by mercenaries on Iliad. She felt bad for a particular ding on his forehead, but she had apologized a thousand times for accidentally running him over with a skysailer.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

As Di/Dimitri: “Redheaded and dark-eyed, a strong jaw, and broad shoulders that filled a slightly-too-small lavender evening coat. He smiled at her—lopsided, imperfect. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place from where. ... So close, the individual strands of his hair looked woven with sunlight, his skin pale—but not like Jax’s, more like a boy who had never seen the sun." (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Ana)

“So she memorized how the light from the windows slanted across the sharp edges of his face, the way he leaned toward her like a shield, how there were a thousand stars in his eyes, which sometimes made them shine as silver as moonlight—as they did now.” (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Ana)

Di received a cut on his cheek during Coronation Day that is held with silver stitches during SoS to prevent the cut from revealing the metal underneath. He also has a little breakdown -- as one does -- in which he busts up the skin on his knuckles, which he hides then with gloves.

Throughout SoS, Di’s hair is often remarked very specifically as “Blood red”, and he wears quite a bit of black.

Jax

"A Solani. The one from the skysailer. He must’ve been close to Robb’s age, but his silver hair made him look old—ancient—and his skin shimmered as if starlight hid just beneath. He wore a ruffly purple evening coat, golden filigree decorating the collar to match the lining, and buttons so polished they gleamed. Underneath that insufferably garish jacket was a silk shirt, stained with what Robb figured was his blood. A pair of goggles sat around his neck.” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Robb)

Wears purple often; after the event with Koren Vey, his skin literally glows. “”It’s a long story, but yes, I’m a glowlight. It makes reading in the dark riveting.” (SoS, III: Starless, Jax) Also in SoS, Jax has to chop his own hair off during the final fight, resulting in him sporting a shoulder-length cut during Erik’s funeral; according to Robb, he looks no less dashing for it.

Robb

“He looked the most like their father, broad shouldered and stocky, with hair that curled like the lies that fell from his tongue.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Robb)

Like his mother and brother, Robb also has olive skin and signature Valerio-blue eyes, often compared to the Erosian sky. In HoI, Jax threatened to make a short joke (mind you, Jax is tall); in SoS, Robb notes that he was always shorter than his brother, but a recent growth spurt had now made them eye-to-eye.

In the conclusion of HoI, Di -- then HIVEd -- made his tracking chip go haywire and an impromptu amputation was needed, cutting his right arm off between his elbow and his shoulder. Robb got a cybernetic prosthetic about a month before the events of SoS.

Elara

“She was around Ana’s age -- eighteen, maybe -- with shoulder length silver hair that partially shadowed her sharp face, and wide violet eyes rimmed with kohl. Her lips were painted black to match the rest of her wardrobe. She was short and curvy, with wide hips and thick legs that tapered into knee-high gravity boots. She was a Solani like Jax, but her skin was darker, reminding Ana of the cold deserts on Cerces. There was a wire that looped from her right ear down into her collar and disappeared. A hearing apparatus.” (SoS, I: Starship, Ana)

"Then -- like twin stars igniting -- moonlight-colored eyes flickered to life on a face made of metal slats, forming angular cheekbones and mouth and chin. There was a horrible, deep scrape across its temple that had been soldered closed. A Metal.” (SoS, I: Starship, Ana)

Malifare

“She walked with the grace of a dancer, floating without a sound. The pins in her flaxen hair matched her black dress. Floor-length, high collar, the insignia of the crown on her sleeve.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Di)

“Flaxen hair, narrow face, wearing the deep purple of a royal handmaiden." (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Di)

Siege

“The captain’s black hair framed her brown face in wild, electrifying curls, glowing with interwoven fiber optics, simmering orange like a stoked fire— Oh, Ana could tell by the color that she was mad.” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

Siege has green eyes. When she isn’t mad her hair is typically a golden yellow, though it grows dull when she’s drained or injured, and can be blue though it happened very rarely. As a teenager -- in a very hazy recollection by Di -- she’s described as someone who never smiles.

Talle

“Talle—short and thin, with black hair in a pixie cut and hands so steady she could slit a throat clean while navigating the skyways of Nevaeh...” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

In Jax’s flashback in Soul of Stars, Talle is described as tall with long black hair, but I’ll just assume that Talle is simply tall compared to an 8 or 9 year-old Jax. (SoS, II: Starless, Jax)

Also, her voice is often noted as sweet.

Lenda

““Seriously?” Lenda groaned, brushing back her floppy dishwater-blond hair. She was solid, with narrow brown eyes and tawny skin with rosy undertones. She displayed the scars on her arms like trophies—battles won in the fighting arenas of Iliad. Lenda was twenty and unafraid of everything— Except, maybe for Palavar.” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

Riggs

"Riggs, fiddling with a ball bearing in his mechanical leg, grumbled a reply and heaved it off the table, setting it on the bench beside him. He’d lost his right leg to the Plague twenty years ago—cut it off himself right above the knee. He lost his family to the disease on Eros, and kept a photo of his daughter in a silver locket around his neck. Sometimes at night, Ana heard him talking to her in his dreams." (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

Wick

““No one [likes Palavar],” rumbled Wick, who had a habit of being quiet. He listened, and that made him a talented communications specialist. He absorbed languages like a sponge, so many that Ana could only hope to wrap her tongue around a quarter of them. He was Cercian by birth, the markings under his eyes so faded Ana couldn’t tell which clan he hailed from, and he never told, having left that life years ago. His skIn was a shade darker than Siege’s, with a warm hue to it—like the dawn.” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

Barger

““Eh, don’t bother me. Three jacks,” said Barger, a stout man in his mid-twenties with a ginger mustache. His fingers were always grease stained, nails ripped short, the signs of a tireless weapons mechanic.” (HoI, II: Iron Ships, Ana)

Cynthia Valerio

“Lady Valerio looked wicked, from her bloodred lipstick to her bloodred dress, as she gave a gracious bow.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

“Tall and thin, with olive skin and graying brown hair swept into a bun, cheekbones so sharp they could cut ice. She wore a finely detailed coat and trousers, a Valerio crest pinned above her heart. She appraised the small crew with shrewd blue eyes—he knew that color. He knew it achingly well. The color of Erosian skies.” (HoI, III: Iron Blood, Jax)

Mercer Valerio

Robb is his spitting image, except that Mercer wore a thick beard.

Erik Valerio

“At nineteen, Erik Valerio was dashing, popular, and conniving in a way that granted him whatever he wanted. He looked like their mother—tall and olive skinned, a sharp face, with straight dark hair and a smile that made you want to trust him.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Robb)

“His brother stood blocking the doorway in a deep brown leather jacket with mink fur at the collar and dark trousers. His boots were well polished and decorated with the Valerio insignia—a snake eating its own tail. He filled the doorway just like he had in Robb’s nightmares, his hair short, the sides shaved with celestial designs, and he narrowed his eyes like their mother always did—disapproving, but not surprised, as if nothing Robb would ever do would be worthy of approval.” (SoS, IV: Star Crossed, Robb)

Erik and Cynthia often match, both wearing red at the celebration for Erik becoming the heir, both wearing black at the pre-coronation ball, and both -- this time including Robb -- wearing white at the coronation itself.

Nicholi

“The Emperor, clad in royal purple, had a hand on his wife’s shoulder. He looked like all the pictures she’d seen in the newsfeeds. Golden-brown eyes and rich brown skin, like the Grand Duchess, a full beard over a strong face.” (HoI, III: Iron Blood, Ana)

Selena

“Beside him, his wife, the Empress, smiled out of the portrait, brown curly hair and Valerio-blue eyes.” (HoI, III: Iron Blood, Ana)

Rhys, Wylan, and Tobias Armorov

Ana’s three older brothers are described as having dark curly hair, and the youngest, Tobias, has Valerio-blue eyes. They’re described further in short snippets Ana recalls in the palace, chasing the ghosts of their voices:

“Rhys— He let her taste the sweets from the kitchen. The scent of cinnamon. Warm brown eyes, a melting smile. He used to kiss her bruises when her middle brother, Wylan—a cocky smile and a mess of black curls—knocked her down when they pretended to be outlaws. All the horseplaying would scare her youngest brother—Tobias. Valerio blue eyes and a small smile and a love of violins and sweet candies and stories.” (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Ana)

Lord Rasovant

“An older man, graying beard braided down his chest, appeared at the far end of the hallway. Dark eyes and deep wrinkles and ghostly-pale skin. The clank of decorative medals on his breast accompanied his footsteps. He was dressed in a simple royal-purple evening coat with uneven tails, gilded buttons and filigree across the collar and sleeves.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Di)

The Grand Duchess

“Ana drank the woman in, from the delicate wrinkles across her face to her silvery-white hair pulled back into a simple bun, making her cheekbones look sharp enough to cut. Her skin was the color of soft earth and speckled with age, her hands bony knobs. She looked old, but in a terrifying and timeless way, the way mountains looked old but immovable.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

She also has “...stone-cut green eyes...” (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Robb), similar in description to Siege’s

Wynn Wysteria

Wynn has a freckled face and long, curly strawberry-red hair. (HoI, IV: Iron Will, Ana)

Viera

“She was tall, with white-blond hair and arrowhead-shaped markings under her eyes—heritage markings for certain Cercian clans.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Di)

Messiers

“A patrol of six Messiers appeared in the doorway. They were sharp, metallic. Made of planes and slats she knew well, because they looked like D09. Like Metals. Because once, they had been. Now HIVE’d, the Messiers’ blue eyes blazed like virtue incarnate. They moved in unison, their blue-and-black uniforms pristine, shined boots making solid thumps on the masonry floor as they marched into the shrine.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

Mokuba

“A tall, burly gentleman in a stained long coat and trousers, the seams frayed and boots greasy.” (HoI, I: Iron Theif, Ana)

Redbeard

“He had been an imposing man, as thick as two men. He had a braided red beard that reached halfway down the front of his barrel chest, and it glowed with optics the way Siege’s did, although Ana much preferred the way they looped into her curls.” (SoS, III: Starlit, Ana)

Cullen

Ana spun around to the owner of the voice, a tall androgynous person with long black hair that reached well below their waist, and warm brown skin, decked in gold jewelry and a coat the color of a nebula. They grinned at her, and the neon implants in their cheeks glowed a brilliant teal. (SoS, IV: Star Crossed, Ana)

#heart of iron #hoi #soul of stars #sos #reference #descriptions

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butterflyinthewell · 6 years ago

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Here is a giant post of the vocabulary I use when narrating from Godzilla’s perspective. (Pardon my autistic infodumping...)

[Human perspective shot of Godzilla looming next to a building. We’re looking upward, so all you see is his huge chest, his chin, his stomach, his hips and his hands. He is looking straight ahead, so he would have to look down to see the viewer.]

--- * A lot of what’s written in this is based on my personal headcanons / speculations for / about Godzilla and his godzillasaur species, gleaned from 20+ years of being a Godzilla fan and a few things I read on the Godzilla wiki. *

Godzilla 2014 and KOTM are bringing in brand new Godzilla fans who may want to write fanfiction, so I wrote this out to give other / newer fanfic authors ideas for how to make up vocabulary for narrating Godzilla’s POV. I personally apply this to Heisei era Godzilla, but you can pick and choose things to apply to other versions as well. This is not a how-to, it’s more of a guide map.

Godzilla can’t exactly narrate in words, so I use specific vocabulary for his narration to “paint” his perspective into a form readers can understand while still keeping it a little bit animalistic or alien. Terms that are capitalized are capitalized for 2 reasons: It’s something he “named” with a descriptor, or it’s knowledge about the world imparted on him by his Father when he was a baby. Things he doesn’t capitalize are casual terms, like we would say “my wife” or “that’s the sun up there in the sky.”

I treat Godzilla as sapient, self-aware and driven by thoughts and emotions as much as instinct. He has a distinct, individual personality. He harbors a deep connection to the Earth since he himself is a force of nature created in unnatural circumstances. At a glance he sees the world more primitively than we do because he has no understanding or need for modern human trappings like cell phones or cities, but dig deeper and his feelings about life are as complex as ours.

He gets a very interesting new perspective of the modern human world because of a nasty man named Goro Kurojima. Let’s just say “pieces of Mecha-King Ghidorah, SHRINK RAY, Godzilla becoming the size of an action figure” and leave it at that. The experience lets Godzilla realize humans put the same emphasis on family / connections that godzillasaurs do, but we kinda suck at showing it. ;)

A small note about the timeline goofiness thanks to Godzilla vs King Ghidorah: I spin it that trying to teleport the godzillasaur into the Bering Sea let him turn into a bigger, angrier Godzilla because of nuclear material that detonated when he ‘landed’ on it, so messing with time changed nothing in history other than his size. The 1984 attack and his battle with Biollante still happened. All Shindo’s submarine did was feed him and kill the anti-nuclear-energy-bacteria he got infected with in Godzilla vs Biollante.

Another note: I will use godzillasaur to refer to Godzilla’s species in general. In his mind and heart he is still a dinosaur who has lived for a very, very, very long time and his father lived even longer still. He is ancient.

---

--- Stuff related to himself, his family or Shezilla ---

The Old Days = the time of the dinosaurs, which he greatly misses. He knows he can’t return to those days because his appearance will make normal godzillasaurs run away in fear.

The New World = modern times, a place where he feels forever foreign.

The Flash = the bright detonation of the underwater nuclear energy that mutated him.

The Change = the painful process of mutating. It was an extremely traumatic experience, so he gets really pissed off if something flashes bright white light straight in his eyes. Any other color, he doesn’t care, but white is awful and reminds him of the painful Change that came after the Flash. ----Side note: Right after the Change, he swam around the ocean feeding off of natural uranium deposits until they no longer sustained him, which led to him going ashore in ‘84. The rest is history.

The Fireball = the asteroid that led to the extinction of most dinosaurs.

The Big Boom = the sound the asteroid made.

Long Sleep = hibernation

His Fire = the radioactivity that keeps him alive. When he is tiny and learns the ‘heat’ of his Fire can make humans sick, he tries to minimize his radioactive output when near people he likes. There is no way to make it safer when he is full size, but he will still try.

Feeding his Fire = when he’s absorbing radiation.

His Fire burning low / Fire Hunger = his body’s “low radiation warning” that signals he needs to go absorb more to maintain his internal fission. It feels like a mix of hunger and nausea and he feels his body getting weaker / stiffer when he needs to feed.

His Flame = his radioactive breath beam.

The Surge = his nuclear pulse. It’s a painful move for him, so he doesn’t like to do it very often.

The Scent = he has nerve fibers in the roof of his mouth that behave like a biological Geiger counter. To him it’s a scent that tingles, and the stronger the tingle the stronger the radioactivity. It’s directional, he will catch a whiff of Sustenance and track it by pointing his nose at the source. A studious observer will see him open his mouth slightly like cats do when he’s trying to pin down the exact location of a radioactive snack. It also helps him keep track of how Shezilla is doing. ----Side note: Godzilla has a very acute sense of smell, and when he’s tiny he uses smell along with sight and hearing to tell individual humans apart. He gets concerned when the lady humans he’s in contact with smell like blood because the concept of a period is beyond him, so he thinks they’re injured. It’s...kinda cute.

Sustenance = Radioactive anything he can absorb radiation from. Sometimes he swallows radioactive materials and sometimes he only needs to touch or be near them. He discovers he loves the taste of iodine-131 while he’s tiny and will slurp that up from a eye dropper like it’s candy.

Invisible light / Invisible colors = light from the ultraviolet spectrum, he’s a tetrachromat. He sees 'down’ into all the colors we can and ‘up’ into the ultraviolet spectrum. So he will see a rainbow the same way we do, but with more colors past violet. If you point a black light at him, the pits and grooves in his hide will fluoresce blue and purple. He sees these without the help of a black light. These colors are more concentrated on his hands, face, neck, chest, the edges of where his muscles bulge and the base of his dorsal spines to draw attention to these areas. Shezilla’s are in the same spots and glow pink and green. It’s these invisible colors that make them so attractive to each other, because it’s pretty.

Dark Light = x-rays and gamma rays, he perceives their effects on the environment (a blurry glow around the source) the way humans perceive certain colors as glowing under a black light.

Shining his Light = the act of lighting up his dorsal plates to impress Shezilla or alert her of his position in pitch darkness. If Shezilla does it, she’s showing him her Light.

His Thunder = the whoosh of his holosystolic heart murmur, which is due to a ventricular-septal defect. He can always hear this although it’s louder to him in quiet places or while he’s underwater.

His Lightning = the internal kick he feels from his biological nuclear reactor shocking his heart whenever its rhythm goes awry.

His Palsy / the Palsy = the spasms, limited range of motion and difficulty moving he experiences due to brain damage caused by his heart defect. His Palsy is being difficult when it hurts to move, when controlling a movement is hard or he uses a lot of effort to initiate movements, and it’s the reason he has a slow, lumbering gait. Its visible effects get more pronounced when he’s starving for radiation.

The Pangs = the chest pains he gets when his heart races towards fibrillation. This happens because the mutation caused his heart’s conduction system to form too many nerve branches around the hole between his ventricles. Sometimes they misfire, throwing chaos into his normally nice, rhythmic heartbeat. It tends to happen more when his heart beats fast. Fast for him is 50bpm or more. His resting heart rate is around 13 - 16bpm when he’s awake, drops to 10bpm when he’s in deep delta wave sleep and can go as low as 5bpm when he’s in deep hibernation. He gets up to 85bpm when the v-tach kicks in and that causes the Pangs. ----Side note: This is the sticking point of why the shrink ray is actually hurting Godzilla. When he’s tiny, his resting heart rate is close to 50bpm and jumps to 80 - 90bpm when he gets stressed, and can hit 120bpm when the v-tach kicks in and leads to fibrillation. It’s literally killing him because being smaller means his body isn’t at the critical mass it needs to be at to sustain his biological nuclear fission, which allows him to heal ridiculously fast and stay so unbelievably physically strong. His internal reactor isn’t a bottomless pit of energy, it can’t continue to zap him indefinitely.

Deep Sleep = the occasions when his heart fibrillates long enough that he loses consciousness. This was induced by the cadmium in 1984, which also stopped the internal shocks from happening, and he might have stayed down for good if that nuke didn’t go off in the sky and re-energize him.

Long Memory = his hyperthymestic memory, which is unusual even for his species; he is always journeying into his Long Memory and comparing today to The Old Days.

His mate / beloved mate / Gift from the Wishing Star = Shezilla, who appeared to him one day out of seemingly nowhere. She is the most beautiful godzillasaur he has ever seen.

Wasting Sickness = cancer / tumors, called such because the sick person gets very thin and weak. He can smell the disease.

Mother = his saurian mother. She was blind and died of the Wasting Sickness when he was still a hatchling. In human terms, she had a brain tumor that caused terrible pain, caused her to have seizures and was in the process of destroying her optic nerves when she succumbed. It was his first exposure to death, but he was too Young to be traumatized by it like Father was.

Father = the first Godzilla who appeared in 1954 and was killed by the Oxygen Destroyer. He was at sea when the nuke mutated him, which woke him up into a state of disorientation and panic. He wandered across Odo island and Japan because he was in pain, scared and desperately looking for his son. Sadly, the little humans didn’t understand him when he popped his head over a hill and asked them if they saw his son. Instead, they ran away. He got angry and smashed through their strange forest in attempt to make them listen, and in response they killed him. ----Side note: This Godzilla was the father of the ‘current’ Godzilla. His rampage across Japan is a direct result of the Futurians’ meddling because they caused him to search for his missing son instead of finding him where Shindo left him.

Metal One = MechaGodzilla

Little One = Baby Godzilla / Little Godzilla / Godzilla Jr. ----Side note: This godzillasaur is not Godzilla’s biological offspring, his real parents are long gone.

Pod = family

Marking = he has scent glands in the folds between his fingers that leave his scent behind when he scrapes his claws on something to mark an area as his. Part of why he destroys some of the same landmarks is they rebuild, which removes the scent, so he puts his scent back. ----Side note: A kaijuologist figured this out and notes that Godzilla is less likely to veer off his path and totally destroy a building that’s been sprayed with his scent after reconstruction, but it’s expensive to replicate the scent and most builders don’t apply it after rebuilding.

Patrolling = traveling old migration routes, which he uses the sun, stars and Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate through. Sometimes this takes him through cities, but most of the time he traverses rural areas or areas without any human population.

--- Beliefs ---

Spirit = soul / life force.

The Stars = the afterlife, eternity, Heaven, etc. He believes the stars in the sky are his ancestors’ Spirits, and the Milky Way is a giant forest everyone journeys to after they die.

The Wishing Star / Morning Star / Evening Star = Venus, whenever it’s up before dawn or after sunset. He reveres it the way people of faith revere their deity. He looked at it with longing any time he saw it in the sky, and believes doing so convinced it to give him Shezilla as a gift. Hence her being a Gift from the Wishing Star.

Evil Moon = a red, fully eclipsed moon. It is the antithesis of the Wishing Star. His Mother died during a lunar eclipse and the Fireball happened the day after one, so he associates lunar eclipses with bad things happening.

--- Nature stuff ---

Fire Mountain = volcano

Fire Mountain Smoke = ash or pyroclastic flow

Land Blood = magma and lava

Land Scab = lava that has cooled enough to stop glowing.

Land Heart = magma chambers deep under Earth’s crust

Land Song = the ultra low frequency vibrations of moving tectonic plates. He can hear ultra low and ultra high frequencies even beyond typical animals, so he hears distant earthquakes as music! (But they aren’t so nice when they happen underneath him, then it’s just shaking and noise.) He hears lava moving and knows a volcano is going to erupt long before it actually does. His hearing is magnified further underwater. He hears all the whale songs and dolphin clicks and any other noise that happens underwater, so when he dives he thinks the whole world sings to his heartbeat.

Land Scream = the ultra high and low frequency squeals that precede earthquakes under his current location. This hurts his ears, and instinct prompts him to try to leave the immediate area before the shaking starts.

Water Wind = tsunami, as experienced while underwater when it goes by. A big one can sweep him off course if he’s trying to swim through it.

Flood Surge = tsunami, as experienced while on land or in shallow water. He can wade through it without a problem if the water is shallow enough to walk in. This can also refer to storm surge in the event of a hurricane making landfall.

Ancient Caves = prehistoric caves that are miles under the Earth’s crust. They are the closest thing he has to the world he remembers. Human eyes have never and will never see these enormous caverns. Sometimes he goes there and scrapes up precious stones (diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, quartz, etc.) to give to Shezilla as gifts because she likes the pretty colors.

Rain Smell / Thunder Smell = the scent in the air when conditions are favorable for rainy / stormy weather. In other words, petrichor.

Big Rains = monsoons

Sea Storms = hurricanes

Mating of Sea and Sky / Mating of Land and Sky = waterspouts / tornadoes, described as such because their formation looks similar to the mating process between godzillasaurs.

Crackle = the tingly feeling from his body emitting a streamer during a thunderstorm. If it finds a step leader, he gets struck by lightning. Lightning strikes are hot and noisy, but don’t cause anything more than some burns. A strike to the face can give him flashbacks of the Flash and anger him into destroying whatever is in his path at that very moment.

Falling Cold = snow

Cold Land = polar ice caps and glaciers

Slippery Cold Land = ice

Warm Season / Hot Season / Cool Season / Cold Season = Spring, summer, fall, winter.

Long Cold Season = ice age

Draw = magnetic fields, which he is sensitive to and uses to navigate in conjunction with the position of the sun or stars. As you can imagine, anything that emits magnetic pulses or unnatural magnetic fields will disorient him and he’ll go find out what’s ‘wrong’. This, along with bird call recordings, was used to lure him up Mt. Mihara in ‘84.

Draw Up = north

Draw Down = south

Horizons = east if he’s not following the sun, west if he is following the sun.

--- Human stuff ---

Bugs, zappers and stingers = the aircraft, land vehicles and watercraft that shoot at him. Solid projectiles are stingers. The maser tanks are the zappers.

Silver forests / strange forests / glowing forests = cities, they’re called glowing at night because of the lights.

Shiny trees / strange trees / glowing trees = skyscrapers, they’re called glowing at night because of the lights.

Boxes = buildings that are squarer in shape or not tall like skyscrapers.

Tiny boxes = buildings that aren’t tall, like you see in suburban areas.

Caves / Caverns = the insides of human dwellings.

Weird rocks = furniture

Shiny rocks = tiles

Scented sand = cat litter, he doesn’t mind the strange smell. He “goes” in it when he’s tiny and buries the results like cats do because he still has the instinct to not alert predators. The cat litter is the clumping sort that blocks some of the radiation and makes it safer to clean up after him. ----------Side note: Anything from inside Godzilla’s body is dangerously radioactive when he’s full size, but less so when he’s small. You’ll get radiation sickness if you try to pet full size Godzilla while wearing anything less than a HAZMAT suit, but he can be picked up and handled safely in someone’s bare when he’s tiny. Still, people wear gloves to handle him as a precaution.

Not-dirty dirt = carpets / rugs

Mud that isn’t sticky / weird mud = bedspreads

Artificial suns = lights

Colorful Light Box / Image Box = TV sets and computer monitors.

Talking box / howling box = phones

Transparent box = the aquarium he’s kept in while tiny.

Colored vines = cords, wires, cables or ropes.

Metal vines = chains, both for jewelry and holding stuff.

Artificial claws = eating utensils, like silverware and chopsticks.

Their kill = the food humans eat. Most of it looks and smells totally unappetizing, but he expects at least a bite if they’re having meat or fish. He finds it confusing that humans can walk around a corner and reappear with food without any signs of a hunt.

Weird worms = noodles

Hot mud = coffee, it smells and tastes nasty to him. He will literally gag from the smell if it’s really strong.

Outer skins / outer shells = clothes / HAZMAT suits

Molting = changing clothes, he thinks humans molt way too often.

Eye covers = goggles

Eye frames = glasses, both Kenpachiro and Goro wear them although their choice of frames are different. (Goro’s are plastic fully rimmed black rectangular frames, Kenpachiro’s are thin titanium semi-rimmed wayfarer frames.)

Marking sticks = pens or pencils

Marking shapes = written words (in Japanese), he recognizes they have significance to the humans by how they create and react to them, but doesn’t understand the connection between writing and language.

--- Communication ---

Old Tongue = in essence, godzillasaur “language”. He uses purposeful vocalizations, facial expressions and body movements to “talk” to the humans when he’s tiny because he sees the Kenpachiro’s group as his Pod. A whole ‘sentence’ may be expressed simultaneously. If I were to translate Godzilla’s ‘language’ in a movie, it would be as subtitles. Much of his behavior is communication. ----Side note: Humans unknowingly speak Old Tongue a lot via their body language, facial expressions and tones of voice, but he gets lost with speech and the fact that humans react to each others’ vocalizations more than their gestures. That said, he uses pattern recognition to grasp the meaning of a few individual words, like responding to the specific syllables humans attribute to him and looking at who says his name, and the word stop. He picks up on the hand gestures used to train him in the lab, too. ----Extra note: A quick and dirty bit of Old Tongue-- if Godzilla tilts his snout down and looks upward at you, he’s signaling that he doesn’t trust you by getting his snout out of his visual field to watch you more closely. If he throws his head back when he roars, he’s angry!

Mind Song = telepathic communication. Godzilla communicates with Miki Saegusa through memories, emotions and sensory information because he knows when she’s touching his mind. He's able to decide whether to welcome her in or kick her out and block her off, but 99% of the time he welcomes her in.

Mouth sounds / jabbering noises / chattering = human speech... he knows it is a form of elaborate vocal communication. He finds it annoying, overly complex and confusing.

--- The naughty stuff ---

Kiss = the act of touching or nuzzling noses. A nose to nose touch is like a little peck, while rubbing their noses together is more intimate.

Impressing = the mating display behavior. He circles her, shows off his sharp teeth, shows off his dorsal spines and flexes a bit to show off his big, strong muscles. Then he brings her Sustenance or food. It’s very much the godzillasaur equivalent of a pick up line followed by a romantic dinner. If she rejects his offerings, she’s rejecting him. But if she flicks her tail to the side and rubs her head against his neck after he does all that? Ooh, baby, he’s gonna get lucky!

In Season = fertility, they both emit pheromones that stink like garbage to humans, but it’s perfume to them! Shezilla goes into season 4 times a year and it lasts a week. Godzilla goes into season once a year for a day without Shezilla present, but her going into season triggers his hormones to shift too and he’ll stay in season until she goes out of it. They get really freakin’ horny and twitchy when in each others’ presence. When apart, Godzilla tends to be a bit more aggressive because sexual frustration is a thing, and Shezilla hunts and eats more traditional fare (sharks / whales) to store extra nutrients in case she conceives and lays an egg. Also, you can’t tell by looking at Shezilla when she’s in season, but Godzilla’s dorsal spines get a little bit longer and his muscles bulk up. ----Side note: The reason Godzilla changes outwardly and Shezilla doesn’t is it’s the guy’s job to impress the girl. Their chances of actually conceiving are small because of the radiation in their cells and mutated DNA. Godzilla’s sperm cells are so hyperactive and fast-moving that kaijuologists can’t get an accurate count, and the state of Shezilla’s egg cells are unknown. The only reason kaijuologists got a sperm sample at all is because gravity is a thing and the excess dripped out as soon as Shezilla stood up again after Godzilla toppled her onto a building to do the deed for the first time. (They’re animals, they will do it anywhere if the mood strikes!)

Being One / Making Life = mating. They mate via cloacal kiss, but they do it in something similar to the human missionary position because that’s the best way to line their vents up. Shezilla’s dorsal spines are smaller because she is the one who lays on her back and helps her big, klutzy boyfriend get into position on top of her using her teeth and claws. It doesn’t hurt him at all, nature made the exact spots she bites and grips into erogenous zones that encourage him to keep going. His feet go under her thighs and flank her tail, which are erogenous zones for her. He lines his vent up with hers by feel, everts the muscular inner walls of his cloaca into her vent and her muscles grab on to achieve a proper seal. Mating for them isn’t a ’touch cloacas and done’ deal, they stay in position for several minutes. There’s no humping action either, it’s all driven by internal muscle contractions. ----Side note: In my headcanon Godzilla fucks without a dick, get over it.

Touching Spirits / Union = the sensation humans know as an orgasm. Their bodies relax instead of tense up when they feel it happen because the endorphin flood puts them into an altered state of consciousness, and it keeps them from popping apart prematurely. The most movement they’ll do is a lot of tail twitching. For Godzilla, the sensation triggers the muscle contractions for release, and for Shezilla it creates suction that moves the sperm where it’s supposed to go to fertilize an egg cell. They thrash around or groom each other afterward because they feel a tiny bit high as their endorphin rush comes to an end. -----Side note: She comes when he does because his triggers hers, so they always experience it together.

One = the godzillasaur equivalent to marriage, which is consummated the first time a pair mates.

Vent = the cloaca. It closes tight and can’t be seen when not in use for mating or expelling waste. It’s located right in front of where their tails join their body. Godzillasaurs stand upright, so that is why they mate facing each other.

Life Material = the goo inside unhatched eggs, though it can also refer to semen.

--- Specific people ---

(Canon characters)

The Deserter = Yasukai Shindo, who saluted him on Lagos Island and left him while he was wounded. He sees Shindo as the one who abandoned him to the pain of the mutation process and it’s why he looked into Shindo’s eyes through the window before he killed him with the same bright light that made him hurt. He wanted Shindo to know that he remembered and hated him. ----Side note: Shindo never realized what Godzilla was thinking when they looked at each other through the high rise window. He accepted his fate as divine retribution because he felt responsible for 'creating’ a bigger, meaner Godzilla.

The Mind Singer = Miki Saegusa, the psychic woman who confuses and intrigues him greatly. He remembers seeing her as an adult before he got mutated, but later he saw her as a child inside the train car he picked up and threw aside in ‘84. He knows humans grow bigger and their hair turns white or falls out when they get old, but from his perspective Miki is aging out of order. Time travel is a concept beyond him, so he will never understand that she traveled to the past with the Futurians. -------Side note: Miki doesn’t harbor ill will towards Godzilla even though her entire family was with her and died when he dropped the train car. She sensed no malice or cruelty in him, he was an animal doing what animals do, and holding a grudge would be like being angry with an earthquake or a tornado. As time goes on and she comes in contact with Godzilla more often, she comes to realize he is intelligent in his own way and experiences a broad range of emotions just like humans. This gives her a deep compassion towards him; he is lonely in his difference, same as her.

(OCs)

The Odd One = Kenpachiro Satsuma, an (adult diagnosed!) autistic kaijuologist who is lanky, geeky and tends to look a bit disheveled most of the time. He is a widow who deeply misses Momoko, his deceased wife. This is the guy who studies Godzilla very closely (special interest) because he truly wants to understand how he lives, communicates and experiences the world. He believes Godzilla is capable of more emotion than just anger and that humans can learn to coexist peacefully with him. Kenpachiro is the man who cloned Shezilla, so he understands the grief Godzilla is suffering through after her death and he regrets causing him that pain. ----Side note: Kenpachiro has a teenage son named Akira. He tries to be a good father to the kid, but doesn’t know how to connect with him. As a result, Akira is sometimes belligerent and misbehaves in attempt to get his father’s attention. Godzilla sees the rift between them and will try to bridge it because he misses his own father.

The Cruel One = Goro Kurojima. A buff, broad-shouldered, intimidating guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a bushy mustache. This guy is Kenpachiro’s rival. He is an abusive sadist who wants to make Godzilla suffer until he dies as payback for the loss of his family in 1954. He doesn’t differentiate the ‘current’ Godzilla from the 1954 monster even though they aren’t the same creature. He attributes only malice to Godzilla’s behavior and does not believe Godzilla is capable of anything but hatred. He has untreated PTSD. Godzilla can sense the hatred this man has for him and he doesn’t like it. -----Side note: Having PTSD is not what makes Goro an abusive, sadistic villain. His choices to hurt those around him for his own personal gain are what make him a villain. He was just a kid coming home from school when the first Godzilla reduced his house and mother to ash right in front of him and stepped on the fiery rubble. He saw his mother’s skin melt. It haunts him. The PTSD actually humanizes him and explains where his pain comes from without excusing his behavior.

The Gentle One / Mama = Reiko Fukamori, a veterinarian / kaijuologist who has feelings for Kenpachiro. She is a very plain, unassuming woman who doesn’t realize the full extent of Goro’s nastiness until he gets Godzilla into his clutches, so she is the one who sets things in motion by sneaking Godzilla away from the lab and into Kenpachiro’s hands. Her gentleness reminds Godzilla of his saurian mother. She talks to him a lot, and he is able to tell by her tone that she means him no harm. ------Side note: Reiko’s veterinary experience lets her figure out Godzilla’s high muscle tone is neurological and that his heart defect is a dangerous problem for him while he’s tiny. She knocks Kenpachiro’s socks off with her suggested solution to keep him alive until the shrink ray begins to wear off. She is the one who introduces Godzilla to iodine-131, which she gives via an eye dropper while training him to follow simple voice commands / gestures so he’s easier to work with. She is the only person Godzilla chirps at. Their relationship becomes very similar to Baby and Asuza from Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla II.

--- Example narration ---

--- Akira’s lava lamp causes tiny!Godzilla to have a flashback of his youth. Kenpachiro has a tooth from the original ‘54 Godzilla that he uses as a shelf. It’s mentioned, so I figured I should give context. ---

Reflections of the magical red globules flickered across Godzilla's eyes. It took him far back to The Old Days before the Fireball. A time when the sky was red and trees touched the clouds. Godzilla was very young and tiny with ribs that stood out on his flanks.

A Big Tooth with its short arms and bad breath lunged at him. He stared at its slavering teeth, unafraid. Suddenly, a nearly black shape streaked into view. Father caught him by the scruff of his neck and sprinted away from the danger. Young Godzilla relaxed against the reassuring touch. Father's hot breath tickled the back of his neck as he ran. Oblivious to the Big Tooth snapping at Father's heels, young Godzilla shrieked in delight. Father ran so fast! He watched the brown and green streaks of trees fly by.

Then Father ducked into the underbrush. It was muddy and cold, but Father swam through it like water. The Big Tooth would not walk out on this mud. Defeated, it crashed back into the jungle to find more suitable prey. Father slowly wriggled free on the other side of the mud. Young Godzilla thought the squishing sound it made was funny, but Father put him down and beckoned for him to follow. So young Godzilla stumbled behind his father, nipping at his ankles. He followed him up a grassy hill overlooking mountains. He was so tired when he got to the top that he collapsed, panting.

The smell in this area was horrible and glowing red rivers boiled in the valley below. Father told him the glowing red stuff was Land Blood that came from the Land Hearts inside Fire Mountains.

Father bent to lap the mud off his hands and arms. Young Godzilla purred and squirmed as the big sandpaper tongue scraped the mud off his hide. Then Father beckoned him away, for it was time to hunt.

Father took him back to the Fire Mountain at night. They stood together and watched the giant sprays of glowing Land Blood shoot towards the stars. It was nothing more than glowing red rain! He ran forward and tried to catch some on his tongue. Father roared at him to come back. Land Blood was dangerous and not a toy! It had the power to both create and destroy.

Many seasons later, when Godzilla met his Gift from the Wishing Star, he laid over her to Make Life, and at the moment of Union his body erupted like a Fire Mountain. Afterward, the fierceness in her eyes and the gentleness of her Kiss made him forget The New World he found so unfamiliar. They were One, now and forever.

Reality crystallized. He blinked and refocused his eyes. That was not Land Blood shooting up; that was red slime inside a human contraption. The tooth beside him was not the strong jaws of Father carrying him to safety. He took a step back and saw his own reflection staring at him instead of his mate’s beautiful face.

He was little again...but he would never be like he was before the Flash.

The humans who lived in this giant cave were the closest thing he had to a Pod. And by the look of it the Odd One did not pay close attention to his young. He was ignorant to the younger one’s needs for attention. This ignorance would soon drive them apart.

Godzilla howled past the bitterness in his throat. He turned away from his reflection. Brokenness happened everywhere he went, and it would never stop.

--- One last note ---

Godzilla makes eye contact and reads emotions through eyes much like neurotypical humans do. Eye contact won’t provoke him like it does most animals unless a hostile move follows. He can read the emotions in a human’s eyes if he gets close enough to see them, and humans who survive eye contact with him swear he stared into their soul. Because he does.

[Yasukai Shindo looks out the window of his high rise office at Godzilla, who is right outside looking in. They are looking into each others’ eyes, though Godzilla’s are in shadow. Godzilla looks into Shindo’s eyes as he kills him with his radioactive breath. Shindo opens his arms and accepts his fate.]

#Godzilla #Gojira #kaiju #headcanon #fanfiction #ideas #long post #VERY long post #food mention #tw vomit #tw menstruation #tw feces #tw unsanitary #swearing #violence #water

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the-uptake · 5 years ago

Text

Between You and Me

The Uptake, With Symbiotic Self-Indulgence. Book III, Chapter 11. Go to previous. TWs: Shaving, alcohol, drugging, hangovers of both kinds, bondage, epidemic, isolation, bombing survivorship mention, descriptions of lethal body horror. Bite the hand that feeds, tap the vein that bleeds...

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Come third shift that night, the faint hum within the complex’s walls had faded, and only one wall of each apartment’s main room and bathroom illuminated its inhabitants’ way with the pale Wolfram phosphorescence accumulated during the second shift. If not for the potent, unfamiliar scent of vaguely sandalwood aftershave and the dark gold towels, Cecil could nearly have forgotten he stood shirtless in someone else’s bathroom. That, and he’d sooner be caught dead than own bathroom rugs.

His halo lay, turned off, on the counter beside the sink. The internal elements in its opalescent clear plastic emanated faint pulses. To his surprise, he found the tenant owned a rechargeable power bank. Possibly several, he supposed, considering the facility with which he located it in the fluorescent twilight. So as to let ‘Choly keep theirs to get through the night, the redhead gladly made use of the foot-long clear-housing device, so the aural aureole could maintain its juices that night well past the hour it normally flickered off altogether. Unlike the backup electrical source, his boyfriend wouldn’t have any need at the time for the clipper that he then produced from its case. He fished around in the like-new guard attachments, recalling that ‘Choly didn’t use any. When he snapped on the size two, an ebullient nerve jolted through him. He pulled the drain stopper, and leaned into the mirror to get to work.

As the chunks of two-inch hair fell to the counter, floor, and sink basin, the act felt more natural than he’d expected. He’d trimmed himself dozens of times over the years, and maintained his own facial hair, but he’d never buzzed off all his hair. If he’d ever seen a Leveler with their hair this short, they hid it beneath the translucent cranial plates which the Northeast US deemed especially fashionable. Full-scalp plating was unheard of, though: these functional successors to the fascinator always had either brightly colored, vee-reactive, or even fiber-optic extensions wefted through exposed sections, or the wearer’s natural hair pulled through it to be styled somewhat akin to how people used to style hair around combs and other such devices. The reverberations of the clippers on his scalp rendered the sound for him as would a deep bone conduction headset. He wondered how someone might even wear such an accessory without hair long enough to clip it into.

He set down the clippers to run his hands all over his work, and smeared around his chin and jaw with the heels of his palms. The length of what remained on his head now nearly matched that of his third-shift shadow. The more he stared at himself, the more his heart lightened. Content with the catharsis of self transgression, he moved to clean up after himself. With a lock of the longest hair from the top of his head in his fingers, he wondered whether ‘Choly would want it. He flinched at himself, but still tucked the sizable brassy chunk into the inner pouch of his toiletry bag regardless, unable to quit the habituation of such thoughts. He did his best without a broom and dust pan to corral the rest of the trimmings into the wastebasket.

Without building power, the plumbing lacked necessary pressure, so he instead used some of the tenant’s reserve water supply, from the interconnecting clear stackable units stashed in the bathtub, to shampoo and rinse his head in the sink.

Suspiciously well equipped for the unplugged shifts, he noted, of the tenant’s specialized furnishings. The sensation of scrubbing the fine clippings off his scalp with his fingernails got him whistle-humming softly with his mouth open. The small spigot on the side of it made it incredibly simple to measure out cupfuls to pour over his head as he held it over the basin. Having it in these units is so much handier than our repurposed leftovers bins. Maybe he’d help us get set up with something like this.

He tossed the borrowed towel into the hamper by the tub and put his unbuttoned gold dress shirt back on, then reconnected the four flexible ports of his halo and handshaked it. In the next room, he could hear struggling that had, from the labored nasal breathing, likely gone on for some time. He murmured dully to himself, put his glasses back on his face, and took his empty highball with him to investigate.

Though Jacob’s apartment had the same floor plan as Cecil and ‘Choly’s, the furnishings denied any meaningful confusion. The back third had an office area, the middle a series of utility shelves and an L-shaped workbench perpendicular to the wall, and the front a peculiarly spacious third of open floor with a single broad cabinet. Just as theirs, dozens of potted plants peppered the long, narrow quarters. Unlike theirs, rather than literary in nature, the grey-area verbot that peppered Jacob’s was technological and mechanical.

“Hope you don’t mind that I’ve let myself in, neighbor,” he remarked as he approached the upholstered swiveling desk chair from behind. “Decided I’d stay the night with you, to make sure you recovered right from the tranq. My brother and their friend helped me carry you over here before they headed out.”

Jacob stilled at Cecil’s voice, and stopped straining against the ropes that anchored him to his seat. He didn’t bother craning his head to look up over the back of the chair.

“I do still have both kidneys, right?” The snark received deadpan silence. “--Where’s Angel?”

“Powered off, in the front. I could teach you better encryption, if you want.”

Cecil casually refreshed his glass from the small lacquer dry bar in the very corner of the office space. He plunked a few cocktail cherries suspended in lime gelatin cubes from the zippered package, and splashed in whiskey, ginger ale, and some kind of Vek bitters. He sipped at his concoction until he netted one of the bright blue fruits in his mouth and twisted off the stem, and chewed before he spoke again.

“I appreciate your hospitality, really. These jellies are something else. I’m on my third Premier.” Cecil faced into the apartment, skirting eye contact, to lean his weight against the side of the desk. Behind him, rain had probably strafed the naked window for most of the evening already, and would definitely continue through the night. The stem went back in his cup, since he didn’t trust his ability to hit the waste bin two meters away. “Place’s nice, too. See you’ve greened it up. Did my brother do yours, too, like some kinduva traveling snake oil dealer?”

The blond let a slow breath escape flared nostrils, and an intermittent low whine corrugated his affect.

“What time is it? Can’t be super late. Glow’s still going. --Are you sure you wouldn’t rather a slice of confec? You seem like you could use some confec right now. Don’t strike me as the type to drink--”

“--About twenty-two. Not too long before first shift. Then it’s just the two of us. And I’ll be blind, drunk,and deaf.”

“It’s just you and me here?”

Inebriation had misinformed Cecil’s tongue, since he didn’t usually keep a continuous charge in the halo, but he couldn’t be bothered to correct himself. He worked at draining his glass, so he could earn the rest of the fruits that had glued themselves to the bottom of the crowded glass. He nudged the chair back a bit with his foot to slide over to sit on the desk and face him. He just stared blankly at the tall, thick blond while popping the prized garnishes in his mouth one at a time, removing the stems each time and letting them accumulate in the highball.

Jacob slouched when Cecil’s enjoyment of them seemed more like absent cud-chewing, and he shut his eyes, folding to the implicit staring contest.

“Are you all right, pal? Is that a stupid question? Is that okay to ask? --You know you can just eat the jellies without making a drink, right--”

Cecil sat the glass down on the bar, and gripped the edge of the desk, to swing his feet under it.

“I just shot you. You’re tied up, and I can’t let you go. And I can’t even look at my boyfriend right now. Do you even really need to ask?” His mouth scrunched and he glanced at the ceiling before resuming more agreeable eye contact. “Question of my own now, since you can clearly intuit some modicum of transparency: What made you a repairman?”

Jacob’s exhausted eyes stitched in a smile, and he shifted back in the chair.

“Cred’s never been the only currency. There’s lost potential in everything around us. Call it alchemy, in the most abstract sense. Mend and mod. Turn something into something else. In lieu of cred, people used to trade goods and services all the time, back in the day. The tradition never died. It just changed. Like everything else did.” He squinted again, his mouth becoming a wide thin line. “Look, I can’t turn on the poetic charm just like that. If you’re asking why a repairman’s decided to live in Tri-City, with everything like it is, I stayed behind because I knew there’d be survivors who’d still need the building to work right. Simple as that. Why’s it matter to you?”

“How altruistic of you. Of course it matters. You weren’t just fixing the garbage chutes. You were going through people’s trash. Just doesn’t add up to me, though, why you’d put yourself at risk to return something so patently thrown away.”

“Again with that box!” Jacob scoffed, the stress flickering out of his grin. “Would you have rather I just let that stuff get destroyed? Wait. You’re scared I’d tattle. Weak. You’d better freakin’ believe I wouldn’t bring police into the building. Your honey isn’t the only gremlin in this place, you know. I’m not gonna burn the whole house down just to smoke out one cockroach.”

“I know I can’t be the only one with a weapon. What’s stopping you from dealing with the... roaches... yourself?”

The subtext read louder than the text. Jacob knew why Cecil didn’t think he could untie him, but now he’d said it outright.

“You feel personally responsibly for Central, don’t you, librarian? That’s what all this is. You just can’t let it go.”

Cecil let out a broken laugh, and his eyes glassed up as he steeled a snivel.

“How can’t I? I should have been able to stop it. I was working a Level 7 server room when Central became a Roman candle. You snarked about my burn scars and all that shit, but surely from the look of me, you can tell how close I had to be to one of the payloads.” The ex-librarian couldn’t sit still anymore and paced. He quickly conflated the habit with his brother and sat back down on the desk, to lace and fold his hands in his lap with a sour, desperate face. “You know we’ve only got a localized Nikola-web here, repairman. Just what they’ll feed us, accept from us. Have you got an Underweb connection? Has anyone here?”

Jacob didn’t like not being able to watch Cecil pace, but he didn’t like it even more when the pacing halted so abruptly, only for the strung-out stocky little man to perch in front of him all over again. His eyes slowly widened as his brow raised, and he frowned thoughtfully.

“Now just what exactly would somebody like you need the Underweb for?”

The ginger nearly objected, but recognized he hadn’t been shut down. He shifted in place as he formed his narrative response.

“‘Choly needs medical stuff. But he’s scared of billing. It’s exciting to know he’s taken care of all that himself his whole life. You know Stalkers had two options with their medical needs. They either bartered with verbot to get care from this one clinic... or they didn’t. He’s been disabled since before he was a teen. He racked up an awful lot of debt with their lead doc. It got to where he couldn’t afford the emotional, sociological, or physical cost of enlisting the doc’s help.” He stilled himself by chewing at his spider bite studs, but his voice began to break. “He asked me this afternoon about a... maggot debridement kit. And Trylocaine saline. The bullet you asked about. He told me, he got shot in the leg. That night. It’s gotten so fucking infected. You think the 25-line garbage chute smelled bad? Just be glad you weren’t in the bathroom this morning helping him sop up the pus in the first place.”

The repairman huffed, eyeing the dry bar.

“So he wasn’t puffing up to scare me, by describing all the...” He realized he couldn’t gesticulate, and slouched in a sympathetic resignation. “The skin or whatever. Slag, though. Leather. Real leather,” he whooped. “And that much of it. It’s all kind of revolting, isn’t it?”

“Everything about him is so revolting that it’s charming. If there’s a way to keep him... keeping it. Oh, I don’t know.” He caught himself trying to stand to pace and burked the compulsion. “I just don’t understand why he threw it away, when he literally put years of blood and sweat into it.”

“Everybody’s got their own exchange rate, their own value of things. He might just not value the same things you do. Or at least, not in the same way. Whatever value that thing, and crafting it, has to him. Might be past tense. --Why’s it so important to you, that he keeps on like he has? You only just today found out about it, from the sound of it all.”

“Because this has been his ‘normal’ for the past four years!” he cried, throwing his hands up. “I can nearly forgive that he never told me, or showed me. He hasn’t had his hair bleached like that since we first met, and then he goes and does that the day after the bombing. And that tattoo. That triangle thing immortalized in the leather. I know he got it, a month after we started going steady, just to push my buttons.” He rubbed at his tattooed arms and couldn’t look at Jacob anymore, trembling deep in his lungs. “...I guess a part of me’s worried that he’s either trying to move to a time before he knew me. Or a time before he had to be nagged up over all this mess. It’s an understatement, that everything’s gone to shit since Central went dark, but everything really did feel right until that day. We managed. We worked. Like, it was all falling into place, not apart.”

Jacob barked a laugh, disquieted by his inability to unpack the brand of Cecil’s loyalty to ‘Choly.

“Geez, pal. Gonna sprain something, overthinking so hard. Mister Thorn’s on your side, and he’s going to guarantee your Ever After won’t be ending any time soon. Promise.” He got a bit lyrical as he drafted the laundry list. “Is leather working stuff all you think ‘Choly would need? The surgical stuff. I’ve got pharmaceutical connections. Wonder if Trylocaine’s enough...”

Cecil’s head picked up when he heard Jacob humoring him, and a hollow enchantment overwhelmed him at a loss for the spectrum of what the repairman must have had access to.

“I’m... not sure what you’re suggesting here,” he mumbled.

“All you’ve gotta be is specific. I can get it.”

“...And the cost?”

The repairman scoffed, in a wide-eyed detachment.

“The cost? You mean, what’s in it for me?” He thought it over a moment. “All depends on what it is, I guess.”

“What about Ketonamil?” Cecil blurted out, a little too intensely. Worried to have been mistaken for anger, he softly amended, “--Or at least, the stuff to make some?”

Cecil’s head rang in a complex grief, that the cyanogenic steroid was the first thing to fly out of his mouth. Maybe he felt more threatened than he thought by Jacob, in ways the tranq couldn’t adjust for. Or maybe he just wanted to gauge the repairman’s going prices. Jacob melted in a stunned, warm fascination.

“All this couch psychiatry mess has been fun, but if we’re going to continue to be neighbors, I really have got to work on how I keep letting you lot continue to surprise me with gems like this.” A wistful sigh escaped him, stuttering into discomfort. He wagged his head toward the reader on the square pad in the windowsill. “Yeah, I’ve got Underweb access. It should still have a charge. Parked it before third shift. If you... untie me... I could--”

“--Or,” Cecil asserted with a wild glare, gripping the man’s kneecap until he squirmed, then balance back to put the other hand on the device slightly behind himself. “You could just tell me your sequence so I can browse for myself.”

Cecil turned on the screen and waited. Maybe the liquor had loosened his inhibitions. He never got drunk. Was he a mean drunk? A talkative drunk? He’d disclosed to a near total stranger things he’d never come close to discussing with anyone close to him. He could see Jacob sweating.

“...Or that.”

Jacob told him the finger pattern design to draw through the symbols, and the lock screen shut off. He’d never been able to get the hang of ‘Choly’s rooted reader, and he’d purposefully left its updates off for years on top of that. The rooted user interface of the current model had so many more buttons to swipe among, and many menus necessitated the use of manually typing with the keyless entry pad that occupied the last third of the flat device. He didn’t ask Jacob to tell him how to use it, lest he risk inviting giving Jacob good reason to insist, If only you’d just untie me, I could show you myself, I’m no good at explaining things like that with words, et cetera, et cetera.

He’d figure it out himself.

The time in the corner indicated 22:52. If only you’d just untie me. The hypothetical request repeated itself in Cecil’s head. Did he really trust what Jacob told him, or was he being spoon-fed whatever might get him to free him? Though the wine key didn’t look like a reliable option, he pocketed it. Then he picked up the pronged Japanese bar spoon, and twiddled it between two fingers while he browsed with the other hand trying to locate the merchant apps. Apparently, its owner had the news Web app set to auto-load certain tiers of noteworthy news broadcasts. The screen split between three different pieces:

“Bloom Set to Ramp to Full Pandemic Status”

“Bloom Victims Now Sprouting Up on International Soil”

“New Developments in Bloom Survivor Procedures”

He skimmed the first, his brow sinking against his glasses. Something was effectively causing people to spontaneously turn inside out. He could recognize the “plant” and “insect” or“crustacean” traits the article described in the structures that jutted from and leafed out of the bodies knotted up in the apparent agony of such a gruesome death, even with only the photographs included of the casualties. His jaw tightened, recalling his brother mere hours ago making casual discussion over how Vekarix couldn’t graft an exoskeleton donor into a mammal’s genetic expression without lethal consequences. He boiled inside at the incredulity that Ben could be involved. The thylacine hybrid hadn’t seemed remotely out of sorts during the insect grafting discussion with ‘Choly. Had he been about to tell them all about this‘Bloom,’ only to have gotten interrupted by Jacob? By the Box?

The second article, he only skimmed, his ears ringing too much to focus. He gleaned victims had been found on both coastlines of the States, and in the past week cases had been discovered in Scandinavia and South Asia. Investigations had already been underway to pinpoint if a sole food supplier might have shipped out tainted stock, and pressure had intensified once the epidemic had crossed international waters. He spaced out a ways, despising the reality how disconnected from the outside world their apartment building was. Unplugged from reliable transportation, let alone utilities, including Web. Fed only what FEMA deemed suitable to funnel into their location-specific Nikola-based Web broadcasts. He stared at the photos, revolted fundamentally at what could only be some manner of genetic disease.

Speechless, the ex-librarian looked up, haunted, and turned around the reader to set it in Jacob’s lap to observe him.

“I’ve got to keep up on current events,” he lampshaded. “Sue me for having auto-load set on some stuff.”

“--You knew about this then?” Cecil snipped. “Have there been any in Tri yet?”

Jacob shrugged, and decided giving him his closest understanding of the crisis better served them both than instructing specific topic searches.

“Only a matter of time, I guess. They’ve started refining a cure. Made their first survivor announcement a few days ago. Nasty stuff. Comes in flare-ups. Seems to start just turning you green, but every episode after that just fucks you up sideways. Looking like the key to surviving it is catching it before‘crab phase’ or whatever the hell that explosion of sharp mangled guts is. Worst part is, it makes you complacent to the changes, or oblivious altogether. You don’t seek medical help. You stop eating, and seek light and water above all else. The first survivor only got there‘cause he stuck close enough to home his steady found him and took him somewhere.”

All the while, Cecil had stared at the reader screen, not Jacob.

“What... is it.”

“A virus, maybe? No one knows. It’s got to be genetic, ‘cause they reversed it with humanization serum. Look, if you wanna read up on it, that’s fine. I’m probably missing scientifical parts of this whole shebang. Use my reader all you want. I don’t care. Just lemme get up and piss, pal. You really are tormenting me at this point.”

Cecil finally folded, and crouched behind the chair to cut the knots with the wine key. By the time the ropes loosened off the chair, Jacob was already rounding the chair to gently knuckle-scrub the ex-librarian’s fresh buzz cut with a chuckle, and he strolled off to the bathroom. Cecil bundled up the rope, then sat to resume reading the news articles. Without all the bookshelves to dampen the sound, having the door open while he took care of his business echoed awfully. Cecil sneered, but appreciated that even though Jacob saved reserve water by not flushing until in the morning, he at least heard him wash his hands.

The third piece was almost totally in video broadcast. He started it, but couldn’t find the volume to turn it up, so he tapped at it until closed captioning started streaming. They interviewed a tall, older man with worn features and an angular nose, bespoken in layered burgundy and navy leisure suiting. The man had shoulder-length receding chartreuse hair, and blood-black sclera and fingernails. From his manicured brows and sideburns, he could tell it wasn’t a dye job. He grimaced as he skimmed the text.

Ivory Rasmussen. Prior already renown as the Confectioner responsible for Resin. Lives in Level 22, in the solar sector of still-crippled Tri-City, New Jersey.

He didn’t get anything more from the interview beyond the understanding they wanted to know what he felt, knowing his survival could mean a large-scale success in overcoming the pandemic globally. Except his insistence that, despite the global incidence, he discredited anyone who thus far considered the Bloom a pandemic of any kind. How dare Jacob simply shrug when a Tri-City native was the survivor in mention. When Jacob came up behind him and put a hand to his shoulder, he jerked to glower up at him, but softened immediately.

“Dude looks super wild. Am I right?” He patted the shoulder for emphasis.“Now how about that shopping list? Gotta get it before first shift. My receiver’s in a third shift sector, so their glow-time is in less than an hour now.”

“Leather crafting tools,” Cecil seethed. “Maggot debridement. Trylocaine. ...Antibiotics! And Ketonamil.”

At first, he’d just been sticking to what he’d thought was an accidental request, but certainty laced his voice now as though he hadn’t known he meant it the first time he’d said it before.

“And Ketonamil,” Jacob repeated. He sat on the edge of the desk and took the reader from him, flipping through with routine cynicism as he easily located every item requested. “Sorry for doing it for you. We’re just in a time crunch, is all.”

“You ordered the things!” Cecil nearly bolted up out of the chair. “But we hadn’t even negotiated what it’ll set me back yet!”

“Shh, shh,” he soothed, waving him to mentally sink back down in the chair. “Prices on delivery, neighbor. Prices on delivery.”

“But--”

“There a problem? No questions asked, why you want any of this stuff. I can conveniently forget anything you’ve said to me tonight, if you like. Doctor patient confidentiality, or whatever bullshit you want to call it. Services are the oldest human currency. I’ve got the means and the motivation. You won’t find both so easily in the same individual. Not in these parts. I’m not for anything too violent, I promise. I can already reassure you, I’ve never set a death in motion in providing any of these items in the past.”

“Up to, but not including,” the librarian jabbed dryly.

“Say, I wonder if we could find a genuine purpose for all that genuine leather,” he proposed aloud, stroking his short under-chin beard thoughtfully. “Something the little gremlin might like to keep.”

“He fancies himself an insect,” he corrected. Though the deprecating endearment nettled him, it worried him more that this endeavor might imperil his priceless object so quickly after he’d come into its possession. “I’m sure of it, that if you asked him, he’d consider the leather his chrysalis.”

“And just what do you think it’ll make him, if we can convince him to turn the stuff into something else?” The repairman offered the bag of cocktail jellies with a benevolent glance.

“Something that he might like,” Cecil repeated as he awed up at the taller man, accepting the cherries in a deferential entrapment.

“You still wanna fall back and keep an eye on me tonight?”

“I don’t think I could go home just yet.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Cecil snorted, and popped another fruit in his mouth.

“Depends on your hourly rates, I guess.”

#biopunk #dystopian #cyberpunk #body horror #dystopia #the uptake #with symbiotic self indulgence #jacob thorn #george cecil #between you and me

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withastolenlantern · 6 years ago

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When Yokota arrived back to the laboratory, Midori was again occupied by the object of his affection, bent at the waist as he loomed over the short wall of the nurse station. A video, no doubt the latest net sensation, played on Eiko-kun’s holo as they both giggled quietly. Yokota smiled, as fifty years ago one might have found him in the same position, laughing and flirting in the student union with the art student who would become his wife. Yokota had many apprentices throughout the years, and all of them were talented in different ways. Some were destined for greatness as epidemiologists, or primary care, or even, as with Takahashi-san, hospital administration. In Midori he had found something else. The young man’s energy and impertinence were emblematic of his age, and he still needed work on his bedside manner. An earlier patient nearly died of shock when the young physician callously described test results confirming a rare form of cancer, more taken with his prognostic prowess than considering its effects on the afflicted.

But whatever his latest protege might have lacked in self-control or compassion, he made up for with his brilliance in diagnostics. The doctor was a tireless researcher, willing to chase every and any strange symptom or bizarre condition, and an expert at multiple cutting-edge metrology and analysis techniques. Yokota was increasingly convinced that this was his last kohai, and Midori would make for a more than capable replacement managing the research laboratory.

The elder man’s hands were becoming arthritic with age, and his knees creaked loudly in the mornings, a testament to one too many years of kendo practice. He’d squirreled away enough savings to last a few years, and while he would never accept it, his daughter would no doubt offer him a place with her family. But he would never allow himself to become a burden like that. The Japanese government, much like it's global counterparts, had largely exhausted its ability to support its elderly population through any type of entitlement programs. Both domestic and UN politicians continued to pay lip service to the important role the aged played in modern society; here in Japan there was even a federal holiday for it. But that was not the first opioid-addict oba-chan he'd laid to rest, and likely would not be the last. Shinto was arranged around the worship of the already deceased, not those dying in a piss-alley gutter. No, Yokota-san would take a long walk into Tokyo Bay before he let himself become a burden. He would fade away from the changing world, leaving only his daughter and his work to succeed him. Just like Tomoko.

He approached the nurse station slowly and quietly, allowing the young professionals one small fleeting moment of distraction before they returned to their responsibilities. Eiko-kun gasped in surprise at the holo, lifting a hand to her mouth as a distraught cat scurried under the a table, fleeing the buzz of a drone bird flitting around an apartment. Her other hand, Yokota noticed, was resting quietly atop Midori’s. He stopped behind his assistant and cleared his throat loudly to announce his presence.

“Doctor Yokota,” Midori said, turning quickly and becoming ramrod straight. Eiko-kun blushed a bright crimson in embarrassment and killed the feed to her holo. “We, uh…”

“Am I interrupting?” the older doctor asked with mock severity.

“No, no. Eiku-kun and I were just discussing…” Midori stammered.

“It’s fine, Midori-san. Relax,” Yokota said reassuringly. “We all need a break sometimes."

The younger man sighed, his shoulders visibly releasing tension. He turned to Yokota, bowing his head low and away from the nurse. “Did you bring the sample?” he whispered, his tone conspiratorial.

“Of course,” Yokota replied, opening his bag to display the vial.

They hurried into the lab, where Midori had already been preparing. “I ran additional tests against the patient’s blood samples,” he explained. “ELISA measurements did not yield any results for hemorrhagic proteins, and visual scan results returned no signs of unusual viral strains.”

Yokota opened the vial and withdrew a small amount of the viscous fluid into a syringe before injecting some into a spectrum analyzer. The machine whirred and hummed to life as it processed the sample. Midori busied himself depositing an additional specimen between two glass plates and sliding them under a high-powered optical profilometer. The viewscreen kicked on and the younger doctor began scanning across the surface of the fluid, looking for any anomalous variations in uniformity that may indicate any particulates suspended in the emulsion. Yokota stepped behind his protege and watched idly as the constant surface aspect flowed by on the screen.

A small colored blip flew by the edge of the monitor, almost imperceptible. Yokota blinked, not sure if what he’d seen was real, or simply an illusion of his aging eyes. Perturbed, he wiped his glasses with his akita kerchief. Then it happened again. “Wait, what was that?” he asked. “Go back.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Midori said, confused.

“No, there it is again,” Yokota pointed as another colored blotch, larger this time, quickly came in and out of frame. “What magnification are you at?”

“Uh… ten nanometers,” the younger man said.

“Back out. Five-hundred nanometers,” Yokota instructed.

“That’s awful big for a viral infection, don’t you think?” Midori cautioned.

“Humor me.”

“You’re the boss, Midori said with a shrug, resizing the scan envelope to a larger sweep size. The servo-controller squealed as it lifted the interface head further away from the sample, then whined as it auto-adjusted its position for optimal clarity. Taking up the small joystick, Midori again panned slowly across the surface, now less uniform in coloration with several distinct rectangular structures dotted across the landscape. “What the hell?”

Yokota leaned in closer, his nose near to the screen. He reached over gently and took the joystick from Midori’s hand, centering the view on one of the structures and zooming in slightly. It was several hundred nanometers in length, with a pointed structure on one end of a tubular structure, and a flattened wider section at the other. “That�� doesn’t look like any virus I’ve ever seen,” the older man commented.

“Is it some kind of bacteriophage? The overall structure looks vaguely like that, but I don’t see any of the landing fibers, and I have no idea what this... is,” Midori said, gesturing toward the non-pointed end. “That’s typically where the attachment fibers would go.”

“Agreed,” Yokota said, equally perplexed. “There’s a bunch of these, whatever they are, scattered about the suspension. Look, there’s more,” he commented, steering the profilometer across the surface as several more of the structures came into view.

Behind them, the spectrum analyzer blurted that it had finished its assessment, and the readout came to life displaying several chemical formulas. Yokota walked over to the instrument and hit the button to generate a print-out. A sheet of paper listing the chemical contents slid out from a slot in the front, and he laid it down on the bench to review, Midori behind and peering over his shoulder. “Well, we’ve got sufentanil in a sucralose suspension, just as we suspected. Explains the color and viscosity.” He read on: “caffeine, corn starch, trace organics…”

“Does that say tungsten?” Midori interrupted, pointing to the bottom of the chart.

“That doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t recognize this here below it either,” Yokota said, indicating a complex chemical formula.

“I do,” Midori said, a quizzical expression on his face. “It’s an esterase.”

“Not one of the pancreatic ones,” the older doctor countered.

“No. It breaks down certain types of plastics and polymers. Polyimide, in particular, if I remember correctly from my Biomechanics classes.”

“Why would anyone cut that into a street drug?” Yokota wondered.

#this is super-fillery #we'll return to the quote-unquote good parts later I promise #(if there are any in this monstrosity)#The World Ocean

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sancliffinc · 8 months ago

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sancliff · 1 year ago

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travelonlinetipsofficial · 3 years ago

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What are the best things to do for free in New York?

New Post has been published on https://www.travelonlinetips.com/what-are-the-best-things-to-do-for-free-in-new-york/

What are the best things to do for free in New York?

Sure, you could–drop a bunch of coin to go to the top of the Empire State Building, eat at the fanciest restaurants or walk around on the grounds of the Statue of Liberty. But what if we told you that you could take a boat ride right past Lady Liberty without spending a dime? It’s a possibility and thousands of New Yorkers who ride the Staten Island Ferry do it every day.

New York is chock full of free gems like these ones, but to find them, the secret is connecting with a local who knows all the tricks. Luckily for you, we’re spilling our beans and dishing up the best free spots to enjoy in New York City.

From long, luxurious walks through the city’s parks, including the elevated High Line, to the weird, wacky and wonderful sights at Coney Island, this list curates the best of New York’s offerings into a tidy little package.–

So, no matter how small – or non-existent- your budget is, you’re still capable of having a great time in the Big Apple. Now, without further ado, allow us to present to you the 10Best list of New York City’s free things to do.–

Photo courtesy of Luna Park

Coney Island is home to New York’s alternative side. From the yearly mermaid parade to the nationally televised hot dog eating contest, this beachy outreach of the city feels a million miles away. If you can’t make it for an event (though you really should try!), you’ll still find plenty to do once you arrive. Take your chances on a ride at the amusement park, Luna Park, or if you’re able to drop a few bucks, gain admittance into the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. We won’t ruin the surprises but this freak show will have you scratching your head – or in some cases, hiding your eyes.

Recommended for Free Things to Do because: Coney Island is grimy, weird and unforgettable experience. For free.

Andrea’s expert tip: Check the schedule and try to go when an annual event, such as the summertime Mermaid Parade, is in full swing.