#Overkill Evolution

[sgskhkt]

sorry ive been gone so long, spent the last month obsessing over a sopping wet puppy with punch beam eyes

silly goofy doodle dump under the cut

[isagrimorie]

I love how Criminal Minds 5x11 - Retaliation is a very Emily Prentiss episode. And more hints about Emily's past and her previous training, the ability to continue on and be alert.

The car she's in gets hit by a truck, and she keeps on trucking along. She empties her clip but is also cognizant enough to memorize partial plate numbers:

(Wow a night scene, look at that, I can see during a night scene, Criminal Minds Evolution!)

Emily's trained to go on (and honestly, also her dogged stubbornness just doesn't keep her down) despite serious injury.

Emily's so confused when Derek tells her she emptied her clip shooting at the truck.

Right up to the personality of people who would and could do undercover work:

Speaking from experience there, Special Agent Emily Prentiss?

And then, Reid unknowingly hits on the head Emily's ongoing existential crisis anytime a case hits too close to home.

But also, how, honestly Emily has it in her to just really murder a man.

As the criminal of the week, Schrader observed Emily has the look in her eyes that said she would and could kill him given the chance.

Schrader killed the cop who was in the car with Emily. Schrader taunted her about killing the man right next to her.

Schrader either thought he could psych out Emily from killing him or was desperate enough to just pull a suicide by cop.

Schrader taunts Derek about his arm injury and moves his gun an inch away from Joe Muller's head to shoot Derek instead.

And that minute movement was enough for Emily:

(Derek shooting at Schrader though was both overkill and risky since he could've shot Muller instead, thankfully that doesn't happen).

I’m so curious what Emily’s been through during her taskforce days that Emily is… comfortable is not exactly the word but unfazed killing?

What has Emily seen that makes some of the horrific scenes just roll off her back.

Also the very few anecdotes she shares are kind of harrowing in themselves:

Like, how years later Emily shares with Tara Lewis that in her JTF-12 days, she was on a mission where there were troops who would leave playing cards on dead terrorists, declaring 'We did this'.

What has Emily had to do that 'good guys doing bad things' has really screwed her up bad?

That after everything she just wanted a job that was “clean”. Clear right and clear wrongs.

I do think as hard it is as a fan to accept— Emily did need the time away from the BAU to reconcile a few things about herself.

Accept some of the things she learned about herself as a spy and realize… all the morally ambiguous things she can live with to a point. There are still lines she won’t cross.

Also, because spy stuff -- and Burn Notice kind of gave the (fictional, maybe?) guidelines to a great undercover agent:

Michael Westen: "When you're claiming to be somebody you're not, the key is commitment. You've got to sell it like your life depends on it. Because sometimes it does."

Michael Westen: "Inexperienced operatives abandon a cover ID under pressure. Experienced ones just play their roles harder."

---

I can only imagine that Emily Prentiss played by the same rules as Michael Westen.

/edited

[marlynnofmany]

A Feat of Minor Daring

(Related side project: Prank War!)

~~~

If you have to wait around for a client to bring you something to deliver, waiting on a landing pad with spectacular scenery is not a bad way to do it. Most of the rest of the crew was inside the ship — shuffling the boxes from our other client of the day, and doing any number of other mundane things — so it was just Paint and me enjoying the alien landscape. Their loss. 

I was appreciating the views, while Paint was really there for the smells. I kept pointing out particularly vivid splashes of color among the sea-anemone-shaped trees, while Paint caught whiffs of enticing things. 

“Ooh, what do you think that sharp scent is?” Paint asked when a cool breeze gusted past. She pulled her heat scarf closer. She was also wearing a heat sticker plastered to her scaly chest, which seemed like overkill to me, but I wasn’t a coldblooded lizard alien. I just had a sweater for the chill. 

“Your guess is better than mine,” I said, sniffing the air. “I’m going to go with ‘some sort of plant.’”

A cheerful jumble of musical notes chimed from the treeline where winged fauna hid among tentacle-branches. It sounded remarkably like several ringtones going off at the same time. I was about to ask Paint if she thought it was animals imitating tech, or maybe just a coincidence of evolution, when wild flapping heralded an explosion of feathers across the clearing. 

Colorful bird-things soared over us, their wings a riot of fiery shades and their bodies lined in speckled back feathers over bright blue scales. It was a glorious streak of color, and they sounded like a pile of phones all ringing at once. I had to grin at the sight. 

Paint just said, “I think they’re the source of the smell. How lovely.”

Then a straggler flapped out after the others, and I stopped grinning. 

It was trailing a plastic bag caught around its foot, just like the ones still causing trouble for animals on Earth. The poor thing must have been scavenging in town. By the time it collapsed halfway across the clearing, I was already moving, tugging my sweater off and sneaking up on the bird.

Paint squeaked, “What are you doing?”

“It needs help,” I said, keeping my voice low. The alien bird was breathing hard from the effort of fighting that much extra drag, and hopefully no additional problems. It hadn’t noticed me yet.

“Why is that your responsibility?” Paint hissed in concern. “It could bite you! You don’t even have scales, and you’re not wearing an exo suit! Why did you just take off your soft armor?”

“It’s not my responsibility,” I murmured. “But somebody’s got to.” I eased forward and took a long-legged jump to land with one foot squarely on the bag, then tackled the bird to wrap it in my sweater.

It, unsurprisingly, objected. And it was stronger than it looked.

“What are you doing??” Paint repeated. “You’ll get hurt!”

I fought to get a hand around the bird’s head and keep it from pecking me anywhere important while also holding its wings in. It did its level best to accomplish fight and flight at the same time. It even regurgitated a splash of food, which I managed to barely dodge. It smelled unpleasantly fishy.

But I got the bird’s head pinned down in a way that hopefully didn’t restrict its breathing, and I ended up crouched over the thing using my legs to keep its wings folded. My other hand was doing the important job of preventing it from wriggling free. That didn’t leave any hands for removing the bag.

“Paint! I need your claws!”

“What? No!” She sounded more than a little panicked.

“Just get the bag off its foot!” I said, jerking my head back to where the bag rustled behind me. “Then I’ll let it go!”

“That doesn’t look safe!” Paint insisted.

The bird bucked and thrashed. “It’s not going to get any safer! Come on, it needs help!”

Paint hissed a string of what were probably swear words as she darted forward and approached the talons. I couldn’t see what she was doing from my angle, but I heard the rustle of plastic. I wanted to ask how it was going and give pointers, maybe suggest stepping on the bag to hold it tight, though I didn’t know if that would help or not. I kept quiet.

“Got it!” Paint leapt back, holding up the torn bag in triumph.

“Great!” I said. “Does its leg look injured? Did the bag dig into it or cut off circulation as far as you can tell?”

Paint stepped forward gingerly, then shook her head. “No, the scales look fine.”

I let out a breath. “Extra great. Okay, stand back.”

Paint scampered over to stand by the ship, taking the bag with her, while I got my feet under me. In as smooth a motion as I could, I jumped sideways and rolled away, trailing my sweater. I would have preferred to stand and exit with dignity, but this was faster. Dignity wasn’t worth getting pecked in the knee.

In a whirlwind of feathers, the scaly bird scrambled into the sky. I sat up to watch it go. While I expected a dramatic arc into the distance, it only got as far as the biggest amoeba-tree. I worried that it was injured after all. Then I saw the cluster of tiny beaks that reached up as it landed.

I grinned all over again, watching the reunited family greet each other. A rustle of plastic told me Paint stood beside me. I looked up at her. “We did it.”

She watched the nest with wide eyes, clutching the bag. “We did. And it mattered.”

“It always matters.” I got to my feet with a wince, hoping that wasn’t going to be a bruise on my hip. “Thanks for helping. That was a deed well done.”

Paint was still staring. “Do you think it will have enough food for all the hatchlings? After spitting some at you?”

A glance told me the bird was feeding its young in the time-honored vomity fashion. “I hope so,” I said. “Scavenging for more might lead to another trash adventure, though maybe this was a learning experience.”

Paint stood up straighter. “Let’s check the species database and see what it eats,” she said. “That smells a lot like the canned fish I’ve been saving. We can put it out where they’ll find it.”

“A fine plan,” I told her. “Let’s get cleaned up first so we don’t leave bird germs in the kitchen.”

We’d only taken a couple steps toward the ship before Eggskin met us at the door with concern on their scaly face. “Kavlae said there was some sort of commotion outside, and someone might be hurt?” They brandished the medscanner.

Before I could answer, Paint held up the crumpled plastic bag. “We saved a creature that was trapped in this!”

Eggskin cocked their head, clearly about to ask why, but Paint was still talking. She gave a dramatic recounting of the whole affair. Eggskin turned on the scanner and checked us both for contamination while she talked. Clear. (Whew.)

“…And now it’s safely up in the nest with its hatchlings, and it wouldn’t have made it up there if not for us, and they would have starved and died, and we saved all of them!” Paint said, waving the bag. “It always matters! Now where’s the can opener? I want to leave them some of my fish.”

Eggskin blinked. “Third drawer on the right, where it should be. Unless someone’s misplaced it again. Put that in the biohazard bin and wash your hands.”

“Got it, thanks!” Paint was gone in a rustle of plastic.

Eggskin looked up at me. “Is ‘pack bonding’ contagious?”

I laughed. “I couldn’t tell you. But it always matters. Would you mind keeping an eye on that nest over there while I go change clothes? I’ll wash my hands too.”

Eggskin sighed. “Please do.”

They stood outside the ship watching the distant family of scaly birds, wearing an expression like they were trying to figure something out. I smiled and left to get cleaned up. I’d check the species database afterward. Maybe I had some food they’d like too.

~~~

Did I mention the Prank War?

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

What’s another thing you want to talk about that no one has ever bothered to ask? Please enlighten us all on this topic.

There's always a pang of nervousness when GIL starts getting supertheoretical, so it's possibly understandable why no one has ever asked about vestigial organs. AKA ...

Are there any features of Gallifreyan anatomy that are redundant or dormant?

Every species has a biological junk drawer, and Gallifreyans cannot be the exception. On Earth, humans have question-mark features, such as the appendix, tailbone, wisdom teeth, ear muscles, and the nictitating membrane—structures that once served a purpose but now mostly just sit there, waiting to be inflamed.

On Gallifrey, the situation is made more complex by one fundamental fact:

🧬 Evolution Was On Hold (Sort Of)

Gallifreyans haven't evolved naturally since the Dark Times. Their development has been regulated, rerouted, and retrofitted through biodata manipulation and Loom-based engineering. Traditional Darwinian selection pressures were effectively paused the moment their society had to resort to Looms post-Curse.

However, their original biology—whether evolved or lifted wholesale from some prehistoric, likely reptilian species—still left its fingerprints. And unless something was deliberately erased, weird remnants hung around.

So, below are a few candidates for Gallifreyan anatomical redundancy. Everything here is speculative, but grounded in comparative xenobiology and the limited hard data available.

🧻 Appendix

(Appendicula Rassiloni, pending formal name)

There is reason to believe that Gallifreyans possess an appendix, or at least a small, lymphoid-adjacent structure at the junction of their upper and lower gut tract. Despite genetic engineering, this structure appears to persist.

On Earth, the appendix is theorised to serve an immune or microbiotic support role. Since both species appear to retain this organ:

It may play a similar immunological buffering role in Gallifreyans

Or it's a pure evolutionary artefact—possibly linked to ancestral high-cellulose or herbivorous diets

Surgical removal seems to have occurred and appears to be safe.

🧬 Reproductive Organs

Gallifreyans did not reproduce biologically for millennia. During the Curse of the Pythia era, the species lost all fertility, leading to the rise of Looms. For thousands of years, reproductive organs were present but not able to do what they were designed for.

What's interesting is that these systems were never removed from the genetic template. They were retained—like a shrine to something no longer believed in.

These organs were vestigial for a very long time

With the lifting of the curse, biological reproduction resumed (take it up with Professor Davies)

Modern Gallifreyans are fully fertile, and those organs are now functional again

This may be the only known example in xenobiology of a vestigial system reactivating across a species.

🧠 The Third Brain Stem

Gallifreyans have three brain stems (or two, or one, but the highest claimed is three). In human neuroanatomy, the brain stem regulates autonomic functions—breathing, heart rate, etc.—but in Gallifreyans, most of that is managed by the autonomic brain, a specialised structure near the cerebellum. This begs the question—why an utter overkill of three brain stems?

The three brain stems appear to serve primarily as high-speed neural relays:

93 pairs of nerves (as opposed to Earth's 12) branch from the brain stems into the spinal column

This enhances bodily coordination, reflex speed, and neural multitasking

But it's not entirely clear why they need three

Speculation: the third stem may once have supported intensive psionic integration or higher-dimensional sensory routing, both of which have atrophied in modern Gallifreyans. If so, it may now operate as redundancy—no longer essential, but still maintained.

👁️ Superior Epiphysis Cerebri

This is a structure we know about: a gland located just above the regular epiphysis cerebri (pineal gland). It appears to allow Gallifreyans to perceive higher dimensions—but only when consciously activated and trained. Most Gallifreyans go their entire lives without ever doing this.

Likely used more frequently in ancient times when psionic activity was stronger

Technically functional, but unused in the vast majority of citizens

So not vestigial, but dormant, unless awakened.

📉 Psionic Atrophy

It's worth noting that the ancestral Gallifreyans—the Shobogans—were far more psychically potent than the average modern Gallifreyan.

Today, despite all their biotech enhancements, many Time Lords rely on trained psionic ability rather than raw talent. This reflects a decline in natural telepathy.

So while the psychic system isn't vestigial, much of its organic infrastructure may be. The unused 'old wiring' may still be embedded in the brain, waiting to be rerouted or accidentally activated.

🏫 So...

Some organs are sleeping. Some have been reactivated. Some may be the last echoes of a people who once danced naked around cauldrons and ate raw Sealak. GIL continues to investigate.

Related:

💬|🧬🐒What does the evolution lineage of Gallifreyans look like?: Highly theoretical look at how Gallifreyans evolved.

💬|🏺🧙What do Shobogans look like, and how are they different from modern Gallifreyans?: Various biological difference between Gallifreyans and their ancestors.

📺|🧶👶What is looming and how does it exist alongside natural reproduction?: Overview of looming and its place alongside natural reproduction in Gallifreyan society.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[starmahgalaxies]

Yikes. Patamon is such a gem from saving Takeru from become flattened fish food.

The part before where I mentioned Devimon has a good silhouette? Yeah, that.

Don't worry, little guy. You definitely get more wings to be able to fly. Their whole conversation about Patamon evolving is absolutely precious. I love the sketchy/hand drawn feel for all the "Imaginary" pig evolutions Takeru comes up with. I didn't include them because I ended up with enough screencaps for this episode as is (I get less restraint as I go along).

Always some of the prettiest locations in the Digital World.

POYOMON MY PRECIOUS BABY! my favorite baby digimon spotted.

I will always take the opportunity to post these adorable kids.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel using electricity in water like that.

Guy comes back to his babysitting job and realizes a couple kids have made a mess trying to take over lol.

Poor child with divorced parents has defensive instinct against people arguing. Baby, no 💔. (said with full sincerity and personal experience).

I enjoy how it shows with Patamon's evolution too. The evolution process is about to be booted up as Takeru is under a lot of stress and Patamon's protect instincts kicking in. It then goes down as it shows the kid's conflict avoidance overriding any sense of danger or stress that would otherwise cause it. (It also would be overkill to have a child/rookie digimon evolve into a literal angel to fight another young 'mon the same level as him).

Cuuuute.

Evidence he is not an only child with his first thought of conflict resolution is to make a game of it. Secondly, where did you get that outfit??

🎉

Friends, yay! Also, another time I really wanted to include a pretty shot just 'cause.

Yup, definitely a child with trauma from parents arguing. ilysm

Yeah, punch him straight to hell!

You precious, kind, hopeful child. You are too good for these worlds. They are not ready for your character arc /affectionate.

Takeru grows into a little gremlin and I love that for him. The most hopeful have some of the deepest scars and righteous anger in their hearts. Neither does that take away them being kind.

Yeah, just don't die! I'm not sorry.

Okay, maybe I am a little sorry.

[whos-starr]

ACT 2 WAS CRAZYYY

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER CUT. LIKE ALL THE SPOILERS. I AM DUMPING MY THOUGHTS.

So ep 4 was great !!! I loved Jinx and Isha's interactions and then Isha getting her hair blue!!!

Ending of ep 4 was crazy 😭😭😭 could not believe vander was alive

LOVE EP 5 AHHH!!! The beginning sequence was incredible, showing vi's circle and how unsustainable it became. And then the teamup!!! They've finally sorta reconciled!! Poor Isha though, Vi standing up for her in ep 3 and then making her nose bleed now.

ALSO MEL. MEL HAPPENED. I SCREAMED WHEN "KINO" APPEARED IT WAS CRAZY. I love the way the black rose magic is animated. AND THE REVEAL WITH MEL. OH MY GOD. THAT WAS CRAZY

And then there's jayce. Oh, jayce. He is LOSING it. With how Viktor was talking in the end of the ep while possessing Salo he seemed like he was gonna be the villain, and then he was sunshine and daises in ep 6. Speaking of.

Ep 6. Wow. I. Wow. Im not ok fr.

First off, I like Jayce. He's a good character. But my first response to him at the end of the ep was WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKKKKKK

ANGRY SAD CRYING SOBBING however i do not hate him. He's complicated and my feelings are not simply anger. He's got a lot going on...good on him for not killing that child in front of him though. Even though he killed them later.

CAITVI MADE UP???? WHAT???? LOVE THAT FOR THEM. They're slowly kinda back?? They at least worked together. Also can we talk about how caitlyn immediately attacked Vi when she saw her walking. Like that was overkill, the way she hit her multiple times. Caitlyn didn't recognize her as Vi and if she had she wouldn't have done that, I think. But it shows what she thinks. I'm gonna have a more in depth post about the brutality from the Enforcers/Noxians soon. Im just getting my thoughts out rn.

Ok. Now the big part. Actually crying over Isha. We don't know for sure.....I'm praying shes ok....but wow. All I've got to say is she's brave. She's incredible. She's smart. She took the hextech gemstones from Vi's gauntlets anticipating a fight. She's so amazing, and I really hope she's ok. Also Vander. I've got less hope for him, though.

Misc thoughts:

EP 6 PARALLELS TO EP 3 S1. FINALLY REUNITING AND EVERYTHING GOING TO BE OKAY, THEN SOMEONE GOES AND FUCKS IT UP. WHAT THE GOOF.

on a lighter note AAAAAA THEY PLAYED PAINT THE TOWN BLUE! THATS MY FAVORITE SONG FROM THE SOUNDTRACK!!!!!

Loved seeing Vi and Jinx's mom. She's so much like Jinx. Younger Silco too! And the flashback scene, seeing Vi and Jinx before their parents died. Which means they KNEW Vander when they saw him on the bridge. They knew him all their life. Im not ok rn. Also Vander suggesting the name violet??? DO YOU THINK SILCO SUGGESTED THE NAME POWDER?

AND THEN AND THEN. VIKTOR SAID THE THING. HE SAID GLORIOUS EVOLUTION. AND THEN JINX SAID "MACHINE HERALD" IN REFERENCE TO VIKTOR IM LOSING IT.

Anyways i think thats it....i need act 3 now

[drops-of-moonlights]

-After the Eternal evolution, are there more transformations? And Your Sailor moon Restart, is there other Arcs after the Shadow Galactica arc or that's just it?

each system theoretically has around 7 levels of Senshi power, but it's rare for any Senshi in said system to get to level 2, let alone a whole system reaching level 3 like our Solar System does. It's rarely needed for a Senshi to reach higher than that unless in the times of Sailor Wars, and even then level 4 is basically overkill.

In theory there would be more happenings after Shadow Galactica, but those are sporadic and outside of the scope I want for the AU - the adventure continues, but we don't know what comes after.

[nolanhollogay]

MARATINES '25 DAY SIX: web weaving

novakie relationship evolution

poison poison - renee rapp/wildflower - billie eilish/lacy - olivia rodrigo/gemini moon - renee rapp/overkill - holly humberstone/everyone's in love with you - david byrne/vulnerability/sailor song - gigi perez

taglist: @nikosasaki@witchofinterest@partiallypearl@rose-of-oz@bibaybe

psd credit

[ubahacom]

Imagine, if you will, that you're a fish. Not a particularly bright fish—perhaps the kind that forgets its own name halfway through a bubble—but a fish nonetheless. You're minding your business, buried comfortably in sand, invisible to the naked eye, smugly thinking you've outwitted the food chain.

Enter: the hammerhead shark.

Now, a hammerhead shark is what you might call nature’s whimsical engineering error that accidentally became brilliant. It looks like someone tried to draw a shark from memory after three pints and a head injury. And yet, it is—astonishingly—an apex predator, armed with one of the most absurdly useful superpowers in the known aquatic universe: electroreception.

Yes, that’s right. While humans were busy inventing the toaster and forgetting their car keys, hammerhead sharks evolved a sense that can detect the electric fields emitted by living things. Not just the dramatic kind, like electric eels or underwater rave DJs. No, we're talking about the soft, whispering fizz of your neurons doing their daily paperwork. The subtlest zap of biological activity. Even the slightly anxious flicker of a guilty stingray's heartbeat under a foot of sand.

And that ridiculous head? It’s not just for poking fun at during biology lectures. It’s called a cephalofoil, which sounds like something you’d wrap a cosmic sandwich in, and it's covered in thousands of sensors called ampullae of Lorenzini—a name that sounds suspiciously like an Italian prog-rock band.

These sensors can detect electric fields so faint, they make your Wi-Fi signal look like a Viking funeral. We're talking one billionth of a volt. A voltage so low, if you tried to power even a thought with it, your brain would send back a polite note saying “no thank you.”

So to recap: you, a fish, are hiding under the sand. Smug. Invisible. Then along comes a cross-eyed torpedo with a flat head and a built-in paranormal fish-finder. You are, in the strictest scientific sense, doomed.

And that, dear reader, is why the hammerhead shark is not only a triumph of ridiculous design, but a floating argument for why evolution has a wicked sense of humor—and a taste for very specific kinds of overkill.

#Electroreception #shark #hammerhead #hammerheadshark #sharks #SharkWeek

[erazonpo3]

If I were given the chance to redo Way Out from the start the one thing I feel most confident that I'd want to change is that I'd want to set up Mega Evolution as a thing in this story from the very start. By the time I thought about how I'd like to add it it felt too late in the story to try introducing it, because as cool as having a power-up button for a Pokemon is, it's therefore something you need to establish with weight and significance imo

Because it's pretty thematic to PLA, right, where the story is all about befriending Pokemon– but on the same coin, when everyone else is taking baby steps it's a bit overkill to be maxing out the potential of an unbreakable bond etc.

Mostly though I think it'd be relevant in showing Volo that no matter what kind of might he can accrue, he's still pretty in over his head; with the state of battling being what it is in Hisui I don't think he actually really knows strategy so much as he knows how to throw hard hits again and again (see: Giratina). There isn't a meta to speak of for him to learn from, and of course he's not going to know about the special magical advanced forms pokemon can get under the right circumstances.

There's a story in there somewhere about him having to work to achieve it after all the stuff in the postgame too, but I still kind of want to write a chapter of In Too Deep where he just learns about it (the only problem being I don't know how to write it without it just being an exposition dump of stuff the reader already knows)

[vanityxvanitas]

In ch 159 of yu yu hakusho it is stated that ice maidens die if they ever have a sexual relationship with a man, so is yukina going to die if she pursues a romantic relationship with kuwabara?

I guess you're referring to this part? If that's the case, then interesting, I didn't know it could be read like that. The line in Japanese just said all ice maidens who gave birth to boys died shortly afterwards, but didn't specify why. It could be a biological process, which makes me wonder if Hina knew about this - and if she did, why she still chose to have children then. (This is making me create lame conspiracies again...)

In the manga, their mother Hina died shortly after giving birth, but in the anime, she committed suicide. I think the anime scriptwriter interpreted the deaths as an active behavior and changed the line to convey that. Initially, I also read this part as the deaths of them were either due to suicides due to emotional pains, or experiences of pressure from their system/society that led them towards suicides (which might be why Yukina’s attitude towards her own people was so extreme). This description also offers a possibility that she killed herself to spare her son the stigma of patricide, which might imply she knew the birth of him would actually kill her. (Irrelevant but Raizen’s lover also died after giving birth, perhaps due to huge biological barriers that divide the youkai - human species.)

Therefore, considering the anime setting, it seems like Yukina would be fine entering a relationship with Kazuma, because she left that environment. Assuming they become a couple and get married and want a child, in the case of post-delivery death being a biological process, maybe she would be fine if they refrain from pregnancy. Also, I remember that only A-class youkai can breed with humans, so there’s a chance Yukina couldn't conceive a child with Kazuma. If she was around 100 years old by the time she's together with Kazuma, she might still have a child asexually.

However, I don't know if this changes when the ranking of the youkai changes, so maybe Yukina and Kazuma can make a child. I mean, there's even a concept like atavism of the Mazoku that suggests higher classes of youkai can manipulate their DNA. Somehow, it just makes more sense for me if how youkai being able to create hybrids with humans is due to their biological similarities regardless of rankings, but maybe the progression of rankings imply extremely quick evolutions within a youkai’s lifetime or something.

Perhaps Hina also evolved before she gave birth to her children? It was stated that the female child from asexual reproduction would be a complete copy of the ice maiden and male child would inherit the father's characteristics, so I guess Hiei might be a product of hybridogenesis (and Yukina could be from parthenogenesis, but it isn't clear if she and Hiei received any trait from the parent of the opposite sex because they were a special case within Hyouga’s history).

This is far-fetched but I don't know if ice maidens’ bodies evolved to reject the heredity of foreign genes, but if we follow that route where post-delivery deaths were inevitable biological process, it makes more sense why the ice maidens were so strict about their traditions (as the reasons were more justified in comparison than them actively reject the outsiders merely due to historical reasons). Dropping a baby to death is still overkill though.

[sunset-synthetica]

Can you explain how the immortal science of marxism-leninism relates to Turbo Overkill

I don't believe TO is trying to have a huge deep political message, but some of it was intentional and the rest stems from its inspirations, ie Blade Runner, whose political messaging WAS intentionally a critique of capitalism and/or the more specific effects it has on our lives.

The backdrop is a late capitalist- using Mandel's definition- system where the largest and most powerful company's (Teratek's) capital is generated mostly, if not entirely, by selling increasingly more dangerous and experimental products to a consumer base spanning entire solar systems at the very least.

By looking at Johnny as a member of the exploited working class - albeit a class traitor, as he's a former cop* - a disabled person, unable to earn enough to save his life in any other way than by essentially selling himself to Teratek and gradually losing parts of his own body and surrenderong agency as this job becomes more and more demanding. We see a clear anti-capitalist sentiment built directly into the foundation of the game.

We can go further though.

SYN, in short summarized as a sentient, virus-esque AI, functions as an abstracted, personified representation of Teratek itself and its ultimate goals. SYN was supposed to enhance the process of human body augmentation, and, as Johnny's mother states, having been directly involved in the making of SYN, it should have been a way to help people, had Teratek not been the intended owner.

SYN goes rogue, and, instead of disobeying Teratek's policy, takes it further, either converting augmented people into a mind controlled force, or creating entirely new beings in the pursuit of human evolution. She seeks to force the human race to evolve, or be exterminated, which relates moreso to eugenics but is a vital part of her position in the story.

So, establishing SYN as both a manifestation of Teratek/the wider market as well as its relationship to the workers, and something of a next step in the evolutionary line of their thinking, her relationship with Johnny gets easier to pick apart.

Johnny is offered a choice that, while more obvious in its immediate effect, partially reflects the experience of the worker- debase himself, be stripped of choice, free will, identity, be exploited for the rest of his life to build a future he will not see or enjoy, sell his labor for the cost of staying alive - or die. It's not a choice, not really, it's an illusion.

He chooses to stay alive, of course, and though SYN is defeated at the end, it doesn't break him out of the loop. SYN is not the root of the problem, she is not the cause for Johnny's suffering and exploitation, she's the more extreme, almost caricature-like version of his struggle.

Johnny ends the story the same as he'd began, only the illusion of a choice in the matter is shattered.

The Street Cleaners

The Street Cleaners are a mercenary-like faction, essentially fulfilling the role of the police, though on a much less regulated, official level. We don't have a lot of information about them, but from what I've been able to gather, they are generally disliked by the Regulators- police force- and work outside the law to an unknown extent, without pretending otherwise, all while fulfilling the interests of corporations.

Within the Street Cleaners, everything goes if the money is good enough, which was the incentive for Johnny to join in the first place- do the dirty work, get paid, survive.

I wanna look at Maw specifically. He's all around an interesting character, but it really shines from this angle.

All of the Street Cleaners seem to enjoy their work, including Johnny, but Maw's relationship to it is particular, in that he doesn't see his colleague or fellow people as either competition or allies on the same level, but as inherently beneath him, not worthy of his consideration.

Maw criticizes the corporations, claims them to be untrustworthy and incapable of wielding power without abusing it, and yet his solution is not the collective seizing of the means of production- SYN's platform and all its available resources, including the augmentation process in this context- but rather the accumulation of all for himself.

He plans to change the system from within by establishing himself as in control, as its driving force, instead of seeing the system as inherently flawed and needing to be dismantled. No amount of gradual change could have changed SYN, or the system for the better, and so, Maw only speeds up a process that, under SYN, might have taken longer, but would have been inevitable regardless.

Maw loses control, loses his sense of reality and objectivity, of himself, and crumbles under the weight of this process, this power.

Were SYN the one in control during the time of Maw's rampage, the process may have been more gradual, less chaotic, but the ending would have been the same - a mass extinction event, countless deaths and destruction, regardless of whether the motive was a false hope for the evolution of the human race, or profit for the bourgeoisie/market, as represented mostly by Teratek's Executive.

In short, Maw allows himself to become absorbed by the system, accelerates its negative outcome, and upon being killed, just like SYN's own death, nothing changes. Both deaths slow the progress down somewhat, hide the obvious, but result in no meaningful change.

All of this, while a reach in some parts, is not contradicted by anything in the story of Turbo Overkill, rendering it an insane, but viable analysis.

My conclusion is that Marxism-Leninism couldn't have saved Johnny Turbo, but it could have eased his suffering and made him see his struggle as founded in a material reality outside his own control, and inherent to the very system he exists within.

-----------

*the situation of the Regulator force isn't exactly clear, but Paradise- Johnny's home, and the respective Regulator force of which he was a part of- is stated to have heavy criminal activity, which necessitated the Regulator presence, and may have inspired Johnny to join in the first place.

SYN, ironically enough, directly states that Johnny's presence in the Regulator force meant he "enforced [her] goals," until he was led astray by his injury. Said goals are specifically the elimination of the weak to make place for the strong, a genocide, but it's unclear if by "her", SYN describes herself as the sentient person possessing agency, or the purpose for which Teratek utilized her prior. If we assume the latter is true, it would mean the Regulators are simply a cleaner, more widely accepted version of the Street Cleaners, as I've already stated is my belief.

[mattkenzie]

Alright, now hear me out… A bug-type Eeveelution based off on the Venezuelan poodle moth and we shall call it Papilleon (Pappillion (French word for butterfly) + Eon)

I think for this Eeveelution, similar to Leafeon’s old evolution method levelling up near a moss rock, this one would be standing close to the moss stone (at night) using a moonstone. (But would it be on a full moon? The requirement would be such an overkill because of Ursaluna using a Peat Block on a full moon?)… Aww what the heck… Full moon!

[ghostchanuwu]

Even though this will quell the Titains Rampage this is still the worst outcome for everyone

(Was unsure if cross posting this here too would be overkill but meh whatever its my blog ill post my self indulgent stuff if i want)

A bit of inspo for Steven's character actually came from Anna and Nostra with a bunch of overthinking cannonical Pokemon Timelines and a sprinkle of cosmic horror

It took a bit of workshopping but I did settle on a point in which AniRedux became a thing and suprisingly it wasn't during ORAS's timeline

It was Emerald's

Now the reasoning behind this is that in the Delta Episode Devon Corp was going to go through with the dimensional shifter plan which in this continuity actually happened (alt ORAS timline where the meteor gets sent to Emerald's timeline and since mega evolution didnt exist in that one Rayquaza was unable to stop it in time) shortly after the impact the timeline had been reset completely because by then the destruction would have been too much (Steven had been the one to actually track down Jirachi right before the impact and had made that wish to reset everything but at the cost of everything being completely different and nobody having memories of what had occured, Steven did not expect his and Jirachi's paths to cross again but it did under the worst circumstances)

Basically AniRedux was caused by an alternate event in canon ORAS that screwed over canon Emerald (canon Emerald still exists as the non-ME timeline) that is now a Mega Evolution timeline

(I had been debating on if XY point would warrent being the reset point but the damage from the Ultimate Weapon would arguably be isolated to Kalos possible spilling a bit into Paldea, USUM was another canidate bc of the Ultra Beasts but Guzzlord's world already counts as a bad end timeline but that might be explored as being the canon non-ME timeline since it would make the most sense)

[thekaijudude]

Honestly they could have just made this new guy a reionics with some extra flare so he could still make armor for omega, he’s doing the same thing and I miss rei :c

iirc talked about this in-depth before. In general I doubt TsuPro would not actually touch the Reionyx Apocalypse ever unless it's within the context of UGF like what they've already done with First Mission

This is due to Reiblood being potentially a Legendary Alien on par with the Legendary Ultras, literally a Universal threat at the minimum

Even in the context of NEO, all they've dealt with is literally just a fragment of his soul. And we literally already have an active Parallel Isotope of yet another fragment of his soul as shown in First Mission, which itself can already threaten the Kingdom as pointed out by Marie.

So dumbing the broader background of the Reionyx threat to an annual series where the average kaiju threat is just City level is simply overkill, unfeasible and no one wants to watch yet again TsuPro dancing around the potentiality of UGF4's return when it's been 4 YEARS atp alr, everyone is alr kinda pissed atp about this since Sakamoto is literally MIA

For Omega, the concept of Ultra-Kaiju partners in NG era is the foundation needed for Armor forms as seen in Victory, X, Blazar and now Omega and the latest member is simply a continued evolution of that. From the outlook, Omega's Armor concept + Ultra-Kaiju partnership is the most developed of all as we've seen

Recall:

Victory - Only actual partner was Shepardon, the rest was just simply using Spark dolls as tools without any characterization, Ultra-Kaiju interaction minimal

X - Only actual partner was Cyber Gomora, rest was just Cyber Cards, Ultra-Kaiju interaction minimal, it was more of a bond between Daichi and Cyber Gomora rather than with X

Blazar - Only actual partner was Firdran, rest was just via Blazar Stones, we literally only had 1 episode where we saw him interacting with Firdran, in the rest of the series it was just being treated as a summoned tool with 0 interaction

Omega - As much as I hate how toyetic the Meteor Kaiju are as they appear as their Meteor Monster Series releases within the show, based on the trailer, we can tell that they are an ever present background character, interacting mainly with Kosei, so this setting puts the kaiju partners in line for far more characterization

(Ik Decker has had kaiju partners as well but bruh they're literally just a tool in his series)

So as we can see, Omega has the most developed Ultra-Kaiju dynamic. But of course we can continue to still expand upon this like say having the kaiju be an actual character with its own ideas and motivations

So this setting imo is simply par for the course so long as TsuPro decides to continue with Armor forms, so they have to push the Ultra-Kaiju dynamic alongside this agenda

[dragongirlsnout]

only just now found out about dbp from one of unfucker's forks linking to it on the github, and I'm kinda curious if there was a specific point where you decided you wanted to actually work on it (since I remember you saying development was shelved i think last february-ish)

Would have to look up the specific dates, but vaguely sometime around when cohost went down. DB+ was actually finished and working at the time when we stopped active development last February, and we held off on publishing it mainly because of the awful response we got from people at the time when we brought up, you know, not wanting to sink hours of our free time into a site that had just banned one of our best friends on the basis of her being a popular transfem and was actively in the process of burying that fucked up fact beneath "lmao mullenweg is an idiot" memes.

I don't think people realised just *how much* time we spent on DBU and DB+ combined. For reference, we have done paid webextension development on commission for a relatively small project, both in scope and in simplicity, with a "closed-form solution", e.g. something that we could code and never have to update because it operated entirely outside the scope of the websites it affected. We charged 400 USD for that project, a very fair amount based on my expertise and the amount of time we spent writing code and testing it. If we were to develop DB+ from the ground up for a client, counting all of my research, testing, refinement, and the iterative design work that came from DBU, we would charge no less than 5000 USD. Even that is probably undercutting our work; we could only afford to charge that little because web development is solely a hobby for us, and not a primary source of income. Check in on your compsci friends, the industry is not doing very well.

That tirade aside, DB+ is mostly the same as it was pre-release, with the addition of the IDB engine we developed for chutils, a few new features revolving around newer site changes, and a lot of general code cleanup. We haven't made any updates in the past few months (?) between a combination of being busy with exams and work, as well as the fact that it just...didn't really need any. DB+, while incredibly robust and completely unpatchable by staff (suck my dick), isn't a final evolution of the concept, but we haven't really felt the need to move onto the final stage yet because it still feels like overkill when a) demand is low and b) tumblr is no farther from exploding than it was a year ago. That said, we *do* have a third stage design in the prototype stage that works, is generally feasible, and completely blows the past two years of staff's web anti-development out of the water. I'll refrain from saying any more than that, for now, though.

- Zinnia